Песня хоббитов из «Властелина Колец» Дж. Р. Р. Толкина (“Farewell we call to hearth and home...”): на пересечении культур и традиций

Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета. Серия 3: Филология. 2025. № 83. С. 9–25.

Афанасьев В. А.

Tolkien’s poems, particularly those which are included in his prose, are not often studied in a way that would take into account not only individual poetic features of a certain text, but also its link with other poems and with the literary world of the prosaic text. Meanwhile, it is in such texts as the novel “The Lord of the Rings” the poetry (usually in the form of songs) plays a specifi c role and has a number of important context-related functions being a good illustration of intertwining cultures and poetic traditions of fi ctitious peoples. One of the prominent texts of this kind is the song “Farewell We Call to Hearth and Home”, the internal authors of which are hobbits Merry and Pippin. This song is in many respects based on the song of the dwarves from “The Hobbit” (“Far over the Misty Mountains Cold”). It derives from its “primary source” the poetic form (in a somewhat more elaborate shape), genre (war song), elevated mood, as well as a number of other images and motifs. Besides, the authors use their own poetic tradition and employ images which are signifi cant in the hobbits’ culture (‘home’, ‘hearth’, ‘bed’); they even directly cite hobbits’ folk songs and Bilbo’s poetry, also occurring in the novel. This combination of “the own” and “the foreign” is instructive in terms of the dialogue of cultures that has been artfully imitated by Tolkien; it is also clearly signifi cant in the context of the novel. The song is designed to encourage Frodo before his journey to Rivendell and to make a connection between his mission and Bilbo’s adventure from “The Hobbit”. Besides, the text of the poem reveals a remarkable dissimilitude between these two journeys, foreshadowing further events and even becoming prophetic.

Keywords: художественный мир, традиция, диалог культур, поэтика, tradition, poetics, dialogue of cultures, Tolkien, Толкин, Властелин колец, the Lord of the Rings, стих и проза, literary world, verse and prose