When the trolls of Mordor come for you

The orcs, in a still from 'The Lord of the Rings' (2001), by Peter Jackson.

I thought that the worst that Sauron, the villain of

could send us were the Nazgûl, the Balrog of Khazad-dûm or special troops of orcs, like the Uruk-hai of Captain Uglúk.

Well no.

The worst are the trolls of Mordor,

Tolkien's radical

My goodness, how those emanations from the dark country have been merciless on the networks with a server for a take away from me some considerations about the writer, expressed at the passage of the new television series about his conspicuous literary work.

You have to see how Middle Earth is, minefield;

very alive and sensitive, no doubt.

In almost forty years of journalism, he had never been more beaten than for commenting on

the Amazon Prime Video series.

I have been stunned to see the vehemence, virulence and even violence (verbal, at the moment: anyone approaches Minas Morgul) with which some have found it necessary to refute with sticks what I wrote about the creator of Middle-earth.

Entrenched in Helm's Deep they have me.

More information

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power', great return to Middle-earth

Do not think that I doubted in the slightest the quality of the author (of whom I have been a fervent admirer since I passionately read

, in 1978, 79 and 80, since the three volumes appeared here one at a time). year), or that I picked on his good mother, Mrs. Mabel Suffield, or that I suggested that the Inklings, his Oxford literary group, were a pederasty ring.

But if even archery like Legolas!

I simply pointed out that Tolkien was a misogynist, that the original Galadriel elf (the one in the series is more material and worldly, and an accomplished warrior) was like a Virgin Mary with pointed ears;

that

, the equivalent of the Old Testament for Middle-earth (“in the beginning was Eru, the Only One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar, and first he made the Ainur, the Holy Ones, who were offspring of his thought”), seemed to me a tome (well, I'll make an effort to reread it, I found my 1984 copy at the bottom of the fantasy section in my library, next to the lyrics to Sally Oldfield's

), and that Tolkien would have been surprised see how the Amazon series brought female empowerment into their world.

The actress Morfydd Clark, in the role of Galadriel, in the Amazon series.

Matt Grace / Prime Video (Prime Vide / EFE)

He also described

as a trilogy (despite the fact that, anathema!, its author always said that it was a single book divided into three by the publishers);

and, trying to avoid making

in case I got a bump on the head for it, I didn't mention, because the series doesn't do it at the beginning, that the hairy ones are hobbits (in fact, their most common and numerous branch), although Tolkien explains it at the beginning of

that beginning

false that many of us had to make an effort to overcome and enjoy the immensely good that followed...

Well, for all those sins I have been massacred at the hands of a troop of furious Tolkinians (sorry, Tolkinians) from Barad-Dûr, who have described the article as "embarrassing" and its author (menda) of, and I quote only a few epithets , not even the worst, imbecile, pseudo-journalist, infamous, cenutrio, ignorant,

, retarded, dull , noticeably mentally handicapped looking for a minute of glory (Mr. Mandrill's contribution), brat (when I'm almost Elrond's age), filthy , and Tolkien's scholar subspecies.

They have even manipulated a photo of me (greetings, Evaristo) and put a clown nose on me.

I imagine that the will of those who have expanded like this was not to engage in a serene debate, but for those who have been bothered with good intentions, let me try to justify the misogynist thing.

Although Tolkien does have some notable female characters, specifically in

the two elves Galadriel and Arwen —Evening Star, the dark-haired bride and later wife of Aragorn and queen of Gondor—, and the human of Rohan Éowin, who kills the Lord of the Nazgûl disguised as a Rohirrim warrior and then returns to her works and marries Faramir (I'm leaving Golden Berry on purpose, which seems like a goop to me, like everything by Tom Bombadil), in reality the writer's great novel is a story of masculine beings.

They are the vast majority of the characters and especially the nine members of the Company of the Ring, the main protagonists of the plot (the hobbits Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry, the men Aragorn and Boromir, the elf Legolas, the dwarf Gimli and the wizard Gandalf).

Among the bad guys, the only female thing (let's imagine, well, let's see who dares to sex her) is the Ella-Laraña spider.

In

by the way, does not leave any women.

Seven of the nine protagonists of 'The Lord of the Rings' (Boromir and Gimli are missing), in the film adaptation by Peter Jackson.© 2001 - New Line Productions, Inc.

Tolkien himself (1892-1973) lived in a world of men (as told by his biographer Humphrey Carter,

, Minotaur, 1990).

For him —son of his time—, the natural thing was that the masculine and feminine universes were separated, they in the domestic sphere or at most in that of “the mysteries of the Bona Dea”, as CS Lewis said.

The Inklings were all male and in such groups women were excluded.

Tolkien had also lived through the intense experience of the front in the First World War, on the Somme, characterized by male camaraderie (one of the

of

).

It is true that one of the most remembered stories of the writer is that of the mortal Beren and his love for the beautiful immortal elf Lúthien (the names of the two characters, identified with them, appear on the tombstone on the tomb of Tolkien and his wife Edith) , but that points to a romantic and idealized idea of ​​women and love that is not at odds with discrimination in practice.

In his letters, collected by Carter himself, Tolkien points out that he does not believe in friendship between men and women.

There are other criticizable things about Tolkien, in addition to his vision of women as beings essentially unequal to men and who play in another league (something that the novelist Marion Zimmer Bradley has also reproached him for): he did not believe in democracy and defended “ virtues” of the old feudal society.

His books, and especially that magnum opus that is

can also be criticized for lacking a sense of humor and being sexless.

Of course it is very difficult for someone to get horny with a passage from

, or

Tolkien, who exalted chastity, is not Houellebecq.

On the other hand, his way of despising the life of the orcs, exterminated with a genocidal profusion, has been made ugly (see the ingenious

, by Kirill Yeskov, Bibliopolis, 2004).

The writer JRR Tolkien

Another characteristic of the writer that is often overlooked is that he had a total commitment to Christianity and the Catholic Church: his religious feeling, tinged with anguish or happiness depending on the circumstances, permeates his work (see the revealing texts on the matter in J

Minotaur, 2001, ie

, by Charles A. Coulombe, or

, by Sean McGrath).

And many of his themes such as Evil, spiritual light, the fall, temptation, the burden, or eternal life, not to mention the resurrection of Gandalf, stem from a deep religious consciousness.

Tolkien was of daily communion (always prior to confession) and in favor of the mass in Latin (it is what he has to know languages), although he would probably have preferred it in Quenya or Sindarin.

Having said all this, which does not have to affect the reading of something as magnificent as

, we must remember that Tolkien is a guy who dazzled Auden (hearing him live declaim his translation of

: Minotaur has published it ), who said such beautiful things as “a dragon is not an idle fantasy” (something George RR Martin, who owes him so much, will agree with), and who has taken us to lofty heights of emotion and feeling.

I have been reproached by the trolls of Mordor for not having read Tolkien.

I don't care if they call me an asshole, but I do care if they try to take away from me the immense reading, vital and even spiritual adventure that began (I have it written down) on January 27, 1979, Saturday, when I opened the first page of the first volume of

, bought at El Corte Inglés in Plaza Cataluña (I bought the next two at the

Tuset

Those days I read Bukowski, we did a workshop at the Institut del Teatre with Lluís Pasqual on

O'Neill area, I saw

and the second part of

I played rugby against Cornellà (losing), I personally met Lindsay Kemp and I met Ada several times at

.

But what has remained indelible in my memory of that time is the feeling of sitting on my grandfather's chesterfield sofa when they slept at home, putting Mahler's

on the record player , opening

and immerse myself in that captivating world of epic melancholy and splendid darkness, where adventure and even victory over Evil are tinged with the irremediable fate that everything, heroism, swords, rings, elves, friendship, love and youth, is inexorably condemned to disappear.

“Where are the helmet and the breastplate, and the luminous floating hairs? / Where are the spring and the harvest and the tall spike that grows?

/ They have passed like a rain on the mountain, like a wind on the meadow;

/ The days have descended in the west in the shadow behind the hills.

/ Who will collect the smoke of burning dead wood, or see the fugitive years that return from the Sea?

Ah, Tolkien, Tolkien...

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