[Durelin]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry...Tolkien, when faced with some of the 'fallow' periods in the writing, would have turned to his own life's experience for inspiration. This is, I think, tempting, but two points make me hesitate to accept such a possibility for a writer like Tolkien. This first is how he talked about 'what gets into the cauldron of story' in his essay "On Fairy Stories". I know we should limit our main discussion here to the text of the Forewords, but I think it is valuable to recognise that for Tolkien, story or narrative had a life or purpose or MO of its own, separate from any private personal experience. (Think of his funny line about the bishop and the banana peel.) If anything from his private life, which, as Child says, he
treated modestly and reticently, did get into the stew, he would, I am sure, include it only if it made sense in terms of the story, not in terms of personal self-expression. Certainly the way Tolkien defended the poem Beowulf as a unified work of art in his "Monsters and the Critics" essay suggests that he valued narrative as artistic expression rather than as personal expression. I think it is us in our post-Freud, post-psychoanalytical age that wants to reduce everything to an author's psyche, but this perspective is only a recent one of the last hundred years and does not represent the kind of understanding of philology or of ancient literature with which a scholar like Tolkien would be familiar.

A long quote, but there is little that can be pulled out! It all goes so well together...

I see little difference between artistic and personal expression. At least, these two may constantly intertwine. The fact is that in our creative natures as humans, we express so much personal experiences, thoughts, and what makes 'you, you'. Now, I have constantly been annoyed by the much-overused phrase 'express yourself', but this is mainly because it has been abused. Still, in an artistic creation of your own, formed from your own creativity, it cannot be free of personal expression. The artistic forms are a way of expression, if not necessarily displaying any personal beliefs or experiences. I believe this is basically what you were suggesting, Bêthberry, but I think you went a little too far in saying that The Lord of the Rings, or any of Tolkien's works, were not personal expressions. Though I of course agree that any personal expression would be for the benefit of the story, mainly because it is an artistic expression.

Whilst I'm content to see the story as a work of literature in an unusual vein, it is nice in more fanciful moments to imagine that it could be true, and that one day someone may find the Westron Rosetta Stone and set to publishing great tracts of unknown Endorian history.

Most likely just how Tolkien wished the reader to think of his feigned history.

Tolkien had to drop the mask of the translator and admit to his authorship, thus losing the opportunity to take the new comments in the same direction as the old. Perhaps this is also an admission that his histories were becoming for many an important branch of study, and one in need of some sober academic guidance from its leading authority.

Tolkien had taken an obscure and unrecognized 'subject of study' and made it recognized. Perhaps this was pleasing to, in a way, 'show them', but most likely he found it less enjoyable once he was forced to take on the role as the author rather than the translator and a fellow enthusiast of the subject.

-Durelin