David Day: "Vladimir Putin is Sauron, the Dark Lord of our time"

To be in front of a David Day book related to Tolkien and its rich imaginary world is to immerse yourself in a portentous and meticulous work that not only Tolkien fans know how to appreciate.

David Day is an explorer of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and since 1979, when he published his outstanding Tolkien Bestiary, he offers readers numerous books from the Tolkien world. The latest to be published in Spain is 'Tolkien's Illustrated World', edited by Minotauro and containing a selection of illustrations from a unique and exclusive illustration repository that began to be created 40 years ago.

At MUNDIARIO we have the pleasure of speaking with him, not only about Tolkien –although mainly– but about many other current aspects. Enter the fascinating world, this time, not of Tolkien, but of David Day. You are invited.

— When was your passion for Tolkien born?

— I first read 'Lord of the Rings' in the summer of 1967. This was the first year after my high school graduation when I worked in a logging camp in British Columbia. I remember thinking how these magnificent forest were very like those of Tolkien’s Lothlorien, and as it turns out I was not the only one – there is now a kind of tree house hotel that calls itself Lothlorien that now exists on Vancouver Island that is not very far from where I worked back then.

From early childhood, like Tolkien, I read a great deal of mythology: Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and of course I worked with and grew up with Native American Indians. So, when I read 'Lord of the Rings', I was excited by a modern author who whole-heartedly and authentically embraced the tradition of epic literature in the modern novel form.

— 'The Illustrated World of Tolkien' compiles some of the best illustrations inspired by Tolkien from the last 40 years, how was the selection process of the works carried out?

— 'The Illustrated World of Tolkien' is a kind of gallery of the best illustration selected from nine books on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. As I wrote in the introduction it has been one of the great pleasures of my life that I have been able of collaborate with so many wonderful artists. So, in consultation with my editors and designers, I decided to pick the best illustrations from all these books. This resulted in a unique album of the images that are independent of the influence of illustrations to be found in popular media of films and motion pictures. The book consists of texts that are informative of the evolution of Tolkien world and also allows the artists to celebrated and to speak for themselves about the creative process of reimagining the world of Middle-earth.

— 'The Silmarillion' is a lesser known work by J.R.R. Tolkien for the general public (compared to The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings) but of deep weight in many artistic works such as musical works or this book 'The Illustrated World of Tolkien'. What does The Silmarillion mean to you?

— It is a curious thing, but 'The Silmarillion' when it first came out was not the book that most Tolkien fans really seem to want and was not an instant hit. Readers expected another epic novel like The Lord of the Rings. What they got was to me, far more interesting: a 37,000 year history of an entire mythological world! Of course, there were hints of it from the Appendices of Lord of the Rings, but what was revealed in 'The Silmarillion' was something that I would have never believed could have come out of the imagination of one man. As I have said before: it’s as if Homer - before writing the Iliad and Odyssey - first had to imagine and write the entire history and mythology of ancient Greece.

Many fans and reviewers found The Silmarillion too difficult, but as someone who had studied many and diverse and complex mythologies, I was fascinated by his labyrinthine histories and tales. And it really was 'The Silmarillion' that the year after its publication in 1977, that motivated me to write my first book on 'Tolkien: A Tolkien Bestiary' which appeared in 1979. 

Tolkien's Bestiary was the first, and for decades the only fully illustrated reference book on the works of JRR Tolkien.

It was the first – and for decades, the only - fully illustrated reference book on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. And I must say, it was really the only one that was a practical and useful guide to his world. The two other Tolkien major reference books: Foster and Tyler are very useful annotated indexes of Tolkien’s books, but are not particularly useful as guides to his world. My 'Tolkien Bestiary' was both a A-Z reference on Middle-earth, but also provided chronologies, genealogies, index of sources, and fully illustrated 37,000 year history revealed in full colour sections of the book.

The point of the book was to provide a means for readers to orient themselves around Middle-earth and the whole of Arda through the many ages as revealed in 'The Silmarillion'. At that time, there were no published Tolkien maps of Middle-earth beyond the one in 'The Lord of the Rings' (3^rd Age - northwest corner of Middle-earth) and 'The Silmarillion' map of sunken land of Beleriand in the 1^st Age.  So, as I wrote in the introduction: I created a Composite Map of the Lands of Arda Through the Ages that “should be used only for general orientation” purposes showing all the lands of Arda (in a single spread) mentioned in 'The Silmarillion' even though many did not exist at the same time. Of course, over the following decade many more Tolkien texts and rough sketched of maps of Arda would be published, so it was necessary to update my Bestiary with 'The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Tolkien' that included an Atlas section with a dozen maps showing the evolution of the planet over the ages, as well as new sections on geography, sociology, natural history, and biography.  

And so, in a sense, all my books on Tolkien are to provide readers with illustrated guides so they might better enjoy different aspects of Tolkien writing, and see it in the context of epic literature and mythologies of the world

— How much, really, is there religion in Tolkien's work?

— Tolkien, of course, was a devout Catholic, bur his writing about Middle-earth and Arda was a pre-Christian world. As he himself wrote: “I have not put I, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’ in the imaginary world.” I think many people are confused by his much quoted statement: “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” By this, he certainly did not mean that it was a Christian allegory like many of his friend CS Lewis’s fairy tales, but rather it concerns itself with certain philosophical and archetypal ideas and symbols related to the human moral condition that is subconsciously fundamental to the Catholic religion. 

— Is there a Tolkien among contemporary authors?

— There are so many who owe so much to Tolkien as the champion and popularizer of the Epic Fantasy genre, but I would say that the Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin is certainly the most obvious early 21^st century heir to Tolkien. Martin has certainly acknowledged Tolkien as his mentor. I imagine Tolkien might have admired Martin’s spectacularly complex world of Westeros.  However, as a morally upright Edwardian Catholic gentleman, I suspect Tolkien would have viewed Martin’s books as a series of novels actually written by Orcs! 

Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, is without a doubt the most obvious heir to Tolkien in the early 21st century.

— Do you have expectations for the upcoming series titled 'The Rings of Power'?

— I am looking forward to seeing what  will be done with Tolkien’s  Second Age of the Numenoreanss. My friend and fellow Canadian John Howe is the main conceptual artist on the series and will undoubtedly lead a team of spectacular illustrators. So I am excited by what their vision that world will reveal. Also, of course, as a writer I am interested what the writers will make of it all. The difficulty of course is that there is actually no one book or manuscript of the Second Age or on Numenor, but a series of notes and chronicles and allusions and hints concerning the Second Age of the Numenoreans and Elves that is spread out over nine different books and other commentaries.

— As a fan of Tolkien, are you also a fan of the adaptations that Peter Jackson made for the cinema?

— Despite the fact that my writing on Tolkien has always been entirely concerned with Tolkien’s actual writing not film or other media, I am not a purist who believes that film adaptations need to be absolutely true to every scene in the book. (I was not  by bothered by disputes over whether Elves should had pointy ears or not!)I thought imaginative sweep of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was quite brilliant – and despite scenes that were invented for the film – I felt it was largely true to the spirit of Tolkien’s writing. I was less keen on The Hobbit trilogy, just because I thought the plot line of the novel had to be too stretched out over its three film duration.  

That said, both of the main conceptual artists – Alan Lee and John Howe – are good personal friends as well as brilliant artist that I have known and worked with over the years. In 1981, Alan Lee and I published a beautiful book entitled Castles, but it was actually another book entitled 'Tolkien’s Ring' (about Tolkien’s mythological sources) in 1996 that Alan Lee first came to illustrate Tolkien’s writing – and hasn’t looked back since!

— As an expert in Tolkien's work, have you ever participated as a consultant in the creation of these audiovisual works?

— In 2014, John Howe – who told me he was a big fan of my 'Tolkien’s Ring' book – asked me appear with him in a French-German television production as toured the castles along the Rhine river and discussed historic and mythological sources of Tolkien, entitled Looking for the Hobbit: Lost Gold of the Rhine.

—  In view of your work, your interest as a writer is not only focused on Tolkien. What genre gives you the most personal satisfaction as an artist?

— I have enjoyed writing in many different genres: fairy tales, mythology, journalism, theatre, fiction, history, natural history, environmental reporter, television and film script writer, newspaper columnist, magazine columnist, and even a dramaturg for ballet. I value each for opening aspects of the world for me, but on a deeply personal level, poetry is probably the form that is most personally integrating for me – and gives me a perspective from which I can imagine other aspects of my life and writing.

— You worked in the press covering environmental information, what is your opinion on environmental news (climate change, global warming...)?

 — I have written half a dozen major environmental books: the first was The Doomsday Book of Animals 1981, The Whale War, Eco-Wars, True Tales of Environmental Madness, The Complete Rhinoceros, Nevermore: A Book of Hours, Meditations on Extinction. I have also written a hundred short television films on extinction of species, entitled Lost Animals of the Twentieth Century, and have been an environmental columnist for Punch, Daily Mail, Sunday Times and the Guardian. I have also worked with Greenpeace, the Environmental Investigation Agency and my daughter is active in the Extinction Rebellion movement; so obviously I think it is the most important issue of our time.

— Would you identify any Dark Lord in our plane of reality?

— It’s hard today not to name Vladimir Putin as Sauron the Dark Lord. But I would also like put in a vote for Donald Trump as a stand in for Saruman. Although, that said, we do have a crowded field of villains for either title.

—What book are you currently reading?

— Mani by Patrick Leigh Fermor. @opinionadas en @mundiario