You say 'Faeries' & I say 'Fairies'

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by davem

I don't mean of rule breaking - which we find in his Orcs, Balrogs, Dragons, etc, but the absence of any rules to be broken.

I know what you mean. It's the kind of thing that I really want to write about, but seems just beyond my grasp. Still, there can't be complete chaos, or Faery would be unliveable and not only in regard to humans. But cause & effect, immutability of solids (if you take my meaning); these would be up for grabs; transformation would be typical. And words fail to adequately convey my meaning.

[davem]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I know what you mean. It's the kind of thing that I really want to write about, but seems just beyond my grasp. Still, there can't be complete chaos, or Faery would be unliveable and not only in regard to humans. But cause & effect, immutability of solids (if you take my meaning); these would be up for grabs; transformation would be typical. And words fail to adequately convey my meaning.

I suppose it could be that Faery has different rules, which would seem entirely logical to its inhabitants, but not to humans, just as it may be that it has its own laws & moral codes. Tolkien presents us with a Faery whose rules, laws & morality are the same as our (Christian) ones.

I'm referring to things like 'Geasa' (taboos),

Irish taboo, and inferentially all Celtic taboo, dates back to an unknown pagan antiquity. It is imposed at or before birth, or again during life, usually at some critical period, and when broken brings disaster and death to the breaker. Its whole background appears to rest on a supernatural relationship between divine men and the Otherworld of the Tuatha De Danann; and it is very certain that this ancient relationship survives in the living Fairy-Faith as one between ordinary men and the fairy-world. Therefore, almost all taboos surviving among Celts ought to be interpreted psychologically or even psychically, and not as ordinary social regulationshttp://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt...30.htm#fr_236/

where, for instance in the story of Cuchulain the hero was forbidden to eat the flesh of a dog, & when he is tricked into doing so his fate is sealed - there's no logical reason for that to be a consequence, but once he has eaten it there is no way to avoid his fate. Or we could look to the story of Baldur in Norse Myth - he could only be slain by a spear of misletoe. There are similar things in the Legendarium (Turin, for instance, seems to to have a number of Geasa imposed on him by Morgoth) but nothing like the traditional accounts of Faeries stealing babies & replacing them with changelings, or Selkies leaving their seal skins on the beach & appearing as young women.

Of course Geasa are rules, so maybe I'm now arguing against myself, but what I was referring to was the absence of what we would call 'rules' or 'laws' of nature - like cause & effect, thermodynamics, logical consistency. As I say, Tolkien does have something similar to geasa in Turin's story, but he gives it a 'logical reason - Morgoth's malice - rather than simply having it as a 'given' in his world that heroes have strange fates, that Faeries are an unknown quantity & that Faery is just a place where wierd stuff happens...

[littlemanpoet]

It now begins to seem to me that Tolkien the modern made Faery acceptable to a modern, and therefore, scientific mind. Our contemporary imagination, having been baptized by Tolkien, has thereby been freed to move beyond the scientific mind to Faery as it is/was.

Which means, in a sense, that as the Star was to Smith, allowing passage to Faery, and as Faery was to Wootton Major, so Tolkien's Middle Earth is for us, allowing our minds to conceive of Faery as it is, and thus Faery can be to us as it was to Wootton Major? I don't know, but I hope so.

[davem]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

It now begins to seem to me that Tolkien the modern made Faery acceptable to a modern, and therefore, scientific mind. Our contemporary imagination, having been baptized by Tolkien, has thereby been freed to move beyond the scientific mind to Faery as it is/was.

Which means, in a sense, that as the Star was to Smith, allowing passage to Faery, and as Faery was to Wootton Major, so Tolkien's Middle Earth is for us, allowing our minds to conceive of Faery as it is, and thus Faery can be to us as it was to Wootton Major? I don't know, but I hope so.

Perhaps what Tolkien did was to make Faery 'acceptable' not the modern, scientific, mind but to the minds of people who, whether they are Christians or not, are products of 2,000 years of Christianity & have grown up with a Christian worldview.

In traditional. pre-Christian belief, there was no Satan, no personification of moral evil - there was life & death, good & bad, but no Good vs Evil. Tolkien 'Christianises' Faery by introducing Morgoth, a fallen Angel, & introduces a (Judeo) Christian element which from then on determines & defines that Faery as a Christian one - it couldn't have been otherwise once he'd made that decision.

The consequence was that Middle-earth would become the battleground in a moral war. Rather than the battle being an eternal one between light & dark, order & chaos, summer & winter which never ends, it becomes an extended war which will one day end in the victory of Good over Evil. There will be winners & losers.

We have all, Christian or not, absorbed that worldview, & so would have expected it, I suppose, in the Faery that Tolkien gave us. Yet, it is not traditional Faery - it is, for whatever (good?) reasons Tolkien had - an invention of his own. As I've repeatedly stated, though, what interests me is why he staked such a claim to traditional Faery (particularly in OFS), & presented himself as a writer within the tradition. He may have acted as a mediator between Faery & modern readers brought up in a Christian world, but was that his intention - is that how he saw his role? Did he think of himself as someone opening a door to traditional Faery, so that we could enter into that 'pre-Christian' world, 'freeing' us from Christian 'indoctrination' - or did he actually want to make Faery Christian - or at least make us see it in that way, as 'the best introduction to the Mountains'? Was he using Faery for his own, evangelical, purposes- we know that that was his original motivation (one only has to read Garth's book) but was that desire something he left behind?

I think its clear that Lewis desired to use Faery to evangelise (the Narnia stories at some points are little other than 'parables' designed to inspire/encourage their readers to be good Christians) - did Tolkien intend the same thing? I think its clear from his letters that if he didn't exactly intend it, he would not have been upset by the prospect.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by davem

We have all, Christian or not, absorbed that worldview, & so would have expected it, I suppose, in the Faery that Tolkien gave us. Yet, it is not traditional Faery - it is, for whatever (good?) reasons Tolkien had - an invention of his own. As I've repeatedly stated, though, what interests me is why he staked such a claim to traditional Faery (particularly in OFS), & presented himself as a writer within the tradition.

Is it possible that he did indeed see himself that way, and saw no tension or contradiction, because the distinction you see had not been perceived in his time?

He may have acted as a mediator between Faery & modern readers brought up in a Christian world, but was that his intention - is that how he saw his role? ... Was he using Faery for his own, evangelical, purposes- we know that that was his original motivation (one only has to read Garth's book) but was that desire something he left behind?

I haven't read Garth, so your reference to him that he intended to evangelize, is something new to me. All other readings about Tolkien seemed to declare pretty strongly that Tolkien was actually against such efforts, and steered clear of it himself.

Did he think of himself as someone opening a door to traditional Faery, so that we could enter into that 'pre-Christian' world, 'freeing' us from Christian 'indoctrination' - or did he actually want to make Faery Christian - or at least make us see it in that way, as 'the best introduction to the Mountains'?

Yes to the former, no to the latter, in my opinion. However, Christianity was so ingrained in him that he couldn't write any other way and be true to himself.

[davem]

Originally Posted by LMP

I haven't read Garth, so your reference to him that he intended to evangelize, is something new to me. All other readings about Tolkien seemed to declare pretty strongly that Tolkien was actually against such efforts, and steered clear of it himself.

An old post of mine from the dreaded Canonicity thread :http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...&postcount=248

Of course, this was the young Tolkien, & he may have changed in his later years, but I think it shows that 'once upon a time' (before his crest fell) he certainly was inspired by a desire to 'evangelise' his fellow countrymen.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

Of course, this was the young Tolkien, & he may have changed in his later years, but I think it shows that 'once upon a time' (before his crest fell) he certainly was inspired by a desire to 'evangelise' his fellow countrymen.

Well, we do know that Tolkien insisted that Edith convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism to marry him at a time when the Church itself (herself?) never required that of Catholic spouses. The only requirement was to agree to raise the children Catholic. And according to Carpenter, Tolkien apparently had little sympathy for or was unable to appreciate the difficulties Edith faced because of that decision.

Yet this seems to be contradicted by Tolkien's statement of "consciously so in the revision", as that would suggest he only late in his long writerly thought came to see that.