Tom Bombadil is just as he is. Just an odd ‘fact’ of that world. He
won’t be explained, because as long as you are (as in this tale you are
meant to be) concentrated on the Ring, he is inexplicable. But he’s
there – a reminder of the truth (as I see it) that the world is so large
and manifold that if you take one facet and fix your mind and heart on
it, there is always something that does not come in to that
story/argument/approach, and seems to belong to a larger story. But of
course in another way, not that of pure story-making, Bombadil is a
deliberate contrast to the Elves who are artists. But B. does not want
to make, alter, devise, or control anything: just to observe and take
joy in the contemplating the things that are not himself. The spirit of this earth made aware of itself. He
is more like science (utterly free from technological blemish) and
history than art. He represents the complete fearlessness of that spirit
when we can catch a little of it. But I do suggest that it is possible
to fear (as I do) that the making artistic sub-creative spirit (of Men
and Elves) is actually more potent, and can ‘fall’, and that it could in
the eventual triumph of its own evil destroy the whole earth, and
Bombadil and all.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, to Nevill Coghill, August 21, 1954.
©2014 The Tolkien Estate Limited, published at http://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/tom-bombadil-addenda-corrigenda
I Find Him Not
I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I fought for Him, and now I pass and die.
Wherefore O God above is all below
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Until High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful?
Or else as if the world were wholly fair,
But that these eyes of men are dense and dim,
And have not power to see it as it is—
Perchance, because our shadow darkens it;—
I thought I could accomplish all His will,
And have but stricken with the sword in vain;
And all whereon I leaned in wife and friend
Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm
Reels back into the beast, and is no more.
My God, thou hast forgot me in my death!
Nay—Jesu Christ—I pass but shall not die.
—Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, The Passing of Arthur, p242.
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I fought for Him, and now I pass and die.
Wherefore O God above is all below
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Until High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful?
Or else as if the world were wholly fair,
But that these eyes of men are dense and dim,
And have not power to see it as it is—
Perchance, because our shadow darkens it;—
I thought I could accomplish all His will,
And have but stricken with the sword in vain;
And all whereon I leaned in wife and friend
Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm
Reels back into the beast, and is no more.
My God, thou hast forgot me in my death!
Nay—Jesu Christ—I pass but shall not die.
—Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, The Passing of Arthur, p242.
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