[davem]

Bethberry
Quote:
davem, you seem to suggest--and I have seen it stated elsewhere here in discussion on the Barrow Downs--that materialists have no moral or ethical basis, cannot differentiate good and evil, cannot ascribe to the belief in beauty and spirituality.

I didn't intend to suggest that. I would ask what their standard is, by which they measure such things - isn't it from some innate sense of right & wrong, of false & 'True'? They hold to some 'ideal' of how things should be, & compare things as they are to that 'ideal'.

I don't think it is possible to define 'Truth' precisely, because we haven't reached the that 'state'. If there's anything in my idea of a 'harmonic' relationship between enchantment, eucatastrophe & Truth, that enchantment is the same thing as eucatastrophe but on a 'lower' level, & that Truth is the 'highest' harmonic, then enchantment is what we feel when we are initially exposed to 'Truth', we move forward in stages. I have to admit that I'm adapting some qabalistic concepts here into literary theory. Or perhaps we can bring in the idea of the three tier universe which we find in the Divine Comedy - Heaven/Truth 'reflecting' down through Purgatory/Eucatastrophe to 'Hell'/enchantment - by which I mean ones first experience of a 'mythological' otherworld - not a 'good' or pleasant enchantment, but an overwhelmingly powerful one. I would speculate that the form 'enchantment' takes, what exactly enchants us, & how, is down to the individual.

There is no requirement that 'enchantment' be pleasant or morally 'good' to be effective. Even in Hell, Dante encounters beauty & sadness & loss, but at the end he passes into the eucatastrophic experience of Purgatory, beyond which he encounters 'Truth', the Love that moves the Sun & the other Stars'.

In LotR we are exposed to enchantment, & opened up to the experience of Eucatastrophe, which in turn points us towards something else, the highest 'harmonic', or Truth. We are taken from the earth, the world of everyday materiality, to the 'Lunar' world, the world of Dream & fantasy - as with Astolpho's visit to the Moon in Orlando Furioso, which is Faery, the world of enchantment. We move on to the Solar world, of light, closer to the Truth, the source of the moonlight, which is the eucatatastrophic experience, & finally onto the 'stellar' world of 'Heaven'.

But to leave Dante & the medieval visionaries & return to Tolkien (as he would probably have wished, knowing his feelings on both Dante & Ariosto).

We don't have to know Tolkien's intentions for his stories to work on us - they can work on us in the way he intended even if we aren't aware of them. When we read his reasons & his explanations for what he wrote, we are as likely to respond by thinking 'Of course! that explains what I felt!' as we are to respond 'Why, that's not it at all! I never felt that!' I would say that the former response is more common.

Aiwendil, when you quote me:

It must exist for itself, & the characters do what they do for their own reasons, which relate solely to their own world, so we can choose to take from that world what we will. But we have to ask ourselves honestly what we are responding to in that world, what needs it is supplying, & why we respond as we do it, & why we choose to take what we do from it.

& respond:

Here it sounds like you hold that to communicate Truth was not the purpose of Tolkien's work. Does this not contradict your thesis about TCBS's goals?

I don't think I am. For the enchantment to work, the secondary world must be self contained, if it is not to come across as allegory & the spell fail to be cast effectively. Only in that 'enchanted' state can we fully experience eucatastrophe, when as Helen says, our guard is down. And the eucatasatrophic experience reveals something beyond itself. So, its impossible for me, Helen, or anyone to give you a precise, scientifically provable definition of 'Truth' here in the Primary world, because you're two stages away from it. I can explain 'enchantment', perhaps, or offer you the means to experience it - reading a particular book might help you experience enchantment. If that works, & you are sufficiently enchanted, you will be opened up to the eucatastrophic experience, which in turn will enable you to glimpse, far off, something else, but you can't see that 'something else' directly from here - its on the other side of the Mountains, yet you can see the 'Light' of it reflected through different forms/experiences.

Niggle cannot concieve of what lies over the Mountains from his shed. But in there he has a glimpse of a Tree, & sets out to paint it. He becomes enchanted. Then, when he
suddenly sees the REAL Tree (REAL, though not of this world - actually MORE real than any tree in this world) he experiences eucatastrophe, a glimpse that there is another kind of reality. Both the Workhouse & his time in Niggle's Parish are equivalent to Purgatory, but his glimpse of the Mountains leads him on to what lies beyond them. The point is, whatever lies beyond them can only be known once he has crossed over, not before. Niggle in his shed, painting his picture, could not know, let alone define whats on the other side. All he can know at that time is the Tree
he is trying to paint. Before he was enchanted by his vision he simply could not know or experience eucatastrophe, let alone give you or anyone else (including himself) a precise definition of it - he may not even have believed in it. But through enchantment he is able to be opened up to the eucatastrophic experience of the real Tree, & the Mountains beyond, which is what inspires him to seek out the way over them.

I can't explain it - we see 'as in a glass, darkly'. Meister Eckhart wrote that 'if we could see even a flower as it has its being in God, this would be greater than the whole world'.

I'm not interested in converting anyone to anything. I'm not a Christian, or a follower of any specific belief or religion, but I've always had a sense of there being 'something' more, which for the sake of convenience, I'll call Truth, because its more 'real' than this 'primary' world as far as I'm concerned. There's a great danger in overvaluing our rational, scienific world & dismissing the past, & 'primitive' beliefs. As someone once pointed out, we talk a lot about the 'ignorant past', but we're currently living in what our decendents will think of as the 'ignorant past'. People have always, at least up to recent times, believed in some ultimate Truth, some organising principle to the universe - they've even believed in fairies, & enchantment - even if they couldn't produce scientific evidence for them. I hold to what Chesterton called the Democracy of the Dead: 'Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the Democracy of the Dead. Democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; Tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.'

So as far as Tolkien is concerned: I won't rule out his opinion just because he happens to be dead, because thats undemocratic. He may not be right, but he has a right not to be ignored, & the same goes for Rob Gilson & GB Smith. Universal Sufferage, guys! The Legendarium was Tolkien's manifesto, & it means what he intended it to mean, & while we may take from it what we will, or reject it all entirely, we can't claim it means nothing at all, & was not intended to do what the writer has stated clearly it was meant to do. I just can't see how anyone can seperate the story from its meaning, or claim it means whatever they choose it to mean. Tolkien is the only one who can claim the Humpty Dumpty role here -'when I use a word it means precisely what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less'

(Well, I''m trying for the longest ever post without being boring - I think I'm on track with the first part)