Na-vaer

Readers of this blog will likely be aware of what an integral part of my life, and especially my childhood and college years, the works of J. R. R. Tolkien are. It’s been a while since I’ve ravenously sped my way through the War of the Ring in a few weeks, or sat rapt in the workshop of Fëanor as he crafted the Silmarils out of crystalline light. I haven’t walked with Erendis in the green hills of Emerië or stood with Ælfwine before the Cottage of Lost Play on the miraculous shores of Tol Eressëa in a long time. But all of those places, all of those names and their bearers and the winding ancient history of it all, are set within my own history–were more real to young Anna than just about anywhere else in our world.

I’ve written before about J. R. R. Tolkien and his life’s work both within and beyond academia–some of it on this blog (which I’ll link below), and some of it unpublished. I’ve also written before about his youngest son, Christopher Tolkien, the last living Inkling, and the profound impact he has had on the worlds of fantasy writing and scholarship, through his careful stewardship of his father’s legacy.

The news of Christopher Tolkien’s death earlier this week is a strange, bittersweet thing to me. On the one hand, I mourn for the passing of one of the greatest Stewards of our time. At J. R. R. Tolkien’s death, his son put aside his own studies to become the guardian and curator of his father’s vast, unfinished works, a monumental task to which he devoted the rest of his life. Such an act of selfless love and respect, free of personal ambition, is amazing to me. I also mourn for Middle-earth itself: both for what will become of it in the hands of others, now that Christopher Tolkien’s stewardship has passed on, and for what we will never see of it, whatever notes scribbled on the backs of exam papers and left illegible in a box somewhere that Christopher Tolkien never got to.

I have written elsewhere about the importance of Christopher Tolkien to Middle-earth and to me. In a guest post on another blog, in which I mused about his stepping down from the position of director of the Tolkien Estate, I wrote:

From my early childhood and first discovery of the vast legendarium behind The Lord of the Rings, Christopher Tolkien has been an integral part of my understanding and imagining of Middle-earth – not just because of his later work in ordering and publishing his father’s manuscripts, but also because he himself, as a child, featured in so many of his father’s letters and obviously had such a deep understanding of and bond with J. R. R. Tolkien and his creations. I can’t imagine a Middle-earth without Christopher Tolkien in it, watching over it. He is Ilúvatar.

I feel the same now, only this time the sadness is deeper and goes on further, doesn’t it? I have, of course, many thoughts on what may become of Middle-earth now, what price must be paid for its continued development by those who have very little business doing so. You can find a lot of those in the guest post I linked above–they haven’t changed since I wrote it a couple years ago. I should point out that (possibly to your surprise) not all of them are negative. But these things are secondary and small, next to the sadness of such a great life lost, and family bereaved.

But at the same time, and more powerfully, I am filled with a sort of gladness. The rest that Christopher Tolkien goes to is well, well deserved. It would be a silly metaphor, to say he has gone to the Havens, boarded the Last Ship, and sailed forever away into the Undying Lands of the West. But it is not a metaphor. The grey rain-curtains of the world have rolled back, and he is in that far, green land with the swift sunrise and the jeweled beach and the Mountains like towers into the sky. A sad day for those of us mortals left behind, but what joy among those whose ranks he has gone ahead to join.

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A few of my previous Tolkienian blog posts:

How I came to Tolkien

Hobbits, Elves, and Positive Desire

Tolkien for Homeschoolers

The World is Changing

Ursula K. LeGuin and J. R. R. Tolkien

And, for funsies, a post about my own beloved Inklings club, The Odd Society: Evenstar

Featured image by Alan Lee