Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, poet, conductor, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas or dramas.
Tolkien seems to have been well acquainted with the works of Wagner, of which the chivalric Lohengrin and Parsifal and the more Norse Der Ring des Nibelungen, were popular in England of his day. Together with his friends in the Kolbítar Club, Tolkien studied the works of Wagner during the late 1920s.[1]
Another member of the club, C.S. Lewis, was an avid fan of Wagner, and collected recordings of Wagner, owned illustrations by Arthur Rackham (a British illustrator, often depicting scenes from the works of Wagner, to whom Tolkien also warmed), dreamt about turning the Ring into prose, and took Tolkien to London to see a staging of the Ring.[2][3][4] During the 1930s, Lewis and Tolkien apparently began working on a translation of the second, and most popular, of the four Ring instalments, Die Walküre.[5][6]
In the scholarly study of J.R.R. Tolkien, Wagner is mostly mentioned in the context of the apparent similarities between Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner's tetralogy of musical dramas based on the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied, and The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Children of Hurin. By and large, these similarities can be chalked up to the shared mythological sources, namely the Völuspá and Völsunga Saga - although some scholars argue for a few more direct inspiration: In The History of The Hobbit, John D. Rateliff is inclined to credit Wagner with inspiring the naming of Mîm which, although derived from Mimir in the sagas, only appears as the name of an untrustworthy Dwarf (substituting Regin) in Wagner's Siegfried.[7]
See also
External links
References
- ↑ Andrew Lazo, "Gathered Round Northern Fires: The Imaginative Impact of the Kolbítar", in Chance 2004
- ↑ Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings, p. 56 (note 1)
- ↑ Andrew Lazo, "Gathered Round Northern Fires: The Imaginative Impact of the Kolbítar", p.197
- ↑ Christine Chism, "Middle-Earth, the Middle Ages, and the Aryan Nation: Myth and History in World War II", in Chance 2003, p.75f
- ↑ Stefan Arvidsson, Draksjukan. Mytiska fantasier hos Tolkien, Wagner och de Vries, p.148
- ↑ Alex Ross, "The Ring and the Rings: Wagner vs. Tolkien", in The New Yorker, December 22, 2003
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, John D. Rateliff (ed.), The History of The Hobbit, Mr. Baggins, The Second Phase, "The Adventure Continues", (i) The Dwarves, Endnote 8, p. 86