Towards the end of his essay "On Fairy Stories" Tolkien considered three ways in which a successful fantasy story benefits its readers - those who come to it and are enchanted by it - they were recovery, escape and consolation. I was reminded of this as I read through LOTR agin just recently. I was amazed at just how moving the story is on so many levels and I was particularly reminded of what Tolkien wrote about recovery.
What does he mean by recovery? Well, very simply, we get used to the wonder of the world in which we live - it becomes trite - and he believed that fantasy helps us to recover that sense of wonder. There is a sense in which we all need to recover the wonder of this world. For example, I live in a beautiful part of the world and when I walk around our home I am surrounded by beauty which I hardly notice. Thanks to my wife's efforts there are truly beautiful flowers everywhere and all sorts of other wonders. Even in my room I am surrounded by marvels. And yet, I am used to these things and most of the time I hardly see them! The phrase "used to them" seems quite telling. It's almost as though I had in some way seen them, used them and then forgotten them. Tolkien has a great way of putting it - he says
"This triteness is really the penalty of “appropriation”. The things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them."
"Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ouselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness."
"Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds. The gems all turn into flowers or flames, and you will be warned that all you had (or knew) was dangerous and potent, not really effectively chained, free and wild; no more yours than they were you."
He tells how "It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."
Now while I have great admiration for the films, ultimately Peter Jackson took on an impossible task for while they contain much that is good, they cannot convey the brilliant poetic writing of Tolkien. LOTR is primarily a book, and a film, though it quotes dialogue directly, cannot express the the full content of the background and the world which Tolkien creates when he writes - not even the wonders of cgi can do that!! It is his words which express his stated aim.
Coming to LOTR I guess that the description of trees and forest whether of Mirkwood, the Old Forest, Ents, Treebeard, people like Fatty Bolger, Farmer Maggot, Barley Butterbur, Nob, Tom Bombadill, Aragorn, Gwahir etc places like The Black Gate, Mordor, Gondor, Helm's Deep, Lothlorien, Rivendell, - all of these aspects of his story give us a fresh perspective on places and people in this world. Just the description of Farmer Maggot's mushrooms does it for me (you'll have to read the book). The enchantment of stars, stone, rock, Shadowfax - you name it - all leave their mark in some way or another. Tolkien is a master at embuing common things (particularly natural things) with rich enchantment. But care is required - we soon appropriate things and add them to our hoard. It is a good exercise in any case to attempt each day to spend a little time taking out a little piece of our hoard and letting one or two locked things fly away.
Another verse of the poem Mythopoea always hits me
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
We all need to recover something of the wonder of the world in which we live and the life which we have been given. Fantasy can help us recover that wonder but ultimately (as Tolkien also admits) it is a sense of true humility and simplicity which is the key to living with our eyes wide open.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Tolkien - Subcreation
Having recently re-read LOTR I was reminded of the small "Tree and Leaf" book in which, among other things is Tolkien's article nbased on a lecture he gave on the subject "On Fairy Stories". In it he describes what he sees as the warrant for fantasy writing and what its essence is. Some of what he had to say may explains something of the huge appeal of LOTR. LOTR is like Marmite (or Vegemite for down-under readers) - you either love it or hate it. There are many people who dislike / hate / dismiss LOTR - as many as those who a) love the story as a story with all the elements of good and evil and heroism and failure etc. but also b) sense that this story has an influence on them - not just emotional but spritual (in the sense that it has effect on their spirits).
Tolkien was a devout Catholic ChristianHe believed in a benevolent Creator and Creation - he believed in the Biblical accounts of Creation and the decisive coming of the Creator into His Creation - birth, death and resurrection.
As a believer in a Creator and a belief that man was created in the image of His Maker and given dominion over the earth before the Fall, he believed that one of the divinely bestowed attributes that man had retained after the Fall was the ability to be a sub-creator. In the poem Mythopoeia he says
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact.
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
That is the viewpoint from which he wrote LOTR. before he even began this undertaking he had written almost the whole history of Middle Earth up to and including the events of LOTR incuding a creation myth etc. That is why LOTR is so incredibly authentic. It is a story to immerse yourself in - and indeed Tolkien's aim was just that. He wanted to write a story which took place in a time and place that was completely different but credible because it was consistently different. Yes, it's fantasy but it's fantasy within a world that has a history and a rich history at that. He saw himself as a subcreator as described in the second stanza above - refracted light - one of many hues splintered from a single white. He distinguished between the primary world - the world in which we live - and a secondary world - the world of the story and considered the degree to which the reader became immersed and involved (enchantment) in the story the important thing. The key to that is the believability of the the secondary world.
Tolkien was a devout Catholic ChristianHe believed in a benevolent Creator and Creation - he believed in the Biblical accounts of Creation and the decisive coming of the Creator into His Creation - birth, death and resurrection.
As a believer in a Creator and a belief that man was created in the image of His Maker and given dominion over the earth before the Fall, he believed that one of the divinely bestowed attributes that man had retained after the Fall was the ability to be a sub-creator. In the poem Mythopoeia he says
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact.
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
That is the viewpoint from which he wrote LOTR. before he even began this undertaking he had written almost the whole history of Middle Earth up to and including the events of LOTR incuding a creation myth etc. That is why LOTR is so incredibly authentic. It is a story to immerse yourself in - and indeed Tolkien's aim was just that. He wanted to write a story which took place in a time and place that was completely different but credible because it was consistently different. Yes, it's fantasy but it's fantasy within a world that has a history and a rich history at that. He saw himself as a subcreator as described in the second stanza above - refracted light - one of many hues splintered from a single white. He distinguished between the primary world - the world in which we live - and a secondary world - the world of the story and considered the degree to which the reader became immersed and involved (enchantment) in the story the important thing. The key to that is the believability of the the secondary world.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Earendil
"There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach." (LOTR The Return of the King)
I had almost forgotten reading this passage until recently in London I walked with my wife past St. Martin in the Fields and saw the sculpture in honour of Oscar Wilde. The inscription on the sculpture was "We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars" - a quote from one of Wilde's plays. My mind went back to Tolkien's words which I had recorded on my phone and which I proceeded to read to my wife at a nearby cafe. I am still struck by that passage from Tolkien. It occurs as Sam and Frodo make their way across the bleak, forsaken land of Mordor inching their way to Orodruin and the Cracks of Doom. Sam has almost abandoned hope of any future when he looked up and saw the star - and hope was renewed.
We all have those times when the world seems bleak and barren and dark are all in desperate need of a glimpse of eternal, piercing beauty to put our lives and aspirations into context. I thank God that at those times we can look up and glimpse eternal glory. The words of Paul in Second Corinthians come to mind. "For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness" has shone in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." We look up and we see Jesus, the bright Morning Star and our hearts are pierced by wonder and beauty and glory and as the old chorus says, "the things of the world become strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."
Above all it gives us the assurance that ultimately evil cannot triumph - good will prevail. There will be "new heavens and a new earth, the home of righteousness" and by God's grace it will also be our eternal home.
I had almost forgotten reading this passage until recently in London I walked with my wife past St. Martin in the Fields and saw the sculpture in honour of Oscar Wilde. The inscription on the sculpture was "We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars" - a quote from one of Wilde's plays. My mind went back to Tolkien's words which I had recorded on my phone and which I proceeded to read to my wife at a nearby cafe. I am still struck by that passage from Tolkien. It occurs as Sam and Frodo make their way across the bleak, forsaken land of Mordor inching their way to Orodruin and the Cracks of Doom. Sam has almost abandoned hope of any future when he looked up and saw the star - and hope was renewed.
We all have those times when the world seems bleak and barren and dark are all in desperate need of a glimpse of eternal, piercing beauty to put our lives and aspirations into context. I thank God that at those times we can look up and glimpse eternal glory. The words of Paul in Second Corinthians come to mind. "For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness" has shone in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." We look up and we see Jesus, the bright Morning Star and our hearts are pierced by wonder and beauty and glory and as the old chorus says, "the things of the world become strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."
Above all it gives us the assurance that ultimately evil cannot triumph - good will prevail. There will be "new heavens and a new earth, the home of righteousness" and by God's grace it will also be our eternal home.
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