为什么魔戒如此受欢迎？

【来源龙腾网】

评论原创翻译：

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.

我必须承认，我从来不确定人们为什么如此喜欢魔戒。我喜欢它，并不是因为它是一个动作冒险故事。

如果你看魔戒的电影，你会认为它们是关于动作冒险的。战斗和动作序列在屏幕上的时间比书中多得多。这在一定程度上是因为媒体本质不同导致的，有可能很多人在书中看到的也是动作冒险，但是，我喜欢的不是。

我想这么说：魔戒的神奇之处在于托尔金所说的“二度创作”。这种想法是，作者不仅仅是在编造一个故事，并要求你暂停对现实世界的信仰，这样你就可以容忍它不是真实的事实。相反，托尔金想要创造一个如此丰富和深刻的世界，以至于你不会怀疑。相反，你对他的第二次创造产生了第二个信仰。

托尔金的世界是会自我完善的，这是以前或以后任何一位作家都没有过的。魔戒只是这个世界的一小部分，你可以看到它。即使你从未读过托尔金一生中出版的作品（洛特和霍比特人）之外的其他文字，你也能感觉到另一个世界就在那里。这里有一些对都灵和锡尔马里尔的过去时的、无法解释的引用，还有成千上万的其他名字，它们让你意识到背后有一个完整的故事。

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.

阅读魔戒并不需要真正了解所有这些背景故事。我们知道背景故事的存在，以及它们背后有更多的故事，其中一些只是写在纸片上的笔记。托尔金痴迷地创造和修改他的世界，这就是为什么它如此引人入胜的原因。

前几天翻阅魔戒时，我注意到只是歌曲和诗歌列表的索引就持续了好几页。这些诗和歌有几十种风格，甚至是语言：霍比特人打油诗，昆雅和辛达林的诗，史诗的片段，罗汉和刚铎不同风格的曼尼什诗……一首又一首。感觉就像它应该是这样产生的：数百名作者在数千年的时间里分别投稿。但事实并非如此：这是一个人的二度创作，他创造了数千个角色来填充他的世界。

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.

还有语言。这是王冠上的宝石。有人说，精灵语言和托尔金语言可以在一个独立的地方被创造出来，但托尔金语言和托尔金语言可以相互关联。语言需要故事，他们需要神话。故事和文字一样都是语言的一部分。

语言就是历史：没有人比托尔金更清楚这一点。他是英语史专家，能流利地说几位英国祖先的英语。全世界唯一的哥特式诗歌是托尔金写的。罗赫林人的语言是以古英语为基础的，即使你不知道，你也能感觉到。（事实上，这种文化比古英语更哥特式，尽管很少有语言学界以外的人知道这一点。）

托尔金的二度创作是如此深刻，以至于你渴望了解更多。你可以查看附录，如果你喜欢的话，可以体验一下珠穆朗玛峰，也就是西里马利昂峰。但即使你没有，即使它们从未出版过，它们也是《魔戒》如此辉煌的原因。你可以花一生的时间读他的故事。就好像他真的成功地填满了一个世界，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.

在我看来，让《魔戒》如此史诗般美丽的不是造物本身，而是造物主的掌控。

正如人们经常指出的那样，三部曲只是整个故事的一小部分。它是无底洞创意海洋中无尽冰山的一角；仅靠一个人的创造力。

我想很多人都会同意，约翰·罗纳德·鲁厄尔·托尔金可以被合理地认为是所有作家中有史以来最接近文学之神的人，而事实上，有一些人——被称为托尔金学者——花费数年甚至数十年的生命来研究他和他的作品，已经让人对他的独特性产生了看法。

我相信，即使是他们中最优秀的人——甚至是他的亲生儿子克里斯托弗·托尔金——也不知道他的传奇故事的完整、真实的规模。怎么可能呢？事实上，我相信，当约翰·托尔金的故事变得如此宏大和复杂，在时间、空间和细节上如此深远，以至于它获得了自己的生命时，就连他自己也失去了对故事的掌控。

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.

在我看来，这是《魔戒》最伟大的一点：不是书本身，而是关于书中内容的无穷无尽。这就是托尔金，比我听说过的任何其他作家都要好，成功地创造了一个如此精巧的世界，以至于在他去世很久之后，魔戒的世界仍然存在，而且可能永远不会消亡。

你知道我有机会去牛津拜访他的坟墓时的感受吗？

它是用泥土和石头做成的，朴实无华，谦逊，像其他坟墓一样的普通坟墓。然而，我感觉到了我想象中的基督徒在圣殿山的感觉，或者穆斯林在卡巴的感觉。我感觉自己就像一个朝圣者，已经到达了旅程的终点：J.R.R.托尔金的最后安息之地——我们宇宙中的伟人，另一个宇宙的创造者。

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

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.

因为魔戒是第一个也是最后一个，他从开始到现在，一直坐在钢铁王座上，嘲笑其他幻想小说徒劳地试图夺回王座。它是同类中的典范，是上议院的领主，是羔羊群中的狮子。

好吧，但说真的，除此之外，它还包含克服逆境、友谊纽带和毅力等美妙主题，《魔戒》是一本圣经，此后所有的幻想都源于它。这可能不是幻想的第一部作品，但它是最有名的。作者是牛津大学的一位老头子，他与其他文学传奇人物如C.S.刘易斯（写纳尼亚编年史的人）是朋友。《指环王》花了托尔金40年的时间才完成，他相信自己所写的是失落的历史，而不是幻想。他认为自己是一个世界的编年史家，而不是一个故事。

这就是《魔戒》如此受欢迎的原因。而且是当时最有趣的书，因为它走在了时代的前面。

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.

因为魔戒是爱，是生命。我猜你说的是电影，所以我来回答。

魔戒电影是第一部试图创作出真正优秀的奇幻电影的巨大尝试。在那之前，我们有亚瑟王的神剑，除此之外没有别的。它在大银幕上成功地传递了大规模的史诗般的战斗。这让我们非常关心托尔金的书并阅读它们。它让我们爱上了虚构的地方和人物。远不止这些。

如果你说的是书，那是因为故事情节，它们建立的巨大世界，那些可能会倒下但肯定会站起来直到成功或死亡的英雄。出于骄傲而冲向巴尔罗格的英雄们，或是一对一与魔哥特作战的诺尔多王们。事实上，当我读到《胡林的孩子们》时，我哭了，因为都灵从来没有休息过，他一直在努力。

事实上，我支持索伦是因为他很强大，看起来像个坏蛋，但这些书改变了我的想法。