Chapter the Fifth: The Bug
I heard thunder. There was no thunder in my world. The rains came only and always at night, and the rains came without thunder and lightning. In the cave-story world, rain comes with thunder and thunder comes with lightning. This was thunder without lightning. If the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and lightning, then this was the thunder bug instead of the thunder. An arrogant story teller takes a class in modal logic. The teacher, being a bit of a zealot, begins the first class with a bold statement: “It is possible to translate any written narrative into a modal expression capable of being re-narrated as a computer program.†Since the student proved adept as well as arrogant, the teacher challenged him to take on a tougher task than the narratives pre-selected in the course material. The teacher had in mind a poem by Emily Dickinson. The arrogant young programmer took on Tolkien. He failed the course because he never turned in the completed project. He continued to work on it throughout his undergraduate degree program and tried (unsuccessfully) to convince his graduate degree committee that he should receive credit for it. He wrote several essays on Tolkien’s narrative works and middle earth mythology as a way of organizing his thoughts and convincing the committee that his work should count for something. He spent the rest of his life niggling on a translation of Tolkien’s middle-earth mythology into a computer program. Most of the essays are indecipherable as well as intolerable, but bits and pieces of the first essay he wrote keep playing the thunder bug in my brain.
I intend to “translate†Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythology into corresponding modal expressions as a prelude to composing a computer program. Any such attempt must begin by dissolving the chronological sequence of Tolkien’s narrated reality in order to foreground key thematic structures. I can hear my friends in the literature department objecting to any reduction of Tolkien’s art. Objection noted. I could respond to that objection by claiming that I not only acknowledge Tolkien’s unique genius but appreciate his art. However, I will not do so: I have too disciplined a mind to confuse creative genius with artistic achievement, and I am too ethical to misstate my own position. I can recognize his genius, but I am incapable of appreciating the artistic accomplishment. In undertaking the described project, I will not be distracted or deterred by any emotional attachment to the work of art I am dissecting. It is a cadaver, and my mind is a scalpel.
There are some who maintain that all analysis is a process of reducing multiplicity to unity and that the result of the process must always, as a consequence, be binary—that multiplicity into unity is essentially an expression of the underlying binary structure: multiplicity/unity; on/off; same/different. If so, then I am not actually saying anything meaningful when I state that I will initiate my dissection of Tolkien’s narration by identifying thematic binaries, but I have to start somewhere. I offer no justification for my choice more compelling than custom. Literary criticism has a long tradition of “reading†narrative art identifying thematic pairings as the apparent instrument, despite the lack of a particularly compelling rational foundation for it. Essayists posing as analysts typically perform the analysis without examination of the underlying premise that signifiers should be classified into “same†and “different.†That “should†is expressed as the deontic modal: it is obligatory that signifiers be grouped into ‘same’ and ‘different’. Is it possible to parse the obligation into more fundamental expressions? Literary critical theory has offered a variety of rationalizations giving the appearance of a legitimate starting point grounded in the necessities of the particular text, but each such rationalization can be reduced to the same underlying premise, and I have been unable to discover a proof of the premise. It should be noted that I offer this observation without aesthetic assessment. I accept in silence that such essays may be nonetheless brilliant, enlightening and entertaining.
I have been advised to avoid the arrogant tone that is apparently annoying to certain members of my degree committee. I have attempted to do so, but the tone seems to be an integral part of my “creative†process. I have also been asked (told) to explain why it is necessary to dissolve the chronological sequence of Tolkien’s narratives. I suppose I should have edited the first draft I submitted to include the requisite explanation without this comment (that is how this type of thing is usually done), but I wanted my reader to know that I had a better opinion of his/her intellect than my advisers have. I did not think any explanation should be necessary. Chronological sequence clouds the senses and confuses the judgment. Chronology is the engine of narration but not of causation—though it sometimes requires a disciplined mind to discern the difference (sometimes, not always). It is a simple thing to say that the logical expression “A then B†does not equal the temporal expression “A then B†but it is easier to do if someone else is pushing the stone up the hill.
I am also advised that I should say a word or two about modal logic. My response was that my reader knows more modal logic than I do, but I have learned to do what I am told. I use modals because it is the means to accomplish my end, not because I am impressed with the modal system. A modal “equation†qualifies the truth of a narrated expression that contains a judgment. The modal system of logic professes to describe the deductive behavior of the expressions: “it is necessary that†and “it is possible that†and can be extended to expressions of belief, temporal sequence and morality. Modal logic is the foundation for most effective applications of artificial intelligence. Modal logic is a symbolic language for talking about graphs, including flows of time or possible worlds.
These are the conventional modals:
Modal □ It is necessary that …
◊ It is possible that …
Deontic O It is obligatory that …
P It is permitted that …
F It is forbidden that …
Temporal G It will always be the case that …
F It will be the case that …
H It has always been the case that …
P It was the case that …
Temporal logics are designed to express temporal progression. It is customary to add the operator [] with the interpretation determined by the logic. [My digressions occur inside the temporal logic operator.] Each time increment is represented by a possible world. The relation is reflexive and transitive but not symmetrical—since we assume that time does not run backwards. [Why do we assume? Because there is no time otherwise—no time because we would be too busy: assumptions save time {Save time from what? Death? Eternal damnation?}.].
To begin, since Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythology is the object of this exercise, we must label it. We could simply assign a symbolic, such as “Xâ€, but I prefer descriptive labels. What is the nature of these collected narratives we have placed in the kill jar? According to the taxonomy provided to us by Tolkien (if one system is as good as another, we might as well use his), Middle-earth is a “Secondary World.â€
What does Tolkien mean by the phrase “Secondary World� It helps to know Coleridge, but it would help even more to know Tolkien—to really know Tolkien. The Primary World is the real world in which we live and breathe—“primary†in part because it is the world “first†perceived. The Primary World is the world created by the Creator. A Secondary World is an imagined world created by an artist, one in “which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside†(according to Tolkien), —a sub-creation according to the lexicon of the English Romantic tradition centered on the relationship between the divine power of creation in the mind of God and the divine power of imagination in the mind of a human artist (a sub-creator).
We must be more precise. What does the term “sub-creation†mean in the context of a narrative work of art? From a phenomenological perspective, it would be true to say that all narratives that describe a real or imagined world are “sub-creations.†If the reader assumes that the described world is real, then the narrative will be labeled “history.†If the reader assumes that the described world is not real, then the narrative will be labeled “fiction.†In either case, the narrative creates the illusion that the real or imagined world is “re-created†by the narrative; thus, the narrated world is a “sub-creation.†A small part of the discussion that would be necessary to parse this definitional problem is relevant to this essay, but, as a starting point for an analysis that is primarily organized on principles of classification, a definition (“all narratives are sub-creationsâ€) that can be reduced to “A = B†does little to advance our cause. So, I will, as Tolkien once put it, arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty Dumpty and use the term “sub-creation†to describe a certain kind of literature and not use it to define literature. For this day, and it may be for this day only, the term “sub-creation†shall refer to a literary work by a specific author (to exclude anonymous tales by the folk) in which the fictional world re-created by that literary work has “an inner consistency of reality.†Ignoring for the moment that it is possible to see the entire world in a single grain of sand, or in a single two-line poem, I will exclude from the entire genus of sub-creation those literary works that do not present a Secondary World to the reader—either because the work does not attempt to do so or because it attempts to do so and fails. How does the reader know whether a literary work creates a Secondary World? I would propose a simple, two-step analysis: a) Does the work suggest a sense of place? b) If so, does the sense of place have the same weight as character? If the answer to both questions is in the affirmative, then the literary work created a Secondary World. From this definition, several conclusions may be developed. 1) Not all literary works create a Secondary World. 2) A literary work can create a Secondary World that does not have an inner consistency of reality. 3) Within the taxonomy of literary works that create a Secondary World possessing an inner consistency of reality, that is, within the genus of sub-creation, there are three species: simple, virtual and mythological. 3a) It is possible for a literary work to present a “place†to the reader but not enter into it, as though the Secondary World were being shown to the reader through a window that remained shut. If the Secondary World remains self-consciously an “other†world, then the literary work can be classified as simple sub-creation. 3b) If the created “place†is sufficiently realized such that the reader imaginatively enters it and the Secondary World becomes, during the process of perception/act of imagination, the mind’s primary habitation, then it is a virtual sub-creation. 3c) If the created “place†is sufficiently realized to exist in the collective consciousness of the culture so that the Secondary World exists independently of the creator’s work, then it is a mythological sub-creation.
Next, though it may not be strictly necessary in order to perform the dissection (knowing that the cadaver was a janitor or a judge seems to help the students focus), we should waste a word or two describing the general themes of Tolkien’s narratives. What was the point? According to Tolkien (whose opinion may be no better than anyone else’s but it is certainly no worse): “Anyway all this stuff [it is, I suppose, fundamentally concerned with the problem of the relation of Art (and Sub-Creation) and Primary Reality] is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world, it is indeed usually at strife…†The “stuff†to which Tolkien refers in this passage is the ultimate sub-creation—the Middle-earth mythology. The “Machine†is his shorthand for the use and abuse of power epitomized in the magic versus enchantment dialectic that will become the focus of this essay (when I get around to it). We may suppose that Tolkien knew what he meant by the terms “Fall†and “Mortality†but this analysis will have to come to meaning without relying on any shortcuts offered by parole evidence. So, students, as we dissect this cadaver, we will be peeling away tissue—skin, fat, muscle, fiber and organ—in order to isolate and identify the “relation†of Art (or the sub-created Secondary World) and the Primary World. If we can assume that Tolkien lived in the Primary World and that his narratives (the cadaver) created a Secondary World (note that I did not presume that he created the Secondary World but that his narratives did), then it may prove productive to examine the relationship of Artist (the Primary World) and Art (the Secondary World).
Tolkien strenuously objected to interpretations based on real or (more often) presumed details of his personal life. [I will not offer evidence to support my assertion. To do so seems silly. The reader who has read his letters already knows that my statement is true. The reader who has not read Tolkien’s letters may either take my word for it or take the time to read the letters. If I did quote Tolkien in order to validate the assertion, the reader who had not read the letters would still have to take my word for it that I had truthfully and accurately quoted Tolkien. I do realize that there are other reasons to quote the author in such circumstances. Of all the possible reasons to do so, the one I like best could be described as “sharing.†Those who find something sufficiently interesting in a particular passage to bother quoting it may find pleasure in sharing the words with others. I would do so for that reason had I not spent so much time explaining why I did not do so.] I share Tolkien’s antipathy toward “psychological†readings of literature (and have always believed that we learn more about the psychological and/or emotional nature of the critic performing such an analysis than we do about either the author or the text). While Tolkien abhorred biographical interpretations, he certainly did not refrain from offering his opinion about what his “stuff†meant—what he intended it to mean—though he was quite capable of discussing his own text with another reader as though they were both reading from a level playing field—that he, as author, did not hold a privileged position in relation to the text’s meaning. Though I come not to praise Tolkien but to bury him, I would be foolish not to admit that his is the best qualified mind to serve as reader of the Tolkien narratives (that is not a true statement about many writers). So, we now ask, what did Tolkien hope to accomplish in creating this Secondary World? Tolkien: “Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level or romantic fairy-story—the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths—which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country…. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.â€
The thing that must be said is that Tolkien accomplished what he set out to do. Tolkien’s Middle-earth has achieved the same ontological status as traditional mythology. Tolkien intended to bequeath a mythological Secondary World to England, equivalent to the mythological Secondary Worlds existing in other cultures, and he succeeded. In order to succeed, he not only had to invent a Secondary World with “an inner consistency of reality†(to adopt his phrase from “On Fairy-Storiesâ€)—mere mortals have done as much—but the Secondary World had to have an engaging story to draw our attention in the first place, a richness of detail (the list of sub-creators who rival Tolkien in this regard grows thin), a layering of narrative forms (legend, folk tale, epic, romance, poetry, essay, genealogical, fragment), a sense of connectedness with “history,†and (here is the one that truly sets him apart) the Secondary World he created had to already exist in the collective consciousness. Let that last phrase sink in a bit and while it sinks, remember that myth is made in the mind of the listener. If myth is made in the mind of the listener, then myth is not made by the speaker (or author). If myth has no author, then myth is anonymous. In this case, anonymous does not simply mean “name withheld.†It means that there is no author. It is not difficult to understand how myth may be considered anonymous since myth is akin to folk tale—tales made by the common folk or folk in common. [That statement presupposes a distinction between myth and folk tale, but the explication of the distinction is a long digression and not material to this essay.] Both myth and folk tale come from story. However, myth, unlike folk tale, may be traced to a single teller, yet remain made in the mind of the listener/reader. How can an individual author write a collective story? Tolkien creates the impression that he “discovered†story more than invented it—particularly so in relation to Lord of the Rings. In a letter responding to a reader’s question, Tolkien said: “I am not a model of scholarship; but in the matter of the Third Age I regard myself as a ‘recorder’ only.†Tolkien was “in the zone†when he wrote Lord of the Rings. He was “unconscious†(I love sports metaphors). Perhaps not all the time, and certainly not when editing the story, but often enough, particularly when the story was taking him places he had never been. Tolkien has related the experience in his letters. He was literally discovering the story as he wrote it. However, and this is a huge “however,†the background, the myth/history sub-creation already existed, and, even though Tolkien invented it, he did not feel “free†to change that myth/history sub-creation in order to meet the needs of the story he was telling. I do not mean to suggest that Tolkien was not constantly refining his vision of Middle-earth; it was his life’s work and he never finished it. Surely we all share the same sense of how Tolkien worked. He attacked his own sub-creation with his keen intellect and vast knowledge of the origins of language until he uncovered the “truth†of the story.
Why do I think that is such a big deal? Homer built his literary work out of pre-existing myth/history. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s drama, Dante’s Inferno, many of the foundations of the western canon are literary works built from pre-existing mythic and/or historical material. This tension between the fact(s) of the existing “pre-story†material and the telling of new story is present in every work of literary genius. That statement may be a tautology but that does not mean it is not true. The remarkable thing about Tolkien is that the necessary tension exists even though the “fact†part of the equation was also invented by him.
The Secondary World was created by Tolkien but not fabricated. Tolkien created it from a boiling stewpot of existing mythological, historical and linguistic elements from a variety of western cultures in his attempt to give the English-speaking peoples something we lacked—“ a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic…†My reference to a “boiling stewpot†is intended to invoke Tolkien’s “soup†in his essay “On Fairy Stories.†The “soup†analogy begins innocently with a reference to George Dasent, the man who brought Norse mythology to the popular English culture. Tolkien distinguishes his soup from Dasent’s: “By ‘the soup’ I mean the story as it is served up by its author or teller, and by ‘the bones’ its sources or material.†He must have liked his soup because he keeps coming back to it: “Speaking of the history of stories and especially of fairy-stories we may say that the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling.†Tolkien’s “soup†and Levi-Strauss’s “cooked†owe their boil to the same fire: the collective consciousness over time. The thing that may be unique about Tolkien is that he not only dipped into the Cauldron of Story as a teller (all good tellers can), but he stirred the pot and played with the fire. Tolkien can cook.
Tolkien states his intent to create a mythology for England. Part of the reason he wanted to do so is the fairly obvious rationale Tolkien openly acknowledged and that was his desire to fill a void. England did not possess a unified mythology connecting creation myth to heroic legend to epic saga to the dimly lit beginnings of history. Other cultures had it. England needed it. Why did England “need†it? The easiest answer to that question is the one that places Tolkien in historical context—the nationalistic fervor sweeping Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that found expression in scientific and pseudo-scientific discoveries and recoveries of each culture’s “root†mythology. It has become almost a cliché to place Tolkien’s Project in that historical context (and, by extension, in the “context†of World War I and II). There is no doubt some truth to it. In fact, though it is an over simplification, the genesis of the Tolkien Project in the mind of the nineteen-year-old Tolkien is probably best understood that way. However, Tolkien did not remain nineteen. As he matured so did the Tolkien Project. Though it is again an over simplification, it makes some sense to understand the “need†for Tolkien’s Project as progressing from a historical/cultural need particular to England, to a literary need and, finally, to a human need. This progression may be chronological, if we adopt the days of Tolkien’s life in the Primary World as the time frame of reference, but if it is, the chronological progression mirrors a more fundamental logical progression.
The historical/cultural need particular to England has been noted. If one were to attempt a psychological reading of Tolkien’s narratives, it would belong in a discussion of this historical/cultural need—as though Tolkien was a product of his time—but that discussion is not material to this dissection and we will not pursue it further. As to the literary need, one should begin an examination of it by reading Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy-Stories.†Tolkien sought a “place†to stand against (or at least apart from) the general habitation of modern literature in the 20th century. Are we really prepared to meet Tolkien on his own ground as an artist? Few have understood it. Even fewer have attempted it. Do not be deceived by his rhetorical self-deprecation. Tolkien was a revolutionary. Single authors do not invent a mythology for an entire culture. Do they? Can they? Did Tolkien seriously believe he was capable of such a thing? He was not timid about scaling the heights. Consider the manner in which he began his “small†essay on fairy stories: “I propose to speak about fairy-stories.†Does that opening sound familiar? It certainly does to the student of poetics. Aristotle begins his Poetics: “I propose to treat of poetry in itself and of its various kinds…†Tolkien is not making an “inside†joke; he is flinging down the gauntlet. Who has noticed? Where are the readers with the strength of mind to follow Tolkien? Later in the essay, Tolkien quietly eviscerates the main stream of literary critical theory from Aristotle to “modernists†of the 20th century as he contrasts literary criticism founded on drama with the appreciation of “true†literature: “In human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature…. It is a misfortune that Drama, an art fundamentally distinct from Literature, should so commonly be considered together with it, or as a branch of it. Among these misfortunes we may reckon the depreciation of Fantasy. For in part at least this depreciation is due to the natural desire of critics to cry up the forms of literature or “imagination†that they themselves, innately or by training, prefer. And criticism in a country that has produced so great a Drama, and possesses the works of William Shakespeare, tends to be far too dramatic. But Drama is naturally hostile to Fantasy. Fantasy, even of the simplest kind, hardly ever succeeds in Drama, when that is presented as it should be, visibly and audibly acted…. For this precise reason—that the characters, and even the scenes, are in Drama not imagined but actually beheld—Drama is, even though it uses a similar material (words, verse, plot), an art fundamentally different from narrative art. Thus, if you prefer Drama to Literature (as many literary critics plainly do) or form your critical theories primarily from dramatic critics, or even from Drama, you are apt to misunderstand pure story-making, and to constrain it to the limitations of stage-plays. You are, for instance, likely to prefer characters, even the basest and dullest, to things. Very little about trees can be got into a play.â€
Tolkien’s disdain for those who “misunderstand pure story-making†and who prefer literature focused on “characters, even the basest and dullest…†should be evident—as should be the inference that Tolkien considers himself engaged in “pure story-making.†Those words fairly characterize the literary critics’ obsession with psychological realism or I am no logician. I cannot read the passage quoted above without thinking of a passage from the “Foreword to the Second Edition†in Lord of the Rings: “Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.†What kinds of writing would be preferred by those who have reviewed Tolkien’s work (perhaps, as he notes, without reading it) and found it absurd or contemptible? Why, the kind of writing that focuses on the basest and dullest characters, of course. This preference for “character development†or “psychological realism†is so pervasive in literary criticism that it rarely gets noticed much less challenged. It is assumed as though axiomatic that “serious†literature must present fully realized characters to the reader; otherwise, as in Tolkien’s case, the work will be, at best, assigned to an inferior genre (such as fantasy or science fiction) or worse, dismissed as juvenile or escapist. Give me a break. The dismissive attitude toward The Lord of the Rings is not dissimilar to the initial response critics have to any truly original work of art. Critics naturally come to the work from their existing frame of reference and they fail to appreciate or understand that the work proceeds from a different set of assumptions. [It is not difficult to imagine how much more readily Tolkien’s work would have been embraced by industrialized, mainstream, “academic†criticism if Frodo had only had the good fortune to have been sexually abused by Uncle Bilbo.] The point is that Tolkien understood the problem, identified the source (the sloppy thinking that led literary critical theory of “true literature†to be mistakenly based on principles appropriate to Drama), and recognized that his effort at “pure story-making†would be ridiculed. He knew he was not likely to persuade the “lit crit†crowd, but one can tell that he believed his determination to stick to his program was not only important for him personally but for Literature universally. If I were interested in setting literary criticism straight, I would write a dissertation on the literary need Tolkien sought to fill, but, as I said, I have no real appreciation for that sort of thing.
Instead, I will move on to the human need fueling Tolkien’s ambition. This need was personal to Tolkien, but it is not idiosyncratic. It is universal. According to the syllabus of this course, “deontic logic provides an analytical tool to explore the moral imperatives of human culture.†I hope the tool is as sharp as my need. The perceiving mind desires and creates order (remember, students, we are probing this cadaver for the relation of sub-creation and creation). In Tolkien’s creation myth, music precedes the world of light (and language). Why does Tolkien use music? Music is Tolkien’s means of expressing the existence of a pre-linguistic “story,†a story without words. It is also an “order†that exists before light, before the created world of matter and energy. In Tolkien's version of Genesis, music precedes the image of creation which precedes the first word, “Ea,†the word made flesh. Iluvatar says to the Ainur, “Behold your music!†and he showed to them a vision, giving to them sight where before there was only hearing. But the visualization was not complete, “for the history was incomplete and the circles of time not full-wrought when the vision was taken away.†Then Iluvatar said, “Ea! Let these things Be!†God said, “Let there BE light and there was light.†With the light, came language. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. The word light “fell†from the mind of God and became light and language (the first “fallâ€). Unity became multiplicity, but the power of creation remains in the word. It is the DNA contained in the etymology of each word. Adam was given the power to name the things of creation in order that Adam would have dominion over them. The Adamic power of naming is the power of sub-creation. Tolkien concludes his poem celebrating sub-creation: “we make still by the law in which we’re made.†God said the word light and light came into being. We are made by the Creator, according to the “law†of creation, and we “make†by that same law. The power is in the word, logos = law (the “law†by which we make and by which we are made). If the “order-creating mind†of the Artist (the sub-creator) imitates (or “equalsâ€) the “order-creating mind†of the Creator, then the sub-creation (the Secondary World) will have a “true†relation with creation (the Primary World).
If we substitute “perception†for (artistic) creation, we begin to understand that this dialectic is more than a poetics of expression; it is a poetics of existence. In my poetics of existence, Einstein’s equation E=mc2 is the equivalent of “the word made flesh.†The “word made flesh†is the original story—the origin of story. “To ask what is the origin of stories (however qualified) is to ask what is the origin of language and of the mind.†There is a spiritual aspect of Tolkien’s poetics, but there is also a scientific corollary. If Tolkien got “inside†language, then he was also “inside†the processes of the human mind that create not only story but order out of a chaos of perception. The mind desires order. Perception depends on it. The same power of the mind that makes sense out of sensation finds story in chaos. That order is something real and imagined; something we both seek and create. The child complains to the parent: “The story is not supposed to end that way!†How does the child know how a story is supposed to end? How do we know the story is not supposed to end that way? The same way we know harmony from disharmony. The same way we know story. The Valar got to hear the music from its original source. The rest of us have to pick it up as we go—aided, I suppose, by some sort of genetic predisposition to find grammar in chaos.
If my mind perceives (re-creates in my mind) the same order that exists in reality, then I am sane, which is the equivalent of saying that the world is sane and that I live in a sane world. The end—the goal—of culture is to live in a sane world. We need assurance that the order we perceive is the order of creation. History unfolds according to the themes of Illuvitar. That is why POWER is dangerous. Power changes the order of things in the Primary World. Magic is the exercise of power to make the Primary World take shape or conform according to an individual will, and when the Primary World does not do so, the inevitable consequence is loss, or worse, dementia and psychosis. [I do not comment on the consequence to the Primary World, because, to this point, our exercise does not require that we prove its existence. We are concerned only with the human perception or re-creation of a Primary World. However, it would be safe to assume that, if the Primary World exists, then it must be ordered (existence requires sequence, even if it is disconnected and random). This order might be referred to as the “natural†order of existence. Magic is the exercise of power to impose order upon what is already ordered: i.e., upon nature.] Melkor exercised power to make Middle-earth take shape according to his story, and the result was the history of Middle-earth, but it was not Melkor’s history—it was Illuvitar’s. The “law†of creation holds creation to the word of the law.
The creation of order may, by itself, be considered a moral act, but morality implies that the act may be either good or evil. The creation of order is good if the order created corresponds with the natural order (with capital “N†Nature in the Romantic tradition). This correspondence creates “enchanted†art. The creation of order is evil if the order created conflicts with the natural order. This conflict is created by magic through the exercise of power. The perception of this natural order and the willingness to act in accordance with it is likewise an act of “good†morality. The misperception of this natural order may simply be deluded or insane, or it may be an evil—certainly the willingness to act contrary to this natural order may be evil.
The Tolkien Project is not religious but it is moral. This “old†mythology of his that has been re-created by our collective consciousness possesses a positive morality—that fact is good news. The full impact of that good news on our culture will not be evident over the short term, but it is inevitable. These things function on generational time scales, but certain aspects of that positive morality obviously bore more immediate fruit. The Thoreau-Tolkien connection that flowered with environmentalists and the “green†movement in the late 1960’s is one such fruit, but there have been many others. Instead of cutting the Scouring of the Shire from the film by Peter Jackson, I held out a secret, vain hope that the episode would be filmed in such a way that it would be obvious “to eyes that could see†that the characters were re-enacting the Siege of the White House in Moscow.
Assume for the moment (assume time then assume time suspended) that Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythology is a narrative figuration of a dialectic. My reader quite naturally asks, “What type of dialectic?†I am trying to decide if I really care. I honestly had in mind a generic dialectic, possibly a Platonic dialectic, though Tolkien’s story offers the possibility of Hegelian synthesis, if viewed from the perspective of the reader rather than the story teller; probably not a Marxist dialectic, though individual actors in the mythological realm could obviously be characterized as an embodiment of dialectical materialism [I have been asked {told} to reduce the number of digressions, because they {the digressions—not those who keep trying to tell me what to do} make too many demands on my reader. I believe my reader can take whatever I dish out and more]. The key terms of this dialectic are “magic†and “enchantment.†What do these terms mean as Tolkien used them? Tolkien: “Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practiced, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills.â€
1. One man looks at a drinking glass containing equal amounts of air and water and sees a glass that is half full.
2. One man looks at a drinking glass containing equal amounts of air and water and sees a glass that is half empty.
3. One man looks at a drinking glass containing equal amounts of air and water and sees a glass that is full (of water and air).
4. One man looks at a drinking glass containing equal amounts of air and water and sees a glass that can be emptied (and filled with wine).
The first man is an optimist. The second man is a pessimist. The third man is an artist. The fourth man is a magician. The perception creating the “full†glass is an enchanted vision. The Russian formalists might call it “defamiliarization†but the effect is the same. The trick of creating a full glass by filling it with wine—turning water and air into wine—is accomplished through the use of power, defined by Tolkien as magic.
The goal of the Tolkien Project is to infuse the real world with enchantment. In Tolkien’s private lexicon, “magic†is the application of a technological art acting upon (using FORCE upon) the world to achieve an end. “Enchantment†is the realization of an imagined sub-creation—it is the ordering of a reality from within. The possibility of a real world order based on enchantment instead of magic was the soul of the Tolkien Project. For those who love Tolkien’s sub-created world, it can be a call to arms even for those who do not fully comprehend what they are fighting for or against. The critics who have long dismissed Tolkien’s work as an “escapist†fantasy fail to understand the revolutionary force behind the Tolkien Project: it is not a desire to escape to Middle Earth but to re-create this world as Middle-Earth.
In order to re-create Middle-Earth, according to the theory of relativity, it makes no difference whether we bring ourselves back in time to Middle-Earth or whether we bring Middle-Earth forward in time to ourselves. If we accept the call to arms, do we scour our local shire, plant more trees and oppose global consumerism (all noble acts) or is it possible to achieve the ultimate goal? What does Thoreau have to do with Tolkien? Why do I keep asking questions instead of answering them?
Try a thought experiment. What if Tolkien’s Middle-Earth was not set in a distant past but in a distant future? What sort of technology would be required to transform the present world into a Middle-Earth? Is the power of a wizard’s staff produced by magic or by an advanced technology? Is the healing power of the hands of the king a magical emanation or has technology become sufficiently advanced to bio-engineer a man so that his hands act as sophisticated medical diagnostic and therapeutic instruments?
The real question is not the technology but CONTROL. Was the world purposefully engineered to become Middle-Earth or did it evolve that way over time through a kind of second generation evolution accomplished through a synthesis of virtual (i.e., computer) natural selection and real (i.e. native biological) natural selection? That is what the War of the Rings will be about: Will Middle-Earth evolve under Gandalf’s loving care or be made by anvil and hammer under Sauron’s iron claw? Do you still believe that the Tolkien Project is a harmless escapist fantasy? Do not look back; look ahead.
The primary focus of the thought experiment is to provide a dynamic for the Tolkien Project that is revolutionary instead of reactionary. We are still fighting against the establishment’s insidious plot to contain the Tolkien Project. We need to let the genie out of the genre. Think in evolutionary terms. Myth has, if anything, more power in the world today and still more in the world tomorrow than it did in the mythological past, because the force of “cultural selection†is replacing “natural selection†in the engine of evolution. In contrasting Gandalf’s loving hand with Sauron’s iron claw, I did not mean that Gandalf would control the direction of change. The battle is whether cultural selection will be driven by magic or enchantment (Gandalf or Sauron). By Gandalf’s hand, I did not mean Gandalf’s hand—that would mean Gandalf has placed the ring on his finger. By Gandalf’s hand, I meant enchanted evolution. The re-creation of this world as middle earth will take place over thousands of years as an evolutionary necessity because the other path leads to extinction. This is not a fairy tale. Well, yes, it is a fairy tale, but it is a fairy tale about a possible future, not an impossible past. The Middle-earth I envision is one in which human beings would be connected to the world in a way that would be explained today as technological, but in such a way that it would be impossible to determine whether the world “controlled†us or we “controlled†it, and, in which the mechanism of control was equally present within, inherent in the “us†and the “it.â€
The idea would be something like the inverse of Clarke's law, if we substitute Tolkien's "enchantment" for Clarke's "magic." Clarke's law is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. What if the technology was sufficiently advanced such that it was indistinguishable from enchantment instead of magic, but in this case not from the perspective of the less advanced civilization but FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE ADVANCED CIVILIZATION? From the perspective of the less advanced civilization, the enchantment would look like technology. Please understand that I am not proposing some sort of Star Trek scenario that would give people the power of Gods where thought was immediately transformed into action/energy/fruitcake. What I have in mind is an advance in technology that might appear to be more of a retreat. There are two roads mankind might take toward becoming its own "sufficiently advanced technology"—one that leads to magic (and extinction) and the other to enchantment (and fulfillment).
The philosophy of “enchantment†is more than a relation between us and the world: it is a means of relating with the other. In Tolkien’s mythology, it is a bad thing to use power to exert dominion and control (“magicâ€) over the world (both the environment and other creatures). Remember Tom Bombadil: “Power to defy our Enemy is not in him [Bombadil], unless such power is in the earth itself. And yet we see that Sauron can torture and destroy the very hills.†I suppose one way to “teach†a morality of enchantment (how to relate to your fellow man) would be to use a familiar device: “WWGD†or “What would Gandalf do?†Gandalf was sent to middle earth to nurture/inspire/enchant opposition to Sauron, but he was not supposed to use power to oppose power. He would not take the ring. Thoreau and Tolkien really are kindred spirits. Thoreau responded to a public announcement concerning the technological feasibility of linking New England to Texas by telegraph in order to make instant communication possible by asking whether people in New England and Texas had anything to say to one another. “Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers [railroad ties—you know, the wood beams under the iron rails (I am attempting to compensate for cultural differences)], and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.†Tolkien wrote “Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic Power, but of Power (exerted for Domination). Nuclear physics can be used for that purpose. But they need not be. They need not be used at all. If there is a contemporary reference in my story at all it is to what seems to me the most widespread assumption of our time: that if a thing can be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false.†Recall the scene in which Saruman announces to Gandalf that Saruman is “Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colors,†while showing off his fancy new special-effects robe and flashing his ring. Gandalf responds: “I liked white better.†Saruman: “White! It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page may be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.†Gandalf: “In which case it is no longer white, and he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.†This short debate between Gandalf and Saruman is the finest expression in Lord of the Rings of the enchantment/magic dialect. For one thing, Tolkien’s words invoke the dialectic between nature’s rainbow and Newton’s rainbow. Newton demonstrated that white light can be scientifically broken into a spectrum of color deconstructing the miracle of nature’s rainbow. The Fall of Man can be metaphorically dramatized in the myth of Newton’s apple. Newton sits contented under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. An apple falls on his head. He takes a bite of the apple. He breaks white light into a rainbow of colors. He knows the secret of the rainbow. He can create a rainbow, but he can no longer see God’s rainbow.
I cut short the quotation from Thoreau about railroads before it really got interesting. Here is the rest: “Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.†I do not why I always think of Tolkien when I read this passage. Perhaps it is the element of the fantastic, although, when the black humor takes me, it is visualized more as a comedic, night of the living dead scene, with the “sleepers†constantly struggling to rise from beneath the iron rails and a gang of living men working frantically to nail them back in place.
Thoreau, playful as always, was reminding us of the obvious death toll railroad construction took on the lives of the Irish and Yankee men who worked on the crews, but he wanted us to realize that the constructed railroad is still taking lives—that is still rides upon the living who work to support it. The real cost is not in the building but in the keeping. But there is hope—the dead may rise up and put off the rail.
Thoreau begins the essay, “Walking,†by saying, “I wish to speak a word for Nature.†This essay is not as self-conscious an attempt as Tolkien’s to re-invent Aristotle’s Poetics, but it is Thoreau’s expression of a theory of poetics from the inside of language: “Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could express the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive sense, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them,--transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots.†The pun on “roots†is classic Thoreau. He loved to play on and with words. He is asking for a literary work in which the words “transplanted†to the page still have real earth clinging to their roots—their etymological roots. What does Thoreau mean here—what kind of literature does he seek? Superficial speculation might lead one to suggest one of the “nature†poets, someone like Wordsworth. Thoreau mentions the Lake Poets in particular when he observes that there is “plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself.†Where does he look for Nature in literature? “Mythology comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology its roots in than English literature: Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before fancy and imagination were affected with blight.â€
Mythology! Imagine that! Does Thoreau practice what he preached? Does he create the kind literary work he seeks? Not really, but he was a hell of a preacher. There were moments. I hear something akin to Tolkien’s breath blowing through a passage in Thoreau’s “Wild Apples.†Thoreau tells a tale of how the wild apple tree grows. Working with apple trees, he is already playing with pretty heavy mythological material. His story tells of the early life of the apple tree and how it is turned into a shrub by the constant “pruning†accomplished by cattle grazing over the years. The little apple shrub does not despair, but the cows do not cease their pruning: “The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty years or more, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad that they become their own fence, where some interior shoot, which their foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy: for it has not forgotten its high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit in triumph.†The history/myth (“storyâ€) of the apple tree is created (“spokenâ€) by nature though it must be “ghost written†by Thoreau. Thoreau did not invent the story—he discovered it. A work of literature created by an author constantly aware of the history, the “origins,†of the words he chooses will, of necessity, be mythological.
Logos originally meant language/thought/reason (the word thought). Muthos originally meant “utterance†(the word spoken). Cosmos originally meant beauty/harmony/order and the world/universe/creation (the word made flesh.) In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Then God spoke the word. He spoke the word, “light†and there was light, and the light was from God, but it was not with God. The word became real, became matter/energy, became flesh. In the beginning of the cosmos, there was logos and logos was with muthos and logos was muthos. As the unity of the holy trinity of cosmos/logos/muthos falls into multiplicity, the binary logos/muthos evolves into the archetype dualism: content versus form, mind versus body, logic versus instinct, truth versus fiction. The Fall of Man was first an etymological event before it became metaphorically expressed as a cosmological/historical/religious event. The utterance, the spoken word becomes the “body†of language. Aristotle uses “muthos†in Poetics where it is translated as plot (structure): “The plot, then, is the first principle and soul of tragedy.†Muthos = stories (language given form); logos = statements (language expressing truth). Muthos, once at one with logos in the cosmos, becomes contrasted with logos and once contrasted, opposed. Logos becomes aligned with truth and muthos with lies. Plato kicks the poet out of the Republic, and the rest is history—until Tolkien sub-creates the unity-->trinity-->multiplicity myth by going inside language to find the origin of story.
Tolkien got “inside†language in order to discover the original myths that created words: “Max Mueller’s view of mythology as a disease of language can be abandoned without regret. Mythology is not a disease at all… It would be more near the truth to say that languages… are a disease of mythology. But Language cannot, all the same, be dismissed. The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval.†[We interrupt this quotation to bring you Tolkien’s trinity: the incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale.] “The human mind, endowed with the powers of generalization and abstraction, sees not only green-grass, discriminating it from other things (and finding it fair to look upon), but sees that it is green as well as being grass. But how powerful, how stimulating to the vary faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent. And that is not surprising: such incantations might indeed be said to be only another view of adjectives, a part of speech in a mystical grammar… When we take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power… We may put a deadly green upon a man’s face and produce a horror… Man becomes a sub-creator.â€
In the beginning, all language was mythological. When language was new, grass meant green-grass and not only was there no such word as green, there was no such thing as green until the day a story teller told a story about a land or a time in which grass was not green and in so doing, separated the green from the grass. The child asks the mother, “Why is the grass green?†What story will she tell? Imagine the time and place when language was new and the word for green had not yet been invented. Everyone was color blind. The story teller who first named the grass “green†and thereby allowed the listener to see green for the first time has performed an act of creation: and God said, “Let there be green, and there was green.â€
Once green is separated from grass, it can be attached to something else. Tolkien: “Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human language can say the green sun.†But, “to make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.†Tolkien’s kind of sub-creation offers a road back to the origins of language, the fountainhead and well-spring of story, but it is a road that leads there and back again: the road leads “there†by enchantment, by virtue of the Secondary World, to the origins of story, language and the human mind; and the road leads “back†to the perception of order, the discovery or recognition of story, in reality, in the Primary World. Imagine the consequence if that sub-creation were to become realized—if a Secondary World became a Primary World—and if the re-creation of that Primary World was accomplished by enchantment instead of magic. The Tolkien Project offers the solution to an equation that plots the course of an enchanted co-evolution of culture and nature that ends with myth made real—the equivalence of sub-creation and creation. Tolkien created a fantasy world that has taken root in the real world’s collective consciousness—the only realm where coherent mythologies can exist. These are roots with real dirt on them! Why do you think Tolkien worked from etymologies of real words instead of the easier task of creating a consistent but disconnected invented language? The etymological “roots†of his myths have real dirt on them—the unspoken story before the story, not the word made flesh but dirt made word.
I would, in all seriousness, like to make a POINT. Normally, I don’t do points. I do not believe in them as a rule. Every time I focus on a single point it splits apart into sub-points or decays. The radioactive half-life of one of my points is less time than it takes to read one of my sentences. Tolkien got so many things right. His sub-creation is so “plugged into†the origins of our language that, no matter how many times the mythology is translated, the collective consciousness will still “get it.†His theme is the third theme of Iluvatar: “a third theme grew amid the confusion, and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity.†If I had my druthers, the Tolkien estate would have permitted unfettered use of the Middle-earth mythology to all “future artisans.†Instead of Middle-earth imitations springing up everywhere, changed just enough to avoid litigation, those fertile minds would have been free to explore “Niggle’s Tree.†The entire fantasy genre that came into being after the publication of Lord of the Rings would have been based squarely where it should have been—on Tolkien’s work. If artists can mine the Star Trek mythology for a seemingly endless stream of films, television shows, novels and music, just imagine what will be produced from the source material created for us by Tolkien. Do not worry about a few Melkors along the way who might trivialize, degrade or co-opt the original theme: “He hath bethought him of bitter cold immoderate, and yet hath not destroyed the beauty if thy fountains, nor of thy clear pools. Behold the snow, and the cunning work of frost! Melkor hath devised heats and fire without restraint, and hath not dried up thy desire nor utterly quelled the music of the sea. Behold rather the height and glory of the clouds, and the everchanging mists; and listen to the fall of rain upon the earth! And in these clouds thou art drawn nearer to Manwe, thy friend, whom thou lovest.â€
Unfortunately, this aspect of Tolkien’s mythology has created the equivalent of a computer virus, an undetectable worm program that I have been unable to remove. In every computer translation of the Tolkien mythology I have attempted, the program eventually becomes so corrupted by the virus that it inevitably degrades back to the complete original narrative. However, I never deleted my program from the hard drive, and the translation engine waits patiently for a new narrative.
The dialectic between “magic†and “enchantment†finds expression in the dialectic between writing and reading. The art of writing is magic. Writing exercises power and dominion over the world it creates. The art of reading is enchantment. Reading discovers meaning in the union of the created world and the mind of the reader. Sauron is a writer. Gandalf is a reader. I would have never known the special place occupied by the Teller in our village had I not discovered the technology of writing. The Teller does not exercise power and dominion over the story told to the community. The true stories told by the Teller already existed in the minds of the villagers, though they did not know them until the Teller told them. Was this utopian world of enchanted story telling pre-technological or post-technological? Does it matter?