Tolkien lied!

[Child of the 7th Age]

I wanted to take a look at this letter, and I think I've tracked it down. It appears in the second edition of Silm but not the first. It also appears in the published Letters if anyone wants to look at it there. It's a 10,000 word monstor written in 1951 to try and get the Collins publishing house to hurry up on their promise to publish both the Silm and LotR together . This is a well known letter. It's where Tolkien says that he once thought to write some tales in great detail while leaving others as fragments in order to encourage minds wielding paint, and music and drama to come in and complete the outline. (This line is much loved by RPG and fanfiction writers!)

After looking over this letter, I've come to the conclusion that Tolkien is not a liar. He actually means what he says. The most substantive reference to Christianity is in this context: Tolkien was bemoaning the fact that his own country had no truly "English" myth and that he had hoped to be the one to remedy that deficiency by drafting a "body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogenic, to the level of the romantic fairy story". He argues that the Arthurian legend did not provide an adequate English mythology for a number of reasons:

Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britian but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. . for one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent, and repetitive. For another and more important thing, it is involved in and explicitly contains the Christian religion.... for reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy story must, as with all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error) but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary "real" world. ( I am speaking of course of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my essay, which you read."

The italics are mine. And what "essay" is he referring to in the last sentence?
Is this the passage you meant, Morm???

If this is it, then I think Tolkien's words are a coherent part of a particular argument that he is making throughout the entire letter and not just a knee jerk reaction and possible cover-up of some hidden Christian "agenda". (I am saying this in jest, of course!) Just look later in the letter and you'll see what I mean. Tolkien explicitly refers to his story of Creation. He acknowleges that there is "a fall: a fall of Angels, we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of the Christian myth." Then he goes on to point out that all myths and legends are connected. Certain symbols and truths must invariably reappear, whether or not we are talking in a Christian or some other context:

These tales are 'new', they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of "truth" and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear. There cannot be any "story" without a fall--all stories are ultimately about the fall--at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.

Tolkien is distancing himself from an explicitly Christian interpretation in this letter, but he is doing it for a particular reason. He is doing it because his stories will not operate on that level--instead they will reflect the more universal symbols and images that are the heart of all myth, whether Christian or not.

Just an aside, but I don't think Tolkien is referring only to Silm in these passages. The whole point of his letter is to show the publisher that Silm and LotR are a complete whole that must be published together. His statements apply to the entire Legendarium. If he felt that it was "fatal" to include Christian elements in the Silm, it would be equally fatal to include them in Lord of the Rings.

I've been all over the boards on this issue. At different points, I've seen more or less Christianity in the Legendarium. At this juncture I am personally convinced that there is no explicit Christianity in the early Legendarium, just as Tolkien implies in this letter. The reason we have so many interpretive problems with this is that later on the author changed his mind on this and a number of related things. When he speaks of the Christian elements in LotR, it is always in terms of "revisions" and not the original draft. (that was the other letter that Fordim refers to above. I don't have the citation but will try to dig it up.

Long ago I said to Littlemanpoet that I'd love to see someone go through HoMe and all the archival material and pinpoint exactly when this change occurred. (I was actually hoping he would do it for me. ) This change was undoubtedly gradual: certain revisions even before 1951, more later on. It almost seems as if Tolkien wantsed to erase some of the faerie elements and spirit and substitute history instead. There must be ways to determine this chronologically. To the best of my knowledge, no one has done such a study. I just do not see Christianity in the early Legendarium--the whole mood of pessimism and fate seems very different than a Christian world. Even Shippey said that one of the reasons Tolkien wrote LotR was to explore how and why good men perservered when they were struggling in a pre-revelation world. There is also no doubt when I read the Athrabeth that something has definitely changed. If Christianity isn't coming through the front door, it's at least slipping in the back!

I would love to know more about why this happened. Is it just a middle aged/older man coming closer to his doom and dwelling on questions of ultimate fate? Was it the slow realization that the world was not going to heal despite the fact that two world wars had been fought? I don't know. I just know that somewhere along the road Tolkien changed his mind. Perhaps first there was a revision here and there (certainly pre 1951) or a letter referring to Christian symbolism. In subsequent years Tolkien's whole image of the Legendarium shifted. No longer were the Elves the center of attention. Explicit references were made to Eru taking on a man's form and coming into the world. This is so, so far away from the distant Eru that we began with. So Tolkien isn't a liar, but he was notorious about changing his mind. Kilby called it "contrasistency"

Can anybody figure out this particular change that led from elf to man and from universal myth to hints of explicit Catholic doctrine?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

Long ago I said to Littlemanpoet that I'd love to see someone go through HoMe and all the archival material and pinpoint exactly when this change occurred.

I'll bet you a large acorn squash that it came about the moment Trotter was replaced by Strider in the early drafts of LotR. The instant the tall, grim Man came to lead the hobbits on their journey in place of the faintly humourous hobbit marks the moment in which all the more "dark and serious matters" enter into the tale. Frodo's ring becomes for the first time the Ring, and this Hobbit sequel is suddenly connected to the vast material Tolkien had developed for what we now call the Silmarillion.

As to why this happened...Tolkien himself could never say. My personal favourite letter is the one in which he recalls his own surprise and curiousity when this Strider fellow turned up unexpectedly at the Prancing Pony. Who is he? Why is he so grim? What is his connection to Frodo's ring? Why has Gandalf appointed him as their guardian and guide? Answering these questions is what led Tolkien to write the story that he did (it also added about 10 years to the time he thought it would take him to finish writing it!).

[Child of the 7th Age]

Fordim,

And there's another letter even eerier than that one....the draft for Carole Batten-Phelps in 1971.

This is the story where Tolkien was visited by a famous MP who had been "struck by the curious way in which many old pictures seemed to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time". Tolkien politely declined knowing these pictures at which point this happened:

When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before and was not well acquainted with pictorial Art, he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly he said, "Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?"

Poor Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with G to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said, "No, I don't suppose so any longer." I have never been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old philologist to draw concerning his private amusement. But not one that should puff any one up who considers the imperfections of "chosen instruments", and indeed what sometimes see their lamentable unfitness for their purpose.

The words "Christian" and "Christianity" never appear in this quote. Yet it's hard to read this and not get the feeling that Tolkien is no longer talking about Eru--he is talking about God and his own relationship with him, and God's use of his talents. We've come a ways from the earliest days of the Legendarium when Tolkien and his friends spoke mainly in terms of moral regeneration of the English. This is setting things on a whole different plane. I would love to know how and when this occurred. I do think it's why we can argue endlessly about whether the Legendarium has any explicit Christian or Catholic elements. It seems to me that what we start out with --the emphasis on universal myth--is a lot different than where we finally end up. Some people love this shift, while others including Christopher Tolkien are not especially happy with it.

That leaves another question unsolved. Were Tolkien's "revisions" (and I mean revisions in the widest sense involving everything from symbolic references to Mary or the host and essays like the Finrod/Andreth debate) so drastic that they completely changed the nature of the Legendarium by making it more Christian and geared to men? Or were these just surface gloss with the basic story and its emphasis on elves and universal myth still lying intact at the heart of things?

[Boromir88]

Fordim, I think this is the Letter you are looking for?

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. ~Letter 142

Lal remarks in another thread that there is a difference between the English use of 'fundamental' and the American use of the word.

The word fundamentally, or 'fundamentals' means the basics, or doing the simple things right. Sort of like in baseball, when someone says he is a 'fundamentally sound player,' he does the basic things right...(using both hands to catch the ball, keeping your weight on your back foot when you swing, as some examples). It's the simple things, the basics.

In the UK Lal says that it typically means 'lazily' or 'sloppily.'

Looking at this, I think it looks like 'fundamentally religious and Catholic work' means the basics of Christianity are in the story and they are 'absorbed in the symobolism.' There is nothing that comes out and hits you over the head like 'That's obviously Christianity,' kind of like Hookbill's point about the subtetly of the books. (Though, as a side note, I've seen it argued showing the English usage of the word).

I would love to know more about why this happened. Is it just a middle aged/older man coming closer to his doom and dwelling on questions of ultimate fate?~Child

It may have been something that happened as he got older, or at least he started thinking more about when he got older. Tolkien wrote repeatedly that he got sick quite a bit as his age increased, his health got worse, and he wrote about needing to 'rest.' Also as Simon remarks in some memories he had with his grandfather:

He was capable of extremely minute penwork and once gave me a farthing on which he'd written the entire Lord's Prayer in circular script.

I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My grandfather obviously didn't agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but my grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right. He inherited his religion from his mother, who was ostracised by her family following her conversion and then died in poverty when my grandfather was just 12. I know that he played a big part in the decision to send me to Downside, a Roman Catholic school in Somerset.

[Lalwendë]

Well, more that English people use English in a different way, in fact quite lazily and sloppily. I see the word fundamentally used all the time in serious papers and it means "kinda", "sort of". In much the same way if an English person says "It's a bit cold" they mean "Brrr, I'm freezing and I think I've got Hypothermia" or when Captain Scott left his tent and said "I could be some time" he meant "I'm going out there and I'm going to die".

Of course in the new world we have now, if someone sees the word "fundamental" they have visions of someone in a bomb belt who might just blow you up - they see the word and think it means fundamental in the fanatical sense.

The passage in more detail is below. In it you'll see that Tolkien himself says he has put what he says 'clumsily' and it comes across as 'self-important', so he was aware that he had made himself sound a bit pompous, Cardinal Sin to the Englishman:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. However that is very clumsily put and sounds more self-important than I feel. For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little;

Likewise the Mythology For England quote is often misrepresented. He did not want to provide us with a mythology, because we've already got one thank you very much, and of all people Tolkien would have known this better than most. No, he wanted to dedicate his mythology to England - yet again a very different kettle of fish...

EDIT: I'd better say it was Captain Oates who vastly understated his intentions, before me father (or Mithalwen) reads this and beats me about the head with a volume of Scott of the Antarctic or something...