On écoute le maître sur la démocratie :
« I am not a ‘democrat’ only because ‘humility’ and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power – and then we get and are getting slavery. »La démocratie mène à la tyrannie (Platon). La démocratie mène à l’ochlocratie via le nazisme (Hans Gunther). La démocratie mène même à Donald Trump (ne riez pas !).
Sur Hitler, Tolkien ajoute d’un point de vue finement conservateur :
« Anyway, I have in this War a burning private grudge (a persistent feeling of resentment) – against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler… Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized… »Pour comprendre pourquoi Hitler a été encouragé, lisez, je le répète, Conjuring Hitler de Guido Giacomo Preparata. Tout (c’est-à-dire le nazisme) fut mis en place pour occasionner le choc germano-russe garant de la prépondérance impériale anglo-américaine.
La guerre met au monde le monde des machines. Ici Tolkien est proche de Bernanos et de sa France contre les robots :
« Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter – leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privi leged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. »Sur le monde moderne comme monde apocalyptique et babélien :
« The news today about ‘Atomic bombs’ is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men’s hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining… Well we’re in God’s hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders. »Sur la haine de l’aviation et des bombardements humanitaires – par les alliés « anglo-saxons » (qui sont aux anglo-saxons ce que les « républicains » sont aux Français) :
« But it is the aeroplane of war that is the real villain. And nothing can really amend my grief that you, my best beloved, have any connexion with it. My sentiments are more or less those that Frodo would have had if he discovered some Hobbits learning to ride Nazgûl-birds, ‘for the liberation of the Shire’.»On se consolera avec l’historienne anglo-russe Elizabeth Solopova qui évoque la bataille eschatologique, celle des champs catalauniques dans une interview :
« Thus, to give just one example, comparing Tolkien’s description of the battle of Pelennor Fields with Jordanes’s description of the battle of Catalaunian Plains, Tom Shippey wrote that in both battles ‘the civilisation of the West was preserved from the “Easterlings”’. I discuss this and, more generally, the parallels between the two descriptions briefly in my book, but this certainly deserves a study in its own right. The view that the Huns and the Goths were a brutal, destructive force and a threat to Western civilisation, can be found in Roman historiography and very much in later art and historiography up to the early modern period.»Écoutons Tolkien grogner contre le Commonwealth :
« For I love England (not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth (grr!)… »Et sur l’impérialisme américano-britannique, Tolkien ajoute :
« Though in this case, as I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust, I am afraid I am not even supported by a glimmer of patriotism in this remaining war. I would not subscribe a penny to it, let alone a son, were I a free man. It can only benefit America or Russia: prob. the latter. »Et enfin ma cerise sur le gâteau – mondialisation, féminisme et américanisation vus par Tolkien :
« The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be all one blasted little provincial suburb. When they have introduced American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production throughout the Near East, Middle East, Far East, U.S.S.R., the Pampas, el Gran Chaco, the Danubian Basin, Equatorial Africa, Hither Further and Inner Mumboland, Gondhwanaland, Lhasa, and the villages of darkest Berkshire, how happy we shall be. »Tout cela est nûment référencé dans mon ouvrage bellement préfacé par le philosophe-historien Philippe Grasset. Les lettres furent surtout adressées à Christopher, qui fut « ce disciple que Tolkien aimait ».
Notes
- Nicolas Bonnal – Le salut par Tolkien, Editions Avatar.
- The Letters of Tolkien – Humphrey Carpenter&Christopher Tolkien
Le Salut par Tolkien
Eschatologie Occidentale et Ressourcement Littéraire
Auteur : Nicolas Bonnal
Prix: 22,00€
Editeur : AVATAR Editions
Date : 15/10/2016
Collection : Les Inactuels
Pages : 258
Dimensions (cm) : 14,85 x 21
ISBN : 9781907847370
Format : Livre Imprimé
Pour acheter cet ouvrage cliquer ici
