Yes, Tolkien is Wonderful, but...

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Yet what Tolkien's vision lacks is the unexplainable or the marvellous. It could simply be my reading of M-e, but I don't think that in any way the rationalism which underpins it is ever destablised or distorted. Our contemporary world view is never challenged or threatened by Tolkien's vision. Yes, he objects mightily to the satanic mills and the power hungry but at the heart of his vision remains an empowerment of rational and objective depiction. After all, Eru grounds his Legendarium, and so there remains a particular sense of orderedness to his mythology. Reality is not distorted in Tolkien, but expanded to explain balrogs, orcs, rings of power, suspension of time. Despite all our discussions here there is little in Tolkien that remains inexplicable or unexpected, not even eucatastrophe.

I take the point, but I'm not sure that it applies to Smith, or even Niggle - or maybe to the latter only if viewed as allegory. Smith, certainly, includes the unexplainable & the marvellous. And yet... it seems Tolkien struggled with that very aspect of SoWM - to the extent that he wrote an essay 'explaining' the inexplicable elements. Of course, if he hadn't been the kind of writer who was driven to explain & rationalise then M-e would have been so much less complete & believable.