Since I am actively looking for places where the Hobbits and the ring company experience rest and rejuvenation along their journey, I feel compelled to pause and consider Farmer Maggot's farm. Farmer Maggot's farm is a place of rest, yes. They eat and drink as they rest. But is it a locus amoenus? And if not, then what?
The meal is a homely one--a homey one, we might say--farmhouse fare. It consists of mushrooms and other appropriate foods, and it is eaten within man-made--or hobbit-made--walls rather than in nature. In particular, there is no running water. There is also no priest. Farmer Maggot is a shrewd fellow, but he does not, in fact, preside over the meal. His wife is more instrumental than he in laying the table, and his part in the tableau is to analyze recent events rather than to serve. That the main part of the meal is made of mushrooms suggests an earthiness, or perhaps we might say an earthliness. This is good, nourishing food, but it is food of the earth rather than heavenly food. So perhaps sometimes a meal is just a meal? And yet, I'm not sure.
The meeting with Farmer Maggot follows close on the heels of the meeting with the elves at Woodhall. In fact, it is the very next chapter. Like the supper with the elves, this supper is communal: the hobbits share a meal with others, bringing the total to 14--the same number (if memory serves) as the voyage to the Lonely Mountain in the Hobbit, without Gandalf. Interestingly, it is also one more than the total of Jesus and his 12 disciples at the Last Supper (which some would say is the origin of 13 as an unlucky number).
Farmer Maggot, though not a priestly figure, offers sanctuary. He shields Frodo from the Black Riders and transports him to the Ferry. But in spite of not being a "priest" figure (there seem to be no priests among hobbits, even though Gildor calls Frodo a prince among hobbits), he has been in the Old Forest, and has even had some dealings with Tom Bombadil, who reveals his respect for Farmer Maggot later. And while the food is earthly rather than spiritual, he and his wife provide food for Frodo, Sam, and Pippin for their journey, and they later share it with Merry and Fredegar Bolger.
The positioning of this "ordinary" scene of communal eating so close to the extraordinary scene of communal eating and celebration begs for the reader to consider the possible connections. The spiritual food of the elves is different in kind than the homely, earthy food of the farmer, and yet both nourish the body. The eating of the communal meal at Farmer Maggots does relieve their fears, but the communal nature seems to be responsible for that relief rather than the food itself. While it is a man-made shadow of something that, with the elves, touches the divine, a communal meal nevertheless anticipates and participates, in a small way, in that taste of heaven. Here, we glimpse how ordinary moments become elevated to the sacramental in Tolkien, and as we live in this world, such a moment can be equally significant.
7 comments:
Perhaps dinner at Farmer Maggots is to dinner with the elves as Sunday dinner with the family is to the Eucharist received at Sunday Mass? The one sort of completes the other. The Sunday dinner fills out the human need not only for filling our bellies but also for community, for connections and, while not a sacrament, can function as a sort of sacramental as the family gathers together to pray before the meal. Certainly it is a domestic liturgy of sorts.
And I'm reminded of a passage I blogged about some time ago from Cardinal Ratzinger's The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood where he points out the necessity of the ordinary physical meal in creating Christian brotherhood: "Consideration of the Eucharist takes us a step farther, too. Its celebration originally comprised, of course, both the liturgical meal and an ordinary, “physical” meal shared by Christians meeting together in one large unit. The liturgy and ordinary living had not yet become separated. This situation cannot be reconstructed under present circumstances, but Schurmann rightly points out that the need still remains for parishes to develop appropriate forms of community life outside the liturgy in order to supplement the liturgical gathering and make possible direct brotherly contact."
(I blogged it here.
Also, thinking about this: The Liturgy of the Board
That's exactly the kind of thing I was moving towards, yes! Thanks for the links!!
The "Liturgy of the Board" link reminds me of a response paper that I wrote on Dubliners with a particular eye to the eucharistic resonances in "The Dead" and one other story--I forget which. It was about an old, lonely man. I always wanted to do more with that, but of course, Joyce scholars eschew any possibility that Joyce was influenced in any real, uncomplicated, or significant way by Catholicism. If I had a dollar for every time someone in grad school told me that I couldn't do what I was interested in doing... I didn't always listen, but it takes a lot of will to keep going with one idea that is shot down, particular when you have more...
Gah! That in a nutshell is why I burned out in grad school. My reading of Joyce is particularly colored by my understanding that he is steeped in the Catholic faith and that though he attempts to reject the Church, he is haunted by it. Even more so that Flannery O'Connor's "Christ haunted South." All I wanted to do was write about Catholic stuff in a non-ironice, uncomplicated way, and that was just anathema in the Irish Studies world. To make matters worse I was in the beginnings of my spiritual reversion, which actually I think was in part triggered by the cognitive dissonance of being at a nominally Catholic school, reading Irish writers steeped in Catholicism, and surrounded by scholars who refused to take anything to do with faith seriously. I'd probably have been better off in a secular school and studying a very different field of literature.
But that reading of The Dead sounds just up my alley. I can't tell you how much I'd have rejoiced to stumble across it when I was writing about Joyce.
Um... have you read the late Diana Wynne-Jones' article on the rhythms of Tolkien's plot? She took a narrative course from Tolkien, so it's based on analyzing his plot the way he analyzed medieval stuff.
In 1953, Jones started studying English at St Anne's College in Oxford, and attended lectures by both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien before graduating in 1956. Concerning the difference between Lewis and Tolkien, she has described the former as "booming to crowded halls and Tolkien mumbling to me and three others". Jones has remembered going to a "course of lectures" Tolkien gave on the subject of plots and stories, but that "Tolkien was all but inaudible". She has also given a more full account of Tolkien's lectures:
"When I was a student I imagine I caused Tolkien much grief by turning up to hear him lecture week after week, while he was trying to wrap his series up after a fortnight and get on with The Lord of the Rings (you could do that in those days, if you lacked an audience, and still get paid). I sat there obdurately despite all his mumbling and talking with his face pressed up to the blackboard, forcing him to go on expounding every week how you could start with a simple quest narrative and, by gradually twitching elements as it went along, arrive at the complex and entirely different story of Chaucer's "Pardoner's tale" — a story that still contains the excitement of the quest narrative that seeded it. What little I heard of all this was wholly fascinating."
Tom Shippey has commented that Jones' 1983 article "The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings" (which he describes as analysis of that work as "a series of movements, each with its own coda") says more about the narrative of The Lord of the Rings "than, I suspect, Tolkien could".
The article is available in 2 forms I know of:
JRR TOLKIEN: THIS FAR LAND (1983 book of articles by various hands)
EVERARD'S RIDE (1994 NESFA guest of honor collection for Wynne-Jones, containing stories and essays by her)
I don't know if it's online anywhere.
Anyway, the place doesn't have to be holy to be a place of rest or specialness. But the rhythm of adventure and rest was one of the most imitated things in Tolkienesque fantasy - though usually not well, and usually not realizing that he messed with the pattern so much.
Banshee, Fascinating. I must find a copy if that article. Also, it reminds me that I need to go read more Wynne-Jones.
I'm sure the article is interesting... but I don't think (as it seems you're suggesting?) that it precludes a "sacred space" interpretation... I've read Shippey, et. al., and unfortunately I don't really consider them to be the last word on Tolkien for many reasons--one is the strict adherence to what Tolkien did say. I have the utmost respect for what Tolkien did say, but I don't necessarily think that the author directs the critic in such a, well, direct way. By thinking of things a bit differently, I believe you can deepen understanding and appreciation of the work without deviating from the author and his creation. But perhaps I've misunderstood the "Ummmm... have you read" part of your comment?
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