Follow-Up on Sea-Longing in Tolkien

[Tungol]

Professor Olsen talked last session about his lack of certainty about what Sea-longing is really about in Tolkien.

I found this blog by the academic Bruce Charlton, who is a bit of a controversial figure, but I think he makes some illuminating points based mainly on The Notion Club Papers and the Silmarillion: http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.ca/2011/01/tolkien-and-sea-yearning-meaning-of.html

It's not a long blog post and I encourage people to read it. I'll just make a few comments:

Charlton makes the same observation that Professor Olsen did that Tolkien seems a bit vague about what Sea-longing refers to:

"Tolkien's original legendarium hero—Earendil—was of course a mariner. Also the very early Aelfwine character, who visited fairyland and linked it to England. This has always struck me as strange - since Tolkien did not write very much detail about the sea in the way that he wrote about trees and mountains."

To briefly summarize, Charlton's hypothesis is that sea-longing is about saintliness, by which he means "a link between the earthly and heavenly realms, the saint as intercessor for humankind with God." Further, he argues that there is an ascetic element to this: "the launch into the unknown and placing oneself (ultimately, whatever strivings are needed for navigation) at God's mercy"

If we consider these ideas, I think it does throw a new light on many passages about the Sea, including Frodo's first dream. Thoughts?

 

[Tungol]

In terms of Frodo's first dream, we learn that the sounds of the Sea have often troubled his dreams. It could be that Ulmo was already trying to send him a hopeful message in the past, but I think we got a bit side-tracked by the mechanism here. The important fact is that Frodo often dreams of the sound of the Sea, and that he experiences Sea-longing very strongly in this particular dream before the hobbits leave the Shire.

Why would this be happening to Frodo? I think we see here that Frodo follows the protagonist pattern of Eärendil and Ælfwine (Eriol). He dreams of the Sea because he is the "chosen" intermediary between Valinor (heaven) and the world (Middle-earth). It's something larger than Ulmo sending a vision of hope/premonition.

At the same time, Ulmo is often associated with sea-longing. For example, in the Silmarillion, Tuor sings about Ulmo to Eärendil and this awakens both of their sea-longing.

I also think the other sea imagery that I cited in my other post is a kind of background foreshadowing for the role that Frodo and the other hobbits are going to play in the larger picture of the world.