Tolkien on de Camp's "Swords & Sorcery" Anthology

In July 1964, L. Sprague de Camp sent J.R.R. Tolkien a copy of his anthology, Swords & Sorcery, which had been published in December 1963. It is a collection of eight stories, with an introduction by de Camp, and colored cover art and eight interior black and white illustrations by Virgil Finlay.
 

Tolkien already knew the art of Virgil Finlay because his American publisher, Houghton Mifflin, had in early 1963 solicited a sample illustration by Finlay for a proposed (but unrealised) illustrated edition of The Hobbit. Tolkien commented on Finlay’s sample in a letter from 11 October 1963, noting that  “Though it gives prospects of a general treatment rather heavier and more violent and airless than I should like, I thought it was good, and actually I thought Bilbo's rather rotund and babyish (but anxious) face was in keeping with his character up to that point. After the horrors of the ‘illustrations’ to the translations [of The Hobbit] Mr. Finlay is a welcome relief. As long (as seems likely) he will leave humour to the text and pay reasonable attention to what the text says, I expect I shall be quite happy.”

Finlay sample for The Hobbit

Unfortunately, Finlay’s cover and interior illustrations to the anthology are rather undistinguised, and do not showcase Finlay’s talent, perhaps owing to the medium of reproduction in a mass market paperback on cheap paper.

With his copy of the Swords & Sorcery book, Tolkien left some jotted notes, difficult to read (see illustration at bottom). Some bits of these notes are quoted below. His main criticisms of the book he made in a 30 August 1964 letter to de Camp, which has only partially been published. In it, Tolkien noted that he was interested in practically everything save literary criticism, and he said of contemporary fantasy that “I will not pretend that it gave me much pleasure.” In particular about de Camp’s book he noted:  “Though I might say, I suppose, as a purely personal aside, that all the items seem poor in the subsidiary (but to me not unimportant) matters of nomenclature. Best when inventive, least good when literary or archaic. (For instance Thangobrind and Alaric, both singularly inapt for their purpose) . . . Also I do wonder why you chose that particular tale of Dunsany’s. It seems to me to illustrate all his faults. And the ghastly final paragraph!”

In his notes, Tolkien had written: “Found [the anthology] interesting but did not much like the stories in it.” Also: “Most of these things are overheated & exaggerated ([?...] bigger or [?would be] bigger, [?’...’] is [?...] than the purposes warrant) Also obviously over or ill-written.”

Of the eight stories, Tolkien commented upon four specifically, with a later conversational comment about a fifth as reported by de Camp. Tolkien did not comment on deCamp’s introduction, nor on the stories by Kuttner, Leiber and Lovecraft.  His comments on the four are here considered sequentially, in the order they appear in the book.

“The Valor of Cappen Varra” by Poul Anderson.  “Cappen Varra. Nomenclature v. bad. Let us have genuine Scandinavian/Norse ‘barbarians’ or something invented.”

“Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller” by Lord Dunsany. “Dunsany at his worst. Trying so hard for the shudder. But not for a moment making the tale ‘credible’ enough to make a background for a strong [?]. And the ending lamentable — in that [?setting]. In a world in which a Thangobrind could even begin to be (let alone Hlo-hlo or [?all the rest]) early 19th century Riviera [?milleau] is surely utterly impossible — or vice versa. And what is meant by selling his daughter’s soul.” And “Dunsany’s is one of his worst. That final ghastly paragraph!”

De Camp suggested that: “I suppose Tolkien meant by ‘ghastly’ Dunsany’s leaving his ‘secondary world’ to drag in a dig at a type of contemporary person he disliked.”  

In the first paragraph of the story, Dunsany wrote: “Now there was a Merchant Prince who had come to Thangobrind and had offered his daughter’s soul for the diamond that is larger than the human head and was to be found on the lap of the spider-idol, Hlo-Hlo, in his temple of Moung-ga-ling; for he had heard that Thangobrind was a thief to be trusted.”  The final paragraph of the short tale reads:

And the only daughter of the Merchant Prince felt so little gratitude for this great deliverance that she took to respectability of a militant kind, and became aggressively dull, and called her home the English Riviera, and had platitudes worked in worsted upon her tea-cosy, and in the end never died, but passed away at her residence.

“Hellsgarde” by C. L. Moore. “Jirel of Joiry. Does create an atmosphere and [?the] sinister ‘corrupt’ household of Alaric was eerie and credible. But I never [sic] find phantasmal struggles such as that of Jirel with ‘Undead’ Andred quite unconvincing — especially when the victims escape!” And: “Jirel of Joiry [pp.] 140 – 146 is good but needs a deft story (and explanation) to make it valid.”

“The Testament of Athammaus” by Clark Ashton Smith. “The Athammaus monster wholly unbelievable [?…] disgusting [?... ... …]. There are lots of ways of being [?...] nastily, without all this tooraloo of nonsense.”

De Camp met Tolkien in Oxford in February 1967, and de Camp later reported that Tolkien had said he “rather liked” the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard.  It is an odd comment, considering that Tolkien had earlier claimed that he did not much like the stories in the book, and there is no evidence to support the idea that he had read any other Conan story.  De Camp elaborated this view in a letter to John D. Rateliff on 14 January 1983:  “During our conversation, I said something casual to Tolkien about my involvement with Howard’s Conan stories, and he said he ‘rather liked them.’ That was all; we went on to other subjects. I know he had read Swords & Sorcery because I had sent him a copy. I don’t know if he had read any other Conan besides “Shadows in the Moonlight,” but I rather doubt it.”

 

Outside the Human Aquarium: Clark Ashton Smith on Art and Life

The same source of the E.R. Eddison letter discussed in my last blog post contains some letters from Clark Ashton Smith that I found quite interesting. Here is give a long quote from the first of Smith's letters, dated 10 November 1932:

Your questions touch on problems that are, I think, vastly more difficult to elucidate than you imagine. The ultimate motivations of any man’s life, philosophy, art, likes, dislikes, etc., are probably more obscure than is realized; and I doubt if modern psychology has approached them. For this reason, I am not sure that I understand myself, or that any human being can understand himself or others. And understanding is even harder to communicate than achieve, since words may, and usually do have, extremely divergent values for different minds. Having delivered myself of this warning, I’ll try to answer some of your questions.

To the best of my belief, the style in which I write is a perfectly natural mode of utterance for me, and is not affected. My approach to literature is primarily artistic, poetic, esthetic, and for this reason I like the full-hued and somewhat rhythmic type of prose. For many years, I wrote only verse (I have published three volumes of it); and I have always had a prejudice in favor of what is called “the grand manner.” I have also made many paintings and drawings, of a fantastic type; and this pictorial trend has probably influenced my story-writing too. Perhaps, in some case, it has led me to an overuse of adjectives in the effort to achieve a full and vivid vizualization, or rendering of atmosphere.

My stories spring from a profound liking for the imaginative and fantastic, together with a deep speculative interest regarding the cosmic mysteries, and the actual possibilities of other inhabited worlds and alien modes of being. I suspect that nothing  any of us can imagine is half so fantastic as the truth of what may exist outside the human aquarium! Together with my interest in the cosmic, I have (without definitely believing in the supernatural) a vast curiosity concerning what may lie behind the veils of the material world. Life, as I see it, is surrounded and permeated by insoluble mysteries; and I strongly suspect that it is influenced by many forces that science has not yet been able to detect. Perhaps this will help you to understand the mental background of my tales.

As to what life means to me, I think I can safely say that it is largely synonymous with work. I am trying to establish myself as a professional story-writer, and to earn, if possible, enough money so that I will ultimately be able to devote part of the time to the poetry and painting which I have been forced to lay aside through financial exigency. I consider myself fortunate to write (and enjoy writing) a type of fiction that appeals to any considerable portion of the public.

My letter in S[trange] T[ales] touched on a many-sided problem, and I suppose any pronouncement as to what is the highest or most important element in a story is, after all, a matter of personal preference. Your point as to a mingling or co-relating of human and unhuman elements in a horror tale is well-taken, and I agree with you that Poe has obtained some magnificent effects by such opposition. The convincing evocation of macrocosmic or “outside” elements is, I think, far rarer than the adequate presentment of the human, and seems to require a greater capacity for imaginative projection, so for this reason I was tempted to put it higher. But it all depends on what you want, I suppose. It is obvious that the widest public appeal in a story must be based largely on common emotions. Genuine appreciation of the ultrahumanly fantastic presupposes a certain capacity for detachment from the everyday interests and feelings of life. There has to be, temporarily, an objectifying interest, a transcending of the material concerns of the species. The emotion evoked by work of this sort is largely esthetic—a delight in ideas. images, style, etc., for their own sake, rather than a rudimentary solar-plexus tickling. Fantasy represents the effort of the human mind to go beyond the rather painful limits of experiences and observation, it is, so to speak, an aspiration toward the unknown infinities. It corresponds in the world of art and intellection, one might say, to what mysticism is in the spiritual world—an effort toward a broader consciousness than that achieved through the relativities of mundane existence.

From all this, you must not infer that I am indifferent to work that deals with the actual happenings and possibilities of life. The thing that I deprecate is the sort of modern realism, or, more properly, literalism, which treats such happenings and possibilities as a closed microcosm, thoroughly known and charted, and sealed against the unknown elements of the macrocosm. This type of stuff I have come to regard as thoroughly sterile and limitary. It is not, as I see it, a true realism at all, The most elementary facing of the facts of our position in the unverse should include an acceptance of myriad unknown potentialities. Any day, forces may be stumbled upon by investigative scientists that will give an entirely new value and bearing to observed data, and invalidate the whole kit and kaboodle of accepted theories.

I hope that this will make my standpoint, and my stories, clearer to you.*

Smith’s letter to Strange Tales was printed in the January 1933 issue under the title “The Tale of Macrocosmic Horror.”  It is reprinted in Planets and Dimension: Collected Essays of Clark Ashton Smith (1973), edited by Charles K. Wolfe, pp. 18-19.

 *"Clark Ashton Smith letter to Richard Dodson 1932-11-10", Richard W. Dodson Collection of Science Fiction, Digital Initiatives, University of Idaho

Did Clark Ashton Smith read Tolkien?

This topic came up several years ago, but has gained currency on the web. There are no letters by Smith in which he discusses Tolkien, but only in a reminiscence by Smith's late-in-life friend, Dr. William Farmer (1938-2015), in which Tolkien is discussed. The full April 2005 interview with Farmer by Larry Fischer is available here at Eldritch Dark, but let me quote the relevant Tolkien-related passages (my emphasis added in red):

L F: Which books published since CAS's death do you wish you could have shared with him?
 
Dr F: Oddly enough, probably the Harry Potter series — Clark would have loved the subtle fun poked at the English public schools — and the manner in which real evil is contrasted as something far more sinister than the trivial media representations, and posturings of Satanists. The best translations of Kazantzakis were not available and he would have loved those works — particularly I think, his Odyssey, A Modern Sequel. [T.E. Lawrence's] Seven Pillars of Wisdom was not available to the general public when he was young, and I don't think he ever got to it again, and by the time I had read this great work, Clark was gone. I would like to have re-visited Tolkien's stuff with Clark after I had a master's seminar with Dr. Tolkien in '63. I think, too, that some of Don Fryer's work inspired by Clark would be good to have gone over with Clark — he would have appreciated Don more, and would have had more opportunity to get to know him as I did. I think he might have enjoyed seeing [Ray Bradbury's] Martian Chronicles on film — the advent of the video could have been interesting to share with Clark. Most "sci-fi/fantasy" or "sword & sorcery" has not captured my interest or attention — to have been worth discussing with Clark, there must be more than just story — there must be some deeper current that stirs beneath the surface, subtly gripping the reader and leaving him uncertain as to what just happened to him at the end of the book — "best look again..."
 
L F: How much Tolkien and C.S. Lewis did CAS read, and what did he make of what he read?
 
Dr F: He read all of it he could get his hands on — The Allegory of Love would have frustrated him because he had little Greek, Italian, and Anglo-Saxon and the book is not foot-noted.

Tolkien's creation of an entire history, obviously biblically parallel, with its own several languages and grammar he admired immensely. In discussing it briefly at odd interludes, he always came back to the basic remembrance: "Sauron is only a servant". He always felt real evil was something Tolkien understood as something infinitely more profound and dangerous than trivial little dilettantes like [Anton] LaVey [of the Church of Satan] and his ilk could imagine — he would be amused by the common theme in many books and films where some very bad person desires great power and calls up an ancient horror he thinks he can control, only to be utterly consumed by it when he at last succeeds.

The comment about Farmer having attended a master's seminar with Tolkien in 1963 rang a bit odd with me, as Tolkien retired from teaching in 1959, but returned for two terms in October 1962 through April 1963 when his colleague C.L. Wrenn was on sabbatical. Tolkien's duties seem to have involved only the giving of public lectures (on Beowulf). I queried Dr. Farmer on this, and he didn't provide any further details. In a post at the Eldritch Dark forum on 30 November 2011 (scroll down, here), he elaborated further:

I cannot say that Clark had read the whole Ring trilogy, and I don't recall the books being available in Paper-back at that time, so I know he didn't own any - I know that he had read "The Hobbit", and at least some of the "Fellowship..." He liked the Hobbit, and admired the inventiveness, particularly in the variation in names and language as relates to species - (cf difference between Dwarf names and Elf names). As I recall, he also expressed admiration for the consistency of the images and "leit motif" over such extended narrative - a gift he admired, but had never attempted. The single quote I recall is his having said that Tolkien appeared to be a true master of language. I was not myself at that time equipped to engage much farther in the discussion as my own knowledge of the books was limited.

Smith died in August 1961, which was indeed four years before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings appeared in paperback. All of what Farmer says may be true, but I think it should be qualified a bit. Some of Farmer's comments (here and elsewhere) seem to be projections of his own opinions onto Smith. I really wish we had some first-hand comments from Smith himself in lieu of second-hand comments made forty-some years after Smith's death.

On the other side of the coin, we do know that in 1964 Tolkien read at least one story by Clark Ashton Smith.  L. Sprague de Camp had sent Tolkien a copy of his mass-market anthology Swords & Sorcery (Pyramid Books, published in December 1963).  Tolkien's copy, dated by him July 1964, with some hastily scrawled pencilled notes was on sale many years ago (see here), and I noted that Tolkien didn't much care for the Clark Ashton Smith tale, "The Testament of Athammaus" (which is not one of Smith's best anyway). Tolkien felt the monster was wholly unbelievable and the story had a tooraloo of nonsense in it. Tolkien wrote more diplomatically to de Camp in August 1964 that "all the items seem poor in the subsidiary (but to me not unimportant) matters of nomenclature. Best when inventive, least good when literary or archaic."