[davem]

My feeling, based on the material Garth has published in Tolkien & the Great War, is that Tolkien's purpose in trying to create a Mythology for England was, as I said, 'moral regeneration'. England had lost its identity, its moral values; society was on a very slippery downward slope. His inspiration was Lonrot - the Kalevala had reawakened the Finns; their country, which had been a 'shuttlecock' between the superpowers Sweden & Russia for centuries, had found a new identity through that work & the anniversary of its publication is still a national holiday. I think Tolkien took this as an example of what mythology could do for a nation. He decided that a mythology for England, which fused Christianity with that 'noble northern spirit' which he so loved, could do that job for his own country.

The point is that, far from being simply the 'subcreation of a secondary world in the mind', which bore no relation to the primary world, when he began his intention was that it would have a very powerful & direct impact on the primary world - of course he tries different ways to link it to the primary, but the intent is there all through the twenties & into the thirties. Flieger has shown in a recent essay that one of the ways he tries to link it to the English is by having English characters linked 'psychically' to the past (as in Lost Road & Notion Club Papers) - the past of Middle earth would be seen to be alive in the English people of today.

But then something changes. He no longer wishes his mythology to impact in any way on the primary world. He wants it to be taken as a story of a secondary world only, & he will deny as vociferously as he can any suggestion of a relationship with the primary.

I accept that mythology had been misused in the past, & that Tolkien would have been perfectly aware of that, but it had never been so misused as it had by the Nazis. Tolkien blames the Nazis specifically for making the noble northern spirit 'forever accursed' - meaning what? - that although in the past similar misuse of mythological symbols had occurred, something qualitatively different had occured this time? I suspect that's it.

We can't underestimate the effect on a man like Tolkien, with his deep love of northerness, of what the Nazis had done. That 'noble northern spirit' had been 'Ruined, perverted, misapplied, & made forever accursed'.

Tolkien had seen the extremes of what national mythologies could lead to - liberation & regeneration for Finland, moral depravity & the Holocaust for Germany. I think he became frightened not that he would fail in his dream of creating a mythology for England, but that he would succeed, & that dream would translate from the secondary world into the primary world as a nightmare.

As to what's unpublished - well, we don't have his diaries, & the only letters Christopher Tolkien has allowed to be published are the ones that relate directly to Middle earth. Lets speculate on a 'nightmare scenario' some letters from the early thirties, where, before the horrors of Nazism have appeared, or at least been made known - Tolkien sees Germany arising from the depression, inspired by the nordic myths & fired by the noble northern spirit, & makes some positive comments. Of course, as soon as the truth about Nazism comes out he rejects it all immediately, but if such letters, or diary passages, existed, one could understand CRT not wanting them to appear.

I certainly wouldn't deny the impact of WW1 on Tolkien, but he comes out of that war with a desire to give his country its own mythology, in order to inspire its moral regeneration & make it a great nation once again (as, ironically, did Hitler). It was WW2 which confronted him with the reality of how terrible the downside of national mythologies could be.