The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

by J.R.R. Tolkien

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost;

Bilbo's poem has the rhythm and pattern of Daoist and Buddhist aphorisms, where apparent paradoxes are used to show that the truth is more dynamic than static, and categories are not as interesting as the seams between them. The imagery of "wanderer" is important in The Lord of the Rings (not least from the influence of the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Wanderer"). The wanderer is not lost, but merely temporarily blocked from his true identity. The exiled warrior, deprived of his web of reciprocal obligaions of community, of purpose, of identity, strives across the land to recover the mead-hall, the ring-giver, the lord-thane relationship that gives his courage meaning. It is in that bearing up against the slings and arrows of inconstant fate that the wanderer proves his worth as a warrior, to return to his reightful place. The ideal of the wanderer in Daoism is different. A wanderer is a playful figure, a fool who has no specific place where they must be. Aimless, directionless, like a meandering turtle dragging its tail through the mud, the wanderer lives the utlimate life of freedom, of limitless possibilities. It is only be eschewing the obligations imposed on one by conventional society, honors as well as dishonors, that one can achieve xiaoyao, the ultimate freedom of the wanderer. I'm not sure which version of the wanderer is more compelling to me, or if maybe they are even, two sides of the same coin, a paradox to be resolved. I've been speaking a lot about Tolkien's inspirations, but as I draft this meandering note, it occurs to me that I ought to speak a little on how he transcends his insipirations as well. All great writers must invent their own language, their own inimitable combination of idiosyncratic usage, preferred grammatical constructions, unique images infused by their personal myths, rhetorical tropes honed by their particular experience ... all fused into an idiolect that they, and only they, feel perfectly at home in. This is because ordinary language (or "the Common Tongue"), like ready-made clothing or mass-manufactured tools, is inadequate to express or realize the sui generis nature of each singular existence. To tell the stories that only they can tell, writers must invent their own language. (Writers who don't strive to invent their own language end up writing in clichés; they're easy to understand because they have nothing interesting to say). Idiolects, of course, die with their one and only speaker. And so all great books are written in dead languages. The passage of time erodes them, tests them, filters them until what limited them to their times have been striped away, leaving behind only what is eternal, universal, lasting: Humanity expressed in a single voice, Life embodied in a single soul. That core is self-translating, self-generating, self-renewing. This is, ulitmately, why I think The Lord of the Rings continues to draw the love of readers everywhere -- those who love Anglo-Saxon poetry as well as those who don't, those who enjoy finding parallels to Daoism as well as those who don't, those who want to live like Hobbits as well as those who want to live like elves -- a story told in "ancient mode" with an eternally youthful soul. It is a story that only Tokien could tell, and he invented a language to tell it -- a language that we gladly study and immerse ourselves in, in order to discover our own soul-path, to enrich our own breóst-hord. In that act of reading and actively imagining into being the world created by the author, our minds touch across time and space, and the dead language is alive again. All that's dead isn't gone; not every universal is also common. A paradox. Thank you for accompanying me on the latest iteration of my journey through Middle-earth. You've been such plasant company that I wish I knew half of you as well as I should like and you deserve. Wander on.