為什麼魔戒如此受歡迎？_風聞

【來源龍騰網】

評論原創翻譯：

Joshua Engel

I have to admit, I’ve never been entirely sure why people are so enamored of The Lord of the Rings. I know why I am, but it’s not at all for its nature as an action-adventure story.

If you watch the LotR movies, that’s what you’d think they were about. The battle and action sequences get a lot more screen time than they do in the books. That’s partly the nature of the medium, but I think that’s what a lot of people see in the books as well, and I just don’t.

Here’s the way I’d put it: the amazing thing about The Lord of the Rings is what Tolkien called “secondary creation”. It’s the idea that the writer isn’t just making up a story and asking you to suspend your belief in the real world so that you can tolerate the fact that it’s not real. Rather, Tolkien wants to create a world so rich and deep that you don’t have to suspend disbelief. You instead come to a secondary belief in his secondary creation.

Tolkien’s world is self-complete in a way no author before or since has ever been. LotR is only the tip, a little piece of that world that pokes up to where you can see it. Even if you never read another word of Tolkien outside of the pieces published in his lifetime (LotR and The Hobbit), you can feel that the rest of the other world is out there. There are passing, unexplained references to Turin and the Silmarils and literally thousands of other names dropped in such a way as to make you realize that there’s a fully-worked out story behind it.

我必須承認，我從來不確定人們為什麼如此喜歡魔戒。我喜歡它，並不是因為它是一個動作冒險故事。

如果你看魔戒的電影，你會認為它們是關於動作冒險的。戰鬥和動作序列在屏幕上的時間比書中多得多。這在一定程度上是因為媒體本質不同導致的，有可能很多人在書中看到的也是動作冒險，但是，我喜歡的不是。

我想這麼説：魔戒的神奇之處在於托爾金所説的“二度創作”。這種想法是，作者不僅僅是在編造一個故事，並要求你暫停對現實世界的信仰，這樣你就可以容忍它不是真實的事實。相反，托爾金想要創造一個如此豐富和深刻的世界，以至於你不會懷疑。相反，你對他的第二次創造產生了第二個信仰。

托爾金的世界是會自我完善的，這是以前或以後任何一位作家都沒有過的。魔戒只是這個世界的一小部分，你可以看到它。即使你從未讀過托爾金一生中出版的作品（洛特和霍比特人）之外的其他文字，你也能感覺到另一個世界就在那裏。這裏有一些對都靈和錫爾馬里爾的過去時的、無法解釋的引用，還有成千上萬的其他名字，它們讓你意識到背後有一個完整的故事。

Reading LotR isn’t about actually knowing all of those back stories. It’s about knowing that they exist, and that there are even more stories behind them, some of which were little more than notes jotted onto scraps of paper. Tolkien created and revised his world obsessively, and that’s what makes it so riveting.

Flipping through LotR the other day I noticed that just the index of the list of songs and poems goes on for several pages. These are poems and songs in dozens of styles and even languages: Hobbit doggerel, poems in both Quenya and Sindarin, fragments of epic verse, different styles of Mannish poetry in Rohan and Gondor… on and on and on. It feels like what it’s supposed to be: hundreds of authors contributing separately over thousands of years. But it isn’t: it’s the secondary creation of one man who created thousands of characters to populate his world.

閲讀魔戒並不需要真正瞭解所有這些背景故事。我們知道背景故事的存在，以及它們背後有更多的故事，其中一些只是寫在紙片上的筆記。托爾金痴迷地創造和修改他的世界，這就是為什麼它如此引人入勝的原因。

前幾天翻閲魔戒時，我注意到只是歌曲和詩歌列表的索引就持續了好幾頁。這些詩和歌有幾十種風格，甚至是語言：霍比特人打油詩，昆雅和辛達林的詩，史詩的片段，羅漢和剛鐸不同風格的曼尼什詩……一首又一首。感覺就像它應該是這樣產生的：數百名作者在數千年的時間裏分別投稿。但事實並非如此：這是一個人的二度創作，他創造了數千個角色來填充他的世界。

And then there’s the languages. This is the crown jewel. Tolkien created two separate but related Elvish languages, and it can be said that he wrote the whole world in order to give these languages a place to be. Languages need stories; they need myths. The stories are part of the language as much as the words are.

Language is history: nobody knew that better than Tolkien. He was an expert in the history of English, and spoke several English ancestors fluently. The only Gothic poetry in the entire world was written by Tolkien. The language of the Rohirrim is based on Old English, and even if you don’t know that, you can feel it. (Actually the culture is more Gothic than Old English, though few outside philological circles would know that.)

Tolkien’s secondary creation is so deep that you crave to know more. You can look in the Appendices, and if you like them, undergo the Mount Everest that is The Silmarillion. But even if you don’t, even if they were never published, they are the reason that The Lord of the Rings is so utterly brilliant. You can spend a lifetime reading his back stories. It’s as though he managed to genuinely fill a world, all by himself.

還有語言。這是王冠上的寶石。有人説，精靈語言和托爾金語言可以在一個獨立的地方被創造出來，但托爾金語言和托爾金語言可以相互關聯。語言需要故事，他們需要神話。故事和文字一樣都是語言的一部分。

語言就是歷史：沒有人比托爾金更清楚這一點。他是英語史專家，能流利地説幾位英國祖先的英語。全世界唯一的哥特式詩歌是托爾金寫的。羅赫林人的語言是以古英語為基礎的，即使你不知道，你也能感覺到。（事實上，這種文化比古英語更哥特式，儘管很少有語言學界以外的人知道這一點。）

托爾金的二度創作是如此深刻，以至於你渴望瞭解更多。你可以查看附錄，如果你喜歡的話，可以體驗一下珠穆朗瑪峯，也就是西里馬利昂峯。但即使你沒有，即使它們從未出版過，它們也是《魔戒》如此輝煌的原因。你可以花一生的時間讀他的故事。就好像他真的成功地填滿了一個世界，全靠他自己。

Elijah Kourt

What makes the Lord of the Rings so epic and beautiful, in my opinion, is not the creation itself, but rather the mastery of its creator.

The trilogy, as it is often pointed out, is nothing but a small fraction of the whole story. It is the tip of an endless iceberg in a bottomless sea of creativity; the creativity of just one man.

I think many would agree that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien can be rightfully considered as the closest thing to a literary God any author has ever been, and the fact that there are people - known as Tolkien scholars - who spend years, even decades of their lives to study him and his work, already gives an idea of his singular, remarkable uniqueness.

I am sure that even the best of them - even Christopher Tolkien, his own son - are not aware of the full, true scale of his legendarium. How could they be? In fact, I believe even John Tolkien himself lost the end of it at some point when his story grew so big and intricate, so far-reaching in time, in space, and in detail, that it gained a life of its own.

在我看來，讓《魔戒》如此史詩般美麗的不是造物本身，而是造物主的掌控。

正如人們經常指出的那樣，三部曲只是整個故事的一小部分。它是無底洞創意海洋中無盡冰山的一角；僅靠一個人的創造力。

我想很多人都會同意，約翰·羅納德·魯厄爾·托爾金可以被合理地認為是所有作家中有史以來最接近文學之神的人，而事實上，有一些人——被稱為托爾金學者——花費數年甚至數十年的生命來研究他和他的作品，已經讓人對他的獨特性產生了看法。

我相信，即使是他們中最優秀的人——甚至是他的親生兒子克里斯托弗·托爾金——也不知道他的傳奇故事的完整、真實的規模。怎麼可能呢？事實上，我相信，當約翰·托爾金的故事變得如此宏大和複雜，在時間、空間和細節上如此深遠，以至於它獲得了自己的生命時，就連他自己也失去了對故事的掌控。

And that, in my opinion, is the greatest thing about the Lord of the Rings: not the books themselves, but the endless content about the content in them. That is how Tolkien, better than any other writer I have heard of, succeeded in creating a world so masterfully crafted that it continues to live today, long after he is gone, and which will likely never die.

You know how I felt when I had the opportunity to visit his grave in Oxford?

It was made of earth and stone, unpretentious, humble; an ordinary grave like any other. And yet I felt what I imagine a Christian feels at Temple Mount, or a Muslim at the Kaaba. I felt like a pilgrim who had reached the end of his journey: the final resting place of J.R.R. Tolkien - a great man in our Universe, the Creator of another.

在我看來，這是《魔戒》最偉大的一點：不是書本身，而是關於書中內容的無窮無盡。這就是托爾金，比我聽説過的任何其他作家都要好，成功地創造了一個如此精巧的世界，以至於在他去世很久之後，魔戒的世界仍然存在，而且可能永遠不會消亡。

你知道我有機會去牛津拜訪他的墳墓時的感受嗎？

它是用泥土和石頭做成的，樸實無華，謙遜，像其他墳墓一樣的普通墳墓。然而，我感覺到了我想象中的基督徒在聖殿山的感覺，或者穆斯林在卡巴的感覺。我感覺自己就像一個朝聖者，已經到達了旅程的終點：J.R.R.托爾金的最後安息之地——我們宇宙中的偉人，另一個宇宙的創造者。

原創翻譯：龍騰網 http://www.ltaaa.cn 轉載請註明出處

Gage Colao

Because LOTR is First and Last, Alpha and Omega, it sits upon the Iron Throne and scoffs at the futile attempts of other Fantasy novels to claim said throne. It is a paragon of its kind, a Lord of Lords, a Lion above Lambs.

Ok but seriously, besides it wonderful themes of overcoming adversity, the bonds of friendship, and perseverance; the Lord of the Rings is the bible from which all fantasy there after was inspired by. It may not be the first work of fantasy but it is the most well known. Written by an Oxford Don who was friends with other legends of literature like C.S. Lewis (the guy who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia). Lord of the Rings took Tolkien 40 years of his life to accomplish and he believed what he was writing was lost alternate history, not fantasy. He thought of himself as a chronicler of a world not a story.

That is why Lord of the Rings is so popular. As well as being the most interesting book of its time because it was ahead of its time.

因為魔戒是第一個也是最後一個，他從開始到現在，一直坐在鋼鐵王座上，嘲笑其他幻想小説徒勞地試圖奪回王座。它是同類中的典範，是上議院的領主，是羔羊羣中的獅子。

好吧，但説真的，除此之外，它還包含克服逆境、友誼紐帶和毅力等美妙主題，《魔戒》是一本聖經，此後所有的幻想都源於它。這可能不是幻想的第一部作品，但它是最有名的。作者是牛津大學的一位老頭子，他與其他文學傳奇人物如C.S.劉易斯（寫納尼亞編年史的人）是朋友。《指環王》花了托爾金40年的時間才完成，他相信自己所寫的是失落的歷史，而不是幻想。他認為自己是一個世界的編年史家，而不是一個故事。

這就是《魔戒》如此受歡迎的原因。而且是當時最有趣的書，因為它走在了時代的前面。

Theo Giannop

Because Lord of the Rings is love, Lord of the Rings is life. I’m guessing you’re talking about the movies, so I’ll answer to that.

The LOTR movies were the first giant attempt at creating fantasy movies that would actually be good. Before that, we had Excalibur, and nothing else. It transfered epic battles of a grand scale on the big screen with great success. It made us care enough to pick up Tolkien’s books and read them. It made us fall in love with fictional places and characters. And so much more than that.

If you’re talking about the books, it’s because of the storytelling, the huge world they establish, the heroes who might fall but will certainly get back up until they succeed or die trying. The heroes who out of pride charge into Balrogs, or the High King of the Noldor who fought Morgoth one on one. The fact that when I read “Children of Hurin” I cried because Turin never got a break but he still tried.

The fact that I rooted for Sauron because he was powerful and seemed like a badass, but the books changed my mind.

因為魔戒是愛，是生命。我猜你説的是電影，所以我來回答。

魔戒電影是第一部試圖創作出真正優秀的奇幻電影的巨大嘗試。在那之前，我們有亞瑟王的神劍，除此之外沒有別的。它在大銀幕上成功地傳遞了大規模的史詩般的戰鬥。這讓我們非常關心托爾金的書並閲讀它們。它讓我們愛上了虛構的地方和人物。遠不止這些。

如果你説的是書，那是因為故事情節，它們建立的巨大世界，那些可能會倒下但肯定會站起來直到成功或死亡的英雄。出於驕傲而衝向巴爾羅格的英雄們，或是一對一與魔哥特作戰的諾爾多王們。事實上，當我讀到《胡林的孩子們》時，我哭了，因為都靈從來沒有休息過，他一直在努力。

事實上，我支持索倫是因為他很強大，看起來像個壞蛋，但這些書改變了我的想法。