Art!

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

I think I would ask "define purpose." Giving pleasure, providing thought, or entertainment, amusement, something pretty to cover an ugly hole in the wall... all of those are purpose. Whether or not our modern world considers such things important or valuable is its own loss. The stimulation of imagination is, to me, something very important, valuable, and full of purpose, as both invention and culture need a healthy imagination to survive. It seems to me that Tolkien's work has provided a vast number of people with a powerful wellspring of inspiration, and that alone is a tremendous purpose, whether or not Tolkien intended it at first. Not everyone will think so, but then, some things I was once taught were the most Important Purposes in the world turned out to be some of the most negative influences on my life in the long run.

Purpose, I suppose, is very much in the eye, and mind, of the beholder.

[The Mouth of Sauron]

I think they were good fantasy novels.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I think the germ of his work was simply an urge to write, to create this thing of beauty being inspired by so many different works of literature and art, and by his own life, by faith, by language. He spent years perfecting this writing so that it was coherent, even to the extent that he made names fot the linguistic patterns he had laid down, that moon phases and stars were correct. He was like a painter working in the most meticulous detail imaginable.

Indeed. Three words: Leaf by Niggle.

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

I think I would ask "define purpose." Giving pleasure, providing thought, or entertainment, amusement, something pretty to cover an ugly hole in the wall... all of those are purpose. Whether or not our modern world considers such things important or valuable is its own loss.

Oh my! Well indeed - Leaf by Niggle. "He was of no real use to the Society." Did the Professor actually try to answer to us himself already a long time ago?

[Morsul the Dark]

I would say everything in Life needs a purpose and these novels are lovely but have the purpose of entertainment.

My philosophy on Art as Fea well knows is all about function

"Go for Form and Function, but if both are not attainable you need Function."

I always say that. Beauty itself I would say except in mating habits of humans Not a uselful thing.

So again I say LOTR entertains that IS it's function beyond that point is a realm for philosophers and critics.

[Morthoron]

Lal, you seem to be following (at least in this thread) the 19th century 'Art for Art's Sake' movement.

Oscar Wilde made the point that...

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.

James McNeill Whistler, a friend of Oscar's (that is until their egos became too big to fit in one room) concluded...

People have acquired the habit of looking, as who should
say, not at a picture, but through it, at some human fact,
that shall, or shall not, from a social point of view, better
their mental or moral state...

Then Whistler added more bluntly...

Art should be independent of all claptrap —should stand alone and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like

I don't necessarily subscribe to the Art for Art's Sake Movement (although the critiques and essays of Walter Pater are fascinating), nor do I think one can necessarily divorce intellectual considerations such as 'meaning' or 'social impact' from some art (particularly literature), but one can certainly exclude these considerations in a discussion and simply discuss, as you said "the sheer poetry of it all."

Ummm...where do you wish to start?

[A Little Green]

Beauty itself is a purpose. Of course it is. Whether Tolkien's work has another purpose than beauty is something known by the author alone. (And he has, I think, denied there being another purpose.) We can, however, argue about whether a purpose given to his work later and by other people is a purpose in the same way the original purpose is.

What I find interesting as well is that we seem to have a need to make sense of things by discussing things like "Do Balrogs have wings?" or "Why didn't the eagles just carry Frodo to Mount Doom?" or "What was Tom Bombadil?" When I see a thread like that appear, it always pops into my mind that LotR was, after all, a book, a fiction, a stunning work of art. There is no answer to questions like that because Tolkien didn't answer them in his book. Nor do we need those answers, necessarily, to enjoy the art, the beauty, the poetry of it all. In fact, to me it's rather the same as telling me that something beautiful is actually a chemical reaction in my brain. A killjoy. An attempt to analyse and make sense of a thing of beauty, whether it is an art guy explaining why some element in a painting is in the specific place it happens to be in or a scientist explaining how the sea is made of H2O molecules, is something I can't help but regard as interesting but dull - something that takes away the mystery. For myself, I don't want to know if there was a moral teaching behind LotR. I don't want to know whether Balrogs have wings.

[Inziladun]

While I don't mind ruminating over whether Balrogs have wings, or what Tom Bombadil really was, I draw the line at imparting metaphor and allegory to these works. That's the reason I insist on an 'in-story' explanation for Tom. Breaking down a story while trying to figure out a 'hidden' meaning or intent by the author has always seemed to me a Sarumanish thing to do. And Gandalf didn't care much for such activity.

'And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.'

I very much enjoy talking about in-story topics, such as the trade-route questions, the origins of Barrow-wights, and whether Thingol was a wise king.
I get no insight from prying into the author's head looking for all the answers though. The text usually has answers enough, and when it doesn't, that's where individual interpretations, which are virtually limitless in their variety, come into play to keep things interesting. Any one seen the movie Dead Poet's Society?

[Mithalwen]

I think Tolkien did have a purpose in that he created Arda as a place for his invented languages to live and be. In the process like the elves of Lorien he put the thought of all that he loved in to what he made and their presence can be distinguished by those that have the "eyes to see that can".

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by A Little Green

A killjoy. An attempt to analyse and make sense of a thing of beauty, whether it is an art guy explaining why some element in a painting is in the specific place it happens to be in or a scientist explaining how the sea is made of H2O molecules, is something I can't help but regard as interesting but dull - something that takes away the mystery.

It reminds me about the anecdote on Goethe which I don't don't remember exactly but I can outline the idea of it.

Goethe was climbing the Alps with his romanticist friend and when the sun set in beautiful colours his friend asked him how dull it would be for Goethe as he was a student of light and colour as a "scientist", that he wouldn't get the feeling of it. And then Goethe replied that on the contrary, knowing how the colours were born made it even a greater experience as it was not only an aesthetic but also an intellectual experience at the same time...

Like Morthoron implies, we have a nice divide between the romanticism of feeling and then the intellectualism of reason. Not that he suggests we should choose between the two - and not that I suggest it. But we should be aware of the divide and that none is the clear champion.

I mean "take away the mystery"? I do hear that oftentimes at school. But what does that actually mean? Why are the "mysteries" of nature poorer than those produced by our poor imagination (I mean the "unicorns" or " anthropomorphic Gods", really, how low can you get)? I mean science has explained a lot of things that had a "mystical" explanation earlier but aren't their explanations even more mysterious? The idea that matter is actually composed of tiny particles and are merely constructed of nothing? How do you understand that even if it's taught to you at school? There's no mystery in there? Or that those tiny particles actually can be either waves or energy? What about the dark matter? Black holes sucking everything into them? Or the microscopic life-forms discovered that are more dreadful than any aliens Hollywood has produced, life-forms discovered from 10 kilometers+ under the sea thriving without sunlight, in acid... Would any human imagination thought of these unless the world threw them on our inquisitive eyes and minds?

In medieval times it was thought that human imagination was "connecting those things in nature that were not connected and dividing those which were not divided in nature". How true (think of the unicorns or anthropomorphic Gods again)! All fine and dandy, but dependent on our everyday vision of the world itself, built from our experiences...


Or to pose the question from a different angle: why is something you can't articulate dearer than that which you can articulate? And this I think is more to the point made here.

Okay too late (RL) to press the point, but let me just make a few questions...

In music as such (non-vocal music that is) or in non-figurative art one could say there is no easily discerned conceptual substance. But every novel, every poem, every song, every theater-piece is conceptrual through and through. They are built from concepts and their combinations. The question remains are the individual works immune to translation, can they be described meaningfully in other concepts?

The romantics made a difference between allegories and symbols meaning that an allegory was something you could explain with other concepts (eg. describe what it meant; like a scale meaning justice or a lion meaning courage etc.) but with symbols you could only point at the work and say: that is what is meant in there.

So is a piece of art a symbol in the romantic sense? Our culture tends to champion that view today...

Let me draw a parallel here. The romantic movement also "discovered" imagination again. To them it was inspiration, something coming from the innermost recesses of our individual being (paving the way for psycho-analysis and the concept of unconscious). But "inspiration" had meant something completely different before the 19th century Germany (and France). In-spirare actually means to "breath in", to breath in from outside - from the muses in the earliest notes of our culture.

So where do our "new" ideas - that make works of art, engineering, science... - come from; from outside of us (eg. the shared world open to all of us) or from the innermost recesses of absolutely particular individuals?

How should we "read" art? As something that can be shared with others - even if disagreeing but then again helping others to see things they don't see (or getting "corrected" or being opened with new perspectives by others) - or as private experiences closed to any conceptual sharing just keeping with our own feeling here and now?

Bah... the time is running. But I hope I managed to make at least a few provocative intrusions into the subject...

And to avoid any misunderstandings, I'm not sure I'm an advocate of either extreme view I've built up here. Like Aristotle said, the virtuous way is somewhere in between the extremes...

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Lal

Of course, this line of thought risks cutting all scope for discussion dead, but it shouldn't. Maybe we should, instead of trying to find some useful purpose to Tolkien's work, just sit back and discuss the sheer poetry of it all?

Although I'm sympathetic to the idea, Lal, I think you sort of answered your own question. I think we all agree that LotR is a beautiful piece of art, but discussing what everyone agrees on ain't that intriguing, is it? Like, isn't the Birthday Party a wonderful episode? - Oh yeah, and don't you just love Bilbo's speech? - Definitely! it's great how T manages to create that special atmosphere etc etc. Such a thread wouldn't get many replies, me thinks...

Originally Posted by Nogrod

I mean "take away the mystery"? I do hear that oftentimes at school. But what does that actually mean? Why are the "mysteries" of nature poorer than those produced by our poor imagination (I mean the "unicorns" or " anthropomorphic Gods", really, how low can you get)? I mean science has explained a lot of things that had a "mystical" explanation earlier but aren't their explanations even more mysterious? The idea that matter is actually composed of tiny particles and are merely constructed of nothing? How do you understand that even if it's taught to you at school? There's no mystery in there? Or that those tiny particles actually can be either waves or energy? What about the dark matter? Black holes sucking everything into them? Or the microscopic life-forms discovered that are more dreadful than any aliens Hollywood has produced, life-forms discovered from 10 kilometers+ under the sea thriving without sunlight, in acid... Would any human imagination thought of these unless the world threw them on our inquisitive eyes and minds?

I never understood that "takes away the mystery" nonsense either. Yes, modern science has explained many things that used to be clouded in myth and superstition, and we now know infinitely much more about ourselves and the world around it that we used to just a few hundred years ago. Then people believed in elves and dragons and trolls, which made for good bed time stories, but now we know there is in fact no "magic", there are no fairies dancing on misty meadows a midsummer's night, and when the thunder rolls, Thor isn't riding his great chariot in the sky. We know this, unless we do like the Ostrich and bury our heads in the sand (not that Ostriches actually do that either, that's another alluring but quite ridiculous myth). No, take the myths for what they are, but don't shy away from the truth.

Physicists have mathematically reconstructed and explained the creation of the universe down to the first tiny fractions of a pico-second (not saying they are right) and more and more is learned about our mind and consciousness. Still, the true orgin and meaning behind our existence here remains as much or more of a mystery, as Nogrod says. While physicists may argue convincingly for the Big Bang-theory, they still have no convincing answer just as to how something could come out of nothing, and how nothing can be everything. Chances are they never will either, but isn't the quest for knowledge and progress the very essence of humanity? I at least can't help to want to know. If the evidence don't add up, I will question it. But each to his own.

That said, I'm not a fan of academic literary analysis, unless the work in question is primarily an idea-book, which LotR certainly isn't. Not that it's lacking ideas, mind you.