What's "real," anyway?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I've been reading through the thread "All made up?" (begun by davem, credit where credit etc) and it's got me to thinking about the 'reality' of Middle Earth.

Now, I know that The Lord of the Rings does not chronicle 'real' historical events, but at the same time there is a profound reality to the book. And I'm not just talking about the verisimilitude of the book, the sense that is 'feels' real thanks to the incredible detail and coherence of it all. I'm talking about the reality that all art has (or aspires to).

I mean, no piece of art is real. Hamlet is not a real person, but an actor performing a role. If he is doing a good job in an effective production, then it's more real than a bad actor in an indifferent version of the play. But that's not to say, of course, that Hamlet -- or any fictional character -- is fake or utterly divorced from reality. There is something in art that is real. To quote from Hamlet himself, "the purpose of art is, as it were, to hold a mirror up to nature."

So here's where I'm going with this. How much reality is there in the art of Tolkien's creation? When we put LotR beside something like Hamlet is it as real as Shakespeare's play? Put more accurately, is it real in the same way?

On the one hand, I think it's easy to see Tolkien's art as being less real, or further removed from reality, insofar as the mirror that he gives us does not reflect a nature that we ourselves live in. On the other hand, that seems to me a kind of honesty: it's almost as though Tolkien is admitting that art is not real, and so he's not going to try and fool us into thinking it's real (that's a trick like Sauron would play) and so the most realistic thing he can do is to create an art that is clearly artful. Its ability to announced itself as art makes it more honestly real!

Does this make any sense at all?

I suppose what I am getting at is the question of where and in what ways does the art that brings Middle Earth to life impinge upon, reflect, engage, connect with reality? What is real about Middle Earth? Is it possible to see Frodo, orcs, a magic ring, Ents and all the richness of Tolkien's fabulous world as being real in the same way that Hamlet is real, or a painting of a pond by Degas?

One last thought-fragment, that probably has nothing to do with the above, but something tells me it might -- Oscar Wilde wrote that "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written." Is the whole question of 'the real' in relation to books a red herring? The Lord of the Rings is just "well written," end of story?

[Imladris]

I will attempt to answer your post (which is a brilliant idea as always).

I suppose that there are many things that make LotR real. I do not believe that Oscar Wilde had it right, though and this is why I think so. Books are like words. Either they are true, or they are not true.

What makes a book real, I believe, is if it speaks truth -- if it tells the truth about the universe. That's why books/stories (think The Sting) that make heroes out of bad guys leave an unsatisfying taste in the mouth. It's because they aren't true. Bad guys can never and will never make good role models.

I think that is why Lord of the Rings feels real. How often have we done a good deed and been repayed with loss or badness? Frodo saved the Shire -- yet he could not enjoy it. How often have we tried to do something and failed? Frodo could not throw the Ring into the Mount Doom. He failed.

In short, LotR tells us the evils of war (and life is a war isn't it? There's always fights between individuals [brother/sister squabbles for instance] and among nations), that even though good will (eventually) triumph we all suffer both on a world wide scale and on an individual scale.

[Encaitare]

It seems to me that it is as "real" as a story of its type can be. Certainly we would not expect to encounter elves and Rings of Power in our own world, but in Middle-earth it all seems to make sense. Tolkien hands these events and information to us and we simply accept it, because in Middle-earth that's just how things work.

This thread made me think of some sections in "On Fairy Stories," which I'm sure many Downers have read.

It is at any rate essential to a gunuine fairy-story, as distinct from the employment of this form for lesser or debased purposes, that it should be presented as "true." The meaning of "true" in this connexion I will condider in a moment. But since the fairy-story deals with "marvels," it cannot tolerate any frame or manchinery suggesting that the whole story in which they occur is a figment or illusion. The tale itself may, of course, be so good that one can ignore the frame.

and

Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called "willing suspension of disbelief." But this does not seem to me as a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful "sub-creator." He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is "true": it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed.You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in a work of art that has for us failed.

Whew! I think this sums up a lot of what I was going to say, so I won't repeat it. But the last sentence of the second excerpt I find particularly interesting. Oftentimes have I read books which are not as engrossing as the Lord of the Rings, and the whole time I feel like some kind of outsider, looking at these people in their little world and nitpicking, thinking, "Oh, well that could never happen," and being generally doubtful. It's like when you really try to like something you are reading, but simply can't get into it, and then it just isn't real anymore.

Middle-earth is not a perfect world; it is very much unlike our own and yet it holds the same truths of friendship, loyalty, love, despair, and hardship which tie it into our own world.

[davem]

I suppose this sums up the problems I have with the Narnia books (& with most fantasy novels - the only ones that have really drawn me in, apart from Tolkien's - even the 'lesser' works like Niggle & Roverandom - are Hope Mirlee's Lud in the Mist & John Crowley's Little, Big). The 'reality' of Tolkien's works is due to a number of things - principally perhaps the time he took developing them. Tolkien's novels are not 'word processor' novels; they were written out long hand, amended, begun over & over, & we have all the texts, all the failed attempts, & since CT has made them available, all those versions now exist alongside the works published during Tolkien's lifetime. Trotter is a 'real' Tolkien character for me, for instance.

In a sense, all these texts add to the reality, because I think that's how they served Tolkien himself - they provided different angles, & he could explore Middle earth in numerous ways through this approach. Gergely Nagy has shown (The Adapted Text: The Lost Poetry of Beleriand) how in some of the versions of the stories certain poetic phrases have been lifted from the early versions like the Lost Tales or the poetic Lays & placed in the prose versions. This gives a sense of the'final' versions (if we can speak of such things) being constructs put together from earlier 'lost' versions of the stories. Take a passage from the Silmarillion, (ch 13, Of the Return of the Noldor. we have the prose 'version' in the book, but as Nagy points out, it seems to have been constructed from a 'lost' verse original:

and even as the Noldor set foot upon the strand
their cries were taken up into the hills & multiplied,
so that a clamour as of countless mighty voices
filled all the coasts of the North;
and all the noise of the burning of the ships at Losgar
went down the winds of the sea as a tumult of great wrath
and far away [all who heard that sound were filled with wonder]. Nagy, in Tolkien Studies, vol 1

Whether we consciously pick up on this at all, on some level we recognise, with the different styles we encounter even within a single paragraph, that it is a 'construct', & that some other texts, which we don't have, lie behind what we do. This gives an illusion of 'depth', as Nagy points out.

With other writers, who don't have that wealth of background material to draw on, we don't get that sense, so the story, however 'psychologically complex' the characters may seem, is 'one dimensional'.

When Tolkien adds to that fragments of ancient myth (see Shippey in the same volume 'Light Elves, Dark Elves & Others: Tolkien's Elvish Problem), fairy story, folk lore, things we know, or half-know & so recognise on some level, his 'secondary world' takes on a feeling of 'reality'.

As John Crowley states in Aegypt 'There is more than one history of the world' - there is the 'mythic' history, the 'artistic' history, running alongside the 'facts' that we're taught in school - which is the 'real' Arthur? - there's the fifth century Romano British warlord who fought a desperate defensive war against the invading Saxons, with ordinary swords & spears, & there's the Arthur of legend, guided by Merlin, & with his magical blade Excalibur uniting his people, sending off his knights on the Quest of the Holy Grail (another 'variant history', this time of the Church), & falling in battle with his nephew Mordred, embodiment of evil, but who did not truly die &, (like other heroes, including Finn MacCool) is only sleeping, & will awake when his land & people are in need.

Tolkien's 'history' is an alternative to the 'facts', yet both histories contend in our minds (& hearts). Tolkien's creation is speaking the 'language of the heart', & our hearts respond to its 'truth', because there is more than one history of the world.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Encaitare and davem, thanks for the references to those particular texts, but if I might be allowed to nitpick somewhat. . .they are not really on point, I'm afraid.

In that extract from FT, for example, Tolkien is talking about making the world seem "true" -- that is, believeable and consistent with itself. This is, I would posit, somewhat different from being real. Something can be, to quote the professor, "presented as 'true'" (and the quotation marks he puts around "true" are telling aren' they?) but still be "unreal". Take trolls, for example. . .

davem, those papers you cite are fascinating, in particular the Nagy, which I've not read but suddenly I want to. But I think that perhaps you are moving into the same territory of the text as being "presented as true" rather than the trickier idea of its reality. You say intriguing that Trotter is a "real character for you" -- I would love to know what is so real about him? He is a hobbit and a character that Tolkien decided not to use. He is the perfect example of the difference I see between the idea of the text being "presented as true" and the reality of it for us. A ranger hobbit is something that Tolkien realised would never be "true" in his world, and so he removed him. It would not have been internally consistent, and would have jarred the reader so that the appearance of the tale's reality would have been undone. And yet he "is a 'real' character" for you (and your use of those quotation marks is interesting).

Imladris -- thank you for tackling the truth/real conundrum head on when you write that

What makes a book real, I believe, is if it speaks truth

Sounds good, until I get to the example you cite. I do not share your reservations with The Sting, since I have no problem whatsoever with accepting the 'bad guy' as the 'good guy' in the context of the story. So here we get into the messy part -- is this movie real for me (because it and I share a truth: bad guys can be good guys) and not real for you (because you and it do not share that truth with us)? In this case, aren't we moving into some kind of acknowledgement that the reality of the art (in this case LotR) is entirely dependent upon the reader?

If I am willing to accept the art as true, then I make it real. And then this, ironically, leads us right back to the Wilde quote you dispute, insofar as the only way for the book to get me to accept it as true, is by being well-written!?!?

[Evisse the Blue]

insofar as the only way for the book to get me to accept it as true, is by being well-written!?!?

*nods head in agreement*

I'm sorry, I can't help to throw my three pieces of mithril in the pot:
Good book = true book = well-written book.
If Tolkien hadn't been such a talented writer, we wouldn't be here discussing the moral implications of the story. So everything begins with a well-written book. And a well-written book is a believable one, and it's true in the sense that it's believed to be true.

Another quote that may be more or less applicable here: "A poem must not mean but be" (Archibald MacLeish). For me that quote has come to imply that a good poem , or any work of art for that matter, is understood intuitively to 'exist'. Not in the sense of wishful thinking, in an alternate universe or something ... By accepting that it's true you recognize its 'wholeness', its beauty and the writer's talent in bringing it to life, if you will.
Maybe that is the greatest compliment to be payed to a work of art: that it is.
My apologies for being so incoherent at this time, maybe I'll manage to make more sense after I've slept on it.

I would have to say that I felt the same way when I read the books. I felt like it was real, even though it clearly isn't. I think that lotr could stand next to a Shakespearean play such as Hamlet, someday. I think that it would take time for lotr to be a realistic book/play. If it becomes a classic, like Hamlet then people just might have to think, 'is lotr real or not?'