More Post-Miltonic Musings...

Jorge Luis Borges

Author of The Lord of the Rings

Standing in Hotel Beaux, Paris, 1969

(Image from Wikipedia)

This will be old hat to many, but new to me: a website titled Straight Dope and supposedly run by a certain ... or uncertain ... Cecil Adams who never fails to answer questions and never answers wrong. So 'he' says.

Mr. Adams maintains a Straight Dope Message Board, which has a Cafe Society with a thread titled "If LotR Had Been Written By Someone Else!?" (active from October 10, 2002 through February 3, 2004), on which various talented individuals have posted ingenious parodies of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, H. P. Lovecraft, Mickey Spillane, Danielle Steele, Ayn Rand, and even Dr. Suess, among others, all rewriting Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (and not as Jorge Luis Borges would have Pierre Menard rewrite Don Quixote).

And, of course, someone suggested John Milton rewriting Lord of the Rings in the style of Paradise Lost and offered a parody of Milton's invocation to Book 1:

Of the great War of the Ring, and the tast
Of that Forbidden power, the long and
Arduous trek, thru' fiery, blasted plains
With faithful Hobbits and treacherous beasts
To Chaos' edge, and there to cast the One [5]
To endless fire and eternal death:
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that in Rivendell did'st
First teach of the Rings of Power forgéd,
In the beginning how the Dark Lord Sauron
Brought into the world from fiery depths [10]
Of Doom this ring of gold, pouréd into't
His Malice and his Evil; I now
Invoke thy Aid to my Adventrous song
That struggle as it might to take to th'air
Though will I drag from bottomless perdition [15]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime
And justifie the ways of men to Elves.

For this priceless parody, dated October 11, 2002 (8:04 a.m.), we have 'Nerrie' to thank. Just in case anyone reading Gypsy Scholar remains unfamiliar with Milton's epic, I hereby offer Milton's original invocation:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav'nly Muse,that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [ 10 ]
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence, [ 25 ]
And justifie the wayes of God to men.

At 26 lines, the original outdoes the parody's 17, but the parody captures the original's tone. Even where it might seem not to hit the right meter, as in line 12 with its mere 9 syllables (His Malice and his Evil; I now), the parodist has slowed the pace down sufficiently to make these 9 syllables feel like 10 by using a semicolon as caesura to break the line's rhythm and setting the word "now" at the line's end to stretch out its diphthong.

Good show, 'Nerrie,' whoever you were, for a brilliant rewrite! I just can't help wondering how Borges would have rewritten Tolken's Lord of the Rings...

He did not want to compose another Rings -- which is easy -- but the Rings itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide -- word for word and line for line -- with those of J. R. R. Tolkien.

But parody is, in the main, hard to do, so I've cheated.