Utopian Shire - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Bêthberry · 11-30-2008, 08:49 AM

This discussion between Laurinquë and Lalwendë brings in an important aspect of Tolkien's evironmental stance. It wasn't green he was after so much as beauty.

Sub-creation was for Tolkien an essential activity of human beings, as an expression of both beauty and power or control. Essentially as Lal points out the English landscape has been sub-created, with several effects, the most significant for many being an aesthetic quality often associated with Beauty. It is a beauty which has not always been associated with the Sublime, another aesthetic quality, which at least in the 18C was regarded as a quality of the kind of environment Laur speaks of, Mount Blanc in the Swiss Alps (which I read as her Alaskan wilderness, neither of which is a man-made environment (except as the oil and gas conglomerates and animal-hunting-by-airplane-advocates have their impact). This is a very different kind of beauty, one not associated with human sub-creation. It is a kind of landscape which often, in my reading of the historical expansion of North America, developes an adversarial relationship between humans and nature--and it is this very adversarial aspect which stimulates such tourist and sports development as heli-skiing and mountain climbing and championship snowmobiling races.

Beauty being always in the eye of the beholder, it would however seem that Tolkien would prefer, as a Utopia, a landscape that spoke of sub-creation.

11-30-2008, 08:49 AM	#14
Bêthberry Cryptic Aura Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 6,003	This discussion between Laurinquë and Lalwendë brings in an important aspect of Tolkien's evironmental stance. It wasn't green he was after so much as beauty. Sub-creation was for Tolkien an essential activity of human beings, as an expression of both beauty and power or control. Essentially as Lal points out the English landscape has been sub-created, with several effects, the most significant for many being an aesthetic quality often associated with Beauty. It is a beauty which has not always been associated with the Sublime, another aesthetic quality, which at least in the 18C was regarded as a quality of the kind of environment Laur speaks of, Mount Blanc in the Swiss Alps (which I read as her Alaskan wilderness, neither of which is a man-made environment (except as the oil and gas conglomerates and animal-hunting-by-airplane-advocates have their impact). This is a very different kind of beauty, one not associated with human sub-creation. It is a kind of landscape which often, in my reading of the historical expansion of North America, developes an adversarial relationship between humans and nature--and it is this very adversarial aspect which stimulates such tourist and sports development as heli-skiing and mountain climbing and championship snowmobiling races. Beauty being always in the eye of the beholder, it would however seem that Tolkien would prefer, as a Utopia, a landscape that spoke of sub-creation. __________________ I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. Last edited by Bêthberry; 11-30-2008 at 10:18 AM.