The Persistence of Light

A hobbit, the world is learning, looks like a robust child, has curly brown hair on his feet, lived in the Shire in the third age of the world, loves mushrooms, fears water, and is apt to see his eleventy-first birthday in bouncing good health. An elf is taller than a hobbit, speaks a golden language— si man i yulma nin enquantuva?—and lives in forests as engaged in the processes of light and of the green world as a dwarf in the dark mineral world, among gold and crystal. The world also contains wizards, trolls, wargs, orcs, ents, dragons, and many kingdoms of men. The history of all these beings is long and comes from the imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien; and, as we shall soon learn from a book with a title in High Elf, is longer and stranger than we have been told: a history wondrously like and unlike the history of men and gods that we are taught in school.

Tree and Leaf, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin, $4.00

GD

About the Author

Guy Davenport

Featured Tags

A hobbit, the world is learning, looks like a robust child, has curly brown hair on his feet, lived in the Shire in the third age of the world, loves mushrooms, fears water, and is apt to see his eleventy-first birthday in bouncing good health. An elf is taller than a hobbit, speaks a golden language— si man i yulma nin enquantuva?—and lives in forests as engaged in the processes of light and of the green world as a dwarf in the dark mineral world, among gold and crystal. The world also contains wizards, trolls, wargs, orcs, ents, dragons, and many kingdoms of men. The history of all these beings is long and comes from the imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien; and, as we shall soon learn from a book with a title in High Elf, is longer and stranger than we have been told: a history wondrously like and unlike the history of men and gods that we are taught in school.

Tree and Leaf, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin, $4.00