Hey there, and welcome to my series of substack readings. In case you are not aware, some time ago, I started a substack series on Tolkien's letters over at andrew Ininschnyder dot com dot substack, and in the series, I was providing a summary and analysis of each of Tolkien's letters. I then started to read and record these articles as a Tier two benefit over on Patreon. Well, I'm glad to say that I'm now reviving both practices over on substack.
Every other post is free to everybody, with every other post being behind a small paywall. And the good news is that if you are a Tier two patron or higher, you get readings of all the letters delivered through the Patreon podcast feed. And my plan is to post one of these each Tuesday for the foreseeable future. And for now, I am catching up on the record from where I last left off, which was only letter four. I didn't give very far but previously, but we'll go much further
this time. If if you want to listen to the first three, then just search for letter on Patreon and it should come up if you are a Tier two patron or higher. But now let's go ahead and get to it with letter four. This letter was written to Edith Bratt on March second, nineteen sixteen, and in this short letter, Tolkien notes that he's been bored reading old military lecture notes, but that more enjoyably, he's made some
improvements to his quote nonsense fairy language. But he's hesitant to revel in this too much, as he writes, I often long to work at it, and don't let myself because though I love it so, it does seem such a mad hobby reflection. This is the last of the initial short letters to Edith, so next time we'll start getting into some more of his his denser correspondents. Now, it took me a bit to arrive at that word denser.
I initially used weightier, but that wasn't quite right. As I've previously discussed, these short letters with his beloved Edith aren't frivolous, even though they're generally just reciting his daily life with a bit of commentary. A shared life, even through paper and ink, is never something trivial. That being said, as always, there's something worth focusing on in this letter for reflection now, and that is Tolkien's mad hobby with his fairy language. One hand, it does seem to be
a bit mad. He's pouring his energy, his time, and his talents into crafting an intricate fantasy language. Even as a child, Tolkien had this affinity for made up childish languages. But this is something more than a child's game, even if it maintains a similar kind of humor. He's now creating a real, constructed language based on his philological scholarship.
Keep in mind that this is a man who, when still in grade school, was able to hold debates in Latin, Greek, Gothic and English Saxon, not to mention his acquaintance with French, German, Spanish and Welsh, among other languages. Of everything he might do with such linguistic expertise, why invent this fairy language? Tolkien gives us the answer in this short letter. He loved it. Of course, hard work is essential and building something worthwhile, But it really is that simple beauty, empowered
by love is able to awaken true greatness. There's this great clip from a BBC interview that makes us rounds from time to time. When the interviewer asked Tolkien, we said, why did you do this? You know, why invent this world? Why invent this language even before you give us the hobbit, like, why did you do all this? And Tolkien response by just giving a small little smirk and shrugging his shoulders, as if to say, like, why wouldn't I do this?
So that you had invented, literally invented the world before you even wrote the hobbit? Oh? Yes, why? And I just I think that there's something very very true and very good about that, something very much of the artistic's soul in that response. Now, as we've seen in previous letters, Tolkien's secondary world was already starting to take shape just as the primary world came to be through the divine word,
so too would his world be born of language. And a letter much further down the road, he writes, nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language aggreefable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. That's from Letter two O five. See. Many modern fantasy authors have invented nonsense languages that would match their worlds,
but Tolkien's approach is exactly the opposite. Tolkien made a world that match his language, which in turn is drawn from deep philological prime matter that lays beneath various primary world languages. This relates to an idea that will be explored further as we journey through these letters. Tolkien's world is not made up. It is at its core true one man's mad hobby very well may yield an enchanted and enchanting world that brings us sanity when we need
it the most. And I end today with a clip of Tolkien writing and speaking a bit of Elvish, and so you can listen to it through this feed, and then I will also link the YouTube video in the show notes in case you haven't seen it right. I hope that you enjoyed that. And this was a short little letter. Some of them have a lot more to deal with, but I feel like already you can see that there are significant things to draw out from even
these short letters written to Edith. And so if you are not already a Tier two patron or higher, the I no, that's what you need to be in order to get access to these recordings moving forward. So I hope that you appreciate that benefit, and I will talk to you next time. Until then, God Speaking. The music from this episode is owned by Warner Music Group. Please don't sue me.