Middle-earth according to Mordor - The Lord of the Rings retold

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/the_lord_of_the_rings/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer

by aarghh • 15 years ago

186 105 15 years ago

salon.com

Scriptor• 15 years ago

I really need to get around to reading this. The original LOTR did have a rather "western" bent to it. Looking at things in another way would be pretty fun.

Also related: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html, if Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn watched The Fellowship of the Ring.

hnhg• 15 years ago

Being non-white myself, I like to jokingly explain to anyone who will listen about how LOTR is all about racial purity and the perils of rampant immigration of brown folk. I certainly can't think of anyone good in it who is 'non-white'. I grew up on the books and I still have a soft spot for them, but I do like to make fun of this aspect of them.

My other hobby is outlining the racial stereotypes in sci-fi shows/movies...

Tycho6• 15 years ago

But the bad guys aren't 'non-white' in any meaningful sense either, are they?

patrickgzill• 15 years ago

So blacks and Indians (from India) are orcs? Who's the racist again?

knowledgesale2• 15 years ago

Interesting.

As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree.

I realize that it is written in the Norse epic style, and Norse mythology is naturally pretty racist, but it still escapes me why an academic linguistic experiment got such a wide audience.

Another motif, about a small guy doing things greater than himself, is nice though.

wooster2• 15 years ago

You're presupposing (jokingly, of course) allegorical meaning behind the work, which Tolkien explicitly rejected.

Middle Earth was meant as a foundational myth of the British Isles. A sort of stand-in for the real history. A modern-day Beowulf.

If you're looking for parallels with The Real World, you might be better off comparing the war in LoTR to WWI, in which Tolkien served in combat and witnessed some of the most horrific combat in human history, caused mostly by industrial advances. It's a lot easier to see why his nostalgia might be piqued when you think of most of his peers getting mustard gassed, shelled, shot, stabbed, or otherwise dying horrific deaths.

wyclif• 15 years ago

No, no, no. JRRT completely rejected the charge that his work was an allegory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-D65evOCX4

LOTR and The Silmarillion were not about WWII, the Bomb, or "racial purity." You are reading allegory into the stories.

neworbit2• 15 years ago

David Brin wrote an interesting piece on this a few years back. I think Salon picked it up then, too. http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/ind...

ddlatham2• 15 years ago

This is an example of creative, derived work that should be enriching the public commons, when the original is quite old, by a long dead author, yet is still troubled by potential copyright claims.

tptacek4• 15 years ago

And it could have been written straightforwardly as a roman-a-clef without incurring copyright hazards. The reason it wasn't is probably the reason it's at risk: marketing.

It might even make for a better book that way.

Tycho6• 15 years ago

Yes, like Coral Island vs Lord of the Flies.

Although I'm not against the idea of people writing in other peoples' universes, ie. fan fiction. In fact I hate the snotty attitude (seemingly) almost everyone takes towards fan-fiction: it's a win for everyone, like the literary equivalent of forking open-source software, but it's never encouraged.

joe_the_user3• 15 years ago

Disagree with the parent on both points.

I read the first few chapters of the translation.

The book probably couldn't stand on its own. But it was quite interesting as sort-of commentary on Tolkien - even with Tolkien characters completely shifted, it needed to have Tolkien characters to be worth anything. And suppressing that kind of speech is problematic.

pbhjpbhj4• 15 years ago

>And it could have been written straightforwardly as a roman-a-clef without incurring copyright hazards.

I'd not heard of a roman a clef before, a story with a key to translate the characters/figures/places to refer to something else.

I don't think this would help - if you provide me with the parts to make a copyrighted work and you know that is what they are to be used for or you designed them specifically for that use then you are committing contributory infringement (YMMV depending on specifics of copyright law in your country, save to say that legislatures aren't idiots).

In the same way you can't sell your cover of a pop song by encoding the song as an MP3 ("it's not a song it's just bits").

krig• 15 years ago

Yes! This is what culture and creativity is. How can we grow as a society when we cannot comment and build on the culture we live in?

tptacek4• 15 years ago

You absolutely can do this.

bonch• 15 years ago

Um, because the original work is still being sold and is making money for its owners--specifically, the direct relatives of the original author, including one who continued his father's work and released The Silmarillion.

joe_the_user3• 15 years ago

But its hard to argue obscure Russian novel that completely changes the entire setting would in any way decrease the money made by the Tolkien estate.

twp• 15 years ago

This is a really interesting idea but the text itself really needs to be adapted by a native English speaker. I really wanted to plunge into the book, but it's barely readable. Here are the first two sentences of the second paragraph, a typical example of the book's style:

> It was at such a midnight hour that two men moved like gray shadows along the gravelly inner edge of a sickle-shaped gap between two low dunes, and the distance between them was exactly that prescribed by the Field Manual for such occasions. However, contrary to the rules, the one bearing the largest load was not the rear ‘main force’ private, but rather the ‘forward recon’ one, but there were good reasons for that.

It's probably brilliant in Russian, but an English speaker has to unravel and reconstruct each sentence. It makes for heavy going.

I say this not to negatively criticise, but simply to warn readers hoping to discover a fantastic interpretation of an epic tale. A future translation, I am sure, will make for brilliant reading.

Swizec3• 15 years ago

That reads a lot like a NaNoWriMo novel. Many many word padding and abuse of the 'the'.

However, one should not that the original LOTR was written by a linguist. As such it tended to be pretty wordy and often full of horribly complex sentence structures.

For example: > That night they heard no noises. But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to silver and glass, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.

jbri• 15 years ago

The difference is that Tolkein's words flow naturally, while the ones here are more forced - the translation appears to mangle the English to fit exactly what is said in the source text, leaving it feeling rather awkward.

Tolkein's sentences, regardless of how complex, just "work" in English - A similar "transliteration" of Tolkein into Russian or whatever would likely feel as obtuse as this does.

georgecmu4• 15 years ago

Abusing 'the' is a pretty typical Russian error. Russian has no articles, and rules for using them in English are hard to formalize.

listic2• 15 years ago

> However, one should not that the original LOTR was written by a linguist. As such it tended to be pretty wordy and often full of horribly complex sentence structures.

This is exactly what delighted me in Tolkien (LOTR; Silmarillion was over the top for me) or Maria Semyonova (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/880518.Maria_Semyonova_ , translator, Russian fantasy writer, bad film, no English translations that I know of) I was disappointed to discover that many other fantasy and fiction writers don't share the love or skill for such flowery language. It never occured to me that some readers might not enjoy it.

When I was reading some of the acclaimed fiction writers e.g. Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep" not once did I think "Heck, I bet I could write better than this!" I have no illusions of my chances of being a writer in English, when I haven't been one in my native Russian yet, but still. I would not think that thought when I was reading Tolkien or Semenova.

georgecmu4• 15 years ago

an English speaker has to unravel and reconstruct each sentence. It makes for heavy going.

Although according to Guardian, the translator spent "a few dozen lunch hours" on this, I strongly disagree with your point. I've only looked at the first couple of paragraphs so far, but, especially taking into consideration the miniscule amount of time spent, he did quite an admirable job. The reason you find it 'barely readable' and have 'to unravel and reconstruct each sentence' is that this translation strives to emulate the literary style of a 19th century novel. Whether it does it successfully is another question, however, I'm sure you'd be of different opinion, had you spent more time reading Dickens, Hardy and the like.

pnathan2• 15 years ago

Ah, no. Reading that paragraph just doesn't work right. I've read LoTR well upward of 10 times. I've read 1800s literature.

I know how good, flowery, verbose English prose goes, and that's not it.

georgecmu4• 15 years ago

For whatever reason, Tolkien had a huge following in Russia. At least one fantasy writer [1] made a career writing LOTR sequels. Eskov himself is actively blogging on Livejournal [2].

  [1] http://www.perumov.com/books/
  [2] http://afranius.livejournal.com/132382.html

ringm• 15 years ago

One of the most important factors in popularity of a foreign work in Russia is a good translation which does not try to be too literal. Muraviev and Kistyakovsky did a great job with LOTR.

Another reason is that this translation was published in late 80s, when the Russian public was particularly receptive to anything spiritual and/or capable of carrying them away from the grim reality of a collapsing country.

fedd3• 15 years ago

Perumov also was one of the first who tried to depict orcs in a more human way, and elves were mostly arrogant high-class snobs.

really like during perestroika when the "free Western nations" suddenly learned that Russians love their children too

Flemlord• 15 years ago

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has been mentioned many times on HN but is worth mentioning again.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...

kmfrk• 15 years ago

And again, and again, and again. You don't have to be a Harry Potter nor science and philosophy geek; it's accessible and thrilling to everyone.

AdamTReineke• 15 years ago

And if you read it a while ago, there is a good chance the author has added more chapters!

klbarry2• 15 years ago

The problem with this book, of course, is that it ignores the lore Tolkien shares in the Silmarillion, his letters, and other books regarding the origin of Sauron and Orcs.

rsaarelm• 15 years ago

Maybe the idea of the new book was to point out that you can read LotR and Silmarillion as myths and histories written in-universe, instead of an objective and reliable narrative. Suddenly all sorts of things might be slanted to make the winners of the war look good and noble and paint those who opposed them as beastly savages.

michaeldhopkins• 15 years ago

This sort of thing is fun, but it sounds more simplistic than Tolkien's universe and philosophies. I will read it with interest. Can someone comment as to the quality of the Russian version?

ak1394• 15 years ago

It's absolutely brilliant. I especially like that it doesn't try to simply re-tell the LOTR from a different point of view, but changes aesthetics of the story as well. While LOTR is 'an epic saga', 'The Last Ringbearer' reads more like an historical account.

BTW, the russian text is freely available as well: http://lib.ru/PROZA/ESKOV_K/last.txt

Semiapies2• 15 years ago

So, instead of a bourgeois tale of an epic fight against evil forces threatening a dubiously idealized analogue of a society that no longer exists, it's a socialist tale of an epic fight against evil forces threatening a dubiously idealized analogue of a society that no longer exists?

DTrejo• 15 years ago

Link to download the book:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/a75r7u

DjDarkman• 15 years ago

Just like hearing the story of World War [1-2] from different sides.

fedd3• 15 years ago

just like hearing the story of the Cold War from different sides

regehr• 15 years ago

If you can forget the silly musical, _Wicked_ was a pretty awesome book along these same lines.

rapicastillo• 15 years ago

cool. This is like the Middle Earth's Der Untergang (The Downfall)

lotusleaf1987• 15 years ago

If you enjoy the retelling of popular stories from a different perspective, one of the best I've read is Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar. Superman lands in the USSR, is raised as a communist, becomes the villain, Lex Luthor is the hero in America trying to outwit the communist supervillian, Batman is a freedom fighter... I shall say no more, but check it out if you're a nerd like me.

indrax• 15 years ago

You may also enjoy: The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

http://cheeseburgerbrown.com/Darth_Vader/

dawson• 15 years ago

This kind of opportunity doesn't come around often on HN, so for the sake of karma, I have two big Tolkien related sites http://planet-tolkien.com and http://the-hobbit-movie.com/ for anyone interested :)

wooster2• 15 years ago

It's unlikely they'd infringe on Tolkien's copyrights, at least in the US:

  Tolkien was re-editing because in that year, Ace Books in the 
  United States published an unauthorised edition. The Fellowship 
  came out in May 1965, the other two volumes in July. 150,000 copies 
  were printed of each volume! The main text was reset, and introduced 
  new errors, but the appendices were reproduced photographically, and 
  thus contained only the errors already there. Ace Books were exploiting 
  a copyright loophole which meant they did not have to pay Tolkien or his 
  publishers any royalties. Houghton Mifflin appears to have imported too 
  many copies, and the notice they contain, 'Printed in Great Britain' 
  meant that the texts were deemed to be in the public domain in the 
  United States.

http://www.tolkiensociety.com/tolkien/tale.html

Graham24• 15 years ago

Anyone read Bored of the Rings?

klbarry2• 15 years ago

Yes, it seemed a bit uninspired.

neworbit2• 15 years ago

Yeah - it's full of really dated cultural references - I'm not exactly a spring chicken and Serutan meant nothing to me until I looked it up.

bane• 15 years ago

Sounds like what Grendel is to Beowulf, which is a good thing.

Middle-earth according to Mordor - The Lord of the Rings retold

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