Igenlode Wordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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vicomte_de_chagny2021-08-23 12:13 am
igenlode) wrote in vicomte_de_chagny2021-08-23 12:13 am
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Erik and Gollum
Some of the elements of Erik's character in Leroux are really very reminiscent of Tolkien's subsequent creation of Gollum; the tendency to weep and cringe and refer to oneself in the third person, to giggle in a nasty way, and of course to be consumed by longing for the unattainable within full view, to the extent of commiting murder to get it ;-p
And there's that scene where he paddles away across the lake with only his two eyes visible, which is an almost palpable echo of the subsequent scene in "The Lord of the Rings" where Gollum is spotted in the dusk paddling along after Frodo's boat.
I wonder if Tolkien ever did read "The Phantom of the Opera"? I'm sure there wasn't any direct influence involved (Gollum was created for "The Hobbit", which draws its imagery largely from fairy-tales), but "The Hobbit" was actually written only about twenty years later -- because "Phantom" is a historical novel, one tends to forget that it was written in quite a different era from that in which it was set.
He would have been about twenty and up at Oxford when it first came out, and not really in the right demographic to take an interest in that sort of thing -- by the time the film was made and the story acquired popular traction in the English-speaking world, he was busy making translations from Middle English and probably not an aficionado of Lon Chaney horror movies ;-D So I feel the odds are that he probably never read Leroux...
And there's that scene where he paddles away across the lake with only his two eyes visible, which is an almost palpable echo of the subsequent scene in "The Lord of the Rings" where Gollum is spotted in the dusk paddling along after Frodo's boat.
I wonder if Tolkien ever did read "The Phantom of the Opera"? I'm sure there wasn't any direct influence involved (Gollum was created for "The Hobbit", which draws its imagery largely from fairy-tales), but "The Hobbit" was actually written only about twenty years later -- because "Phantom" is a historical novel, one tends to forget that it was written in quite a different era from that in which it was set.
He would have been about twenty and up at Oxford when it first came out, and not really in the right demographic to take an interest in that sort of thing -- by the time the film was made and the story acquired popular traction in the English-speaking world, he was busy making translations from Middle English and probably not an aficionado of Lon Chaney horror movies ;-D So I feel the odds are that he probably never read Leroux...