What was it all for?

[davem]

I suppose my inspiration for this thread is a certain other one which shall remain nameless. I will only touch on it briefly as it deals with the polar opposite approach to this one.

If I can begin with a post of my own from the 'Tolkien's Literary Executor' thread:

At least CT has in the forefront of his mind his father's own wishes & hopes for the work. I wonder if those who follow him in the role will feel the same need or desire. How far one takes 'respect' for the author's wishes is a vexed question. For instance, Tolkien himself repeatedly attacked the breaking down of literary works in search of 'sources'. He first condemned this approach in the 'Tower' allegory in The Monsters & the Critics essay, & towards the end of his life attacked it in terms of approaching his own work - comparing it to a man who, after eating a meal, uses an emetic & sends the result to a chemist for analysis. Tolkien clearly found such an approach to his work wrongheaded & insulting, & requested it not to be done.

One other example could be added - Gandalf's condemnation of Saruman's boast about breaking the Light. Gandalf says that 'He who breaks a thing to find out what it is made of has left the path of wisdom'

Clearly it is not just Gandalf who dislikes this 'breaking down' approach. Gandalf's words could have been said - & effectively were in the essay & interview I cited - by Tolkien himself.

But what is his problem? What is wrong with looking for the sources & inspirations a writer used? Well, let me give some example?

Why does a man (or woman) build a house? Not, one assumes, because one day he stumbled across a pile of bricks & decided to cement them together to make them tidier, or to stop someone walking off with them. No, its far more likely, & far more logical to assume that what happened was that the man wanted a house to live in & went in search of the bricks & other materials he would need to do the job. So the intended use of the bricks comes first, the bricks come second.

Now, in the Monsters & Critics essay Tolkien took on thos critics who wanted to break down Beowulf into its constituent parts, because they considered those parts more important than what the poet had done with them. They effectively condemned the poet for his use of the 'historical' asides he made use of (the story of Finn, etc) in a poem about a dragon & said what he should have done was tell rather the story of Finn.

Tolkien's response was that the story of Beowulf & Grendel, & the Dragon, was not 'inferior', if only because that was the story the poet wanted to tell. The other stories (including references to Cain & Abel) were in there to give depth, & to point up incidents through analogy, but it is not actually necessary to understand those references to 'get' the story. Pulling Beowulf apart in order to find out more about Finn is a dead end, because the poem is not a collection of sources 'cemented' together, but a work of Art.

Tolkien seems always to have felt this way. M&C came at the 'beginning' of his career, Gandalf's statement in LotR around the 'middle' & the interview towards the end of his life. We can say with certainty that he never liked this breaking down approach. Of course, he himself was interested in the story of Finn, but not to the extent that he would shatter Beowulf to get at it.

Tolkien's attitude seems to have been that the sources a writer used were less important than what he did with them. He may have taken certain things from the Bible - but he didn't take everything from the Bible, nor did he take just anything from it. what he took from it (& what, exactly, he did take) he took for a very specific reason. He took what was useful to him. He took the same approach with elements & aspects of Norse, Finnish, Welsh, Irish & Germanic myth, from legend, folklore, Dunne's theories on time, his childhood & wartime experiences, anything & everything he had to hand & needed for the task in hand.

So, perhaps we are nearer to understanding Tolkien's dislike of source hunting. The Art is more than a simple amalgam of the sources he used - it is not a case of if you programmed a computer with the texts of the Bible, the Eddas, the Kalevala, Beowulf, etc you could get it to produce the Legendarium. You couldn't, because what would be lacking in what you programmed in would be the specific vision that inspired the man. The vision (like the desire to have a house to live in) lead him to use the materials he used - he didn't just take the materials he had to hand & decide to 'stick' them together: he 'stuck them together' in a very specific way.

There is a tendency at the moment among Tolkien scholars to focus on a biographical analysis (his childhood, his wartime experiences) or a source analysis (books he read, or might have read) in an attempt to understand his work, Less attention is focussed on what he actually did, & more importantly why he did it.

Now, John Garth has given us letters & diary entries from Tolkmien & the rest of the TCBS, which give the impression he was part of a movement which desired to bring about a 'moral regeneration' of the English people. In the letter to Milton Waldman written before the publication of LotR he stated that once upon a time he had wanted to create a mythology which he could dedicate to England, but that his crest had long since fallen. In the Foreword to the Second Edition of LotR he effectively tells his readers that the story has no 'inner meaning', it is not an 'allegory' of anything, & that he dislikes alllegory profoundly. Although he says he prefers 'applicability' one almost gets the impression that he isn't too keen on that & would prefer people to treat it as he himself does - as 'feigned history'.

Yet, a man who spends the whole of his adult life working to create a coherent 'Secondary World' is driven by something more than the desire to create a mere 'entertainment'. But what was that?

What we can say, given his statements on 'source hunting', is that he wasn't simply out to amalgamate various ideas & source texts into a coherent 'whole', Those things were the raw materials he used to do something - but what was that 'something'? What did he want to build, & what did he want to build it for?

(Please, no-one say it was to proseletiize, or I'll end up banned from my own thread.....)

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

What did he want to build, & what did he want to build it for?

My immediate reaction, I suppose, is "What does it matter?" My own reaction to Tolkien's works is more important to me than his purpose in writing them. But that may just be me.

But ... and I hesitate to ask this ... but, if you are seeking to establish Tolkien's purpose in writing what he did, does that not inevitably involve a consideration of his experiences, influences and sources - those things that led him to write it? And, quite apart from the difficulty of reaching any definitive conclusions on these issues, does that not therefore involve "breaking the thing down" in order to examine it?

Any other approach would surely simply involve stating one's own personal view, clouded by one's own reactions, beliefs and experiences, of what his purpose was.

[davem]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

My immediate reaction, I suppose, is "What does it matter?" My own reaction to Tolkien's works is more important to me than his purpose in writing them. But that may just be me.

But ... and I hesitate to ask this ... but, if you are seeking to establish Tolkien's purpose in writing what he did, does that not inevitably involve a consideration of his experiences, influences and sources - those things that led him to write it? And, quite apart from the difficulty of reaching any definitive conclusions on these issues, does that not therefore involve "breaking the thing down" in order to examine it?

Well, his experiences obviously provided the raw material - but the Legendarium is not a 'biography'. He srew on various literary sources, yet it is not a re-write of Northern Myth, or of the Bible. It is something else.

In the Beowulf 'allegory' the man built the Tower to be able to 'look out on the Sea' - ie, he built it for a purpose. After his death his friends come along & sdismantle the Tower to find out wher the stones came from.

Now, there are two ways of looking at most things - 'Where did it come from?' & 'What is it for?' Source analysis tells us a great deal in answer to the former question, but almost nothing in answer to the latter. Just because the former question is the easier to answer does not make it the more important, or more interesting, question.

Something drove a human being to spend 60 years of his life in the creation & perfection of something which has transfixed millions of readers for the last two generations & looks likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Leaving aside the Bible, one has to say that the other sources he used have not had such a profound effect. Why not? When we read about Surtr crossing Bifrost we are not as affected as when we read of Gandalf's stand against the Balrog. So, finding sources will not explain the effect the work has on us, nor will it explain why Tolkien chose that particular image out of all the ones Tolkien could have chosen from the Pagan sources he had to hand.

Tolkien spent 60 years doing something, & he must have had a reason for devoting such time & energy to it. He wasn't just using 'sources', he was using them for something.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by davem

he was using them for something.

Presumably it had something to do with telling a story.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

Presumably it had something to do with telling a story.

What kind of story, & why did he want to tell it? Why was it so important that it be 'perfect'? What did he mean when he stated that he was all the time trying to discover 'what really happened'?

In the form of that 'story' he was trying to communicate some 'fact' which he believed to be 'external' (at least to his conscious mind')

One review of the Silmarillion asked the question 'How, given little over half a century, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people?' I'd also ask why? & 'What for?

Does it not also make you feel both awed & amazed at what a human being can do?

Originally Posted by Bb

How about he was bored and thought he could write a better yarn out of it all. Or how about he just couldn't let go of words, which told him things that he hadn't seen explored before about them.

Possibly. I just think its bigger (& deeper) than that..... He was 'driven', staying up late into the night over a period of many years. Boredom isn't a good enough explanation.

[Raynor]

Originally Posted by davem

Those things were the raw materials he used to do something - but what was that 'something'?

Well, if we take into considerations these two refferences:

Originally Posted by "He had been inside his language, Part Four, JRRT Biography, by H. Carpenter

But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver. No, said Tolkien, they are not. And, indicating the great trees of Magdalen Grove as their branches bent in the wind, he struck out a different line of argument.
You call a tree a tree, he said, and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a ‘tree’ until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.
We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

Originally Posted by Mythopoeia

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seeds of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

So, I would say the myths represent to him a spiritual path, which redeems us; this may not be the same thing with Christianity, but I doubt that for him, God/Truth was any other than the biblical one.

[alatar]

Originally Posted by davem

Possibly. I just think its bigger (& deeper) than that..... He was 'driven', staying up late into the night over a period of many years. Boredom isn't a good enough explanation.

Is there any information about his mental condition? I don't mean that negatively, but was there an addictive nature in any family member? Was there a possible obsessive/compulsive disorder? Was there a need to 'make something' to counter the destruction that he'd witnessed in the war?

Or was he just trying to avoid real life? Why do we post here, as been said, as don't we have better (and more productive/beneficial) things to be doing?

[Lalwendë]

I detect two strains to this. What did Tolkien want, and how should we be looking at it.

Why did he write LotR? I don't know. Why do I have an urge to stuff the garden full of plants every year? Why do I suddenly like painting in the brightest colours I can get hold of? Why do I make up stories in my head? I would say its simply the Creative Urge. Scientifically speaking it means he had a highly active frontal lobe (also common in mental illness). Pyschologically speaking that he had secret urges to express. Classically speaking it was his Muse um...fiddling with his head. We've all done it, even cavemen did it. If any of us knew why then we'd be rich.

Yes, he spent a lot of time on this work and you could say he had an obsession with it, but this may be partly to do with his perfectionism. Maybe he had a disorder relating to OCD or somesuch, but we can't possibly say that. Maybe it was simply his form of comfort and escape. He certainly tried to intellectualise his urge over the years, many of his statements showing how he matured with age - high-minded when young about moral regneration and suchlike he grew up after a while and realised he wasn't going to change the world. Which also shows that real wisdom lies in appreciating your own insignificance in the great structure of things.

But it all boils down to a creative urge, a strong one. He didn't just work on the world he created for LotR, he attempted, and even wrote, other stories. He drew complex maps. He fiddled with invented languages all his life. he was a competent and prolific artist. he created the Father Christmas Letters for his kids (what a cool and thoughtful father, better than some plastic from Toys R Us!). He wrote lectures. He taught.

How should we be looking at it? Well since Barthes said the Author is Dead in 1968, you can look at it any ruddy way you like, apparently. In fact most of 20th century critical theory (New Criticism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Reader-response) has pretty much ignored the Author and what he or she intended. Though some Marxist criticism seraches out the hidden political agenda of the writer. When the TS give lots of talks on the life of Tolkien in the hope of illuminating us, they're pretty much living in Victorian times as far as Critical theory goes. However, funnily enough, most readers want a bit of biography, want a bit of contemporary context.

If you want to look at the text in and of itself, without reference to author or source, then you need to use New Criticism. Post Structuralism will look at the readers, and the sources, but not look at the text particularly. Reader Response gets us all in a group and asks us how it makes us feel (and then we have a group hug ). But ultimately Tolkien is a special case, as are some other fantasy writers, as he's not just a novelist but a world builder, and much of what we do is to find our way around in that world he created amongst the mass of information, so maybe no kind of theory at all is more valid than another.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien spent 60 years doing something, & he must have had a reason for devoting such time & energy to it. He wasn't just using 'sources', he was using them for something.

How about he was bored and thought he could write a better yarn out of it all. Or how about he just couldn't let go of words, which told him things that he hadn't seen explored before about them.

btw, I really don't think one can generalise about how "we" aren't as moved by Surtr at Bifrost as by Gandalf at Moria. But I guess I'm just old fashioned enough to think that one person using the Royal We is enough.