Over 20 years ago, a lost recording of J.R.R. Tolkien was discovered in a basement in Rotterdam, but the man who found it kept this important reel-to-reel tape hidden away. Until recently, only he had heard the recording. But now, I am one of those lucky Middle-earth lovers who has listened to this magical magnetic tape, and I happily declare that it is awesome. For it proves once and for all that Professor Tolkien was, in fact, very much the hobbit that we all suspected him to be. What's more, we get to hear Tolkien reading a lost poem in the Elven tongue which he translates into English. And to top it off, he states in unambiguous terms (cue Rohirrim war trumpets) the real meaning of The Lord of the Rings!
Got chills yet Tolkien fans? Just wait until you hear it yourself.
The recording took place on March 28th, 1958 in Rotterdam at a "Hobbit Dinner" put on by Tolkien's Dutch publisher and a bookseller. Tolkien's own publisher, Allen and Unwin, paid for his trip to the Netherlands to attend this special party. According to his letters the author was chuffed to find that Rotterdam was filled with people "intoxicated with hobbits." Tolkien showed up at a packed hall where 200 hobbit fanatics had come to hear him and other scholars talk about Middle-earth....
"Like Smaug I am guarding my treasure, hissing at any collector who comes near," he recently stated in response to my email query. Fortunately, a Middle-earth maven named Jay Johnstone, one of the founders of the fantasy/sci-fi site Legendarium.me, sleuthed that van Rossenberg had the recording in his possession, and persuaded him to open his dragon hoard. "I am looking forward to sharing with all Tolkien aficionados the great joy I felt when I first played the tape and heard Tolkien give his great speech," added van Rossenberg.
Legendarium and the Tolkien site MiddleEarthNetwork.com have partnered with van Rossenberg to raise both awareness and funds in order to remaster the original reel-to-reel tape, chronicle the event, and make it available to the world this fall via the Rotterdam Project. "Anything new from Tolkien is always exciting," said Tom Shippey, author of J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, "but the Rotterdam Project is especially so. A speech from Tolkien, in the first years of his success with Lord of the Rings, when he was among friends, enjoying himself, and able to speak freely!"...
Tolkien thanked the assembled "hobbits" for giving him the greatest party of his life. He spoke very modestly about The Lord of the Rings calling it "A poor thing, but my own." He couldn't believe that the people there would want to hear an after-dinner autobiography. So he jumped right into explaining the construction of his great narrative work, stating that the One Ring is a mere mechanism that "sets the clock ticking fast." And then he quite plainly spells out what the books are about--something he only alluded to once in a letter, but is incontrovertible in this speech. (If you want to know exactly what he says you'll just have to listen for yourself!)
