Apr 06 2008
Tolkien on his love of Welsh
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Ed Fitzgerald, in his blog, has uncovered some quotes from Tolkien about languages. In particular, about the Welsh language from a lecture that Tolkien gave in 1955, “English and Welsh”. It is fascinating to read, as is anything by Tolkien, and I find it extremely interesting to note how several times he describes words and languages in a very tactile way. Tolkien says:
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I seem to remember that in a biography of Tolkien that I read, he describes his discovery of Finnish as being similar to discovering a bottle of rare wine in the cellar.
This blending of sensual imagery, between sound and taste in his example, seem to be commonplace amongst those who experience the spiritual with a deep connection to the physical. Experiencing divinity as ‘imminent’ within woodland would be another such experience. This attitude of ‘one-ness’ becomes less of an intellectual concept but more of a perceptive mode, and I think it is strongly evident in the Celtic character. Tolkien goes on to say:
For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist’s desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.
This love, vibrancy and relationship to the land is pure Celt and I think is the heritage that we all have in modern times. He goes on to explain that even for a linguistic scientist, as he was, that:
The nature of this pleasure is difficult, perhaps impossible, to analyse. It cannot, of course, be discovered by structural analysis. No analysis will make one either like or dislike a language, even if it make more precise some of the features of style that are pleasing or distasteful. The pleasure is possibly felt most strongly in the study of a ‘foreign’ or second-learned language; but if so that may be attributed to two things: the learner meets in the other language desirable features that his own first-learned speech has denied to him; and in any case he escapes from the dulling of usage, especially inattentive usage.
Go and read Ed’s blog – I found it fascinating. What a sad loss the passing of Tolkien was.
