205 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

[Christopher Tolkien, now a university lecturer at Oxford, gave a paper to a society at St Anne's College on 'Barbarians and Citizens', his subject being the heroes of northern legend as seen in different fashion by Germanic poets and Roman writers. His father was present at the reading of the paper.]

21 February 1958

I think it was a very excellent performance. It filled me with great delight: first of all because it was so interesting that, after a day (for me) of unceasing labour & movement, I never desired to close my eyes or abstract my mind for a second – and I felt that all round me; and secondly because of parental pride. (Not that I think that this sensation is really one of the hwelpes of þe liun at all: it is a legitimate satisfaction with the least possible of egotism in it (there is never none) to feel that one has not wholly failed in one's appointed part, and has paid forward at least a part of the debt one owes backward.)

It was enormously successful, and I realize now why you hold audiences. There was, of course, life and vividness in your phrases, but you are clear, generally unemphatic and let your stuff speak for itself by sheer placing and shaping. All the same, I suddenly realized that I am a pure philologist. I like history, and am moved by it, but its finest moments for me are those in which it throws light on words and names! Several people (and I agree) spoke to me of the an with which you made the beady-eyed Attila on his couch almost vividly present. Yet oddly, I find the thing that really thrills my nerves is the one you mentioned casually: atta, attila. Without those syllables the whole great drama both of history and legend loses savour for me – or would.

I do not know what I mean, because 'aesthetic' is always impossible to catch in a net of words. Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an 'allegory'. And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn' omentieimo, and that the phase long antedated the book. I never heard any more. But I enjoyed myself immensely and retire to bed really happy. It was obvious that the ball is right at your toes, so far as the total sphere of the academic world is concerned. (Actually I think it of vast nobility and importance.)