The astonishing appeal of Tolkien’s works to the millions upon millions of readers in the 20th and 21st centuries, joined today by millions upon millions of filmgoers, is evidence that a deep need and thirst for mythical imagery, religious values, and allegories of Good still characterize our fellow human beings.

I learned with sorrow, from an article by Dr. Robert Royal, that Professor Virgil Nemoianu died this month. Born in 1940 in Romania, he was one of the most respected specialists in literary criticism and history, both in his native country and in the English-speaking world. In 1971, he earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, San Diego. After teaching at the universities of Bucharest, London, Cambridge, Cincinnati, and Amsterdam, he joined the prestigious Catholic University of America in 1979. There, starting in 1993, he held the title of William J. Byron Distinguished Professor of Literature and Ordinary Professor of Philosophy.

I had the honor of collaborating repeatedly with Professor Virgil Nemoianu, who, alongside Mircea Eliade and Ioan Petru Culianu (University of Chicago), was for my generation a true model of cultural passion and intellectual refinement. In 2002, we co-authored a substantial interview-volume entitled Calm Wisdom. Then, in 2005, we co-edited a volume dedicated to the famous creator of fantasy literature: J.R.R. Tolkien. Faith and Imagination. Some of the most important specialists in Middle-earth contributed to this volume: Bradley Birzer, Michael Waldstein, Andrew Nimmo, Joseph Pearce, Stratford Caldecott, and Christopher Garbowski. Professor Virgil Nemoianu wrote its Foreword, which we are now making available for the first time to the English-speaking public.

May God rest Professor Virgil Nemoianu’s soul in peace.

Robert Lazu Kmita

My encounter with this writer of genuine significance was unexpected. I was in the United States for the first time—my new homeland—pursuing doctoral studies in California, and I was rather perplexed: the world, the people, the customs—everything was still new and unfamiliar. I was irritated by the attitude of my fellow graduate students, whose ideological and political views and behaviors seemed wrong to me. Yet one of their favorite authors, someone they all seemed to warmly admire and know quite well, was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. I read his trilogy, enjoyed it, and found in it a strong connection to my own reading traditions and personal tastes.

I wanted to learn more about him and became even more puzzled: here was a Catholic professor in Protestant England, originally from South Africa, and a well-recognized expert in “exotic” fields—Old English language and pre-medieval literature, as well as pre-Christian Scandinavian and Irish cultures, among others. It took several years before I understood him as part of a literary movement with a clear structure, one that included highly esteemed intellectuals such as Clive Staples Lewis (a prominent literary critic and historian, prose and poetry writer, and Christian apologist), Dorothy Sayers (creator of captivating detective novels, but also a highly competent translator of Dante and author of a radio play about the life of Jesus), Charles Williams (a complex novelist with an expressionist style and a literary critic with religious undertones), and others still.

But the most difficult question remained: why were these left-leaning young people so passionate about a “dusty,” deeply traditional author like Tolkien, with his dragons, knights, and wizards? After some time, I began to understand what his admirers saw in Tolkien, and from that moment on, I began to understand the author himself much better. These young radicals and progressives, as they were, still had a thirst for spirituality and imagination. They were searching for alternative roots—different from the utilitarian and contractual world in which they had grown up. They sensed these roots, even vaguely or confusedly, in Tolkien’s writings. It was, in fact, a compensation for the romanticism they lacked.

Very well—but in that case, Tolkien was deeper and more complex than I had initially thought. Beneath the colorful surface, there were layers that only gradually reveal themselves to a thoughtful reader. First, there is the mythological layer: a reinvention of mythology, we might say, because this scholarly author didn’t merely reuse the legends of the distant North—he rewrote them in a spectacular and often extremely intricate way. Then comes the allegorical level, which carried significant political implications. Tolkien’s thinking descends from the “distributist” movement that flourished in England between 1910 and 1930, theorized especially by Gilbert Keith Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. This brief political movement opposed both socialism (meaning state and central control over the economy and politics) and large-scale capitalism (which implied vast differences in class, wealth, power, and influence).

“Distributism” sought a middle way, one in which small property would be as widespread and stable as possible. In turn, distributism descended from the teachings of a series of papal encyclicals, starting with Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII—before the year 1900. It’s clear that in The Lord of the Rings, the most desirable form of state organization for both author and readers is that found in “the Shire.” At the same time, Tolkien is clearly a monarchist, suggesting a link between kingship and divinity, and a resolute opponent of the infernal powers of totalitarianism. (Tolkien’s monarchism is not primarily political or ideological in source, but rather musical—I would say it descends from the royal Coronation Anthems of G.F. Händel). In any case, there is no doubt that the political allegory in The Lord of the Rings is particularly rich and well-crafted.

Moreover, we could even speak of a certain philosophy of history. The Lord of the Rings is set during a time of transition—the moment when human society is settling the surface of the earth. The dark powers of Evil clash with a colorful world in which the fantastic and/or supernatural unfolds in all its richness: races and character types abound. A multiculturalist paradise—even a multiplicity of species! All of these are destined to decline, replaced by a more peaceful, more orderly, and at the same time more banal world, in which good and evil (as the reader understands) will now clash primarily within individual souls, rather than in societies, systems, or external appearances.

And behind all these allegories, narratives, and historical perspectives, we also discover—without much difficulty—a spiritual, ethical, and essentially religious level. The biblical discrete references and Christ-like echoes (in Gandalf, Frodo, and other instances) are hard to ignore. The praise and emphasis on values such as family, sacrifice, loyalty, generosity, courage, friendship, balanced justice, and tradition hold a central place in Tolkien’s work. His fantasy is founded upon harsh and powerful moral realities—realities that are, ultimately, impossible to remove from human life.

Perhaps this helps us better understand the astonishing appeal of Tolkien’s works to the millions upon millions of readers in the 20th and 21st centuries, joined today by millions upon millions of filmgoers. A deep need and thirst for mythical imagery, religious values, and allegories of Good still characterize our fellow human beings—a fact we note with sincere surprise and joy. The “Christophobia” so aggressively imposed from the top down across the globe has not (yet?) succeeded in prevailing. The surveys and sales figures tell a different story.

Are Tolkien’s works “the best,” or at least among the best, of the past 100 years, as so many believe? It’s hard to say—certainly too soon to decide. But a literary durability and even growth that has lasted for 50 years is no small thing in the fast-paced world we live in. Furthermore, an author who has simply created a new literary subgenre—a variant of “science fiction” freed from its technological obsessions—unquestionably earns, if nothing else, a certain weight in the history of literature. For now, let us enjoy reading and reflect on the many dimensions—especially the religious and spiritual—present in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.

(Translation of the foreword to the volume coordinated by Virgil Nemoianu and Robert Lazu, J.R.R. Tolkien. Faith and imagination, Hartmann Publishing House, 2005, pp. 5-9)

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The featured image, uploaded by TuckerFTW, is “Tolkien in 1940’s colored by TuckerFTW 2021.” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The image of Virgil Nemoianu is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.