[davem]

MR U

Quote:'davem, you seem to be equating “meaning” and "interpretation" with “allegorical meaning” and "allegorical interpretation". This is certainly not what I’m driving at; I don’t think others are either.'

The post wasn't directed at others her, but at those like Stormfront, ot Terry Donaldson, who do go beyond even applicability into allegory. Analysis of the 'Meaning' of a story is only possible when we have stepped back from the direct experience of the secondary world, & are attempting to account for our reactions to the story. At that point we are 'observers' rather than 'experiencers' of the secondary world. We are critics, classifyers, trying to work out which 'box' to put our experience in, which label to stick on it. Or worse, we're like Stormfront, asking 'What's in it for me? What can I get out of this that will be of use in the Primary world? It equivalent to strip mining, or mass deforestation for a quick buck. Like Frodo in Lorien we should simply experience the living tree, not see it as a source of timber to do something with.

Quote:' You also seem to be expressing the idea that enchantment and meaning are mutually exclusive. Here I disagree strongly. I am with Aiwendil: without plot and characters, where is enchantment? If LotR were a thousand pages of standing around at an Elvish picnic admiring all the otherworldly aspects of Faerie while pixie-dust sprinkled gently down on our heads, we’d be using words like “intensely boring” and “pointless” instead of “enchanting”. The much-referenced “On Fairy Stories”:Quote:
Stories that are actually concerned primarily with “fairies,” that is with creatures that might also in modern English be called “elves,” are relatively rare, and as a rule not very interesting. Most good “fairy-stories” are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches. (emphasis Tolkien’s)
The Legendarium is a series of stories, not just a setting.'

Yet this is exactly what we have in Smith, & Smith is far from boring or pointless. For me it is one of the most powerful & moving works Tolkien ever wrote. We are simply seeing a series of unconected scenes, & visions, with no connecting narrative - at least while we follow Smith through Faerie. Smith has very few 'adventures' in the sense the term is usually understood. He simply walks in Faerie, & things happen, in which he plays little or no active part. The point of the story - if there is one, is that merely wandering in Faerie is of value, & enchanting enough. I have to say that for me, Smith is more 'Tolkienesque' than anything else he wrote (does that make sense?). It is 'pure' Faerie, with no narrative drive as such, no 'quest'. All the rules are put aside & we are taken into Faerie more totally than anywhere else since the Lost Tales.

Aiwendil

I have to wonder about this 'denial' of an 'objectively existing faerie' realm. Especially from someone involved in a project to produce a 'coherent' Silmarillion - what are you doing if not trying to put together a vision of Middle Earth from lots of scattered & contradictory sources - so you must have some sense of what Middle Earth 'should' be like. You must have some sense of there being a coherent story, a coherent world - as if all the existing stories are 'windows' onto this 'Archetypal' secondary world.

Secondly, Tolkien believed in 'faerie', & spent his life trying to present it to us, so even if you don't like or agree with the idea you have to accept that that is the position Tolkien was coming from,& what motivated him. His original reason for beginning to write was not to 'invent' a new mythology, but to rediscover one that was lost. So He clearly believed that this mythological secondary world had once existed, & was still accessible, indeed that it was still around in some form - in traditional beliefs, stories, place names & partiularly in language.

There simply is, for many of us, a sense of familiarty with Middle Earth, a sense of 'recognition', of 'remembering' when we read the stories. What amazed me for a while was that non English people could even make sense of Tolkien's writings - Middle Earth seemed so purely 'English', reflecting the landscapes I grew up in & the people I knew. Yet that's not the case & people from all over the world respond to it. So what explanation can there be - what was I relating to & feeling at home with, if it wasn't my own background? It must have been something more 'universal', something which people from all over the world also felt a connection with. I won't get into the 'Monomyth' debate, as I've only read Masks of God once, a long time ago & my memories of it are vague, but I must side with Tolkien as regards the existence of Faerie, whatever that is.