Tove Jansson, author of the Moomins, also illustrated "The Hobbit" in the 1960s.
Her version turned out controversial because Gollum is a giant compared to Bilbo. Turns out Tolkien hadn't described Gollum's size anywhere, and the author actually reworded future editions of the book to make it clear that Gollum is a small creature.
In my opinion Jansson's "Hobbit" is a great interpretation by a legendary artist, and this Gollum controversy has overshadowed it too much.
The Soviet 1970s version (the OP link here) has an obvious debt to Jansson's illustrations, but the style is much more conventional and stiff. Jansson's linework and compositions are exquisite.
Fascinating - Jansson's artwork is lovely. Thank you for sharing it!
I think the huge Gollum is a very understandable misinterpretation, but I think it's likely false the text she worked from was ambiguous about Gollum's size.
If she was working from the 1951 revision, which seems likely if she was working in the 60s, then there is an explicit cue in the text showing that Gollum must be roughly Bilbo's size, when Bilbo is escaping the caves:
> Straight over Gollum’s head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air...
If Bilbo could jump over Gollum with a three-foot leap, Gollum cannot be a giant.
That said, it's well after the passage she illustrated, and would require a pretty attentive reader to catch, so as I said, the mistake is certainly understandable.
Additional caveat that I've not read the second edition of The Hobbit, only more recent ones, so it's conceivable that passage wasn't _exactly_ as I've quoted it.
I strongly suspect was largely as written, however, and even without the explicit numbers, if Bilbo jumps over Gollum, the inference remains largely the same.
> If Bilbo could jump over Gollum with a three-foot leap, Gollum cannot be a giant.
Agree (although Gollum was crouched down)
> I strongly suspect was largely as written, however, and even without the explicit numbers, if Bilbo jumps over Gollum, the inference remains largely the same
I'm guessing that the jump wasn't in the first edition at all, where Bilbo and Gollum apparently parted amicably.
>Her version turned out controversial because Gollum is a giant compared to Bilbo. Turns out Tolkien hadn't described Gollum's size anywhere
Cain and Abel, whom Deagol and Smeagol (Gollum) parallel, may have been giant themselves, given that Adam (their father) is specified in certain religious /apocryphal texts as being 60-100 cubits tall, or 90-150 feet.
that's a wild theory, considering that Tolkien himself described Gollum to be "a small, slimy creature" after the revisions, probably because of Jansson's depiction of him. and although the parallel is clear between many characters of the Hobbit and the Bible, do you have any credible sources that Tolkien took inspiration from apocryphal texts (or in this case the Hadith) ?
> the author actually reworded future editions of the book to make it clear that Gollum is a small creature
The primary retconning occurred in 1951, when the encounter in The Hobbit between Bilbo and Gollum was rewritten to be confrontational rather than amicable, because TLOTR now needed the Ring to have a malevolent influence. The retconning is reflected in Bilbo's apology in the Council of Elrond to those (i.e. Gloin, but implicitly the readers) who may have heard a different version of his story. I'd love to see a first edition of the Hobbit to see what Tolkien actually did say about Gollum.
[Edit]. Just checked my (third edition) copy of The Hobbit. It only says that Gollum was "a small slimy creature" who "had a little boat". There aren't any other descriptions of their relative size, except that Bilbo actually jumps over Gollum's head when escaping him (Gollum is crouched down at this point), as a sibling comment has just observed.
I can see why one would think Gollum was huge early on. Without the context of the Lord of the Rings (where it’s established he was something like a hobbit before becoming Gollum), and also the fact that he ate goblins who wandered in his area of the caves, one might easily guess he was huge.
Most books are, sadly, quite worthless nowadays (monetary value). But the Tove Jansson illustrated, swedish edition of Bilbo is still a sought-after book that usually goes for hundreds of dollars.
Here is an ongoing auction on Tradera (the swedish ebay), currently at SEK 3050 (~$320):
I am not sure I understand. Aren't books "worthless" because they are readily available? Books are only expensive if they are rare (out of print, special limited edition, hand made or labor intensive, author signed, etc.). I don't think I would want "most" books to be rare and difficult to obtain.
I always thought that the passages that talk about Smeagol before he was corrupted by the ring - made it rather easy to think of him as a hobbit or maybe a human.
As bonus trivia, depiction of Bilbo was based on the "short, round stature, expressive eyes, broad and open face" of the famous Soviet actor Yevgeniy Leonov (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Leonov).
Basically, he says that he was approached by some random person and was gifted a copy of The Hobbit. This person turned out to be an illustrator of translated edition (same as at the OP's link) and he made Bilbo look like Leonov (the guy in the video).
As a footnote, Leonov famously voiced Soviet version of Winnie The Pooh in all its glorious 3 episodes:
I'm assuming you're not saying Tolkien based his description of Bilbo on that Leonov. Are you saying the illustrator based the illustrations on Leonov?
Does Leonov actually say that? Or just that the description and illustrations are similar to him?
In the video, Leonov says Belomlinskij (artist who made illustrations for this edition) himself gifted him this book and explained that he based Bilbo looks on Leonov.
My sister read me the first chapter of this edition of The Hobbit and refused to read me any more. So I had to read the rest myself to find out what happens. It became the first "grown up" book I ever finished.
When I read LoTR a few years later, these illustrations formed the images of what hobbits, dwarfs, and Gollum looked like in my minds' eye. Decades later, having seen the Peter Jackson films several times, Bilbo still looks wrong to me as I expect Leonov; Gollum looks wrong too for that matter.
“Down the face of a precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. […] The black crawling shape was now three-quarters of the way down, and perhaps fifty feet or less above the cliff's foot.[…] They peered down at the dark pool. A little black head appeared at the far end of the basin, just out of the deep shadow of the rocks.”
No visual version of Tolkien’s works could ever be made now which depicts Gollum accurately.
Similar experience for me, except my imagery was influenced by the Brothers Hildebrandt. I collected all their cards and was obsessed with the detail in them.
Another illustrator from the 70's was Ingahild Grathmer[1] which was said to be a favourite by Tolkien himself[2]. Maybe he was polite because of the noteriaty (not sure if known at the time) but I do like them as well. Have a look at the documentary on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/rNqVqzIxi3A&t=24m19s
Tolkien was generally favorable to any illustrations that followed the text; he actually explicitly mentioned that he was creating a “legendarium” which would have different interpretations.
What he didn’t like was illustrations by those who never even read the descriptions, or created things based on other media (Tolkien dwarves vs Snow White dwarfs, for example).
It's still on my to-be-read list, but anyone exploring the Russian/Tolkien rabbit hole might also like The Last Ringbearer, which is a retelling from the other side's perspective. The English translation was never officially published but is on archive.org and probably other less reputable sites.
Worth noting: the author, Kirill Yeskov, authored a great book on the Earth history and the old theories of it. And the reasons he wrote The Last Ringbearer, according to his (now deleted) blog, were 1) the geology of Tolkien's world was impossible, the landmass had to be bigger, 2) if the orcs were an army, there must have been a country, a money system, a bureacracy, a developed economy, and so on. From that country's perspective, the elves were a small bunch of rioters on the fringe of the empire.
In Bulgaria, our longest running comic magazine (Дъга ("Duga") e.g. Rainbow) had version of the Hobbit - https://www.endorion.org/books/comics/ - This was in fact the first version of the "books" I got exposed in, and then much later read the real stuff :)
The funny thing is the local communist newspaper "Red Truth" (as if there were non-communist ones, ...) published a review of LOTR in 1977, in which they pretty much took the side of the Mordor. (It might be a made-up joke from the 90s, but the spirit of absurdity is spot on for 1977.)
The reasoning was roughly:
* Mordor is obviously meant to be USSR, as it's in the east.
* The orcs are clearly heavy industry workers, building the world of future.
* Bilbo is obviously a son from a bourgeoisie family, disgusted by hard work.
* The west is represented by elves = aristocracy, people = bourgeoisie, hobbits = landowners.
* The group of reactionaries are afraid of a made up "threat from the east", led by Gandalf.
* Gandalf = a reactionary ideologue, keeping people in state of fear of progress and knowledge.
* Saruman = protector of the oppressed, declared a traitor and destroyed by the reactionaries.
* But socialism can't be destroyed by throwing something in the fire. All the power to Mordor, surrounded by reactionary neighbors.
Well, they are not entirely wrong: Tolkien was a big fan of "old England", as he saw it, with its primarily agricultural focus, and held rather dim view on industrialization and modernism. While Soviets of course were fanatics of industrialization and considered the petty bourgeoisie and kulaks (and Bagginses certainly look a lot like kulaks) their mortal enemies. Tolkien was very adamant that he does not do allegories, and yet the Soviets were right to consider him ideologically opposed to them. He was also a devout Catholic and ardent anti-Communist, so whether or not the Red Truth really declared him an enemy, they certainly would have strong reasons to.
This is unlikely, because "The lord of the rings" was translated much later. "The Hobbit" was first published in 1976, there was an announcement that there is more, but the first volume of "The Lord of the Rings" was published only in 1983.
I found an article in English [1] that mentions a newspaper article called "Tolkien's Cosmos" that does indeed find political meaning in "The Lord". But that article was written much later, in 1997. I cannot find the article itself, but judging from the time and the newspaper ("The Independent Newspaper", proudly liberal) I would guess the author was not a proponent of communism, but the opposite: he equated Mordor or Saruman with Soviet Union because he considered himself to be the part of the winning forces of the West.
Readit News
Her version turned out controversial because Gollum is a giant compared to Bilbo. Turns out Tolkien hadn't described Gollum's size anywhere, and the author actually reworded future editions of the book to make it clear that Gollum is a small creature.
You can see the image here:
https://www.thepopverse.com/jrr-tolkien-the-hobbit-tove-jans...
In my opinion Jansson's "Hobbit" is a great interpretation by a legendary artist, and this Gollum controversy has overshadowed it too much.
The Soviet 1970s version (the OP link here) has an obvious debt to Jansson's illustrations, but the style is much more conventional and stiff. Jansson's linework and compositions are exquisite.
I think the huge Gollum is a very understandable misinterpretation, but I think it's likely false the text she worked from was ambiguous about Gollum's size.
If she was working from the 1951 revision, which seems likely if she was working in the 60s, then there is an explicit cue in the text showing that Gollum must be roughly Bilbo's size, when Bilbo is escaping the caves:
> Straight over Gollum’s head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air...
If Bilbo could jump over Gollum with a three-foot leap, Gollum cannot be a giant.
That said, it's well after the passage she illustrated, and would require a pretty attentive reader to catch, so as I said, the mistake is certainly understandable.
Additional caveat that I've not read the second edition of The Hobbit, only more recent ones, so it's conceivable that passage wasn't _exactly_ as I've quoted it.
I strongly suspect was largely as written, however, and even without the explicit numbers, if Bilbo jumps over Gollum, the inference remains largely the same.
Agree (although Gollum was crouched down)
> I strongly suspect was largely as written, however, and even without the explicit numbers, if Bilbo jumps over Gollum, the inference remains largely the same
I'm guessing that the jump wasn't in the first edition at all, where Bilbo and Gollum apparently parted amicably.
(LOTR says the ring can change size, but this wasn't discussed in the Hobbit, and presumably hadn't occurred to Tolkien yet when he wrote it).
Cain and Abel, whom Deagol and Smeagol (Gollum) parallel, may have been giant themselves, given that Adam (their father) is specified in certain religious /apocryphal texts as being 60-100 cubits tall, or 90-150 feet.
The primary retconning occurred in 1951, when the encounter in The Hobbit between Bilbo and Gollum was rewritten to be confrontational rather than amicable, because TLOTR now needed the Ring to have a malevolent influence. The retconning is reflected in Bilbo's apology in the Council of Elrond to those (i.e. Gloin, but implicitly the readers) who may have heard a different version of his story. I'd love to see a first edition of the Hobbit to see what Tolkien actually did say about Gollum.
[Edit]. Just checked my (third edition) copy of The Hobbit. It only says that Gollum was "a small slimy creature" who "had a little boat". There aren't any other descriptions of their relative size, except that Bilbo actually jumps over Gollum's head when escaping him (Gollum is crouched down at this point), as a sibling comment has just observed.
https://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-Facsimile-Gift-Tolkien-author/...
Or, the differences in the texts are pretty thoroughly hashed out in:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12973638-the-history-of-...
which contains an annotated (and analyzed) text of the first edition.
Here is an ongoing auction on Tradera (the swedish ebay), currently at SEK 3050 (~$320):
https://www.tradera.com/item/341571/686383148/j-r-r-tolkien-...
I am not sure I understand. Aren't books "worthless" because they are readily available? Books are only expensive if they are rare (out of print, special limited edition, hand made or labor intensive, author signed, etc.). I don't think I would want "most" books to be rare and difficult to obtain.
Dead Comment
In this video Leonov mentions this fact before reading an excerpt from the book: https://youtu.be/z7hEJxTBsTs
Basically, he says that he was approached by some random person and was gifted a copy of The Hobbit. This person turned out to be an illustrator of translated edition (same as at the OP's link) and he made Bilbo look like Leonov (the guy in the video).
As a footnote, Leonov famously voiced Soviet version of Winnie The Pooh in all its glorious 3 episodes:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh_(1969_film)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQmGXzNMw0E
Does Leonov actually say that? Or just that the description and illustrations are similar to him?
When I read LoTR a few years later, these illustrations formed the images of what hobbits, dwarfs, and Gollum looked like in my minds' eye. Decades later, having seen the Peter Jackson films several times, Bilbo still looks wrong to me as I expect Leonov; Gollum looks wrong too for that matter.
“Down the face of a precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. […] The black crawling shape was now three-quarters of the way down, and perhaps fifty feet or less above the cliff's foot.[…] They peered down at the dark pool. A little black head appeared at the far end of the basin, just out of the deep shadow of the rocks.”
No visual version of Tolkien’s works could ever be made now which depicts Gollum accurately.
Do you mean the skin color? The reference to the color black here is clearly there because Gollum is in the shadows in a darkened cave.
Deleted Comment
(Go to 24:19 for Ingahild herself)
[1] a.k.a. Margrethe Alexandrine Þórhildur Ingrid (https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Margrethe_II_of_Denmark) [2] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66764/time-queen-denmark...
What he didn’t like was illustrations by those who never even read the descriptions, or created things based on other media (Tolkien dwarves vs Snow White dwarfs, for example).
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/581457001928701869/
https://tainthemeat.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/o-poveste-cu-un...
The reasoning was roughly:
* Mordor is obviously meant to be USSR, as it's in the east.
* The orcs are clearly heavy industry workers, building the world of future.
* Bilbo is obviously a son from a bourgeoisie family, disgusted by hard work.
* The west is represented by elves = aristocracy, people = bourgeoisie, hobbits = landowners.
* The group of reactionaries are afraid of a made up "threat from the east", led by Gandalf.
* Gandalf = a reactionary ideologue, keeping people in state of fear of progress and knowledge.
* Saruman = protector of the oppressed, declared a traitor and destroyed by the reactionaries.
* But socialism can't be destroyed by throwing something in the fire. All the power to Mordor, surrounded by reactionary neighbors.
See from example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer as perhaps the most famous from the genre
I found an article in English [1] that mentions a newspaper article called "Tolkien's Cosmos" that does indeed find political meaning in "The Lord". But that article was written much later, in 1997. I cannot find the article itself, but judging from the time and the newspaper ("The Independent Newspaper", proudly liberal) I would guess the author was not a proponent of communism, but the opposite: he equated Mordor or Saruman with Soviet Union because he considered himself to be the part of the winning forces of the West.
[1] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/176070
A very good one, Vaclav Havel, who BTW pioneered typographical poetry.