The Ring, Precious and the Pearl Poet

mjnairn

New Member
As we hurtle toward the Council of Elrond, I have been thinking about the nature of the ring’s evil. I know this is to anticipate but I wanted to jot down these thoughts before they vanish from my mind. As we find out from Gandalf, Isildur, as far as we know, is the first mortal recorded describing the Ring as “ precious” ( small p ). This seems to be spontaneous on his part, meaning he probably did not hear it referred to this way by anyone else, unlike Bilbo and Frodo. This seems to also rise up from within Sméagol as well. So: why “ precious?”
Knowing Tolkien’s very close association with the Pearl, it occurred to me, after 40-odd years of reading both LOTR and the Pearl, that the use of “precious” in the novel might not be accidental and could shed some valuable light on Tolkien’s conception of evil in LOTR.
“Precious” is a key term in the Pearl, used quite often by the poet, the first time in line 4: Ne proved I never her precious pere: So round, so reken in uch aray, So smal, so smothe her sides were... It’s meaning is most often used as we understand it today, something greatly loved or treasured, of great value etc; but it could also be used in Middle English to mean sacred. We come to understand that this “precious Pearl withouten spot” the poet has lost is his daughter, lately deceased. As the poem progresses he moves through his grief and mourning to a transcendent understanding of the world and comes closer to “Godes present,To mo of his mysterys I had been driven..” So “precious” is then used in the poem to describe not only a gem but a daughter, and a father’s love for his daughter. I am being hasty here: there is much more to be said of this.
Bearing in mind how “precious” is used in the poem, I find it more gut-wrenchingly twisted and sinister when “precious” is used in LOTR when referring to the Ring: a perversion of what is beautiful and holy and transcendent. Even Gollum’s grief is corrupted by the Precious, unlike in the poem; Frodo is spared at least this by the grace of the Valar, but the alternative is imaginable.
Anyway, I don’t know if these parallels have been pointed out before, but I find them deeply enriching. It would be an interesting mythmoot paper.

Michael (SirCalidore on discord)
 
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