I can't find that source now where Tolkien says he felt like he was merely recording and not creating. I'm sure you folks with the pulse of the Letters and HoMe at your fingertip can find that passage, particularly if you think you can work it round to your side of things as the context and recipient and date must be pondered like the entrails of sacrificial animals.
For now, here's a very eloquent statement from a letter to Unwin. It's the letter where Tollkien talks about grace appearing "in mythological form"and where "Allegory and Story meet[. . .] somewhere in Truth." (bolding mine)
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Letter 109, 31 July 1947
Well, I have talked quite long enough about my own follies. The thing is to finish the thing as devised and then let it be judged. But forgive me! It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other. I fear it must stand or fall as it substantially is. It would be idle to pretend that I do not greatly desire publication, since a solitary art is no art; nor that I have not a pleasure in praise, with as little vanity as fallen man can manage (he has not much more share in his writings than in his children of the body, but it is something to have a function; yet the chief thing is to complete one's work, as far as completion has any real sense.
|
As for putting "ahead" literary things over "formulations of truth", I'd go with what Tolkien said about the nature of mankind as subcreators in OFS.