What did Tolkien really mean ....

[Child of the 7th Age]

Littlemanpoet,
Oh, Littlemanpoet, what have you done? I've consciously been avoiding Books on account of too many interesting rpgs and the demands of real life. But you also know I can't resist a discussion on this topic.

Now that I've skimmed back over my posts from our last discussion, I wanted to say something more, partly drawing on that thread and partly on later ideas.

First, I've gone back and forth on this issue for years. I can really only tell you where I stand right now. If you talk to me next week, I may be somewhere totally different. Yet, generally, the more I've read, the more certain I feel that Tolkien's Legendarium and even the LotR were not consciously Christian or Catholic in their origins. There were other factors at work: the impact of the northern traditions, the pull of faerie, Tolkien's sense of loss that England had no stories of its own bound up with its language and its soil, a desire to bring about a moral rejuvenation, and certainly the sheer pull of language. Yet let me be careful to voice a caveat here. The author's religious beliefs naturally have some bearing on his personal frame of reference (as might happen with anyone) and this was bound to leave a few gentle footprints on the Legendarium, and definitely to influence the values he was espousing. Yet overall I see nothing to suggest that Tolkien was consciously attempting to put forward a Catholic or Christian position in his story when he first began his work. Those are two separate things. And I feel it remained that way for many years.

At the same time I sense a shift in Tolkien's attitudes that came about gradually. A tiny change here and another one there....what came out at the end was different than what was initially envisioned. That is why in one place we can have Tolkien saying that he sees the inclusion of the Christian religion as the greatest drawback of the Arthurian corpus yet a number of years later go on himself to highlight the exchange between Finrod and Andreth as part of the history of Arda with its obvious reference to the ultimate incarnation of Eru.

So many people, including Christopher himself, are downright uncomfortable with the Andreth dialogue and other pieces that JRRT wrote in the final years of his life. It seems like a drawing away from his original roots of faerie and northern myth and a pull towards modern "reality", an explicit attempt to incorporate scientific knowledge and a more doctrinaire religious attitude into the Legendarium itself. I feel that, like it or not, that is part of what happened to Tolkien and the Legendarium. No human being stands still, but very few of us are so dedicated to a particular story or subcreated world that we take it inside our soul and carefully develop it for over fifty years. That story is bound to reflect some of the personal changes that Tolkien went through during that long period.

To me the two most "glaring" examples of the religious revisions of the Legendarium were the Andreth dialogue, which has been mentioned above, and the depiction of Galadriel, something that was brought up in the last thread. The Galadriel who initially rebelled against the Valar is so, so different from the Galadriel given to us in the later Letters and in UT itself. The latter was actually written in the final month of Tolkien's life, although Christopher has said that his father wanted to incorporate this changed portrait of Galadriel into the Silm. When Tolkien describes Galadriel as "unstained" and says "she had committed no evil deeds", it's hard for me not to overlook the clear religious implication. Tolkien himself has acknowledged Galadriel's tie to Mary.

But we do have to be careful here. It seems to me there are two types of revisions going on. One is the actual revisions on paper such as the two instances cited above: Tolkien sat down and wrote something to be added to the Legendarium. Perhaps just as critical, however, were those revisions that occurred not on paper but in Tolkien's own mind. It wasn't the words that changed, but his understanding of the meaning behind those words. Lembas, for instance, had always been in LotR....suddenly, in the Letters, lembas becomes an echo of the Eucharist.

Sometimes Tolkien seems genuinely surprised when he sensed more meaning in his words than he had thought was there in the first place. I especially recall that very well known letter written just two years before Tolkien died when a member of parliament visited him. One thing led to another and the gentlemen asked: "Of course, you don't suppose , do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?" My jaw always drops open a little when I read Tolkien's reply:

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 seems their lamentable unfitness for the purpose..."

Tolkien then went on to add that readers had approached him and, in first encountering the story, had felt the dim dawning of religious feeling.

So what are we to make of this? Any discussion of the Christian or Catholic revisions of LotR and the Legendarium must consider the contents of this rather strange letter. It seems to me we have three choices. Maybe Tolkien was lying: he said and wrote something that he didn't believe just to impress the M.P. or the person (Miss Batten-Phelps) to whom he sent the letter. Or perhaps in the last two years of his life, Tolkien was sadly deluded: he lacked the mental capacity or stability to interpret what was actually going on. To put it bluntly, he simply didn't understand the meaning of what he wrote in that letter. Or we can go with alternative three: that, after a lifetime of devotion to the Legendarium and less than two years before his death, Tolkien had come to believe that he had been chosen as an instrument by God to convey the story of Arda to those around him and that this story contained some profound religious truths that had an immediate impact on at least a few of his readers. Of the three options listed, I prefer this one. Morever, I don't think anyone begins thinking something like this overnight. It has to be a gradual thing.

It's not important whether you or I believe that Tolkien was God's instrument. What is important is that he felt this way by the end of his life. That's a pretty remarkable thing for anyone to say. That belief had to have influenced the development of the Legendarium in all its drafts and revisions, a fact that's buttressed by scattered evidence like the Andreth dialogue and the change in Galadriel. Someone (not me for sure!) is going to have to spend a very long time going through the drafts and nailing all this down, but I believe it's there. I'm sure it will be very fuzzy; the chronology won't be nice and tidy. Tolkien's mind can be called many things but "nice and tidy" isn't one of them.

You are right, too, to raise the issue of Tolkien's view of the machine and nature. It could be another piece of the puzzle, especially if we could somehow find out the particular lessons that Tolkien was taught as part of his religious instruction. I could cite historical examples of this kind of attitude towards the machine, but I don't know anything about Tolkien's exposure to such ideas. And overall I do not know enough about 20th century Catholic thought pre and post Vatican II to be able to address much of this with any confidence. It's also interesting to note that Tolkien expressed at least some reservations in his letters about the changes in the Catholic Church on account of Vatican 2.

Sorry this is so looong...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

Surely the classic definition should suffice.

No. The word 'fundamentally' is a strong one, and on it hangs a lot of meaning. we must remember that Tolkien was also an Englishman and we use English differently.

Originally Posted by lmp

You seem to be implying that Tolkien is engaging in untruth. Are you suggesting that Tolkien is telling a fellow Catholic something he doesn't really think is true, because his audience happens to be Catholic?

No. But he was writing to a particular type of person, writing a personal letter, on a particular topic. In that respect we must consider that this was not intended as a public statement, it was a reply to a personal letter. Tolkien at all times made sure to state publicly things which he wanted readers to know about his work, for example that it was not an allegory. His letters were personal discussions about interpretation and you can often see that thoughts simply spring to his mind as he writes; and he wrote with ink, so letters would be very difficult to go back and correct (unlike nowadays when we have e-mail and 'delete' keys), which is why we so often see caveats made after grand statements. Indeed, in this self same letter we see that happening. So we need to check ourselves when using the Letters.

Originally Posted by lmp

Perhaps and perhaps not. What seems most likely to me is that this Catholic author is acknowledging something he knows to be true, to a fellow Catholic reader; basically letting him in on a secret that the rest of the reading world need not know. The problem is, we have the Letter before us. Isn't it true that his public statements by and large stated what he didn't want his readers to miscontrue from LotR?

Have we read the introduction to Lord of the Rings, where Tolkien categorically states in a very public way:

Originally Posted by Tolkien

As for any inner meaning or message it has in the intention of the author, none.

Let's look again at what he said the infamous letter:

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;

1. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work Tolkien claims it is a 'fundamentally' Catholic work. He does not mean it is a 'rules based' 'fundamental' work, he means at heart it's the work of a Catholic.

2. unconsciously so at first He says it was done 'unconsciously so at first' - meaning he didn't even consider Catholicism as he was writing, and if anything got into his work, it wasn't there by intention.

3. but consciously in the revision He says 'consciously in the revision'. Here we're all at sea as we do not know if he sat there editing with Catholicism in mind, or if he means that he could see this after publication, or at which point in the whole process of writing. We just don't know. But he does tell us more later in the letter.

4. I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world He states that he did make a very conscious effort to remove anything which could 'identify' Real World religions in his text. Why did he do this? Because he recognised that his work was sympathetic to his own religion anyway? Because he didn't want intrusions on a secondary world? Because he thought it might seem offensive to fellow Catholics? Because it was a aesthetic decision as he was so fearful of allegory?

5. the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism He knows that any links to real world religion are 'absorbed' into the story - meaning that the narrative carries any elements which may have found their way down his pen and onto the page. He also knows that amongst all the other symbolism he has chosen he may indeed have included some Catholic imagery.

6. The most important point, the one which gets forgotten. The Context. The Qualifier. 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; Tolkien's caveat. He says that what he has just written down is quite pompous, he cannot correct it (he does not have a word processor or Tippex!) but he can qualify it. Letters are not Literature, they are personal, and though Tolkien would occasionally throw one away, why do that when a Qualifier can be added? He tells his correspondent that the truth of it is that he actually did very little planning.

We can't argue with what Tolkien says, no matter how much we want something to mean something else. I'm not asserting, merely breaking down what he says, and using the full context of his statement, not just the juicy bit.

The other important point to note is Tolkien's particular distaste for literature with 'messages'. And this increased as he aged. He grew to dislike much of the work he is 'famed' for liking (much of which he wasn't exactly fanatical about anyway), including George MacDonald and GK Chesterton, and his favourites amongst the works of Lewis were his sci-fi tales, he disliked his religious works (possibly also due to Lewis being Anglican?) and Narnia.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

OK -- being terribly reductive and probably simplistic here...but couldn't Tolkien simply have been acknowledging the difference between the creating-writer who pens a first draft and the editing-writer who takes that great shambles and renders it "finished" insofar as he makes sure that it "makes sense" (i.e. is internally coherent, presents a unified story and vision of its characters and action).

The creating-writer (in this model) simply goes with the story and gets it down. The editing-writer is one who shapes that material -- and given that Tolkien was Catholic and his work engages with moral issues it makes sense that this act of re-vision would be undertaken from that perspective.

Maybe the Professor was just being honest: "As I was revising the story I was conscious of the fact that I was a Catholic man who was reshaping it and rendering it coherent."

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

OK -- being terribly reductive and probably simplistic here...but couldn't Tolkien simply have been acknowledging the difference between the creating-writer who pens a first draft and the editing-writer who takes that great shambles and renders it "finished" insofar as he makes sure that it "makes sense" (i.e. is internally coherent, presents a unified story and vision of its characters and action).

The creating-writer (in this model) simply goes with the story and gets it down. The editing-writer is one who shapes that material -- and given that Tolkien was Catholic and his work engages with moral issues it makes sense that this act of re-vision would be undertaken from that perspective.

Maybe the Professor was just being honest: "As I was revising the story I was conscious of the fact that I was a Catholic man who was reshaping it and rendering it coherent."

Bearing in mind his dislike of allegory and 'message' Literature, you're probably correct. It likely does boil down to something as simple as the following: Tolkien taking up his text in the editing process and making sure references to Earthly religions were excised, and him making sure that the story itself was sympathetic to his own moral systems (e.g. you can imagine him making sure Aragorn behaved with perfect manners towards Eowyn, who obviously fancied him, a 'taken' man. And Love to Tolkien was a lifelong choice, something most definitely influenced by his Catholicism - though it might have also been personal!).

[mark12_30]

What Child and Fordie said.

What Child said: after having writen three novels and two rpg's, I reread them and frequently think, "My God, I remember writing that part-- but I didn't plan on it coming together like that." There is the sense of looking over your shoulder, and up.

And (regarding what Fordie said) if I now were to go back and edit them-- as I have half done with TFW, but never finished -- much would change. I would niggle (always did.) And I would seek to convey something somewhat different than I had initially sought to convey. Why? Because of the things that I see in it now that I didn't plan when I wrote it; because of that sense of looking over my shoulder, that has changed the way I myself see the story. It has two authors, now.