There is a rumor that the Second Age of Middle-Earth will be made into a drama in 2021.
Therefore, I have read “Silmarillion” and “Unfinished Tales” written by J.R.R. Tolkien and edited by Christopher Tolkien. I read “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” in junior high school days, but had not gotten in touch with these unfinished tales by Tolkien. As a grown up, I noticed quite a lot of influences from legends of earlier days, e.g. Celtic mythology, Matter of Britain, Edda, Saga, Beowulf, Das Nibelungenlied, and Der Ring des Nibelungen, on these stories. Many of the motives, e.g. Rings of Power and the Sword that was Broken, are taken from the above stories. J.R.R. Tolkien is known to be a famous philologist in Oxford and there are many respects to languages of his interests; the main character of “The Hobbit”, Bilbo is named after a city in Basque (in original, Euskal Herria), Bilbo (Bilbao is Spanish, but in Euskara it is Bilbo!). The main character of “The Lord of the Rings”, Frodo, is named after a legendary Danish king. The wizard, Gandalf, is from a dwarf in Norse mythology. Inventions of elvish languages, Quenya and Sindarin (similar to Proto-Celtic), and their characters, Tengwar and Cirth (similar to Runes), by Tolkien much represent his respect to these ancient linguistic worlds. The stories are partially heroic tales, but mainly they are philosophical legends for the fall of greats and the rise of ordinary people (e.g. transition from Morgoth, Sauron to Man). The quests in these stories are sublimated in some of modern novels. For example, there are few classic literatures in Euskara. However, recently Kirmen Uribe wrote “Bilbao-New York-Bilbao” and “Mussche” as new standards for Basque literature. They are modern quests for origins and future of the characters involved in the stories. Of course, there are respects for classic literatures and for example, a ring appears in the story. The networks of repeating motives are interesting objects to decipher the stories.
Euskara itself is an interesting language. Together with Caucasian languages, it is said that it might be in the same line as Sumerian language, as they are all ergative and agglutinative languages. Since languages not only define the structure of communication but also expressions of ideas and logics of the people, these languages for minorities are on the line of interests. Euskaldunak (the Basques) are mainly Catholic, but Caucasians worship diverged religions. For example, the Georgians mainly worship Georgian Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Christianity has a long history and evolution of the form of worships. In the Council of Nicaea, Nicaean and Arianism broke of relations with each other. The former believes in Christ being God, while the latter denies equivalence of Christ and Father. In the Council of Ephesus, Nestorianism parted from main streams of Christianity. Nestorianism believes in that Christ possess two distinct hypostasis, deity and humanity, which is denied in the main streams. In the Council of Chalcedon, Oriental Orthodox Churches parted from main streams of Christianity. Oriental Orthodox Churches believe in Miaphysitism, in which deity and humanity in Christ is integrated as one, and are neither divided into two nor united. This is denied by the main streams. In Great Schism, the main streams were divided into Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church. The former believes in that both Father and Son send out Holy Spirit, while the latter believes in that only Father is accounted for Holy Spirit. The former has also affinity with cynicism and repenting, while the latter has affinity with beliefs that human nature is fundamentally good. The Reformation forced Protestantism parted from Catholic. The former is based on individualism, while the latter has more affinity to structuring religious society. Georgian Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church is in the line of Eastern Orthodox Church and the cultures of Georgian people are much influenced by the religion. Philosophy, history, arts, literatures and languages are the matter that should be considered to grasp the idea of ethnicity.
In the stories of Middle-Earth, the evil is easy to understand. However, recent development of literatures made ambiguous borders among goods and evils. The development of devils, whose characters are not so easily stated, appears as a symbol of hypocrites. The devil appeared in Ivan (Иван)’s nightmare in “The Brothers Karamazov (Бра́тья Карама́зовы)”, or Woland (Воланд) in “The Master and Margarita (Мастер и Маргарита)”, are the examples. Especially in “Бра́тья Карама́зовы”, the lines of each character are in plausible note with full of misdirection and contradiction as normal people, and there is no pre-established harmony as in many of the stories of human beings. Even in the stories of Middle-Earth, many significant outputs occurred mainly by “be meant to” situations, which are nothing but coincidences for ordinary people. “Бра́тья Карама́зовы” is intended to be based on the principle of Eastern Orthodox Church, however, it is more realistic than ordinary religious tales. The description of delirium of Иван gets closer to the true situation, e.g. illusions, dead people walking in the street, or the devil’s visit to him. Irresponsible rumoring “interpreters” of an incident seems to spoil everything, however, there is a foreshadow of Christianity embracing a secret truth of the world, involving Ethica, Claude Bernard and others. As like the stories of Middle-Earth, the story was originally intended to develop further, which became impossible by the death of the author. “Бра́тья Карама́зовы” is one of the best stories I have ever read.
