The Scourge of The Dark Side...Tolkien and Modernism

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

So, if I follow up the scourge's critique with a glowing review, will that make a difference for you? Or, I can merely offer Neil Gaiman's interview on the Colbert Report. Gaiman was hawking his Newberry Medal-winning children's book 'The Graveyard Book', and Gaiman mentions Tolkien as his major influence. So, you can listen to the drivel of some mall-rat critic spouting Homeric platitudes, or you can rely on a bestselling author. *shrugs*

Oh, and the bit about Tom Bombadil is hilarious...

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2009/03/18...olbert-report/

Bravo, Morth. I had been wondering where/how to get a link here on the Downs to Gaiman's acknowledgement of Tolkien, and, more particularly, his audacious comments about Bombadil.

What that blog link leaves out, though, was Colbert's other criteria for an illustrator besides being American, one without any sense of hope. Says something about Gaiman's sense of Art Spiegelman that Gaiman suggested him.

It was an intriguing interview, well sparred by both of them.

[littlemanpoet]

As to the initial question, I find this quote from Tolkien interesting and germaine:

If there is any contemporary reference in my story (The Lord of the Ring) at all it is ... the most widespread assumption of our time: that if a thing can be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false. The greatest examples of the action of the spirit and of reason are in abnegation.

This from the Letters. As usual, Tolkien is very careful and precise in his use of words, and shows that he understands modernism better than modernists do.

Suffice it to say, I think Tolkien is right.

And no, modernism is not dead. It just keeps morphing ... into new modes.

[dreeness]

In "The Violence of the Fantasy" Slavoj Žižek said (emphasis added):

It goes to Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s credit that a century ago he spelled out the properly perverse nature of the way Christianity relates to paganism; he turns around the standard (mis)perception according to which the ancient pagan attitude is that of the joyful assertion of life, while Christianity imposes a sombre order of guilt and renunciation. It is, on the contrary, the pagan stance that is deeply melancholic: Even if it preaches a pleasurable life, it is in the mode of “enjoy it while it lasts, because, at the end, there is always death and decay.” The message of Christianity is, on the contrary, that of infinite joy beneath the deceptive surface of guilt and renunciation: The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. (Chesterton, 1995, p. 164) Is not Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings the ultimate proof of this paradox? Only a devout Christian could have imagined such magnificent pagan universe, thereby confirming that paganism is the ultimate Christian dream. Perhaps this is why the conservative Christian critics who recently expressed their concern at how books and movies like Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter series undermine Christianity through their message of pagan magic miss the point, the perverse conclusion that is unavoidable here: You want to enjoy the pagan dream of pleasurable life without paying the price of melancholic sadness for it? Choose Christianity!