question on the rings ...

"Chris Hoelscher" skrev i meddelandet


> and he seemed only to forgot the name "gandalf" - i never thought he
> forgot
Mithrandir ... he certainly did not hesitate responding to it ...


Hm. I'm doubtful about that. Mithrandir was his name east of the Sea; in
Valinor he was known as Olórin.

Öjevind

In message
Morgoth's Curse spoke these
staves:
>
> On Tue, 8 Mar 2011 23:08:06 -0600, Bill O'Meally
> wrote:
>>
>> Can anyone recall other instances where a character, after a
>> traumatic and life-changing experience, has forgotten his name?
>
> Nienor daughter of Hurin?
>
> (I added the question mark because I am not certain whether
> that example actually qualifies.)

It may be, in my opinion, that this example qualifies better than
many other: if we assume that the forgetfulness of the Mouth of
Sauron was also, at least partially, induced from the outside -- in
the case of Nienor Glaurung made her forget, and I imagine that
Sauron would want his underlings to suppress their own personalities,
their desires and hopes. His ideal servant appears to have been a
Nazgûl who had no will save Sauron's own, and with this kind of
subjugation of themselves expected of, and possibly enforced upon,
his servants, it would be no suprise if they should forget their own
identity and identify themselves only through their servitude to
Sauron.

There is something of name-magic in this, I believe[#]. Treebeard
implies that telling someone your true name amounts to giving that
someone a level of control of you, but what if that someone takes
your name away entirely?

I am thinking also of Tolkien's poem 'Mythopoeia'
Yet trees are not ‘trees', until so named and seen —
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
('Mythopoeia' lines 29 though 32)

My thoughts are racing in all directions, right now

There seems to be a significance in _naming_ -- things derive some
deeper identity from the name that is not conveyed by a photograph of
other record, or even by the thing itself. Tolkien seems almost to
suggest that it is the _names_ that gives identity to things. In that
case, removing the name is equivalent to removing the identity: when
a cannot remember his name, then he cannot remember himself, who he
truly is, what he desires, what he loves, etc.

Words Matter! They mattered to Tolkien (obviously) and they matter in
his fiction. Naming is significant in Tolkien, and so, I think, is
un-naming.

[#] See also Mary Zimmer, 'Creating and Re-creating Worlds with
Words: Th e
Religion and the Magic of Language in _The Lord of the Rings_' in
_Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader_ by Jane Chance (ed)

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

To make a name for learning
when other roads are barred,
take something very easy
and make it very hard.
- Piet Hein, /Wide Road/