[HN Gopher] Things JRR Tolkien has never said, done, written or ...
___________________________________________________________________
Things JRR Tolkien has never said, done, written or had anything to
do with
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 126 points
Date : 2021-02-07 09:42 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thetolkienist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thetolkienist.com)
| lou1306 wrote:
| The misquote I find most laughable is
|
| > It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any
| dragons
|
| ...since, you know, Lord Of The Rings does not feature any
| dragons! (The "fell beasts" that Nazguls ride are _not_ dragons,
| not even close)
| imperistan wrote:
| Are you sure? There might be some references to them, even
| though no living dragons appear as characters.
| lou1306 wrote:
| Of course Smaug does get referenced (in Fellowship, Frodo
| actually meets Gloin, i.e. Gimli's dad and one of Bilbo's
| fellow adventurers in The Hobbit). But still, it's fair to
| say that there are no _actual_ dragons anywhere in LOTR.
| fpgaminer wrote:
| Ummm ... Smaug?
| Steuard wrote:
| That's _The Hobbit_. (I suppose Smaug gets mentioned here and
| there in LotR, and Gandalf makes an entertaining firework
| version of him...)
| benhoyt wrote:
| Smaug is in The Hobbit, a different adventure.
| croissants wrote:
| It seems to make people happy to attribute pithy, compassionate,
| vaguely new-agey sentiments to prestigious writers. Another
| example that comes to mind is the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi,
| whose works have been... _reimagined_ in the last few decades [1]
| into little things you can superimpose on a photo of a beach
| sunset.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman_Barks
| prox wrote:
| Coleman Barks at least has a sense of rhyme, but when it comes
| to the original Rumi, it is indeed very different. It's hard to
| find good (accurate) Rumi translations,
| [deleted]
| jleyank wrote:
| Well, when I was in college back then, I heard that Tolkien and
| his friends were really into D&D. One long weekend, after
| consuming too much, umm, "pipeweed", they had such a memorable
| adventure that "we should write this down" kept coming up.
| Tolkien, as he was a professor and so good with writing grant
| requests, was given the assignment... And, as they say, the rest
| is history.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I don't know what it says about me, but I've never heard any of
| these before, with the exception of the misquoting of "not all
| those who wander are lost"
| cccc4all wrote:
| I have one simple request. That is to have frickin sharks with
| laser beams attached to their heads! -- JRR Tolkien (maybe)
| einpoklum wrote:
| My tower is the highest tower. And I have the best lamps. I have
| the best Orcs!
|
| And I don't want to hear your fake news about how I have no body.
| Fake! ... Now, the folks at One Guldur Network, they're the kind
| of people know how respect a leader.
|
| And if you spite me, I will summon my loyal Nazgul: The Witch-
| King, Khamul and Covfefe.
|
| ----
|
| (... Things I was expecting to read at the link.)
| sixhobbits wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210207094741/https://thetolkie...
| Archelaos wrote:
| "The trouble with the Internet is that you never know whether a
| quotation is correct or not." (Leonardo da Vinci)
| foreigner wrote:
| lol
| sn41 wrote:
| A true visionary, accurate as always.
| Quekid5 wrote:
| "A witty saying proves nothing". - Voltaire
| (or Einstein)
| CyanDeparture wrote:
| That is often attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, but it is
| actually a quote from Abraham Lincoln.
| dmd wrote:
| I am getting really tired of correcting people on this, but,
| once again - it was Konrad Zuse, but he was actually quoting
| Radia Perlman.
| dvtrn wrote:
| An unexpected (and I thought humorous) Radia Perlman
| reference, but a welcome one!
| KineticLensman wrote:
| As well as misplaced quotes, a lot or people like to identify
| connections between places that Tolkien lived in or visited and
| places in Middle Earth. Clearly, there are likely inspirations,
| for example, young Tolkien's walking holiday in the Alps may have
| informed some of his descriptions of the Misty Mountains, and
| World War one battlefields may have inspired the Dead Marshes and
| Mordor. But did 'The Hollies' park in Leeds [0], where Tolkien
| was a professor, inspire Hollin, just outside the gates of Moria?
| Who can say?
|
| Incidentally, I have lived in two of the cities that Tolkien did:
| Leeds and Bournemouth. As a post grad at Leeds University, the
| small office (just east of the current Student Union building)
| that I shared for a while had reputedly been used by Tolkien long
| before I was born. We joked that it was the inspiration for the
| damp, dark, twisty caves of the goblins in the Hobbit.
|
| [Edit - just checked - Tolkien explicitly references his Swiss
| walking tour as an inspiration for parts of the Misty Mountains]
|
| [0] https://www.headingleyleeds.com/parks-hollies
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#Youth
| p_l wrote:
| I'd love if someone fact checked whether the salt mine of
| Wieliczka was really the inspiration for Moria (the guides do
| imply so, based AFAIK on a visit by Tolkien there). It does
| seem to fall under the "likely inspiration" case (if you ever
| visit Wieliczka, you'll get it :D)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > salt mine of Wieliczka was really the inspiration for Moria
| (the guides do imply so, based AFAIK on a visit by Tolkien
| there)
|
| Hmmm. Not heard this one. That said, I've read quite a lot of
| Tolkien biographic material, and I'm not aware that he ever
| visited southern Poland before writing the Lord of the Rings.
| He wasn't particularly well travelled before he became
| famous, and as far as I know he had only visited South Africa
| (where he was born and left as a very young child),
| Switzerland (walking holiday) and France (WW1) before the
| bulk of the LOTR writing occurred. After 1939 a trip to
| Wieliczka would have involved him entering a WW2 war zone or
| crossing the Iron Curtain, something I'm certain he didn't do
| before LOTR was published in 1955.
| p_l wrote:
| The suggestion was that he visited it on a trip before WW1,
| possibly related to the Switzerland trip? And most
| importantly, it would be marked as Austro-Hungary territory
| at the time.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > The suggestion was that he visited it on a trip before
| WW1, possibly related to the Switzerland trip?
|
| Again, I don't think so. I just re-read the relevant
| chapter in Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien. The
| 1911 Switzerland trip (when he was aged 19) was just
| that; and the group of 12 returned to England as soon as
| the walking was done.
| p_l wrote:
| I guess that it can be marked as untrue tale then. Pity,
| because it really would fit ;)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I visited Wieliczka and some visual similarities are striking
| enough that the hypothesis that Wieliczka inspired at least
| the _filmmakers_ of the series seems plausible to me.
|
| But there is AFAIK no record of JRRT himself visiting there
| and Poland would be a very untypical vacation destination of
| a British guy in the interwar period.
| randycupertino wrote:
| Seeing the salt mines was one of my highlights of my trip to
| Poland! On my tour any Tolkien connection or inspiration
| wasn't mentioned, fwiw. Would love to go back when travel is
| reopened.
| 101008 wrote:
| I may consider myself a Rowlingologist (because of JK Rowling),
| and it is a constant fight. A lot of places in the UK claim to
| have inspired JK Rowling, just because they are similar in the
| way they were portrayed in the films (which is very different
| from the books).
|
| There is also the case of Livreria Lello, in Porto, Portugal,
| who spent years claiming JK Rowling visited it and got inspired
| for Hogwarts (they seem to have a similar staircase). They even
| held a Harry Potter event with signed books (most of them fake,
| probably the bookshop didnt know it, but they didnt do their
| dilligence).
|
| Fortunatelly, Rowling denied knowing that place at all on
| Twitter [1], but as far as I know, the Livreria keeps telling
| its visitor about Rowling connection.
|
| The same happens in Edinburgh (JKR city for the last 30 years),
| where if you do a tour, the guide will try to make a Harry
| Potter connection on every corner. Which is not completely
| true.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1263377779338481665
| andrepd wrote:
| It's a gorgeous bookshop, regardless. Maybe with less Potter
| tourism it will get a little less crowded ;)
| schoen wrote:
| When I went it was so busy that they required you to buy a
| ticket to get in, which was refunded if you then bought a
| book.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| The Drakensberg in South Africa (yes, the name does translate
| as "Dragon Mountains") are sometimes cited as an inspiration to
| Tolkien.
|
| If this is accurate or not is another question, but a google of
| "Tolkien Drakensberg" certainly shows that it is widely known.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > The Drakensberg in South Africa ... are sometimes cited as
| an inspiration to Tolkien.
|
| Tolkien returned to England with his mother aged 3 and never
| went back. Tolkien himself claimed "to have few memories of
| South Africa, except for a vivid encounter with a large
| spider, an experience he put to good use later in his
| writing. The grave of his father, Arthur Tolkien, is still
| identifiable in Bloemfontein's President Brand Cemetery" [0]
| So probably not a big influence, if any.
|
| [0] https://www.southafrica.net/gl/en/travel/article/jrr-
| tolkien...
| seany wrote:
| There's literally a place called the shire in Malawi. (been
| there, it's delightful)
| Talanes wrote:
| There are a lot of Shires.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shire
| jmfldn wrote:
| I didn't realise how many fake quotes he had attributed to him.
| Reminds me a bit of the many fake Buddha quotes that do the
| rounds. Some are obviously just the sort of guff you'd read on
| Instagram hovering over a naff picture of a sunset. Others are
| harder to detect and may be a subtle distortion or sloppy
| transcription rather than a total fabrication.
|
| Goes to show how sceptical we must be when reading things online,
| even when they sound plausible. As the late great Abraham Lincoln
| once said according to something I read recently... "The problem
| with quotes found on the internet is that many simply are not
| true".
| notahacker wrote:
| A related _quotes found on the internet_ subgenre is _quotes
| which are actually real and correctly attributed but were a lot
| less cool than they look over a naff picture of a sunset_
|
| At the beginning of this century, speechwriters for a
| struggling British Conservative Party leader gave him the line
| "do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man" to try
| to turn his dullness into a virtue. Media generally found it
| amusing, he was greeted on his return to Parliament by shushing
| from the opposition, and within the year he'd been replaced
| without even being given the chance to lead his party into an
| election.
|
| But it was a pithy enough line to find its way onto
| inspirational quote lists, and fifteen years later was
| improbably adorning the Twitter profile of Colin Kaepernick
| (complete with correct attribution to a politician Kaepernick
| almost certainly hasn't paid any attention to, never mind been
| inspired by). Can't wait for British civil rights icons to be
| inspired by the words of Jeb Bush!
| perl4ever wrote:
| >Can't wait for British civil rights icons to be inspired by
| the words of Jeb Bush!
|
| "When the Women's March feminist organisation tweeted "Rest
| in peace and power, Barbara Bush" to mark the 2018 death of
| the conservative political matriarch, Twitter users
| criticised the organisation harshly for abandoning its
| radical beginnings"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rest_in_power#cite_note-24
| kergonath wrote:
| Wait, wasn't it Churchill?
| rchase wrote:
| Lady Astor: "If you were my husband, I'd poison your drink."
|
| Churchill: "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
|
| -Apocryphal
| eckesicle wrote:
| "To make up an Oscar Wilde quote just add '- Oscar Wilde' at
| the end" - Mark Twain
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Don't leave me out - Benjamin Franklin
| a1369209993 wrote:
| "85% of quotes on the internet are made up. - Abraham
| Lincoln" (Actual quote*)
|
| * y sn kr kn rk nln
| theobeers wrote:
| It's always fun to read about things that have come to be
| believed about famous authors, without a basis in fact, whether
| through hoaxes or by more innocent means.
|
| The following line from the linked blog post stood out to me: "As
| a Tolkienist I would love [for] many cities A, buildings B or
| persons C to have some sort of link to my favourite author..."
|
| That reminded me of the hoax surrounding a purported 1862 meeting
| between Dickens and Dostoevsky, which came to light in the early
| 2010s.[0] The story gained legs because of how badly many
| Dickensians wanted to believe it. It was a less sentimental
| Dostoevskian who took it upon himself to unravel the whole thing.
|
| There has been some discussion on HN of the Dickens-Dostoevsky
| affair.[1]
|
| [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2013/07/true-
| sto...
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21150906
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| One I read was Galileo visiting Harvard. Apparently they were
| co-temporal (overlapped anyway; Harvard is _old_ ) and it would
| have been possible during his house arrest, should friends have
| spirited him to the New World.
| [deleted]
| bloak wrote:
| The blog post currently says: "I would love a many cities". I
| would guess that "a" should be replaced with "so" rather than
| "for". Perhaps the author will correct it and we'll find out.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-07 23:01 UTC)