Geoffrey Bache Smith
1,432 words
Dark is the world our fathers left us,
Wearily, greyly the long years flow,
Almost the gloom has hope bereft us,
Far is the high gods’ song and low:
Sombre the crests of mountains lonely,
Leafless, wind-ridden, moan the trees;
Down in the valleys is twilight only.
Twilight over the mourning sea;
Time was when earth was always golden,
Time was when skies were always clear;
Spirits and souls of the heroes olden,
Faint are cries from the darkness, hear!
1,206 words
One of the advantages of reading biographies is that even if they’re not very good, there remains the consolation of having learned something. Sadly, this is one of the few positive things that can be said about the recent biopic Tolkien.
Biographies can be tricky to adapt for the screen. Filmmakers will want to adhere to the truth as much as possible while still being able to tell a coherent and thematic story. How much artistic license is too much? (more…)
471 words
“I am in fact a Hobbit.”—J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a favorite author of New Left “hippies” and New Right nationalists, and for pretty much the same reasons. Tolkien deeply distrusted modernization and industrialization, which replace organic reciprocity between man and nature with technological dominion of man over nature, a relationship that deforms and devalues both poles. (more…)
1,085 words
J. R. R. Tolkien (Christopher Tolkien, ed.)
The Fall of Gondolin
New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018
The Fall of Gondolin is Tolkien’s final posthumous publication and the third of his “Great Tales,” alongside The Children of Húrin and Beren and Lúthien. It was compiled and edited by his son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, and contains multiple versions of the story, (more…)
1,550 words
Among the vast array of sources that influenced Tolkien in the creation of his legendarium was the Kalevala, a collection of Finnish folk poetry compiled and edited by the Finnish physician and philologist Elias Lönnrot. Much scholarship exists on Tolkien’s Norse, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon influences, but his interest in the Kalevala is not as often discussed. (more…)
446 words
“I am in fact a Hobbit.”—J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a favorite author of New Left “hippies” and New Right nationalists, and for pretty much the same reasons. Tolkien deeply distrusted modernization and industrialization, which replace organic reciprocity between man and nature with technological dominion of man over nature, a relationship that deforms and devalues both poles. (more…)
6,052 words
“There’s a feeling I get when I look to the West.”–“Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin IV
It was with the advent of Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile (1762) that a direct link was first made between national culture and the simplicity of peasant life. (more…)
3,171 words
We owe a great debt of gratitude to J. R. R. Tolkien, who embodied the medieval bardic tradition, and penned his epic tale in rebuke of mechanized modernity. I doubt even Tolkien could have predicted that some fifty years later, his story would look more like prophecy than fable. Then again, Tolkien probably sensed Europe had entered its twilight. The Great European Civil War of the twentieth century, which Tolkien fought in during its first phase, impressed upon him that modernity, with its unrelenting industry (capitalism) and hi-tech weaponry, was destroying the West. (more…)
446 words
“I am in fact a Hobbit.”—J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a favorite author of New Left “hippies” and New Right nationalists, and for pretty much the same reasons. Tolkien deeply distrusted modernization and industrialization, which replace organic reciprocity between man and nature with technological dominion of man over nature, a relationship that deforms and devalues both poles. (more…)
537 words
Translated by Margot Metroland
We are in an epoch in which numerous religious, ethnic, or sexual groups are risking community-implosion by trying to impose their own values on everyone else. A time in which a certain politician we shall not name (more…)
743 words
Like many in the Alt-Right, I am quite suspicious of the American entertainment industry and its effects on our subconscious assumptions as a society. As Joe Biden stated, “gay marriage” is a consequence of “Jewish leaders in the [entertainment] industry” and their “immense influence” over our culture. Biden’s statement was discussed so widely because all who heard it recognized that he was speaking a seldom-voiced truth: that the progressive social degeneracy of the last 50 years is due in large measure to Hollywood and a certain class of studio moguls and filmmakers. (more…)
446 words
“I am in fact a Hobbit.”—J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a favorite author of New Left “hippies” and New Right nationalists, and for pretty much the same reasons. Tolkien deeply distrusted modernization and industrialization, which replace organic reciprocity between man and nature with technological dominion of man over nature, a relationship that deforms and devalues both poles. (more…)