Aiwendil
Just a short note on the idea of Faerie.
The problem I still have is that while this 'state' may not be logically 'coherent, he ideas & symbols which we find there are
consistent. Faeries/Elves throughout all the stories show consistent & recognisable behaviour, Archetypal images are consistent, so I'm still stuck with the idea of it bering
simply a source of random images - though of course they could be used that way, but if an author does use them in that way, he is writing outside the 'tradtion'. But Tolkien set out to 're-create' a 'lost tradition', to reconstruct what our ancestors had lost. So was there a point at which he deliberately rejected that idea & decided he would use the traditional images for his own purposes - ie in order to 'reveal to us a far off gleam of the gospel'? Or did he
ever really intend to simply 're-create' the ancient mythology of England, was his intention
always to write with another purpose in mind?
We know that the TCBS was inspired by what they thought of as 'Medieval' values in art. poetry, music, that they were inspired by Christianity, by patriotism, the idealisation of woman, etc. What drew them together was this 'medieval' Christian ideal. So could this be what Tolkien is being an 'apologist' for, even an 'evangelist' for in his writings, that particular worldview? If so, then maybe all that 'mythology for England' stuff was not about a scholarly attempt to give us back
exactly what we had lost, but actually to present us with a TCBS-ite 'mythology' for the England of Tolkien's own day, with the intention of combatting what they considered the 'vices' of the modern world.
But if that was the case Tolkien is on pretty shakey ground in claiming his there is no 'meaning' in his stories, or at least no intentional 'meaning' for us in the 'primary' world, because what he is doing is attempting to change the way we think & behave, to change our philosophy & worldview, our whole value system, make us all into his 'ideal' medievals, his fellow TCBS-ites. Yet clearly, he was intelligent enough to know that the 'real' medieval world wasn't like this 'ideal' he, Wiseman, Gilson & Smith held to - so he was actually trying to invent, create from scratch, an ideal medieval world, using whatever he found lying around.
All of which makes him an Artist, rather than an archaeologist, a creator rather than a discoverer, & on with a very specific agenda, which he had stuck with from his schooldays. So everything he wrote, was written for a purpose, with a goal in mind - changing the way we think about the world. But then how come we can read the stories & experience them as having an internal 'reality', & don't feel we're being 'preached at'? Does it mean that Tolkien failed in what he was attempting, but succeeded in doing something he hadn't set out to do at all?
(long 'note'
- who was it who put at the end of a letter that 'this letter is long, because I didn't have time to make it short'?)