Cette lettre, qui date de septembre 1963, donne un rôle éminent à Arwen dans la suggestion de faire passer Frodo à l'Ouest (c'est elle qui, la première, se rend compte de son désespoir) mais c'est à Gandalf qu'est attribué la décision d'accorder un tel privilège au hobbit (Arwen n'ayant qu'un pouvoir de proposition), ceci en sa qualité d'ambassadeur plénipotentiaire des Valar.
Je ne reprends pas l'extrait déjà cité par Ylem dans son post du 23.01.2003 (note 2) à propos de la notion de 'failure'. Je reprends la lettre un peu plus loin, là où il est question non d’une faute reprochée à Frodo mais du sentiment que lui-même peut en avoir et de la seule voie possible pour le guérir de ce sombre sentiment.
(NB : c’est moi qui souligne ou mets en gras –sauf le titre de la lettre - mais les italiques sont celles de la publication)
246 From a letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar (drafts) september 1963
« […] Frodo undertook his quest out of love – to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, il he could ; and also in complete humility, acknowledging that he was wholly iandequate to the task. His real contract was only to do what he could, to try to find a way, and to go as far on the road as his strenght of mind and body allowed. He did that. I do not myself see that the breaking of is mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been – say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a failing rock.
That appears to have been the judgement of Gandalf and Aragorn and of all who learned the full story of his journey. Certainly nothing woud be concealed by Frodo ! But what Frodo himself felt about the events is quite another matter.
He appears at first to have had no sens of guilt (III 224-5) ; 1 he was restored to sanity and peace. But then he thought that he had given his life in sacrifice : he expected to die very soon. But he did not, and one can observe the disquiet growing in him. Arwen was the first to observe the signs, and gave him her jewel for comfort, and thought of a way of healing him* Slowly he fades ‘out of the picture’, saying and doing less and less. I think it is clear on reflection to an attentive reader that when his dark time came upon him and he was conscious of being ‘wounded by knife sting and tooth and a long burden’ (III 268) it was only nightmare memories of past horros that afflicted him, but also unreasoning self-reproach : he was himself and all that he done as a broken failure. ‘Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same, for I shall not be the same’. That was actually a temptation out of the Dark, a last flicker of pride : desire to have returned as a ‘hero’, not content with being a mere instrument of good. And it was mixed with another temptation, blacker and yet (in a sense) more merited, for however that may be explained, he had not in fact cast away the Ring by a voluntary act : he was tempted to regret its destruction, and still to desire it. ‘it is gone for ever, and now all is dark and empty’, he said as he wakened from his sickness in 1420.
‘Alas ! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured’, said Gandalf (III268) – not in Middle-Earth. Frodo was sent or allowed to pass over Sea to heal him – if that could be done, befire he died. He would have enventually to ‘pass away’ : no mortal could, or can, abide for ever on earth, or within Time. So he went both to a purgatory and to a reward, for a while : a period of reflection and peace and a gaining of a true understanding of his position in littleness and in greatness, spent still in Time amid the natural beauty of ‘Arda Unmarred’, the Earth unspoiled by evil.
Bilbo went too. No doubts as a completion of the plan due to Gandalf himslef. Gandalf had a very great affection for Bilbo, from the hobbit’s childhood onwards. His companionship was really necessary for Frodo’s sake – it is difficult to imagine a hobbit, even one who had been through Frodo’s experiences, being really happy evenin an earthly paradise wihout a companion of his own kind, and Bilbo was the person that Frodo most loved. […] »
1 - note en fin de volume [246] 1. ‘And there was Frodo, pale and worm, and yet himself again ; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither stain of will nor madness, nor any fear . . . . . « The Quest is achieved, and now all is over, » [saidFrodo].’
* - note en bas e la page 327 – Il is not made explicit how she could arrange this. She could not of course just transfer her ticket on the boat like that ! For any except those of Elvish race ‘sailing West’ was not permitted, and any exception required ‘authority’, and she was not in direct communication with the Valar, especially not since her choice to become ‘mortal’. What is meant is that it was Arwen who first thought of sending Frodo into the West and put in a plea for him to Gandalf (direct or through Galadriel, or both),and she used her own renunciation of the right to go West as an argument. Her renunciation and suffering were realated to and emmeshed with Frodo’s : both were parts of a plan for the regeneration of the state of men. Her prayer might therefore be specially effective, and her plan have a certain equity of exchange. No doubt it was Gandalf who was the autorithy that accepted the plea. The appendices show clearly that he was the emissary of the Valar, and virtually their plenipotentiary in accomplishing the plan against Sauron. He was also in special accord with Cirdan the Ship-master, who had surrendered to him his ring and so placed himself under Gandalf’s command. Since Gandalf himself went on a ship there would be so to speak no trouble either at embarking or at the landing.