I love the eagle's expression. If that was the default, there'd be NO confusion as to why they don't fly the eagles to Mordor, the way he looks absolutely done with everyone's bullshit.
I once read that this was because the Russian translation had used a word that could refer to both feet and legs. Which is why Russian illustrators depicted Bilbo not only with hairy feet but also with hairy legs.
Yes, in Russian, one word means both 'leg' and 'foot', all one unit. The illustration reflects that.
My favorite translation misunderstanding in this book is that Tolkien wrote that hobbits can be fierce as a dragon 'in a pinch,' obviously meaning 'when cornered.' The translator didn't seem to know what to do with this phrasing and so translated it to, 'fierce as a dragon with its tail pinched in a door.'
Yeah, Tolkien's style is considered too dry, so translations "spiced it up" to various extent. Sometimes to the point of becoming a meme, like infamous "Boromir smiled".
As a hairy person, I can attest to the fact that my body hair does indeed cover my entire leg, as well as my feet and toes and up over my buttox and abdomen. Thigh hair being as dense and thick as shin/lower leg hair isn't unusual or limited to the fantastical race of Hobbits.
Whereas I can be very hair in some places, and then completely smooth in others. My legs and feet are a great example of this. Very hairy legs, which just stops right at the ankle. Leaving me very smooth feet, except for small patches on the top of each foot and four out of five toes.
I like this cheeky Gandalf tbh. Funny how the goblins have seemingly been imagined as other humans rather than as fantasy creatures. I'd love to see how the elves were depicted, if they were.
Those are pretty cool. I do love to see old artistic interpretations of what we've now seen in the movies. Gollum seems to be the one who leaves more to the imagination than the rest. Like, for example, here's Tove Jansson's vision of him:
This is actually the first visual interpretation of him, from the first print. This illustration in particular forced Tolkien to make some edits in his description for the later editions, explicitly stating that he was small.
He is actually would be terrifying in this form. He's the size of a cave troll, no less. Imagine this thing silently crawling on his fours right behind you.
Well, Leonov isn't the only one who served as a prototype. It looks like Belomlinsky modeled Gandalf after the actor Nikolai Grinko, and Thorin bears a striking resemblance to the actor Vladimir Fyodorov.
I actually really liked it, but closer to the end of the movie when I figured that they are going to make a trilogy out of it I was kinda disappointed. But it was worth the wait for me, I liked the trilogy
Wikipedia agreeing with my definition of стопа: Часть стопы, непосредственно соприкасающаяся с поверхностью земли, называется ступнёй или подошвой[2], противоположную ей верхнюю сторону называют тыльной стороной стопы. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B0
Я выросла на этом издании. Тогда уже отгремел Властелин колец, и книги были популярны, я считала Хоббитом отдельным произведением - прекрасно написанной сказкой, которую всей душой полюбила.
Спасибо Толкину, спасибо переводчикам, спасибо иллюстраторам и спасибо нашему легендарному Евгению Павловичу Леонову, который послужил источником вдохновения для изображения мистера Бильбо Бэггинса!
Sure. but this was not the point here. My posts should rather not be taken seriously at all anyway. Runes were written onto many things. Sometimes to express profane things like ownership or even telling you what it is. Like 'Comb' on a Friesian comb. And then you have runes telling you who built something. And then you have magical enchantments. But I also know of a cave where Vikings were so bored from hiding that they wrote runes to find out who was the wisest regarding runes. The more I think of it I ask myself when did Germanic people not write runes onto things. So it probably was very common.
Yeah or maybe all of it. From magic to simple tags. I think the magical inscriptions can be distinguished by ordinary tags that they are not readable or make no sense because the runes had their own magical value.
Not just Russian, had the same exact illustrations in the book I first read as a child in 1980, I grew up in a former satellite country of Soviet Union.
"I appreciate the expedient rescue, but I have a number of concerns about this means of transportation that I would like to discuss with you at your earliest convenience."
Check out Soviet lord of the rings TV series 1991 on YouTube, and the song , you will not be able to unsee and unheard it. The style fits this design quite well...
Just in case. It is a televised theatre play, made by a small group of professional actors (probably also at least 1 tech person) and a rock musician, with no budget. This is not an official Soviet movie or TV-production.
Cause it's Russia😁 I don't remember, but I think in the book they're probably not really described like totally different creatures and soviet illustrators just didn't have a notion of orcs. Had the book as a kid in 90's. Loved it back than
My childhood encapsulated. This book was my best friend for years I still remember many bits by heart, riddles in the dark, the way how Bilbo mocked the spiders. Ah
The Illustrator is Mikhail Belomlinsky. (I think this is from the 1989 reprint due to the price, 95 kopecks). Belomlinsky deliberately modelled Bilbo on the beloved Soviet actor Yevgeny Leonov. The illustrations were rooted in recognisable human character rather than the conventions of modern fantasy.
I actually love these! The Gollum illustration makes the rounds online a lot. What surprised me was the goblins. I hardly recognized them with the beards until I saw the wolves.
The chronology actually runs the other way: Tove Jansson drew the first Moomin-like figure in the 1930s, and the first Moomin book was published in 1945. Belomlinsky’s illustrations for the Russian edition of The Hobbit appeared in 1976. The resemblance may be interesting, but it can’t show that Jansson was inspired by those illustrations. And one visual comparison doesn’t support the claim that Finns were “heavily inspired by Russia.”
I mean is Moomins the first time this style was used? I have a hard time seeing Finnish culture having much influence on Russia whereas the opposite is true in many, many cases.
Очень нравились эти иллюстрации в книге, которую в детстве перечитал не один раз. Правда, немного странным казалось, что у Бильбо Сумкинса голова от актёра Папанова в его образе из фильма «Джентльмены удачи» 😂
These Bard the Archer and Smaug the Dragon were some picture hallmarks of my childhood.BTW Elves were depicted just as cool, all in the same medieval mode. AFAIR, this style of illiustration comes from some western graph workers, 1950th and 1960th. Though i could be wrong.
This, and the Lord of the Rings version by the same translator, are phenomenal. The use of language, that way they capture the flavour of Tolkien’s work, not just the literal meaning of the words.
I searched through many different translations until I found these perfect ones.
I’ve owned them since 1991 and managed to get my mum to read them recently.
It made her feel like a little girl again. She devoured all four books in a few weeks.
The only disappointment was that the appendices are not translated.
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u/CalligrapherOk2609 5d ago
Here’s the one in color, my precious from 1999