Editing Nazgûl (section)

=== The Black Breath ===

{{redirect|Black Breath|the band|Black Breath (band)}}

The Nazgûl spread terror and despair among their enemies, and discomfit those on their own side. The Black Breath is stated to have afflicted many during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Dr Jennifer Urquart, writing in ''[[Mallorn (journal)|Mallorn]]'', describes its normal course as "progressive loss of consciousness and [[hypothermia]], leading to death".<ref name="Urquart 2014">{{cite journal |last=Urquart |first=Jennifer |title='The House of his Spirit Crumbles.' A medical consideration of Faramir's condition on his return from the retreat from Osgiliath, in The Lord of the Rings |journal=Mallorn |date=2014 |issue=55 Winter 2014 |pages=14–17 |url=https://journals.tolkiensociety.org/mallorn/article/download/50/44}}</ref> She comments that the Black Breath, contracted by "excessive proximity" to a Nazgûl, seems to be a "spiritual malady" combined with "fear, confusion, reduced levels of consciousness, hypothermia, weakness and death."<ref name="Urquart 2014"/> Faramir, on the other hand, who was thought to be suffering from the Black Breath, she diagnoses as most likely exhaustion with [[heat stroke]], combined with "psychological distress" and pain, as his symptoms were quite different.<ref name="Urquart 2014"/> Judy Ann Ford and [[Robin Anne Reid]] note that [[Aragorn]]'s use of the herb ''[[athelas]]'' to heal Faramir and others of the Black Breath, a condition "which harms the spirit more than the body",<ref name="Ford Reid 2009"/> identifies him to his people as the true King.<ref name="Ford Reid 2009">{{cite journal |last1=Ford |first1=Judy Ann |last2=Reid |first2=Robin Anne |author2-link=Robin Anne Reid |title=Councils and Kings: Aragorn's Journey Towards Kingship in J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings' and Peter Jackson's 'The Lord of the Rings' |journal=[[Tolkien Studies]] |volume=6 |issue=1 |year=2009 |doi=10.1353/tks.0.0036 |pages=71–90}}</ref>

Michael and Victoria Wodzak discuss how the hobbit Merry Brandybuck can be affected by the Black Breath when the Witch-King has not noticed him, pointing out that Tolkien nowhere says that the Nazgûl breathes on him or on Éowyn. Instead Éowyn "raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eye", and the Wodzaks comment that the Nazgûl uses his eyes "to overwhelm".<ref name="Wodzak Wodzak 2014">{{cite journal |last1=Wodzak |first1=Michael A. |last2=Wodzak |first2=Victoria Holtz |title=Visibílium Ómnium et Invisibílium: Looking Out, On, and In Tolkien's World |journal=[[Tolkien Studies]] |volume=11 |issue=1 |year=2014 |doi=10.1353/tks.2014.0002 |pages=131–147}}</ref> In their view, the seeming inconsistency is resolved by identifying the Black Breath with his "''[[pneuma]]''", his evil spirit, and assuming that it is this which causes the harm all around him.<ref name="Wodzak Wodzak 2014"/>

[[File:Alfred Bastien-GAS ATTACK, FLANDERS, 1915 (CWM 19710261-0084).jpg|thumb|[[John Garth (author)|John Garth]] suggests that the Black Breath may derive from Tolkien's experience of  [[Chemical weapons in World War I|gas in the First World War]].<ref name="Garth 2009"/> Painting ''Gas Attack, Flanders'' by [[Alfred Bastien]], 1915]]

Tolkien's biographer [[John Garth (author)|John Garth]] finds Christopher Gilson's ''Words, Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in "The Lord of the Rings"'' especially interesting for its rendering of two of the Dark Lord [[Sauron]]'s epithets, ''Thû'' meaning "horrible darkness, black mist" and ''Gorthu'' meaning "mist of fear".<ref name="Garth 2009">{{cite journal |last=Garth |first=John |author-link=John Garth (author) |title='Words, Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in "The Lord of the Rings"' (review) |journal=[[Tolkien Studies]] |volume=6 |issue=1 |year=2009 |doi=10.1353/tks.0.0059 |pages=248–255}}</ref> Garth comments that these names "anchor him in the primal night" of Tolkien's [[Giant Spider (Middle Earth)|giant spiders]], the Black Breath, the fog on the [[Barrow-downs]], and the terror of the [[Paths of the Dead]]. He adds that this fog of terror may ultimately derive from [[The Great War and Middle-earth|Tolkien's First World War experience]] "of smoke barrages, [[Chemical weapons in World War I|gas attacks]] and 'animal horror' on the Somme."<ref name="Garth 2009"/> Earlier, in his 2003 book ''[[Tolkien and the Great War]]'', on the other hand, Garth merely notes the "Black Breath of despair that brings down even the bravest" as one of several elements of ''The Lord of the Rings'' which "suggest[s] the influence of 1914–18".<ref>{{cite book |last=Garth |first=John |author-link=John Garth (author) |title=Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth |title-link=Tolkien and the Great War |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |year=2004 |orig-year=2003 |isbn=978-0-00711-953-0 |page=312}}</ref>

In her Tolkienesque 1961 short story "The Jewel of Arwen", the [[fantasy]] and [[science fiction]] writer [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]] provides "Translator's Notes" which assert as part of her [[frame story]] that the Nazgûl were contaminated and enslaved by a monstrous form of radioactivity which transformed "the very cells of their protoplasm".<ref name="Bradley 1961"/> They thereby became radioactive and "immune to radiation poisoning, as is shown by their dwelling in the blasted tower of Minas Ithil [which glowed in the dark]."<ref name="Bradley 1961"/> Further, Bradley writes, the Nazgûl gave off "radioactive contamination", causing the Black Breath.<ref name="Bradley 1961">{{cite journal |last=Bradley |first=Marion Zimmer |author-link=Marion Zimmer Bradley |title=The Jewel of Arwen |journal=I Palantir |date=1961 |issue=2 |url=https://arwen.nu/20/BRADLEY,%20Marion%20Z.%20-%20The%20Jewel%20of%20Arwen.pdf}}</ref>