Need y’all to know that in the 1970’s a letter to the editor was published in Daily Telegraph where the author offhandedly used the phrase “Tolkien-like gloom” to describe an area with barren trees and JRRT himself wrote back an incensed rebuttal at the use of his name in a context that suggested anything negative about trees.
“I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying ‘gloom’, especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies”
He was like how dare you sir I am the biggest tree fan out there
A tree tried to eat the hobbits. Tom Bombadil had to save them. There's Mirkwood, "The Forest of Great Fear." I'm on the side of the writer of the letter to the editor.
Because Tolkien is Tolkien, he actually directly defended the actions of all his forests and trees in this same letter I’m referencing
@businesstiramisu !!!!
This is the best thing in the entire world. Here is a transcript:
Beautiful place because trees are loved From Prof. J.R.R. TOLKIEN SIR—with reference to your leader of June 29, I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying “gloom,” especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two-legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things, but it was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story. It would be unfair to compare the Forestry Commission with Sauron because, as you observe, it is capable of repentance; but nothing it has done that is stupid compares with the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetrated by private individuals and minor official bodies. This savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing. J.R.R. TOLKIEN Merton College, Oxford
@monstrousgourmandizingcats
"Old Man Willow did nothing wrong" is not the Tolkien take I expected today, but I'm here for it.
