k n. 板条，厚板

18) slaughterhouse n. 屠宰场

19) stampede v. 惊跑

20) trample v. 践踏

★★《2003年05月号-第40期-disc01-07》★★

j.r.r. tolkien and a legend he created

tolkien's grand themes would play out in the world of middle earth. it was a world created in his head but 1)imbued with his two greatest loves -- languages and 2)mythology -- loves that were 3)ignited by his mother.

tolkien expert: she knew french and german and latin. she encouraged him to enjoy language; not only to study language, but to enjoy language. she got him to thinking about language.

4)linguistics would be tolkien's constant 5)obsession. as a child, he spent days locked away in his room creating languages.

tolkien expert: while a lot of children invent languages of their own, nonsense languages, tolkien took this to the max. he took it very seriously and invented his own language which he called nafereen.

years later, his self-described "mad hobby" would find its way into the lord of the rings.

"when he saw strider, he 6)dismounted and ran to meet him, calling out, 'ai na vedui dunadan! mae govannen'. his speech and clear ringing voice left no doubt in their hearts the rider was of the elven folk." (the fellowship of the ring, page 204)

as tolkien 7)scribbled out chapter after chapter of rings in his barely legible handwriting, his real life experiences began to influence his writing. his days in the english countryside, the lessons of his catholic upbringing, and especially his horrific time spent in battle during world war i would also find its way onto the pages of his new novel.

christopher lee ("sarumen"): and there's a scene where you see hobbits - they go through the dead 8)marshes and they see all the dead faces staring up at them through the water, as a result of these terrible battles, that was actually based on tolkien's own experiences in world war i when he saw these 9)appalling massacres of soldiers, which took place in battlefields.

"i saw them. 10)grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. many faces proud and fair, and 11)weeds in their silver hair. but all foul, all rotting, all dead." (the two towers, page 614)

in 1940, tolkien's publisher, allen and unwin, eagerly awaited the new hobbit book. however, tolkien's pursuit of perfection slowed the process.

tolkien expert: he was a 12)perfectionist, so that he would write, push to one side, rewrite, push to one side, rewrite, but it was as if he always had to start from the beginning again every time.

tolkien was writing not a book, but a history of middle earth that was rich with detail.

elijah wood ("frodo"): these books were written with such depth and 13)density and sort of attention to detail, that they almost seem like history. like you can read them and almost believe they really happened.

sure, even the smallest detail was scrutinized. he created maps, charts and an 14)appendix the size of most books. in tolkien's mind, he wasn't just creating a fantasy world, but an ancient mythology for england. it is this eye for detail that separated tolkien's work from that of other fantasy writers and forever changed the 15)genre.

tolkien expert: he gave fairy tale a kind of geography and a map, and a history, and a 16)chronology, and a whole world in which to exist and the worlds were connected up with each other.

his 17)dedication to detail, 18)workload at oxford, and occasional lack of interest, caused the writing process to 19)drag on. tolkien began to doubt whether he would ever finish. encouragement would come from a 20)fellow member of the oxford community, c.s. lewis, a writer who would carve his own 21)niche in the world of fantasy writing with works like, the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. over a 22)pint at the local pub, tolkien began to share chapters of his new book with lewis, who became 23)enthralled with the work.

tolkien expert: tolkien would never have finished the lord of the rings without lewis' continuous encouragement. and tolkien really needed somebody like that.

in 1949, twelve years after he had started, j.r.r.tolkien sat on his attic bed. using two fingers, he typed out a complete draft of rings. the book contained dozens of characters, 62 chapters, and lots of pages. rings was over 1,000 pages so the editors wanted to break it up into three volumes.

tolkien expert: they had to talk him into publishing it as a 24)trilogy. he saw it as a single book, the lord of the rings.

the first volume of the lord of the rings, 25)entitled, the fellowship of the ring, was published in august of 1954. the final two volumes would be released over the next 14 months. to the author's dismay, many 26)interpreted the book as an 27)allegory for world war ii.

tolkien expert: he discouraged any sort of 28)allegorical reading where, as a one-for-one 29)correspondence between what's in the book and what's in the world, so that tom bonneville's neutral territory is not switzerland and mordor is not