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Old 10-22-2005, 06:52 PM   #69
littlemanpoet
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
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littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
can't leave this alone.....

davem, this discussion has been on my mind since the last post was placed here. Your basic question seems to still have been unanswered to your satisfaction. I'm not sure that it can be.

I personally do not doubt the veracity of your experience. You see, I don't want to. Which leads me to the inevitable (for me) question that must plague the mind of someone who is a modern Christian (not post-modern, an orthodox believer): if there are indeed faeries, what is their place in the whole structure of creation?

How does one come to perceive them? Does one need to believe, first? Does one need to want them to be real in order to perceive them? Does one have to be born on English soil in order to perceive English faeries? Does one have to be relatively close to nature; that is, having a nature loving mindset as opposed to utilitarian? Does oen need to have Celtic blood flowing through one's veins? And finally, did Tolkien ask these questions?

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'Faery' is as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life...
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Originally Posted by davem
...he seems to be saying that it is his Faery which is 'necessary...
I wonder if he meant that it was necessary to him? Though I must admit that it's necessary to me; it certainly seems that way.
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Originally Posted by davem
Tolkien didn't write about 'real' (ie genuine - in a 'folkloric' sense) Elves & Faeries at all.
How do you know this? I realize that you have seen Faeries, and that what you read in SoWM somehow differs from that. But how do you know that what Tolkien wrote IS NOT what Faerie is like? Can you really say this with confidence?

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Originally Posted by LMP
While all else can be enslaved, human imagination remains free. And this is what Tolkien seems to be saying is Imagination without which humans cannot survive.
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Originally Posted by davem
Who's imagination, though? Is this Faerie as the human imagination, or as the Imagination of the Deity? Maybe even the imagination of the earth itself (why not - if Tom can be the spirit of the countryside?)
If I may make so bold as to answer this question for Tolkien, I would say that he meant human imagination. Did he believe in faeiries the way davem does? I don't know, but I doubt it. I would guess that he wished they were real, wistfully. But of course I don't really know.

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Originally Posted by davem
Was there a time when we were in harmony with the earth - or sufficiently so that the Faeries more like Tolkien's Elves (or like some of them at least)? If so, then SoWM might represent the 'middle' period, when Faeries sought to bring us back to that harmonious relationship, & the traditional accounts our current state - we have rejected them with contempt, they respond in kind.
This seems as right and true as we can possibly hope to be.

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Originally Posted by davem
My question is, why invent such a thing? Is this 'lack' universally felt, or was it only felt by Tolkien himself? Well, no longer. We all feel that 'lack' (those of us who respond to his works, that is) but would we have felt it if he hadn't written his Legendarium? Has he actually made us feel the lack of something which we wouldn't have missed otherwise?
An orthodox Christian who loves faery would say that this lack is real, and that even if it isn't felt, it should be. This is because we were closer to, and are now disconnected from, nature (you know, I dislike that word as a too handy catch-all that loses much in the short-hand).

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Originally Posted by davem
The whole point is that 'the human record of the old myths do not contain the very thing he sought to correct in them' as you say. But in OFS he is claiming that they did/do contain that 'very thing'.
If by 'very thing' we're talking about the presence of beneficent Elves in Tolkien's Legendarium, where in OFS does Tolkien say that? Isn't Tolkien saying that the seminal difference in fairy-story is eucatastrohpe, rather than the presence of high elves?

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Originally Posted by davem
Is Faerie a 'real' place. or simply a construct of the Human imagination. If it is the former, then one cannot simply 'add' things to it which become accepted on equal terms with what already exists there. One can only so that if it is 'merely' a human construct.
Using this argument, we may not write historical novels either. Wouldn't you say that the literature about something, as opposed to the reality of it, is by necessity two different things, especially in terms of those things that remain most steeped in mystery? Also, what do you make of Tolkien 'finding out' what happened? From what did this inspiration derive? Was it his own imaginative power alone? Or was he receiving inspiration from outside himself? In the end, he didn't think it all came from within his own head. Where then?

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BUT Faery is not religious. It is fairly evident that it is not Heaven or Paradise. Certainly its inhabitants, Elves, are not angels or emissaries of God (direct). The tale does not deal with religion itself. The Elves are not busy with a plan to reawake religious devotion in Wootton. The Cooking allegory would not be suitable to any such import. Faery represents at its weakest a breaking out (at least in mind) from the iron ring of the familiar, still more from the adamantine ring of belief that it is known, possessed, controlled, and so (ultimately) all that is worth being considered - a constant awareness of a world beyond these rings. More strongly it represents love: that is, a love and respect for all things, 'inanimate' and 'animate', an unpossessive love of them as 'other'. This 'love' will produce both ruth and delight. Things seen in its light will be respected, and they will also appear delightful, beautiful, wonderful even glorious.
The underlined bolded text appears to me to be what, to Tolkien, Faery represents, whether Faery is real or not. Its reality appears to be of secondary importance to him, at least in terms of the story he is writing. If that is offensive to you, or at least objectionable, that's understandable. However, taken on its own terms, for the sake of the story, it seems to achieve the author's desired ends. Thus Tolkien's elves (in SoWM) must be definition love humans unpossessively, because they are other, just as are all creatures.

Lastly (long post again, sorry), I'm not really trying to give what I consider final answers because, obviously, I don't know them. It's all mystery. Who can know what Faery really is, without having been there? Who can know what Tolkien really thought without being Tolkien (or God)? I'm interested in a continued discussion, more to search things out than to arrive at any definites, which I think is frankly impossible.
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