The History....

"Shaun" <Shaun_Musings RemoveThis @yahoo.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:166a410e-4025-4a58-91e6-5ce694567f89@21g2000hsj.googlegroups.com...

[snip]

> I notice the 'Narn' is obviously what C.S. Lewis coined Narnia
> from...

I wouldn't be so sure of that. In Roman times, there was a city called
Narnia in Italy; the Emperor Nerva was born there. The city still exists,
but nowadays it is called Narni.

Öjevind
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Öjevind Lång wrote:

> "Shaun" <Shaun_Musings RemoveThis @yahoo.com> skrev i meddelandet
> news:166a410e-4025-4a58-91e6-5ce694567f89@21g2000hsj.googlegroups.com...
>
> [snip]
>
>> I notice the 'Narn' is obviously what C.S. Lewis coined Narnia
>> from...
>
> I wouldn't be so sure of that. In Roman times, there was a city called
> Narnia in Italy; the Emperor Nerva was born there. The city still exists,
> but nowadays it is called Narni.

And of course this ties right back into the Babylon 5 thread
--
derek
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"Derek Broughton" <news RemoveThis @pointerstop.ca> skrev i meddelandet
news:2728916.ZT952X0ltn@cedar.serverforest.com...

[snip]
>>
>>> I notice the 'Narn' is obviously what C.S. Lewis coined Narnia
>>> from...
>>
>> I wouldn't be so sure of that. In Roman times, there was a city called
>> Narnia in Italy; the Emperor Nerva was born there. The city still exists,
>> but nowadays it is called Narni.
>
> And of course this ties right back into the Babylon 5 thread

Yes! Personally, I think it very likely that J. Michael Straczynski was
inspired by the name Narnia when he coined the name Narn.

Öjevind
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"?jevind L?ng" <bredband.net.RemoveThis@ojevind.lang> wrote:
> "Derek Broughton" <news.RemoveThis@pointerstop.ca> skrev i meddelandet
> news:2728916.ZT952X0ltn@cedar.serverforest.com...

>>>> I notice the 'Narn' is obviously what C.S. Lewis coined Narnia
>>>> from...

>>> I wouldn't be so sure of that. In Roman times, there was a city called
>>> Narnia in Italy; the Emperor Nerva was born there. The city still exists,
>>> but nowadays it is called Narni.

>> And of course this ties right back into the Babylon 5 thread

> Yes! Personally, I think it very likely that J. Michael Straczynski was
> inspired by the name Narnia when he coined the name Narn.

Why is it likely? The connections between B5 and LotR are obvious, but
I don't see any connection between B5 and Narnia. And you know what
Tolkien answered when people told him that Moria must have been inspired
by the 'land of Moría'...

Anyway, I have often wondered if the Minbari correspond to Elves,
and the Vorlons to the Ainur, then what do the Narn correspond to?
The Dwarves? At least they live underground, even if not by their
own choice...

- Dirk
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Dirk Thierbach wrote:

> And you know what
> Tolkien answered when people told him that Moria must have been inspired
> by the 'land of Moría'...

I don't! Pray tell...


-- FotW

Reality is for those who cannot cope with Middle-earth.
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> > Dirk Thierbach wrote:
> >> And you know what Tolkien answered when people told him that Moria
> >> must have been inspired by the 'land of Moría'...
> > I don't!  Pray tell...
>
> Letter #297:
>
>   As for the 'land of Moría' (note stress): that has no connexion (even
>   'externally') whatsoever. Internally there is no conceivable connexion
>   between the mining of Dwarves, and the story of Abraham. I utterly
>   repudiate any such significances and symbolisms. My mind does not work
>   that way; and (in my view) you are led astray by a purely fortuitous
>   similarity, more obvious in spelling than speech, which cannot be
>   justified from the real intended significance of my story.
>
> - Dirk

I wonder if Tolkien would say the same for a lot of other things. He
wrote the book, at least, from the beginning without a clear aspect of
where he was going. The Black Riders was originally Gandalf himself
(Return of the Shadow) and even when we are introduced to Strider,
Tolkien had no idea who he was. The Mines of Moria was a name, but
that's it.

I'm a writer myself, and I often find myself writing as fast as I can
and going back over it to wonder whom this or that character is.
Tolkien detested allegory, or so he said, so some of the symbolisms
many find in the story may have been put there by accident, or they
could have just been spun in his mind for a bit before putting them
down on paper. What would the story have been like if the Ents had
been evil, as Tolkien originally planned?

SD
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Flame of the West <SPAM_ME_NOT_jsolinas DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:

>> And you know what Tolkien answered when people told him that Moria
>> must have been inspired by the 'land of Moría'...

> I don't! Pray tell...

Letter #297:

As for the 'land of Moría' (note stress): that has no connexion (even
'externally') whatsoever. Internally there is no conceivable connexion
between the mining of Dwarves, and the story of Abraham. I utterly
repudiate any such significances and symbolisms. My mind does not work
that way; and (in my view) you are led astray by a purely fortuitous
similarity, more obvious in spelling than speech, which cannot be
justified from the real intended significance of my story.

- Dirk
 >> Stay informed about: The History.... 

[Removed non-RFC-conform space after comma in Newsgroup: and F'up: line]

Shaun <Shaun_Musings DeleteThis @yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:

>> Letter #297:
>>
>>   As for the 'land of Moría' (note stress): that has no connexion (even
>>   'externally') whatsoever. Internally there is no conceivable connexion
>>   between the mining of Dwarves, and the story of Abraham. I utterly
>>   repudiate any such significances and symbolisms. My mind does not work
>>   that way; and (in my view) you are led astray by a purely fortuitous
>>   similarity, more obvious in spelling than speech, which cannot be
>>   justified from the real intended significance of my story.

> I wonder if Tolkien would say the same for a lot of other things.

As he has on occasion said what influenced him, I doubt it. The point
here is that there are a lot of words which sound or look similar,
but that doesn't necessarily mean that they influenced each other.
And since Tolkien deeply cares about words and their philological
interconnections, I guess he has a right to get a bit emotional about
this

And I think the same goes for Narnia and the Narn in B5. If anything,
I'd think it more likely that CSL picked up the idea for the word
"Narnia" in some Inklings meeting, when Tolkien for example happened
to read aloud some Elvish text with the word Narn ("story") in it.

> I'm a writer myself, and I often find myself writing as fast as I can
> and going back over it to wonder whom this or that character is.

Yes, certainly. And I guess one can detect a few people Tolkien knew
in his characters. But that is quite different topic to similar sounding
words which happen to have no common context.

> Tolkien detested allegory, or so he said, so some of the symbolisms
> many find in the story may have been put there by accident,

By "allegory", Tolkien very likely meant a thinly veiled story that
in fact tries to tell the reader something very specific. That's quite
different from symbolism, which I guess Tolkien would group under
"applicability". (And LotR has symbols -- the Ring is one, for example.)

And as for "detest", Tolkien used allegories himself (in their
"proper" place), so I think this has to be qualified with something
like "when the reader expects a nice story".

- Dirk
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"Dirk Thierbach" <dthierbach DeleteThis @usenet.arcornews.de> skrev i meddelandet
news:20080109084853.398.2.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de...

[snip]

>> Yes! Personally, I think it very likely that J. Michael Straczynski was
>> inspired by the name Narnia when he coined the name Narn.
>
> Why is it likely? The connections between B5 and LotR are obvious, but
> I don't see any connection between B5 and Narnia. And you know what
> Tolkien answered when people told him that Moria must have been inspired
> by the 'land of Moría'...

I don't necessarily believe everything Tolkiensid about his sources of
inspiration. For example, I don't entirely believe his claim that the myth
about the Ring of the Nibelungen had not influenced him at all.

> Anyway, I have often wondered if the Minbari correspond to Elves,
> and the Vorlons to the Ainur, then what do the Narn correspond to?
> The Dwarves? At least they live underground, even if not by their
> own choice...

The poor Narn! The Centauri really were swinish towards them.

Öjevind
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"?jevind L?ng" <bredband.net.TakeThisOut@ojevind.lang> wrote:
> "Dirk Thierbach" <dthierbach.TakeThisOut@usenet.arcornews.de> skrev i meddelandet

>>> Yes! Personally, I think it very likely that J. Michael Straczynski was
>>> inspired by the name Narnia when he coined the name Narn.

>> Why is it likely? The connections between B5 and LotR are obvious, but
>> I don't see any connection between B5 and Narnia. And you know what
>> Tolkien answered when people told him that Moria must have been inspired
>> by the 'land of Moría'...

> I don't necessarily believe everything Tolkiensid about his sources of
> inspiration.

But I think in this case he has a good point.

> For example, I don't entirely believe his claim that the myth
> about the Ring of the Nibelungen had not influenced him at all.

He didn't say that. What he said is that *Wagner's* "Ring der
Nibelungen" had very little resemblence with LotR. Which I understand to
mean that Tolkien thought Wagner had no idea how to use the original
texts properly (and I guess he has a point here, too -- it's for example
easy to see in the libretto of the "Flying Dutchman" that he has
no clear idea how sailing vessels actually operate.) For a professional
philogist, who knows the sources well, I can imagine that such a treatment
must be horrible.

Of course both Wagner and Tolkien draw from the same sources, and hence,
there are similarities. But that's something completely different
from being directly influenced by Wagner.

- Dirk
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Dirk Thierbach wrote:
> Why is it likely? The connections between B5 and LotR are obvious, but
> I don't see any connection between B5 and Narnia.

I doubt there is any. Whenever the subject of C. S. Lewis comes up, even
in the capacity of scholar and critic, Joe sticks his fingers in his ears.
--
John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract,
Man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams. "Bors to Elayne: On the King's Coins"
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