Art!

[Guinevere]

I agree with Legate and Greenie, too much analysing spoils the beauty of a text for me. After all, Tolkien wrote LotR to be enjoyed, not to be analysed!

from letter 181:

I hope you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? Enjoyed is the key-word. For it was written to amuse (in the highest sense): to be readable.

but:

But of course, if one sets out to address adults, they will not be pleased, excited or moved unless the whole, or the incidents, seem to be about something worth considering: there must be some relevance to the "human situation". So something of the teller's own reflections and "values" will inevitably get worked in. This is not the same as allegory.

Reading Legate's posts reminded me very much of Tolkien's Mythopoeia

a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath the ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth