Mythic Unities in The Lord of the Rings

[Lalwendë]

Going right back to your first post here, I was thinking about whether other writers use this 'mythic unity' idea (and I know I've discussed this with you elsewhere, though it might be useful to pop it on here); it would be useful to have other writers who do/did this in order to put things into context.

William Blake is the immediate person who springs to mind. He quite literally strove for unity with his use of art and poetry in combination; I recently went to an exhibition on Poetic Vision, looking at how art and poetry have been and are used in tandem (sometimes in a way that neither can be divorced from the other) to create something entirely different. Blake was of course one of the poet/artists included. But the exhibition also included work by Hughes who worked with a photographer to produce Elmet (another mythic work based on the old kingdom!), William Morris who intended works such as The Wood Beyond The World to be printed by the Kelmscott Press in beautiful hand made editions filled with medieval style illuminations and engravings (and having seen one of these books close up I can now see why this was not going to be economically viable!). Then again we had various pre-Raphaelite artists and poets who combined the two disciplines to create something 'other'. And we also have those who did not strive for 'unity' but who nevertheless touched on the visionary aspects of Art such as Samuel Palmer.

Some of the above of course were inspirations to Tolkien which raises other questions.

However, back to Blake who said "the imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself." He was one writer who did indeed believe that the physical and spiritual were inextricably linked. In using the old sense of the word "pneuma" in the first post here I instantly recognised that this was what Blake wrote about. Of course there is also the way he could 'see God' in the smallest thing, how he thought the world itself was thronged with angels and deities, that they suffused its being, and ours.

We often apply the words 'mystical' and 'visionary' to things we just don't understand, and Blake suffers from this. However Tolkien does too, depsite his use of more direct language and an easy narrative. Both make use of archetypes (and indeed its been said many a time here before that Tolkien's characters are rarely if ever 'seen from the inside' and he has been pinpointed as using archetype characters); Blake has his Four Zoas in Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Great Albion who fulfill the archetype purpose - in fact this epic is about Jerusalem achieving 'unity' once more. Then we also have Milton which is about 'Unity'.

And niftily tying in to the latest thoughts from lmp we come to language, as Blake of course was one of the greatest users of language, understanding the complexities of meaning and how seemingly simple words could have so many other meanings. Read Songs of Innocence and Experience and you can get seemingly endless new interpretations each time you read the poems, and yet they are so easy to read (especially in contrast to Blake's epics). Sound familiar? Yup, Tolkien created this easy to read work (LotR if you can't guess) too, one which seems to throw up endless interpretations and harnesses the power of words.

Finally, moving off from Blake, now it might also be useful to consider which other writers realise and make use of the power of words. In fantasy there is Ursula le Guin who makes great play of the power and potency of Names, but there is someone else who got 'inside language' as Tolkien did - Anthony Burgess. Its too long since I read any of his work, but in the most infamous work, Clockwork Orange you can see how he does a reverse Tolkien, and instead of going back to the source and recovering meanings of words, he takes them forwards and sees where words might end up. I could write more on this and carry on all day, likely, but I must get me breakfast now, alas. The point is, I suppose, that Tolkien was not alone...

[littlemanpoet]

Interesting connections, Lal. I shall have to go back and try Blake again.

This potency of words makes it clear why various characters in LotR and the Sil will cry, "Speak not so!" when someone states an untruth or a mis-truth or worse, a curse. I think it stood out most to me in the Athrabeth.

So if words have this much potency, imagine the impact of a single choice lie. Obviously lies have impact anyway, but the whole notion here seems to lend itself to the idea (Tolkien's in part) that humans are by their very nature sub-creators; therefore, every word we speak is an act of sub-creation. To sub-create a falsehood is to undercut the very fabric of reality, creating a tear in the tapestry of what is. To correct it requires uncovering the lie and knitting back together the torn fabric of reality.

Imagine writing this way, whether rpg or actual myth!

[Lalwendë]

Interesting point about Lies and stories. If you want to read what one writer has to say about Lies, try His Dark Materials.

Note, may be a plot spoiler here so don't read if you don't want the books ruining for you (though its not a big spolier)!

In The Amber Spyglass Lyra feels compelled to go to the Land of the Dead, a horrible place ruled over by the Harpies; this is where all the dead people go and they are effectively stuck here. Lyra tries to tell the Harpies stories, but they attack her. This is because although she has told them stories, she has told them lies. The deal is that if Lyra tells them stories which are true, then she will be shown the way out, and what's more, if anyone else who goes there tells the Harpies True Stories then they too will be allowed to leave (and to finally be free).

What Pullman is saying here is on one level that we should all make sure to live our lives to the full and to have plenty of stories to tell at the end of it all, but he's also saying that the very best stories are True. In the world he creates, lies at first help Lyra, help her find her way out of a whole lot of trouble (hence her nickname Silvertongue), but when it comes to the most serious of situations, she learns that lies are wrong, and that they do not make for good stories; very interesting in the context of a lie 'tearing' the fabric of reality, considering all the cutting between worlds which happens in these books!

[littlemanpoet]

Indeed. I read the trilogy a few years ago. I enjoyed it very much until it started into its polemics against the paper-tiger church, but that's another issue. Interesting point about lies and silvertongues and literal cutting between worlds! .... which, if I recall, actually did, within the story, serve to injure the worlds and the universe itself .... right?

[Lalwendë]

It does indeed injure the fabric of the universe/s, in fact all this cutting goes even further and puts life and human consciousness itself in peril. I find it interesting that he basically says that lies are not just wrong but in the end affect us after death. Mind you, he is not just the anti-religion polemicist that he's been painted to be. After another close reading of the text and then branching off into some of his supplementary writings and works he was inspired by, I find I regret blasting him for his work! I still think he's wrong about Tolkien (but that's a long story...)...An awful lot of misinformation has spread about HDM (which he has not always sought to correct, no doubt he thinks he needs the publicity!). He is not blasting the Catholic church but an imagined extreme form of Calvinism, and he is not an atheist, though I understand how it would take some effort for a Christian reader to get over what he says - the Archbishop of Canterbury lauds the books by the way.

Anyway, again here we have another writer (no doubt influenced heavily by Blake) who deals in 'mythic unities' - much of HDM deals with the nature of the relationship between body and soul, and with Pullman we have another writer who sees the importance of this and tries to clutch at that mysterious 'something'.

[littlemanpoet]

Somehow, subcreation seems to be an important piece of this whole thing. Writing or speaking story creates a new woven fabric of meaning and imagined (imaged?) reality, and one can be successful in such a subcreation, or not. Which links this thread to the one on "the wrong kind of details".

There are writers who just don't get it, but we read their hack anyway, and come away feeling unsatisfied. Why? Because they don't cause wonder, and they don't succeed in effecting a recovered view of reality. What is this recovered view? It is to more closely (certainly not completely!) have revealed to our perception the livingness of creation; which means mythic unities instead of seeing things piecemeal.

One way of keeping this kind of thing in mind is to look at the tree out your back window. Maybe it still has leaves. I just looked out the window at a tree in my neighbor's yard, just as a strong breeze was blowing through. It hit me, watching those leaves dance, that a tree is always interacting with its environment (a rather cold and scientific way of putting it, I admit); that is, leaves never just are. They are sprouting, moving, growing, changing in color, dying, falling, mouldering. Real life is always busy recreating. It's a work of art that never stops being made. I'm failing for words. Maybe you understand what I'm trying to describe in this cumbersome way.