Should we think of ME as a real place?

[Farael]

While posting on the thread about dragon-fire, I formulated something that had been in my mind for a while and it is the seeming contradiction and blurred division of reality and fantasy in Tolkien's work.

Tolkien stated that he meant to create a mithology for England. He meant his stories to be (at least in principle) like the folk stories of other lands. This meant, of course, that these stories should be plausible and real-like, as they he wanted them to be like the history of times before history.

However, it is clear at the same time that Tolkien was not writing a semi-historical document, a compilation of folk stories fixed to look like they belonged to English history, but rather he was writing fantasy.

Seemingly, we have two contradicting approaches here. On one hand Tolkien meant to write something that was real-like and on the other, he was effectively writing about a world other than our own, even if he claimed this world to be a very ancient and forgotten Real World.

How can we bring both ideas together, without getting a headache? That is the main question I'm trying to answer here, and I'd welcome your opinion.

My best attempt at it, is to recognize Middle Earth as its own alternate world. It may be ancient Planet Earth, but the truth of the matter is that there were many things (and beings) that are nowhere to be found in modern Earth.

We are all aware of the different peoples of middle earth, from Elf to Hobbit and from Orc to Goblin. We are also aware of the seemingly magical objects that the inhabitants of Middle Earth claimed were not magic at all, but merely craft.

I think there lays the most important point. For the people of middle earth (furthermore, not for all peoples, but only for those who knew how to possibly make such things happen) it was not magic at all. Much like the tricks of an entertainer at a party seems like magic to most, but to the few who may know the trick it is simply that.

But at the same time, the laws of existance itself in Middle Earth are unlike that of modern Earth. I can tell you with a degree of confidence near-absolute, that it is impossible to pass on your own vital energy into a piece of jewlery, no matter how talented a jeweler you may be. Not to mention that sunlight comes, to the best of our knowledge, from the natural equivalent of a nuclear armagedon by H-bombs which happens fortunately far enough from us that we get to bask in the glow of it rather than be anihilated. In Middle Earth, sunlight comes from a celestial barge that carries the fruit of a tree from whence all light originally came.

So, I believe that the answer of this contradiction, after all this writing, is simple. There is no magic in Middle Earth. However, ME is magical to those of us confined to live in the world we call Planet Earth.

What do you think? can everything in Middle Earth be explained with parallels to the Real World? Is Middle Earth completely magical, and the peoples of Middle Earth just failed to call it "magic" because they thought it natural?

Or perhaps most improtantly. What is "real" and what is "magic" in Middle Earth?

[skip spence]

I don't see the contradiction you speak of.

Tolkien, as a devout christian, to my knowledge believed in a God who was before time, created the world and will judge us all when we die.

At the risk of sounding disrespectful to christian members of this forum, I don't think that this belief is any more realistic than the belief that fire-breathing dragons or invisibility rings once existed. The existance of God is in itself 'magical' so to speak, and if He exists, everything else science can't explain is also possible.

Tolkien seemed to be obsessed with the world and everything in it as fallen, as everything ancient is depicted as bigger, better and fairer. Even the sun is a second best alternative. So, in conclusion, I certainly believe that Tolkien was writing a mythology for this world we live in. Once very magical, now rather faded and grey.

[Nogrod]

I'm afraid the way you pose the question creates more problems it helps us to solve... (althought that's also the way all the good questions end up doing. )

But I can't see a problem between Tolkien's quasi-mythology and actual mythologies in contrast to the world and how it "really" is.

Originally Posted by Farael

But at the same time, the laws of existance itself in Middle Earth are unlike that of modern Earth. I can tell you with a degree of confidence near-absolute, that it is impossible to pass on your own vital energy into a piece of jewlery, no matter how talented a jeweler you may be. Not to mention that sunlight comes, to the best of our knowledge, from the natural equivalent of a nuclear armagedon by H-bombs which happens fortunately far enough from us that we get to bask in the glow of it rather than be anihilated. In Middle Earth, sunlight comes from a celestial barge that carries the fruit of a tree from whence all light originally came.

In the Scandinavian mythology the thunder was Thor riding his chariots over the sky and throwing bolts down on the Middle-earth inhabitated by humans... In Greek mythology it was just craft for Zeus to turn himself into a swan to charm a female to have sex with him. Etc. Still we would not venture to say they had imagined a different planet of which their tales told about. It was that mythology's way of depicting this world.

So maybe we could just say that Tolkien's mythology - like all mythologies - have their particular view of this world we live in embedded with diffent kinds of beliefs and explanations to different things occuring, to how one should lead one's life and so on.

An interesting spin off from this question surely is whether we can compare mythical worldviews to our more or less scientific contemporary view of things with the clear-cut division into natural and (non-existant) supernatural things. Or in which way the people long time ago perceived the notion of truth or explaining things.

I mean we have some interesting remnants in our contemporary thought and speech of some different ways of perceiving things to be true or right.

Like when you say your dearest mate is "a true friend".

Or when after seeing Amelié you say that "it was so true", or "it was so right" (as Amelié finally gets the man). The poetic truth that is: how the world should be as to fulfill the norm of beauty-goodness-truth -thing (kalos) which in the end is the absolute "truth".

[Meriadoc1961]

I guess I really do not see the contradiction, either. Tolkien created a mythological world that, nonetheless, was still THIS world which existed in a very ancient, pre-historical (or lost historical) setting. And although we may not see many of the peoples and races that figured so predominantly in the books, they still are among us, but choose to remain hidden from us as men have been sundered from them throughout the long centuries.

Merry

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

On first sight, there is no problem with taking Tolkien's world like any other mythology. It is just a Secondary world, as Tolkien himself calls it (for more, read his essay On Fairy-Stories, I am not going to elaborate here) - and through the "Secondary faith" we can see it as true. Like any other tale. That has nothing to do with the Primary world or the Primary faith. I guess the source of the topic's question is: what if part of the demands of the Secondary faith is that I include this, our, real world's past and natural laws and other things in it in order for the Secondary world to become true for me?

Well, fortunately, personally I don't have this problem. Now speaking only for myself: when I read a sentence like "It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves," I can accept it without bothering myself whether archaeologists ever found a Hobbit or a Dwarven skeleton. For me, M-E, despite the fact that it sometimes tries to look as a part of our world, is secluded and it's a Secondary World which is connected only to a "Secondary Primary world", i.e. an unreal Primary world, not the world I really live in. For me, believing that Moon is a vessel by the Secondary faith does not contradict in my mind with that Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, believing that Elves exist by the Secondary Faith does not interfere with my knowledge about the world population and believing in Ilúvatar by the Secondary Faith does not contradict the First Commandment. And vice versa. When we here, at the forum, really choose to scientifically analyse some problem, like whether the Dragons could contain fire in their belly, and we see it contradicting this world's physics, and we don't want to simply give up, I say: why not, let's continue. But the Secondary World first. If we come to the conclusion that either dragons could not have spit flames at all or either our physics is wrong, then we must step inside this Secondary primary world and say: yes, our physics are wrong (while this, of course, does not mean that we are going to preach about that on universities).