What Inspired Tolkien To Create The Middle Earth?

What inspired Tolkien to create the Middle Earth?

As Tolkien himself puts it, the whole legendarium started when he came across a strangely-sounding name of Earendel in one of the Old-Saxon poems. Upon reading the first few lines, he felt

“a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words.”

In a letter to Mr. Rang, Tolkien says that it was the sound of this name that enchanted him. This sound was enough to plant in him the desire to create myths around this name.

For the Inklings, the name is the primary reality. The story — or what happened — is secondary. The main question is “Who?”, not “What?” What happens is always secondary to who it happens to.

The Hobbit was conceived in much the same way when Tolkien mindlessly scribbled on a piece of paper: “In the hole underground, there lived a hobbit.” The subsequent story was the elaboration on that name. The primary reality is “Who,” not “What.”

“What’s in a name?” Everything. By naming something or someone, we invoke the invisible reality that this name points to.

For Tolkien, the name is the ultimate mystery of who we are and what we are capable of. The name is for him “the primary world.” Everything else flows out of it. The reason Tolkien’s writing is so appealing is that WE ALL WANT TO KNOW WHO WE ARE!

The Song of Wandering Aengus

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.