The Autobiographical Tolkien - 'Leaf by Niggle'...

[Estelyn Telcontar]

littlemanpoet, I am thinking hard about the question of the nature of Faërie (and trying to decide how it is definitively spelled!). I wonder if it is broader in scope than we think - everything that transcends our visible daily life. Perhaps music, meditation or prayer can be our passport-star, or a good book that lifts us right out of the hum-drum and into infinity. Smith's star is apparently a passport. But it still puzzles me to think that it could be lost...

Another thing has occurred to me in comparing the stories of Niggle and Smith - the early one looks forward. Perhaps because there is yet not much visible success in real life, Tolkien focuses on the rewards of life after death. The late story looks back; there is more sense of fulfilled life in it, but also the sense of great loss at the end and no look at all beyond earthly life itself. I've now started reading the Letters to compare these impressions with JRRT's own life.

And Guinevere, Tolkien himself said that the Hall and the Cook are allegorical, as quoted by Shippey. I think we can look for more without worrying about what he would have said! I like Professor Shippey's comment on the search for allegory in this story - he thinks the analogy that

To seek for the meaning is to cut open the ball in search of its bounce.

is mistaken. Rather,

An allegorical story is much more like a crossword-puzzle. Solutions which are too easy are no fun.
The more correct solutions that are filled in, the narrower becomes the range of possibilities for what is left. The attraction of both allegories and crossword-puzzles is an intellectual one - the reader of an allegory is actively engaged, not being passively led. Solving an allegory gives... a new awareness which entirely reshapes one's understanding of the surface narrative. It is not essential to come up with the one single correct solution. A suggestive or provocative one will do. The story... makes more sense. Only the laziest of readers make no effort at all to respond to the clues given by authors of allegory.

Who am I to contradict a professor? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] (Especially when he agrees with the opinion I have already formed!)