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<\/a><\/center>The Lord of the Rings and Middle-Earth cannot be illustrated. Of course pictures can be drawn, paintings hung in galleries, books illustrated, films made, but none of these images can be definitive, they cannot define the world itself or sum it up or map it out for good. They are sketches, imperfectly glimpsed through shifting cloud and mist.\u00a0 They are partial accomplishments only, as the necesary fixing on the page reduces reduces the vision to the pinned-down cousin of the butterfly we glimpse in the garden.\n\u201cThere came afresh a hundred thousand Orcs and a thousand Balrogs, and in the forefront came Glomund the Dragon, and Elves and Men withered before him.\u201d
\nThe Shaping of Middle-Earth, The Earliest Annals of Beleriand – Year 172
\nA THOUSAND Balrogs, a HUNDRED THOUSAND orcs, led by the greatest of dragons\u2026 One short sentence, but written with words as big as castles, as powerful as tempests. What kind of dragon ? No need for details ; \u00ab men withered before him \u00bb, therefore he is the sum of our revulsion and horror, the paragon of all dragons, the archetype of the great worms of myth and myth history. Typical Tolkien, where every word is worth a thousand pictures.<\/p>\n
Besides, it is not just fiction. All libraries should possess two copies of every book by Tolkien, one for the \u00ab Fantasy and Science Fiction : Alphabetical by Author \u00bb section and another to place on the same shelf as Beowulf, the Odyssey or the Mabinogion. I am sure illustrators would instinctively borrow the latter, as illustrating Tolkien requires that it be treated with the same respect we are taught to accord to history and mythology.<\/p>\n
It is tempting to try to investigate, to ask enthusiasts and avid readers what it is they actually see. Alas, the images readers form in their minds are more oftne than not substractive images, more often defined by what they are not. How many times have I heard \u00ab Oh that\u2019s not Tolkien ! \u00bb from the very people who cannot say what is. As if the mind cannot seize an image from Middle-Earth any more than we can transcribe our dreams, but can brush aside with certainty whatever does not match. Therefore illustrating such a book is a solitary journey, with none of the companionship such a trip might offer to those not burdened with brushes and paints.<\/p>\n
The landscapes themselves are even farther beyond our experience ; their symbolical nature has refined them, stripped them of the haphazardous elements that intrude even on the most sublime of the landscapes we can hope to experience first-hand. There are no deserts on our Earth that can approach Mordor, no more than we can hope to stroll among groves of Mallorn trees. The Shire no longer exists, if indeed it ever existed,\u00a0 beyond the Paradise Lost of the rural paintings of the 19th century. Barad-dur is higher than stone can stand on stone. Yet, these landscapes are so much a part of our cultural heritage that we can insert our personal experiences in them seamlessly until they become one and the same, intensely personal and shared by millions.<\/p>\n
\u00ab Illustration \u00bb, though, is an apt term to describe the painting of Middle-Earth. Providing light, the act of making lustrous or clear. To shed a little clarity here and there. To not be obliged to show too much, to avoid the urge to count commas, but to choose where the light and the shadow goes. To allow the intuitive to take precedence over the encyclopaedic.<\/p>\n
But, when it\u2019s all said and done, it is a world beyond images. All images fall short. I should know\u2026\u00a0 I\u2019ve been doing them for 20 years.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/center>For French speakers, more information can be found at amazon.fr. at this page:\nhttp:\/\/www.amazon.fr\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/2914370539<\/a><\/p>\n
Speaking of Middle-Earth\u2026<\/p>\n
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