The Speech of Saruman

In "The Voice of Saruman", Saruman, as everybody will recall, speaks with
Gandalf and the others from his tower, trying to bamboozle them with his
hypnotic voice. When he fails, he resorts to abuse. His words to Gandalf
are: "If you wish to treat with me, while you have a chance, go away, and
come back when you are sober! And leave behind these cut-throats and small
rag tag that dangle at your tail."
The language is very unlike that in the rest of the book, including the
language of orcs; the marked differences from the speech of the orcs are
mostly due to Saruman being educated and articulate. Actually, the words I
quote probably reflect how Tolkien spoke to C. S. Lewis when Lewis and his
students annoyed him.
The reason why Tolkien lets a villain speak the way he himself did on
occasion was, undoubtedly, that he felt remorse for his treatment of Lewis.
Lewis and his students wanted Tolkien to come down from his ivory tower and
deal with the real world; but Tolkien refused and instead, in the heat of
the moment, heaped insults on poor Lewis. When Tolkien lets Saruman speak
like this, it is an indirect act of contrition. Lewis reacted with happiness
at this change of heart and wrote in his review of "The Lord of the Rings":
"This is a good book, good beyond hope."

Öjevind

On Jan 15, 4:03 pm, Öjevind Lång wrote:
> In "The Voice of Saruman", Saruman, as everybody will recall, speaks with
> Gandalf and the others from his tower, trying to bamboozle them with his
> hypnotic voice. When he fails, he resorts to abuse. His words to Gandalf
> are:  "If you wish to treat with me, while you have a chance, go away, and
> come back when you are sober! And leave behind these cut-throats and small
> rag tag that dangle at your tail."
>   The language is very unlike that in the rest of the book, including the
> language of orcs; the marked differences from the speech of the orcs are
> mostly due to Saruman being educated and articulate. Actually, the words I
> quote probably reflect how Tolkien spoke to C. S. Lewis when Lewis and his
> students annoyed him.
>   The reason why Tolkien lets a villain speak the way he himself did on
> occasion was, undoubtedly, that he felt remorse for his treatment of Lewis.
> Lewis and his students wanted Tolkien to come down from his ivory tower and
> deal with the real world; but Tolkien refused and instead, in the heat of
> the moment, heaped insults on poor Lewis. When Tolkien lets Saruman speak
> like this, it is an indirect act of contrition. Lewis reacted with happiness
> at this change of heart and wrote in his review of "The Lord of the Rings":
> "This is a good book, good beyond hope."

Like the ape Shift ( a fancy portrait of FDR), you mingle a little
truth with your lies to make them stronger. But you fail.

TOLKEIN did indeed justly utter those words to Lewis when the latter,
accompanied by Betjeman and Wain, interrupted His session with
Flooziel the Mermaid. (You stole this truth for your e-text chapter.)
He had better things to do with His time than listen again to their
whinging about the English school's syllabus.

But TOLKIEN never felt remorse, for He never erred. In the original
draft, Gandalf utters the line, not Saruman, when the latter
interrupts a rendez-vous with Fimbrethil. (Note the autobiographical
reference.) This line was changed by the sinister forces that were
determine to twist, pervert, and for ever ruin TOLKIEN's glorious
ahievement.

So why did Lewis say the book was "good beyond hope"? Surely he knew
that, as MORAMBAR told me in a coffee-house in Estée Lauderinórinan),
TOLKIEN's least cough was Wisdom and Truth.

Bogusz takes the more favorable view, that Lewis was weak, but still
loyal; and in a dark hour he doubted that TOLKIEN was the one true
fantasy Writer.

But I have begun to wonder if Lewis did not have a more sinister
motive. Was he in on the plot to distort TOLKIEN's sacred Words with
liberal internationalist claptrap? Did he mean by "good beyond hope"
that the plot had succeeded better than he had expected? The jury is
still out.