“In a hole
in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
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| goodreads.com |
The importance of art and the visual to Tolkien in his work is striking in comparison to the entirely
visual retelling of his stories through Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings
trilogy and upcoming Hobbit trilogy. The Book Fest’s Hobbit presentation opened
with a showing of the trailer for The Hobbit; An Unexpected Journey and then proceeded to Hammond and Ms.
Scull telling The Hobbit in summary accompanied by a slideshow
of corresponding sketches, illustrations and water colors. By comparison to a
full scale movie, this kind of hurried retelling could probably be called
coarse at best, but there was really something magical to it as well.
Those famous
words have greeted thousands upon opening The
Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a story that children have gone to bed with
and then, years later, put their children to bed with. It is a story that has
yet to fade in the popular lexicon and perhaps never will because of the
journey that Tolkien takes us through.
And with the recent celebration of the 75th anniversary of the first printing
and the upcoming release of the Peter Jackson trilogy, the Hobbit as burning
brighter than ever
Hammond and
Ms. Scull gave a lot of insight into Tolkien’s working process and the
production of the novel, for which art played a significant part. Tolkien was a
talented artist and utilized art as a means to help his visualize and realize
the world he saw in his head. Tolkien was insistent that there should be
pictures inside The Hobbit and sent
four illustrations to his publisher. Taken by the illustrations, they agreed to
include the pictures, although there really wasn’t room for them in the budget.
Not content with this small victory, he sent an additional six arguing that the
first four were concentrated in the latter part of the story and the additional
illustrations would allow for even distribution throughout the novel. So they
were included, too. Tolkien himself also designed the dust-jacket.
Hammond and Scull showed several versions of Tolkien’s illustrations of
Hobbiton, including the one that made it into the original printing of the
book. It looks very much like an English country village, perhaps on the skirts
of a mill town. And while Hobbiton is, of course, the Middle Earth equivalent
of a pastoral English village, there was something very real about the
illustration, real in the sense that it looked almost like a photograph and was
somehow very different from Peter Jackson’s conception.
In my own
reading, I often have a hard time visualizing what the author is trying to
describe, or can envision it only in parts. I was very disappointed when I
upgraded from children’s chapter books and found that illustrations were no
longer a thing that happened. As Hammond and Ms. Scull progressed through the
illustrations, I found the book coming more alive for me than ever before,
seeing Tolkien’s vision of the gate to the Elves’ kingdom in Mirkwood. (I feel
it’s necessary to add that I read The Hobbit on a Kindle and the ebook didn’t have
illustrations). They showed pictures Bilbo and the dwarves climbing the Misty
Mountains, Bilbo in the dragon Smaug’s lair, and the Lonely Mountain. My
favorite of Tolkien’s pieces (and his favorite as well) was a watercolor of
Bilbo and the dwarves floating down the river to Laketown. It is, curiously
enough, an inaccurate representation of the scene because in the picture it is
morning, but in the book it was night. But it was such a beautiful image, it
didn’t seem to matter.
With the
upcoming release of the movies, we will get to see in full, what every aspect
of the story looked like (and even a lot more beyond the narrative of the
original novel). So why make a big fuss about a few pictures? There is
something magical about an
illustration and the stylized world that it depicts. Even the most realistic of
drawings is a not an accurate representation of reality and that
inaccessibility makes the depicted wonderfully mysterious. They are a treat. And
with Tolkien, his illustrations are the closest representation to the original
conception in his head. A movie, although it may be shot on real sets and have
real actors, has a stylized quality, especially a movie like The Hobbit. But
because of the complete visual representation, the mystique of an illustration
is lost. A movie fills in all of the blanks visually and gives audience members
an immersive experience. I was reminded by Hammond and Ms. Scull that sometimes
the mystery that remains from only seeing a single picture can be more
intriguing than an entire film. The value of seeing those illustrations was not
lost, even in contrast with the movie trailer.
If Wayne Hammond and
Christine Scull taught me anything during their presentation, it’s that a story
told in different mediums is still the same story but the impact can be so very
different. But, if the magic is there, it shines through no matter what.
By Meaghan O’Brien
