Bombadil's House - "Fear of That Silence"

[jmaline]

I ran across an interesting comment from a student of acoustics that reminded me of the discussion of the "silence of the heavens ... fear of that silence" paragraph at the end of the In the House of Tom Bombadil chapter.

http://mcmansionhell.com/post/169367229546/looking-around-on-sound-part-1-noise

Emphasis added...

As a student of acoustics, I’ve had the displeasure of being in an anechoic chamber and experiencing the suffocating terror that is total silence, a silence so strong you can hear every sound made by your internal organs, a silence so strong people can only stand being in an anechoic chamber for mere minutes.​

Anyway I'm not suggesting that JRRT had experience in an anechoic chamber. Just a mirror of modern science in his text.

 

[Harnuth]

I had to look up that passage in the book. Here it is:

Whether the morning and evening of one day or of many days had passed Frodo could not tell. He did not feel either hungry or tired, only filled with wonder. The stars shone through the window and the silence of the heavens seemed to be round him. He spoke at last out of his wonder and a sudden fear of that silence:

‘Who are you, Master?’ he asked.

‘Eh, what?’ said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. ‘Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer...

--Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (p. 131). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition. ​

That fascinating observation made me realize that the amazing J R R Tolkien was aware that there was no sound in outer space. Now I'm wondering when he first wrote about the "silence of the heavens." In any case, it would have had to be in the time before people started launching satellites and confirmed the theory that space was mostly vacuum, devoid of any kind of atmosphere and hence devoid of sound.

I suspect that if we could peruse Tolkien's bookshelves, we wound find the works of Jules Verne. Edward Everett Hale, and H G Wells there, along with their many compatriots in the early days of science fiction. And, by extrapolation, we might surmise that those early works of science fiction were among the subjects bantered about by the Inklings in their day.


(For what it's worth: I, too, have worked in anechoic chambers. They were all the rage for testing satellites back in the days when the United States had a space program. And I agree; the experience can be quite unsettling. "It's not natural, none of it!" --Dori the Dwarf, in the movie, The Desolation of Smaug.)

 

[Harnuth]

I had to look up that passage in the book. Here it is:

Whether the morning and evening of one day or of many days had passed Frodo could not tell. He did not feel either hungry or tired, only filled with wonder. The stars shone through the window and the silence of the heavens seemed to be round him. He spoke at last out of his wonder and a sudden fear of that silence:

‘Who are you, Master?’ he asked.

‘Eh, what?’ said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. ‘Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer...

--Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (p. 131). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition. ​

That fascinating observation made me realize that the amazing J R R Tolkien was aware that there was no sound in outer space. Now I'm wondering when he first wrote about the "silence of the heavens." In any case, it would have had to be in the time before people started launching satellites and confirmed the theory that space was mostly vacuum, devoid of any kind of atmosphere and hence devoid of sound.

I suspect that if we could peruse Tolkien's bookshelves, we wound find the works of Jules Verne. Edward Everett Hale, and H G Wells there, along with their many compatriots in the early days of science fiction. And, by extrapolation, we might surmise that those early works of science fiction were among the subjects bantered about by the Inklings in their day.


(For what it's worth: I, too, have worked in anechoic chambers. They were all the rage for testing satellites back in the days when the United States had a space program. And I agree; the experience can be quite unsettling. "It's not natural, none of it!" --Dori the Dwarf, in the movie, The Desolation of Smaug.)

 

[ForthDauntless3]

I'd never considered just how maddening pure silence might be. It does make one wonder whether some of Melkor's madness might have come because he spent so much time alone in the void. While an angelic psyche would surely respond differently to ours, it can't have been good for him.

Also, as an unrelated aside, one doesn't need to launch satellites to confirm that space is a vacuum. There are many lines of evidence to demonstrate this, but the most easily understood is this: If space contained any significant atmosphere, the Moon would have quickly spiraled out of its orbit and fallen to Earth due to gas drag. This would have been well known in Tolkien's time.

 

[Harnuth]

From the Silmarillion we know that music was how it all started, so we might speculate that Melkor's psyche would be even more tuned toward sound that ours with all our senses and nonsenses.

My point about the space age is that it wasn't until we started launching satellites that the general public became aware of the lack of sound in space because it was stuff they talked about on the nightly news. Until then, they just didn't think about it. (Yes, indeed, there was a time when the news was about the news instead of political propaganda.) During my 40-year career as an engineer on NASA programs and in sundry space societies, I learned from my experience on the lecture circuit that folks in general don't know much about outer space, not even many heads of aerospace corporations and even NASA employees.

In the first half of the 20th century, many scientists knew a lot about what is beyond the sky, and some of the science fiction writers did; but just as many scientists and writers did not, as evidenced in the SF literature of the time.

I continue to be amazed with J R R Tolkien's breadth and depth of knowledge in fields of science. I don't know if that's typical of an Oxford professor of his time; I do know that it's very unusual among the faculty outside of engineering and science that I've had contact with over the years. I would guess that Tolkien and his fellows were unique among the Oxford dons in their understanding of things outside their respective fields, but I don't know that for sure--we are separated in time and space.

 

[Jim Deutch]

I continue to be amazed with J R R Tolkien's breadth and depth of knowledge in fields of science.

I agree: there are only a very few things in tLotR that bother me on this account.

One is Legolas running over the snowdrifts on Caradhras. That just seems to go beyond Elvish magic into outright denial of the law of gravity. If he can do that, can he also run along the tips of the plants in a field of wheat? I can't wait until Prof. Olsen gets to that passage in the Exploring series to see what he makes of it.

Another is the sight of stars during the day from deep within the passage along the Paths of the Dead. If you can't see stars from the top of the cliffs, (or, similarly, from the edge of a deep well) then it doesn't matter how deep you are: you still can't see the stars! You'll only be able to see a tiny patch of sky, but it will be just as bright from below as it is from the top. Tolkien isn't the only writer with this misconception, though: he probably got it from other literature.

Tolkien made sure he got phases of the moon right for his chronology by the simple expedient of choosing a year (1949 sticks in my head) and just looking them up in an old almanac, with a simple translation from our calendar to his.

Overall, he did a wonderful job.

 

[SteveR]

I would venture to guess that stars visible along the paths of the dead has as much to do with those spirits shutting out the light of the sun as it does with being deep in a crevasse. But then, of course, the question is: why do they not also blot out the light of the stars?

I've never been in an anechoic chamber, but as a musician I find that a silent concert hall or theatre feels tense: the space awaits the playing of music, and so all the small sounds are magnified and amplified as the space (which does have a distinct echo/reverb signature) looks for a sound to grab ahold of and turn into a cacophonous din of its own. They are wonderfully alive-feeling places, with or without music playing in them.

 

[NotACat]

Another is the sight of stars during the day from deep within the passage along the Paths of the Dead. If you can't see stars from the top of the cliffs, (or, similarly, from the edge of a deep well) then it doesn't matter how deep you are: you still can't see the stars! You'll only be able to see a tiny patch of sky, but it will be just as bright from below as it is from the top. Tolkien isn't the only writer with this misconception, though: he probably got it from other literature.

If the Mirrormere can reflect the stars in broad daylight, the Paths of the Dead can manage a similar feat, surely?

 

[SteveR]

They both have very strong polarizers, I suppose?

 

[Jim Deutch]

If the Mirrormere can reflect the stars in broad daylight, the Paths of the Dead can manage a similar feat, surely?

Well, you're right, of course. And yet Mirrormere never bothered me. It's magic! But the Paths of the Dead tripped my bull-filters. Maybe that's because this isn't the only place I've encountered this image. I've seen it claimed as fact in the real world, and it's not.
--
"The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us are going to the stars." - Peter Diamandis

 

[Harnuth]

Tolkien isn't the only writer [to believe that you can see stars from the bottom of a deep well], though: he probably got it from other literature.

Indeed. This belief dates back to Aristotle and is pervasive among the general populace even today. The fact of it is that the daytime sky is just too bright--five times brighter than the brightest star (that would be Sirius). You can, however, view most of the planets through a telescope in the daytime and some of them are often visible to the naked eye. Perhaps Aristotle was looking up from a well and saw a planet or two, thought they were stars, and from that experience a legend was born.