Paramètres de stabilité des digesteurs lors de la digestion et la co-digestion

We now leave the Shire and turn our attention to a unique place in Middle-earth. It is found within the Old Forest on the edge of the Shire and bears a striking resemblance to certain cultural aspects of Hobbit life. In other ways, however, it is entirely di erent. We have already mentioned Tom Bombadil and Goldberry several times and discussed the environmental implications of their characters. We now look at them again in relation to ecotones and liminal spaces. eir house is a place with Shire-like amenities in the midst of the wild world beyond the Shire’s borders. ere, the hobbit travelers enjoy

“food and cheer and song,” which we regard as formulaic expressions of the simple pleasures especially favored by Hobbits. But the house of Tom Bombadil is more than an outpost of rustic comfort in the wilderness; in the terms we have used in this chapter, it is a liminal space—a “thick threshold”—where realms overlap. Some of this can be seen as a function of the complementary roles of Tom and Goldberry themselves. Several domains of the natural world coincide here, but something far deeper and far more significant for Tolkien’s environmen-tal myth also happens during the hobbits’ sojourn. Tom and Goldberry create a space where the timeless mythic realm and the present natural world come together.

e first thing we note in this regard is that Tom and Goldberry are liminal characters. Goldberry is a mythic character that some regard as an embodiment of a river. at is, she is something of a nature goddess.¹⁴

e colors green and gold are associated with her and are reminiscent of the mingled green and gold light of the mythic Two Trees, Telperion and Laurelin; by extension, in some sense, they make Goldberry akin to Yavanna. In Goldberry, the mythic and natural worlds commingle.

Upon meeting her, Frodo immediately sings a song extempore in her praise, emphasizing her identification with natural beauty and the beauty of nature: she is “slender as a willow-wand” and “clearer than clear water,” a “reed by the living pool” in spring and summer, a “river-daughter” fair as “wind on the waterfall” and “leaves’ laughter” (I/vii).

Likewise, Tom belongs both to the real world of the present in which the hobbits live and breathe and to the mythic world in which tem-poral distinctions between the Elder Days and the present—between

the First, Second, and ird Ages of Middle-earth—have little mean-ing. Tom knows the world and loves it, and because of this, he is able to teach the hobbits much about “bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest” (I/vii). During their stay in his house, Tom teaches important environmental lessons to Frodo and his companions, who “began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home.” is is a vision of pristine wilderness, sug-gesting a perspective on the created world in which the components of the natural environment—forests, mountains, rivers, and trees in their earliest natural state—belong “each to themselves.” Tom belongs to the physical world of willow wands, flagstone floors, water lilies, and the like—the subjects of his songs praising the simple beauty of nature.

Yet, like Goldberry, Tom also belongs to the world of myth and leg-end, a concrete manifestation of things the hobbits have barely glimpsed, even in their stories and fairy tales. For example, just as in Lothlórien, where time seems either not to pass or to be irrelevant, during their stay in Bombadil’s house, “Whether the morning and evening of one day or of many days had passed Frodo could not tell. He did not feel either hungry or tired, only filled with wonder” (I/vii). Tom is Eldest. Even to one as old and wise as Elrond—himself a mythic hero appearing in the old tales of Beren and Lúthien—Tom is part of a deeper and older myth, with names befitting his mythic stature. “Iarwain Ben-adar we called him, oldest and fatherless. But many another name he has since been given by other folk: Forn by the Dwarves, Orald by Northern Men, and other names besides” (II/ii). He is said to have been present in western Middle-earth when the Noldor first made their entrance from Valinor in the First Age. He has knowledge of the world “before the river and the trees” and can remember “the first raindrop and the first acorn,”

before the arrival of Elves, Men, and Hobbits. His knowledge goes back to the time “before the seas were bent,” before the creation of the Sun and Moon, when “the dark under the stars . . . was fearless,” and even earlier still, “before the Dark Lord came from Outside” (I/vii). ough he is apparently not a Vala, he seems to be knowledgeable of the mythic history of the land he inhabits because he has been a part of that history from the beginning.

Yet the fact that Tom is old does not produce in him a world-weary gravity of spirit—far from it. He hops around in yellow boots with a

blue feather in his cap, and the nonsense or near nonsense of his rhymes bespeaks a playful levity unequaled anywhere else in Tolkien’s works.

e combination of trochees, spondees, and dactyls in his poems makes for a sprightly quickness, and readers with a finely tuned ear for poetry will note that even in prose, Tom’s conversational discourse falls into these patterns. He thus belongs both to the world of myth and to the world of everyday, even childlike joy in the creation.

Most important, though, Tom belongs to the River’s Daughter, his spouse Goldberry. When we first meet Tom, he is on an errand for her, and Goldberry contributes far more than incidental importance to Tom’s mythic function as an embodiment of the life and spirit of unspoiled land. So few intact couples—spouses or lovers—appear in the novel that Tom and Goldberry’s joyful coexistence merits careful consideration with the small handful of other couples: Galadriel and Celeborn in Lothlórien, Aragorn and Arwen, Faramir and Éowyn, and Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton. It need not be spelled out how important harmonious interactions between males and females are for the propa-gation of life, for the fertility and fecundity of the earth. And although each of these couples plays a crucial role in its own way, the union of Goldberry and Tom has special significance. In their relationship, we see a portrayal of ecologically diverse yet compatible forms of steward-ship over the natural environment. In the background, of course, lies the myth of Yavanna and Aulë, whose division of labor is presented both as a harmonious complementarity and, at its worst, as a rivalry bordering on hostility. e Ents’ legend of the Entwives is one of spousal disharmony, and their disagreement over the best way to tend to growing things—a preservationist versus a conservationist mentality—leads to the Entwives’ departure. In the joyful spousal relationship between Tom and Goldberry, however, we see a rare picture of spousal harmony, a picture that is crucial to the environmental harmony it signifies.

is relationship makes passages set in their house something of a narrative ecotone, where their two di erent ecologies are depicted as coming together. We are not referring here to the organized house and garden surrounded by the wildness of the Old Forest. at ecology is certainly interesting, and it serves as an analogue to the ecotones in the Peruvian Andes mentioned by Berry, where wilderness “thrive[s]

in domesticity to accommodate diversity within unity.” What we mean here is Tom and Goldberry’s ecology. eir house may be the most

important narrative ecotone in the book, and their spousal harmony is the very thing that makes its ecotone possible in the stricter environ-mental sense.

e mythical qualities of the house are evident immediately. Upon entering it, Frodo falls under a spell of enchantment “deeper and nearer to mortal heart; marvelous and yet not strange.” e supernatural aspect is also highlighted by the dreams the hobbits have there—except for Sam, who “slept through the night in deep content, if logs are con-tented.” Merry, Pippin, and Frodo all have dreams that are presented in the text as portents, omens, prophetic glimpses of present and future events. ese include Gandalf ’s captivity and escape from Orthanc, the flooding of the land around Isengard, and Frodo’s final journey into the eternal world beyond death. Pippin’s dreamed sensation that he “was not in an ordinary house at all” is accurate; the house is an otherworldly refuge where “nothing passes door and window . . . save moonlight and starlight and the wind o the hill-top” (I/vi).

Paradoxically, Tom’s house is unexalted. It is an everyday house bordering “the eaves of the Forest,” which are “clipped, and trim as a hedge,” the path “well-tended and bordered with stone.” It is a long, low house with low roof beams on “a hillside of turf.” It has a kitchen garden in which pole beans grow, and it is furnished and decorated naturally in flagstone, earthenware, fresh green rushes, and water lilies (I/vi–vii).

Yet, as soon as he crosses the threshold,¹⁵ Frodo understands the joy “hid-den in the songs we heard”—a joy that is a celebration of the miracles of the natural world, the ordinary created world that is extraordinary in its purpose and beauty. Again, this is a contrast of commingled worlds: the ordinary and the extraordinary, the mythic and the natural. Should we be surprised? As we noted earlier, Tolkien associated myth and fantasy with the power to show us the luminous, spiritual, sacred, and transcendent in nature and in the everyday environments of our quotidian world.

Although the four hobbits do not visit Tom and Goldberry when they return from their quest, the lessons they learn in the Old Forest and the harmonious relationship between Tom and Goldberry and between their domesticity and the surrounding wildness may be as much of an environmental model as the realms of Galadriel and Treebeard are. For the hobbits who must restore the ravaged Shire, that model is an inspi-ration contributing to the richness of the mingled ecology they bring to bear on the reconstruction of their own home.

roughout the trilogy, Tolkien provides narrative clues to indicate the crossing of significant boundaries. In addition to architecture and other constructed markers, many are signaled by reference to changes in vegetation and alterations in the terrain, landforms, and such natu-ral features as rivers, mountains, and grasslands. Broadening Wendell Berry’s title “A Country of Edges” (describing Kentucky’s Red River Gorge), we might see Middle-earth as a land of edges, the comprehen-sion of which involves an awareness of its many environments.¹⁶ At least in environmental terms, for one to understand Middle-earth, one must know its farmlands, gardens, forests, mountains, and grasslands; the boundaries that demarcate them; and the necessary margins uniting them into an environmental whole.

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e Ecology of Ham, Niggle’s