Lovecraftian Tolkien

There’s no doubt that H.P. Lovecraft and J.R.R Tolkien were very different writers.  That being said, there are a few moments in The Fellowship of the Ring that have a vaguely Lovecraftian feel about them.  In “The Great River,” for example, “a dark shape, like a cloud and yet not a cloud, for it moved far more swiftly, came out of the blackness in the South, and sped towards the Company, blotting out all light as it approached.  Soon it appeared as a great winged creature, blacker than the pits in the night.  Fierce voices rose up to greet it from across the water.  Frodo felt a sudden chill running through him and clutching at his heart; there was a deadly cold, like the memory of an old wound, in his shoulder…. Suddenly the great bow of Lórien sang… There was a harsh croaking scream, as it fell out of the air, vanishing down into the gloom of the eastern shore.”

At this point, the reader does not know the nature of the creature – and that uncertainty is very Lovecraftian, as is the “croaking scream.”  Presumably it was a Nazgûl riding on a winged beast, but it is interesting to speculate whether it was actually a Ring-wraith in alternate form.  By comparison, one might recall the image of Sauron fleeing as a vampire in The Silmarillion, dripping blood across the landscape.

 

 

There are a few other examples of Lovecraftian echoes.  The journal of the Dwarves found at Balin’s tomb has a creepy, tortured quality to it: “All had been broken and plundered; but beside the shattered lid of one there lay the remains of a book.  It had been slashed and stabbed and partly burned, and it was so stained with black and other dark marks like old blood that little of it could be read.”  There must be a copy of Lovecraft’s famous Necronomicon that looks something like that.

Most obviously, of course, there is the Watcher in the Water outside of Moria.  In contrast with the monster from the movie version, this creature remains mostly hidden, and deeply enigmatic: “Out from the water a long sinuous tentacle had crawled; it was pale-green and luminous and wet…. Twenty other arms came rippling out.  The dark water boiled, and there was a hideous stench.”

Tolkien’s story is a more optimistic one than Lovecraft would have written, but there is still something of lurking, nameless horror in it – in stark but fascinating contrast to so much that is noble and luminous.
 

 

 

First Image: Art by Santiago Caruso.                    

Source: http://tentaclii.wordpress.com/

Second Image: Photography from American Museum of Natural History and image from Nuremberg Chronicle.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuremberg_chronicles_-_f_2v.png