"Tolkien - Maker of Middle-Earth" - Exhibition Review

“Tolkien - Maker of Middle-Earth” The Weston Library, Oxford 1 June - 28 October 2018

Have you ever been in a company of people, who, once the Tolkien was mentioned, would just suddenly start to through at each other the most obscure facts from his books? While everyone else seems to be participating, you found yourself dumbfounded, unable to contribute to discussion. You know that feeling? Then you are just like me. Neither have I read the books with much attention, nor was I fascinated with the movies. Some may say that these facts mean that I should not write about this exhibition in the first place, that it is like if designer of Berlin Brandeburg Airport would lecture about the importance of deadlines. However, I feel obliged to share my thoughts. 

The exhibition is extraordinary ordinary. Not because of the content, which is magnificent, but because of the composition. If you would run through the exhibition, you would notice that Tolkien liked to draw, that he received a lot fan mail (even Lyndon Jonson’s daughter sent one for the White House!!!), and that The Lord of the Rings never supposed to be published in three volumes, (the book was too long for just one). The title “Tolkien - Maker of the Middle Earth” is completely misleading. After the end of the tour you don’t know much about “the maker” of the Middle Earth. The proper title for this set up is “Tolkien Literary Superstar - Drawings & Maps Included”. 

Just to give an example. The visitor can find out that Tolkien was professor of Anglo - Saxon language in a plaque which is dedicated to his chair. It looks like it is mentioned to demonstrate how important the chair is, since Tolkien, professor, did not have a room in his college, so he worked from home, and sat on that chair. 

The numerous exhibited drawings are the part of the exhibition where this kind of approach becomes most evident, and the lack of proper accompanying text is most apparent. Tolkien’s style, which could be described as Vasily Kandinsky’s early colours meet gothic themes of William Blake, is really attractive. You just want to look at it, as if they have a magical way of locking your attention. Depending from the scenes they depict, the drawings are mostly dark, gloomy, almost distressing, and every once in a while just tranquil, soft, and somehow saturated. 

Drawing from 1937 - "Bilbo comes to the Huts of Raft-elves" 

© The Tolkien Estate Limited

Tolkien's drawing that was used for The Hobbit dust jacket

© The Tolkien Estate Limited

We do not get the opportunity to learn much about the maker of the Middle-Earth. His famous sentence about First World War, quoted in numerous histories of the war - “By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead” - is present. However, there is absolutely no link between his war experience (Tolkien fought at the Somme), or his experience of any kind, with his own work. His biography is almost a nuisance for the exhibition. 

There is only one plaque, out of probably more then one hundred, where accompanying text says something tangible about who the maker of Middle-Earth really was. The text goes: “He intended Middle Earth to represent our own world at a much earlier time, and was fulfilling a long held desire to create a mythology for England, filling a void that he believes was caused by the Norman Conquest, and its dislocating effect on the language, culture and customs of his beloved country”. 

Was Tolkien kind of a primordialsit, who reacted to the crisis of his time, by creating his own world? The world, which just like Tolkien's was experiencing struggle between good and evil? Was Middle-Earth shaped by the time when it was made? If we have in mind that interwar period could be described as a time when idealism was realism, above mentioned idea does not sound completely impertinent. However, The Middle-Earth is fiction, just as my interpretation, but the exhibition does not offer any other reading. 

Just a quick google search shows that a lot of ink have been spilled in debating Tolkien's world. It is also apparent that he was pretty vocal about the key dillemnas of his time. There are many ways to analyse a work of fiction. Unfortunately, none was applied, and the maker of the Middle-Earth remains mystical just as his own world. If you are not a Tolkien fan, who will be satisfied just because he saw something Tolkien-related, then you will be pretty disappointed with this long-awaited exhibition.