Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers

Understanding Charles Williams Co-inherence~

2012-01-04T18:07:00.004Z

Charles Williams often quoted:

Matthew 27:42 He saved others; himself he cannot save.

The taunt of the priests, scribes and elders against Jesus on the cross.

Williams took this as a profound and universal truth about Christian salvation. This is my understanding of what he meant:

Question - How are innocents saved? - babies, and young children; how are they saved who have not known Christ and accepted him during their lives?

Answer - the same way everybody else is saved: by the Love of Neighbour.

The main commandments are number one Love God and number two Love thy Neighbour.

How does this work? We should Love our Neighbour because we Love God (and because God commanded it)

and it is through this Love-of-Neighbour-for-the-sake-of-God that we may achieve salvation, but indirectly, as a by-product.

It is (and this seems to be the crux of Williams argument) our Love that saves our Neighbour. His own efforts avail him nothing.

And our own efforts at salvation avail nothing - except for our Love-of-Neighbour-for-the-sake-of-God.

We too will be saved, if we are saved, by a Neighbour's Love.

In this sense we are all of us, even the most sophisticated, in the same situation as an innocent Babe; saved by the Love of others and not by our own efforts.

Mankind is therefore a web, a network of Neighbours Loving and saving Neighbours; everybody doing the work of salvation for each other.

(Love of God being the reason for Love of Neighbour.)

So we save each other, by prayer and service.

We look at each other and perceive that we are wretched incapables. But the Christian message is that we can (and must) Love (and serve) these wretched and incapable others.

That is what Christ wants us to do.

Our range of Love is, of course, limited - by our own sanctity. The reason for become more Saint-like is from Love of others - only the greatest Saints can effectively pray for the sins of many, can perhaps through their prayers help Mankind to salvation.

Most of the rest of us have far less capacity, less range (perhaps our parents and children, spouses, close friends, those dwelling around us - perhaps for some it is a single person?), but it is our job to do what we can within our given range.

That, I think, is what Charles Williams meant by co-inherence.

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~NOTE: By Co-inherence I also intend to include substitution and exchange - Williams distinctive triad of concerns.

PLACE-HOLDING NOTE:

I think there are implications in co-inherence for how salvation works - that it is an offer which will be made to all, to the soul (which is always mature and able to make this choice, even in babies) and accepted or refused, and the prayers and other helps of others (their Love) may be effectual in making this choice the choice for salvation. The opposite choice, Williams called 'the exclusion of Love' - the worst a human can experience: worse than death, he said.

And, I sense an extrapolation to understand the meaning of life, the extended life, the life into adulthood which so few humans (a small proportion) experienced in history. Life may not be a test for the individual soul, a kind of obstacle course with salvation as the goal or the world as a gymnasium of The Good - but perhaps advanced age was intended for the Love of others: in brief to allow more time to pray for others. Thus life could (potentially) benefit the whole of mankind, the more life - potentially - the greater benefit to the co-inherent web.

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The year's work in Inkling's/ Notion Club studies

2011-12-25T16:16:00.000Z

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2011 was certainly a 'breakthrough' year for me in relation to the project of this blog - meditating on the Notion Club Papers as a focus for engaging with the Inklings and their distinctive teaching for my time and place.

And it is fitting that I should finish this year by re-reading Verlyn Flieger's valedictory book Interrupted Music of 2005.

Anyone who finds this blog interesting really must read Flieger's book - it is an outstanding piece of work, and in many respects this blog is merely an extrapolation of her insights.

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(Although mine are, mostly, extrapolations that VF would regard as inappropriate; or at the least excessively speculative. Indeed she has implied as much in some e-mails! Furthermore, Flieger often distances herself from Tolkien's reactionary perspective; whereas I regard this as one of the most important things which Tolkien has to teach us. I have come to regard JRRT as not 'merely' my favourite writer of fiction, which he already was for more than thirty years; but as something akin to a Holy Elder - a 'spiritual adviser'.)

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Living in myth

2011-12-24T08:05:00.001Z

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In their early years, the Numenoreans lived in myth - they were fallen men, and they did not live in paradise exactly - although it was close; but they lived in myth in that they had a personal relationship with the world and (most of the time) they lived in meaning.

They has a broad angle, inclusive, deep perspective on life - later they focused-in so as to achieve power over the world, developed blinkers, ignored much of their perceptual field.

Life then felt unreal, their world was dead and subject to their will, they felt alienated, sought satisfaction in mastery, conquest, and pleasure...

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I sense something similar for Byzantium at its best - that people lived inside the Christian myth.

Their lives were experienced within the Christian myth (and not merely interpreted in terms of the Christian myth).

Again, this is not perfection nor paradise; because men are fallen, and life is suffering (substantially) - but this wretchedness was experienced (I believe) as within the Christian mythic frame.

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This can be seen most clearly in the lives of the Orthodox Saints. It is not that they lived lives of perfect worldly happiness, but that everything which happens to them is felt as being within providence; the worldly is perceived within the Heavenly frame.

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For this to happen, the myth must be true.

And what must be true is that the world is alive, intelligent, relevant to and concerned with 'me' and has a direction.

When the Numenoreans ceased to believe in the true myth of their origins and condition, they became 'modern', they fell again and were destroyed.

When moderns lost their belief in the wholeness of undivided Christianity then in all forms of Christianity and paganism too (a gradual and still incomplete process) - they lost their ability to live within myth: at most they could pretend to live in myth or according to myth (intellectually-appreciated) - they did not experience life as myth.

Pretending doesn't work.

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And in terms of living within myth (not with reference to salvation) partial, legalistic, dry, procedural, anti-animistic and anti-pagan forms of Christianity do not work.

Yet it is possible to live within the Christian myth, if that is aimed for, and at least for some of the time, and to aspire and work towards the ideal of continuous dwelling in myth - but the myth must be known as true; and it must be the old Christianity of Saints and Angels, Miracles and Spiritual Warfare - if not precisely Eastern Orthodox in terms of denomination, then certainly in that spirit.

Such a life will not be paradise while on earth; but it may be real.

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Charles Williams and co-inherence

2011-12-16T21:57:00.000Z

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http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/charles-williams-and-co-inherence.html

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Charles Williams' Companions of the Co-inherence - can anybody understand?

2011-12-11T11:45:00.000Z

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In 1939 Charles Williams founded an Order called The Companions of the Co-inherence - I believe it is still going in some form.

The Order was based on a set of seven 'sentences' with (supposedly) illustrative or explanatory Biblical quotations.

I have read these sentences innumerable times, and still find them completely baffling.

I would be grateful to anyone who could convincingly explain them to me:

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1. The Order has no constitution except its members.

As it was said: Others he saved, himself he cannot save.

2. It recommends nevertheless that its members shall make a formal act of union with it and of recognition of their own nature.

As it was said: Am I my brothers keeper?

3. Its concern is the practice of the apprehension of the Co-inherence both as a natural and a supernatural principle.

As it was said: Let us make man in our image.

4. It is therefore, per necessitatem, Christian.

As it was said: And who ever says that there was when this was not, let him be anathema.

5.. It recommends therefor the study, on the contemplative side, of the Co-inherence of the Holy and Blessed Trinity, of the Two natures in the single person, of the Mother and Son, of the communicated Eucharist, and of the whole catholic Church.

As it was said: figlia et tuo figlio.

And on the the active side, of methods of exchange, in the Sate, in all forms of love, and in all natural things, such as child-birth.

As it was sais: Bear ye one another's burdens.

6. It concludes in the Divine Substitution of Messias* all forms of exchange and substitution, and it invokes this Act as the root of all.

As it was said: He must become, as it were, a double man.

7. The Order will associate itself primarily with four feasts: the Feast of the Annunciation, the Feast of the Blessed Trinity, the Feast of the Transfiguration, and the Commemoration of All Souls.

As it was said: Another will be in me and I in him.

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Pauline Baynes - my most-loved illustrator?

2011-12-02T10:38:00.000Z

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Perhaps Pauling Baynes is the only illustrator whose work I love - and even then only some of the Tolkien and Lewis work.

Why should this be? Partly, no doubt, the connection with favourite authors, and partly the fact that I came across the work in my early teens when I was more open and unformed. But plenty of other things from that era have fallen away, and while I like many other Tolkien (or Lewis) illustrators, none move me in the same way.

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Baynes illustrated Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham, then Lewis's Narnia chronicles (somewhat hit and miss, but with some definite hits), then - my favorite - Tolkien's Adventures of Tom Bombadil (poems), Smith of Wooton Major; and various maps and posters including those of Middle Earth and the Hobbit journeys, and the cover of the single volume 1970s paperback Lord of the Rings - all of which I used to examine with a magnifying glass to appreciate every last detail!

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All these are done in a developed pastiche of the Luttrell Psalter - a medieval book of the Psalms with copious marginal illustrations (and perhaps the most enjoyable of all ancient English manuscripts).

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My favourite illustrations are those which contain figures and landscape, especially figures in 'movement' - which (like the Luttrell Psalter) is a frozen and stylised kind of movement - beautifully balanced as a formal composition.

I am quite simply transported by some of these illustrations.

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From what I have read of Baynes, she did not really understand either Tolkien or Lewis, nor did she sympathise with their outlooks (although clearly a nice and likable person, she was a very mainstream arts and crafts type Leftist in lifestyle and beliefs) - and yet by the magic of true inspiration she was able to create these masterworks, which not only illustrate but amplify and frame some of Tolkien and Lewis's major features.

This is, of course, quite normal for true creativity, it is inspired, it comes from without not from within.

Baynes supplied the drawing technique, the design - but the genius was supplied her, probably via the spirit of Tolkien and Lewis - and more reliably and frequently in the case of Tolkien than Lewis.

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A small company

2011-11-16T15:09:00.000Z

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The Inklings knew themselves to be swimming against the tide, and that their numbers were small.

The idea of a small 'company' (much like the Inklings themselves) up-against overwhelming odds and charged with saving the world from evil and destruction comes up in several of their key works, and in life.

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There is the Fellowship of the Ring, of course; and in the legends of Numenor which Tolkien worked-on from 1936 (in relation to the Lost Road) and again from 1945 (in relation to the Notion Club Papers) there is a small band of The Faithful led by Elendil (elf-friend) who escape the downfall of the island to establish Arnor and Gondor in Middle Earth.

In the Lost Road, Alboin (the precursor of Lowdham) is a descendant of Erendil, and Alboin's son Audoin is linked with Elendil's son Herendil.

In the Notion Club Papers, Lowdham is seen as a descendant of Elendil, and his friend Jeremy as a descendant of Voronwe his friend whose name means "faithful" .

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In life, Charles Williams was the inspirational leader of an esoteric Christian group (mostly of women) called the Companions of the Co-Inherence.

In That Hideous Strength, by C.S Lewis, the Company are 'four men, some women and a bear'; a heterogeneous group gathered around the leader Ransome who is in communication with angelic intelligences.

The character of Ransome in THS was influenced by Charles Williams, as is the whole novel - and it seems possible that Lewis regarded Williams as a spiritual leader - someone who seemed to be (to some extent) in touch with higher intelligences.

After Williams' death, Lewis edited Arthurian Torso, the work of a faithful friend in transmission of Williams' vision. Lewis was Voronwe to Williams's Elendil.

I do not think Lewis ever again met anyone who could 'replace' William in his spiritual role, or to whom Lewis would again adopt the role of disciple - C.W was perhaps regarded by Lewis as a lost (potential) saviour of his nation - somewhat like King Arthur.

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Tolkien never saw himself as a spiritual leader, yet he was one because of his vision - which came to him and was not created by him. Tolkien was of course an elf-friend: Elendil.

And, as things have happened, JRR Tolkien's elf-friend legacy has been indispensably transmitted by the work of his 'faithful' son Christopher - such that the Elendil-Herendil/ Albion-Audoin/ father-son fictional explorers of the Lost Road turned-out to be a pre-vision of life.

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Charles Williams and the Positive Way

2011-11-16T11:23:00.000Z

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It has always been mysterious to me what Charles Williams was aiming-at with his writings on the Positive Way – also called the Via positiva or the path of “affirmation of images”.

But I think I understand now.

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The Negative Way is the best known method of attaining sanctity, deification or theosis. It is the path of asceticism, as practiced by many monastics through Christian history; and still a focus of Eastern Orthodoxy exemplified by Mount Athos.

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The Negative Way is merely a means to an end, not the end in itself – yet the ‘technique’ has proved itself many times – it entails (for example) long periods of prayer and chanting (often extending into night vigils), physical deprivation (heat or cold) and exercises (standing, prostrations), fasting, celibacy… In general, the purpose is to enable the aspirant to control worldly desires thus to enable a direct awareness of reality – that is God.

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The Negative Way is the most direct and proven route to sanctity, yet it is apparently a path to which few are called – it is generally believed among Christians that there are other paths – less steep, and perhaps leading less high, but valid nonetheless, and perhaps more generally applicable.

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What, then, is the Positive Way? Clearly it is not the opposite of the Negative Way; since that route would (presumably) lead to damnation.

As a married man with a child, a poet, writer, inspirational lecturer, conversationalist and spiritual counsellor; Charles Williams was deeply engaged with the world, and did not feel called to the ascetic path. He tried, therefore, to walk – and to clarify for others in similar state - the lesser known Positive Way.

In this he was, I think, only partly successful – at least, I have been unable until now to understand what he meant – and the explanations of Charles Williams scholars have not been clear to me.

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The clue is in the alternative term Affirmation of Images – that behind the images is reality. The Positive Way is that the images of things – God’s works, and Man’s works that come from God – are visions of reality: visions, that is, of The Good: of God.

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By images is meant words – poetry, prose, the worlds of scripture and ritual; also music; also the visual arts of painting, architecture, beautiful things… insofar as these beautiful things are divinely inspired – insofar as these things are consecrated to God.

The difficulty of the Positive Way is to engage with these images such that the individual may participate in the reality of Good.

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In sum, the Positive Way is a kind of Platonism – in which the initiate sees past the change and corruption, distortions and deceptions of the world and perceives the eternal ideas underlying this. It is an instance of the principle that every small and transient thing is symbolic of greater and timeless things, the world is a microcosm, ‘as above so below’.

Hence (perhaps) Charles Williams attention to poetry and literature generally, his attention to the minutiae of everyday life, love and work – and his swift and sure relation of these worldly matters back to eternal principles.

It was this he hoped to teach by daily interactions, by formal lectures, from his books and writings, and through the Companions of the Co-inherence.

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By means of various techniques such as the purposive use of contracts of exchange – the deliberate and explicit sharing of joys, fears, burdens - (techniques which could be considered analogous to the ascetic methods of the Negative Way) C.W. aimed to (or hoped to; albeit was sometimes corrupted and distracted away from) train his followers into habits of consecration: habits of referencing the mundane to the divine.

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(And without any trace of approximation or dishonesty – he insisted upon maximum accuracy and precision in perceiving the phenomena which were to be referred – no blurring or haziness was to be permitted.)

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What did Charles Williams bring to The Inklings?

2011-11-08T06:49:00.004Z

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Charles Williams very clearly had an important role in the Inklings.

Someone of his stature and personality cannot fail to have influenced the other members of this group in frequent meetings, and indeed the work of Tolkien and Lewis underwent changes from around the time of Williams participation.

How can the nature of these changes be characterized?

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The change relates to Unseen Warfare - the insight that Life is a battle between Good and Evil, a struggle: a matter of choices and temptations; one path leads up towards Heaven, the other down towards damnation.

Tolkien and Lewis were naturally aware of Unseen Warfare as a human reality - but Charles Williams very explicitly lived Unseen Warfare, analyzed it, spoke and wrote of it continually.

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Unseen Warfare (the title comes from a classic of Christian mysticism) was C.W's big subject, especially in his novels, especially in his best novels: Place of the Lion, Descent into Hell and All Hallows Eve.

Tolkien and Lewis began to write fiction more seriously from 1936, shortly afterwards Lewis and Williams began to correspond and meet, and from late 1939 Williams was present in Oxford and regularly participating in social events and meetings.

I suggest that C.W. likely brought Unseen Warfare into focus for Lewis and Tolkien as the main thing in Life and potentially the main thing in story - and thereby provided a deep narrative purpose for the fictions of Lewis and Tolkien.

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The topic of Unseen Warfare is so dominant in Lewis (yet so unusual a topic) that it is somehow easy to miss: Perelandra and That Hideous Strength are novels of UW and so are the Chronicles of Narnia: the Screwtape Letters is perhaps the most successful work about UW ever published.

In Tolkien, Unseen Warfare was present in The Hobbit, especially moments like the struggle of courage when Bilbo first approaches Smaug through the tunnel in the Lonely Mountain: there is on the one hand the right thing to do, and there is also the temptation of cowardice and dishonesty.

But UW expands to take a focal place in the story of The Lord of the Rings, with the major characters of the quest wrestling with their inner demons throughout.

LotR is essentially about Unseen Warfare, the sanctification and ennoblement of the heroes - especially the Hobbit protagonists but also Aragorn, Gandalf, Galadriel; and the failure and damnation of the villains (Saruman, Boromir+, Gollum, Denethor).

UW is not an incidental component of Lord of the Rings but the main thing.

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Unseen Warfare - which Williams perhaps, arguably saw more clearly and lived more intensely than anyone of his era in England, therefore provided a major underlying narrative dynamic for Lewis and Tolkien's narratives.

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The Inklings, by which I mean essentially Tolkien and Lewis with the others role being that of support and stimulus, had a great underlying purpose - which was to restore myth to modern man.

They wanted to restore modern man by re-connecting with myth - modern man who who was languishing in a literalistic and lifeless world of 'history'.

But which myth specifically? Because this was not a post-modern, eclectic, Jungian concern with myth as therapy and a tool for self-development: the Inklings concern with myth was salvific and Christian.

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In a general sense, Lewis and Tolkien saw the world in terms of the 'Platonic' schema of Life versus Reality - that behind the growth decay and change of Life was an eternal, timeless, unchanging world of Reality.

Williams shared this, but was more explicit about it - The Place of the Lion is explicitly about a breakthrough of Platonic archetypes into the modern world.

But analytic elements such as the contrast between Life and Reality, or Platonic forms, are static and are not conducive to the telling of a story - for philosophy to generate stories there must be an individual who negotiates a path through Life; a path with Reality - truth, beauty and virtue - on one side; and on the other side the various temptations of the World such as vice, power, pride, despair...

This is a vision of life as Unseen Warfare - with the proper business of life being about these choices.

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In sum, the Inklings already saw myth in broadly Platonic terms before the C.W. connection, their aim was to connect with myth, but the perspective of Unseen Warfare - coming into sharp focus in the person and works of Williams - joined up this general project with specific stories.

Unseen Warfare was a way in which philosophy could be brought alive in narrative; and which also implicitly Christianized that narrative in a manner that was pervasive and yet unobtrusive.

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As such, Unseen Warfare need not be Christian, but for Williams it was - yet implicitly in the stories.

Williams novels are all about Christian Unseen Warfare, yet don't focus on explicit Christian theology and indeed contain surprisingly little reference to Christianity.

The same applies to Lewis and even more to Tolkien.

Unseen Warfare is built-in; specific Christian themes of Love and Humility are there, and also a great deal of Natural Law virtue - including heroic pagan virtues such as courage and loyalty, and the transcendental unity of virtue with beauty and truth - of wickedness with lies and the destruction of beauty.

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Christian Unseen Warfare is thus built-into the post-C.W. novels of Lewis and Tolkien as the deepest structuring narrative element - and I suggest that this may have been a consequence of Williams intense participation in the Inklings.

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+My mistake - Bronomir is not 'damned'. He repents just before his death.

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Native language?

2011-10-29T10:54:00.000+01:00

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NCPs pp 201-2

Ramer:

"We each have a native language of our own - at least potentially.

(...)

"... the inherited, first-learned language - what is usually mis-called 'native' - bites in early and deep. It is hardly possible to escape from its influence. And later-learned languages also affect the natural style, colouring a man's linguistic taste; the earlier learned the more so.

(...)

"In such rare dreams as I was thinking about, far away by oneself in voiceless countries, then your own native language bubbles up, and makes new names for strange new things. "

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Tolkien's understanding of such matters is that we inherit much more than 'genes' - but also cultural dispositions, including linguistic.

And that we are drawn, spontaneously, to that which 'fits' these dispositions.

I think Tolkien also regarded these dispositions as 'normative' - as something which ought to structure our lives and efforts (certainly if we are to achieve waht be are best fitted to achieve).

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I have a hunch that something of the kind described by Ramer in the NCPs has happened to me in dreams - making up new words for new things; but I have zero recollection of the nature of the language used (native or otherwise) or its relationship to actual terrestrial and historic language.

(Indeed, I suspect the language may have been random/ nonsense/ punning stuff.)

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I have, indeed, a feeble aptitude - and perhaps consequently a weak appetite - for learning languages. So what my 'native' language might be 'like' is hard to discern.

The languages I like to hear (aside from English) include Middle English and Old English; and of foreign languages I can recall listening to German radio as a youngster - just to hear the sound of the speech. Swedish sounds pleasing to me.

All these are obviously Gothic-type Northern European languages, but breaking that mould I find Castilian Spanish is lucid and exciting (Tolkien said the same - and he also liked the Castilian-esque Esperanto. Perhaps this preference was related to his half-Spanish Guardian, Fr. Francis?).

I don't much like the sound or sense of French (which I learned for five years, and know better than any other except Middle English), nor Italian, nor indeed Latin (much), nor any of the Gaelics nor Welsh.

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But all of these are very superficial preferences and aversions.

So I have not, yet, found a key to my own 'native' tongue.

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Spirits speaking - touched in the quick...

2011-10-17T06:09:00.000+01:00

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From The Notion Club Papers pages 202-3.

In this section, the Notion Club are discussing the nature of verbal communications from 'spirits': from angels and demons.

As argued elsewhere in this blog, in this part of The Notion Club Papers I regard Ramer as essentially a mouthpiece for Tolkien.

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'But spirits are often recorded as speaking', said Frankley.

'I know', Ramer answered. 'But I wonder if they really do, or if they make you hear them, just as they can also make you see them in some appropriate form, by producing a direct impression on the mind.

'The clothing of this naked impression in terms intelligible to your incarnate mind is, I imagine, often left to you, the receiver. Though no doubt they can cause you hear words and to see shapes of their own choosing, if they will.

'But in any case the process would be the reverse of the normal in a way, outwards, a translation from meaning into symbol.

'The audible and visible results might be hardly distinguishable from the normal, even so, except for some inner emotion: though there is, in fact, sometimes a perceptible difference of sequence.'

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'I don't know what spirits can do', said Lowdham; 'but I don't see why they cannot make actual sounds (like the eldil in Perelandra): cause the air to vibrate appropriately, if they wish, they seem to affect "matter" directly.'

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'I dare say they can', said Ramer. 'But I doubt if they would wish to, for such a purpose. Communication with another mind is simpler otherwise.

'And the direct attack seems to me to account better for the feelings human beings often have on such occasions. There is often a shock, a sense of being touched in the quick.

'There is movement from within outwards, even if one feels that the cause is outside, something other, not you.

'It is quite different in quality from the reception of sound inwards, even though it may well happen that the thing communicated directly is not strange or alarming, while many things said in the incarnate fashion are tremendous.'

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'You speak as if you knew', said Jeremy. 'How do you know all this?'

'No, I don't to know anything about such things, and I'm not laying down the law. But I feel it.

'I have been visited, or spoken to', Ramer said gravely. 'Then, I think, the meaning was direct, immediate, and the imperfect translation perceptibly later: but it was audible. In many other accounts of other such events I seem to recognize experiences similar, even when far greater'.

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'You make it all sound like Hallucination', said Frankley.

'But of course', said Ramer. 'They work in a similar way.

'If you are thinking of diseased conditions, then you may believe that the cause is nothing external; and all the same something (even if it is only some department of the body) muct be affecting the mind and making it translate outwards.

'If you believe in possession or the attack of evil spirits, then there is no difference in process, only the difference between malice and good-will, lying and truth.

'There is Disease and Lying in the world, and not only among men '.

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Recalling that the NCPs are broadly based on the kind of discussions had by The Inklings, this is a stunning section for the insights it hints at concerning the nature of their conversations and for Tolkien's probably personal experiences.

The conversation is about spirits, which appear to include angels and demons (fallen angels), and the mode of their communications with humans. Apparently, this is the kind of thing that the real world Inklings discussed - they were not only a literary and social group.

Tolkien displays a strong interest in the subject, and possibly direct experience: 'I have been visited, or spoken to'. I find very convincing the detailed 'phenomenological' description of the experience of being communicated-with by spirits, and indeed the subject matter itself is only marginally relevant to the theme of the novel - so the impression is that it has been introduced because of the beliefs, convictions and personal experiences of the author.

In other words, it seems probable that Tolkien had had the experience of being visited and spoken to by angelic spirits.

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Tolkien and the world historical disaster of Vatican II

2011-10-16T07:35:00.001+01:00

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I feel particularly sorry for Tolkien that the Latin Mass, which was the focus of his life and something he saw as eternally dependable, was taken from him (and millions of other Roman Catholics) by the unforced error that was Vatican II (an elite-led 'liberalization' of the Church by dominant Leftist Catholic clergy and religious orders).

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Vatican II was a real body blow, and I suspect the most deeply dismaying event of Tolkien's whole life.

His friend George Sayer said that when participating in a modern English-language Mass in the late 1960s/ early 70s, Tolkien spoke-out the Latin words, loud and clear - presumably continuing this protest to the end of his life.

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Unless and until the truly dread-full lapse and fall - a negative event of world historical significance - represented by Vatican II and what followed, is explicitly repented and reversed by the Roman Catholic Church; then that institution will certainly continue to dwindle and dwindle as a spiritual force for Good in the world.

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From Hobbit-sequel to Lord of the Rings - the role of The Notion Club Papers

2011-10-11T11:46:00.007+01:00

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1936 was the crucial year for Tolkien and Lewis: not exactly the annus mirabilis (year of miracles) but at least the annus divertium (watershed year).

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In 1936 (probably), Lewis and Tolkien agreed each to write a book that exemplified a particular rare mythical quality they both prized.

About this time Lewis finished his first major critical book The Allegory of Love and Tolkien published The Hobbit - so maybe they both felt able to indulge themselves, spread their wings.

Also, The Inklings had been going for a few years, so they had a sympathetic audience among whom to try out their ideas.

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But (to indulge in alternative history!) if Lewis and Tolkien had not made this turn towards 'mythology' in 1936, then we would never have heard of the Inklings:

Lewis would probably be known only as a Christian apologist and Tolkien as a writer of children's adventure books (because The Hobbit sequel would have been simply a Hobbit-sequel - and not the Lord of the Rings).

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Lewis's book turned-out to be a space travel novel published as Out of the Silent Planet (OSP), leading onto Perelandra and That Hideous Strength and then the Narnia chronicles;

while Tolkien's time travel story never got further than draft fragments published after his death as The Lost Road (LR - written c. 1936-7) and its reworking as The Notion Club Papers (NCPs - written 1945-6)...

but which (very significantly) fed-into LotR.

So, without the Lost Road and NCPs there would be no LotR.

And this fact is not sufficiently - or not at all - recognized!

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It is likely that without their friendship and collaboration, Lewis and Tolkien would not have made this step into mythology - they needed each other.

The relationship was no symmetrical: probably Tolkien needed Lewis even more than the reverse: needed Lewis in order to get his longer works finished.

After the Inklings waned, Tolkien found it impossible to complete any but the shortest of books.

*

The importance of OSP has been overshadowed by the Narnia chronicles, while the importance of the unpublished LR/ NCPs was (obviously and rightly!) obliterated by The Lord of the Rings.

However, to view these works through the retrospectoscope is misleading.

At the time they were written these mythical fictions represented a new departure for the authors, and a new attempt at engagement with a wider adult audience.

If the core Inklings are to be considered as functioning as a Christian, counter-revolutionary, reactionary 'conspiracy' to re-mythologize England' (to reconnect England's increasingly secular and disenchanted life with the mythical thinking; as I argue passim in this blog) - then 1936 is the year when this project began.

*

This may seem hard to justify in the case of Tolkien, since it was only about a year later that he began LotR. And of course that was the book which eventually successfully combined the mythic seriousness of the earlier 'Silmarillion' legends with the narrative appeal of the Hobbit.

But for a long time The Lord of the Rings was 'merely' a sequel to The Hobbit - it was not conceived as the ambitious synthesis it eventually became.

My personal impression from reading the early drafts of LotR published in the History of Middle Earth is that it was actually many years down the line that LotR became recognizably the kind of book it eventually was.

Indeed, it could be argued (and I am arguing it here!) that The Hobbit-sequel/ Lord of the Rings probably did not become fully and finally a long, serious, mythic adult novel until after The Notion Club Papers were drafted in 1945-6.

Until about Septenber of 1946, I think that LotR was - on the whole - 'merely' a Hobbit sequel - i.e. primarily an adventure book with just glimpses of mythic depth.

And, as such, LotR had stalled - for explicit reasons (to do with discrepancies in the timings of phases of the moon!) which seem wholly inadequate to explain such severe 'writers block'.

*

My guess is that LotR stalled because Tolkien was bored with writing an adventure story - and this is why he embarked on the highly ambitious Notion Club Papers - taking-up again the main Inklings project to influence the direction of English culture by 're-mythologizing' it.

The intention of the NCPs seems to have been to produce a 'modern' style novel which introduced the (still growing) 'Silmarillion' annals to a general literary audience: framing them as feigned history, and proving a mythic rationale.

*

So it is important to recognize that, although unfinished and unpublished, LR and NCP were in fact for many years Tolkien's most ambitious works.

The Lost Road and Notion Club Papers were where Tolkien explicitly planned at, aimed-at, achieving his long-term aspiration and project to re-connect modern men with the world of mythology -

...whereas, by contrast, the Lord of the Rings was conceived as - more-or-less - an 'entertainment'; and this was (I suspect) still not rejected with any certainty until after the NCPs were abandoned and work on LotR re-commenced in the autumn of 1946.

*

At which point it seems (to me) that Tolkien decided to infuse The Hobbit-sequel/ Lord of the Rings with a new seriousness and mythic depth - drawn from Tolkien's immediate experience in drafting the NCPs.

*

The Lord of the Rings is usually considered to be a fusion of the Hobbit and Silmarillion, along the lines of :

LotR = Hobbit + Silmarillion

But I am suggesting that this is wrong.

*

In my opinion, the proximate cause of the nature of The Lord of the Rings was actually a fusion of the Middle Earth world of The Hobbit with the mythic-spirit of Lost Road/ Notion Club Papers - and the relationship of LotR with the Silmarillion was less direct and more optional.

So the correct formulation is more along the lines of:

LotR = Hobbit + LR/ NCPs (+/- Silmarillion)

*

Note added: The main incompleteness of the argument above, concerns the timing of writing the NCPs (late 1945 to summer of 1946) and my assumption of a significant discontinuity in the manuscript of LotR. What would clinch the argument above would be the demonstration that the LotR MS written after NCP is significantly different from what came before. Or at least there would need to be an increased clarity and firmness of purpose after NCP - of the type and in the direction suggested (such that linkages between the mythic era and modern man were stronger and plainer). I do not have a clear enough grasp of the progress of the LotR MS over this time period to be sure whether or not this is the case - it seems to me that there may be such a discontinuity, but I may be wrong.

More on CS Lewis, JW Dunne and Time/ Dark Tower

2011-09-30T06:26:00.000+01:00

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http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/09/jw-dunne-and-cs-lewis.html

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A note on Hobbit government

2011-09-26T16:11:00.000+01:00

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Hobbits were not Men (or, at least, they were a very distinctive race of Men - long separated) - in particular they were much less status-seeking than men, and less aggressive. A different species naturally has a different form of government.

Despite the apparent 'anarchy' of the Shire at the beginning of Lord of the Rings; overall, I think that Tolkien advocated a religious monarchy, somewhat on the Byzantine model - Gondor under the Kings (before the Stewards) was the nearest thing in the Third Age - and the link between Gondor and Constantinople is explicit in Tolkien's private writings (although the religion in Gondor was extremely vestigial), but Numenor was a more exact parallel.

In other words, Numenor/ Gondor was a monarchy that united spiritual and secular leadership - in which God chose the King, and the King represented God to his people.

Divine sanction was revealed in LotR by Aragorn's 'miracles' of healing - and healing of a type only he could achieve (curing the Black Breath of the Nazgul King).

The authority of the King was absolute, except that he must not go against the will of God (implicitly) - and it just happened to be the King Aragorn's judgment and will (for the good of his subjects) that he left The Shire to govern itself (subject to protection from the King's Men).

A good, kind King would have regarded Hobbits rather as we regard children or mentally-incompetent persons - creating for them a protected environment where they can conduct their own games safely.

But Hobbits could not, and probably should not, be integrated into the world of Men - there could only be some kind of parallel Hobbit society - else they would have been enslaved by bad men.

(I would *guess* - no supporting evidence that I know of - that the Rangers had for centuries been preventing this from happening in Bree, while they were also protecting the Shire Hobbits from invasion).

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Abel Pitt as Adam Fox

2011-09-21T06:16:00.001+01:00

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I have made only sporadic attempts to 'identify' the list of Notion Club Paper members (listed on pages 159-160) with real life Inklings, and others have already done so.

Indeed the striking thing about the Notion Club is how un-like the Inklings they are: no central Lewis character (no central character at all), lacking a Warnie character, and nobody with the peculiar impact of Charles Williams.

Nonetheless, sometimes I have tried to follow the associations in Tolkien's mind which may have led to the names and brief descriptions on the members page.

That is the fun of it: to 'get' an in-joke, and by such means to understand the workings of Tolkien's mind.

*

Thus, in the bath this evening, I recognized Notion Club member Abel Pitt as a play on real life Adam Fox: and (from Google) I discover that Jason Fisher has already made this connection.

*

The fictional biography of Pitt runs:

Dr Abel Pitt. Trinity. Born 1928. Formerly Chaplain of Trinity College; now Bishop of Buckingham. Scholar, occasional poet.

The obvious clue is that Pitt, like Fox, is an Anglican clergyman, both were scholars and occasional poets - but the real Fox was Dean of Divinity (at Lewis's college of Magdalen), a much more elevated position than Chaplain.

Abel is Adam's son in the Old Testament; but what link is there between Fox and Pitt?

*

My guess is that coal/ col links Pitt and Fox - a coal-pit is where coal is extracted while a colfox (a fox whose ears and tail are tipped with coal-black) appears in Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale).

The joke would presumably be that Adam Fox was best known for publishing a book length poem called Old King Coel.

If so, this is an interesting example of Tolkien's philological high spirits that he embedded such fancies in his story, and illustrative of the characteristic scholarly foolery of the real life Inklings that he would expect them to get the joke.

*

The lesson of Numenor

2011-09-20T06:34:00.000+01:00

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(Of course there is no single lesson to derive from the Numenor myth; a true myth is not an allegory but a sub-creation with a life of its own.)

*

The Numenoreans were given peace and plenty, they were freed from bodily suffering and illness, they were given a beautiful and safe place to dwell, their intelligence and skill were enhanced, they had the friendship and help of the high elves.

Their life span was extended about threefold, so they would have enough time to bring their schemes to fruition.

But they remained Men: mortal men. And for all their enhancements they had the faults of men.

*

What did they do - what did they make of their opportunities?

For a while they were satisfied to live well - enjoying the simple things of human life enriched by disinterested learning, art, and religion - and faithfully accepted death when it was due...

Then they became scientists and technologists, almost matching the high elves in their ingenious devices, the greatest mariners the world had seen, the greatest military power...

for a while.

*

But soon they got bored, felt constrained, wanted a change, wanted power and to dominate, wanted the worship and subservience of lesser men - wanted all this and nothing less than than this; here, now and forever.

Wanted perfect satisfaction of all their desires: Good and evil. Wanted permanent worldly gratification.

*

They rejected beauty for power, rejected truth and freedom for propaganda and totalitarian coercion, disbelieved in the virtue of the one God and his Valar - eventually, in a final rapid spiral down into the pit, embraced the worship of 'the dark lord' Morgoth because they believed he could grant them their desires.

Sensing their own degeneration and decline, ignoring argument, refusing repentance,the Numenoreans built a massive armament and assaulted the gods by force, to take what they wanted - to be gods on earth - and were destroyed in a cataclysmic remaking of the world.

In grasping at gratification of all their desires, they embraced destruction: nihilism.

*

Numenor is modern man, conceptualized as being enhanced in both individual and social capability but failing to use these gifts for spiritual purposes; and instead pursuing more and ever more personal and material goals, never satisfied yet insatiable - grasping at more life, more power, more pleasure; at first with energy and zeal, then with fear and exhaustion, finally with despair and insane self-hatred...

*

Repentance and renewal was possible for Numenor at any moment up till the last - the gods and the One held back their justice until they had no choice but to act - but repentance was blocked by pride.

The Numenoreans were insane, having embraced insanity by incremental steps, until - I guess, perhaps - the clearing of illusion at the very end. At the very end when utter failure was obvious and imminent, it is likely death and destruction, annihilation, was chosen.

Chosen on the same basis that Denethor (one of the last true Numenoreans) described in his despair:

"...if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated. (...) But in this at least though shalt not defy my will: to rule my own end."

Thus is pride the strongest of sins, thus is damnation chosen at the last.

*

Hierarchy, reverance and worship in Tolkien's work and life

2011-09-19T14:17:00.000+01:00

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Can be found at:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/

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Humphrey Carpenter and Tolkien

2011-09-10T15:39:00.001+01:00

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I have been re-reading Humphrey Carpenter's authorized Tolkien biography, which I have read many times before - but not for quite a while.

*

Although more than 30 years old, Carpenter had access to private papers (such as diaries) which has not been granted to anyone else; and the biography therefore remains essential, indeed definitive.

HC also edited Tolkien's letters (with Christopher Tolkien) - an exceptional job of work; and published the definitive study of The Inklings (very enjoyable, but deeply flawed by permeating assertions of the triviality of the group).

In sum, the Tolkien connection launched Humphrey Carpenter on a successful career as a man of letters, and he naturally became regarded as a Tolkien and Inklings expert (which indeed he was) - yet he never seemed comfortable in this role, and he is most memorable for his carping and sniping remarks than his for his insights or enthusiasm.

*

Carpenter's greatest achievements in the Tolkien biography are technical: he is completely in command of the information and imposes shape on it, he compresses a lot of facts into a small span, and he does this with an easy and readable style.

And, as it turned out, HC became (more or less) a professional biographer, turning his hand to a wide range of subjects, always producing something factual, well-organized, understandable and readable (and doing so remarkably quickly).

*

But there are problems.

The main is that Carpenter was no more than lukewarm about Tolkien's work, and as a person was not on Tolkien's wavelength. Tolkien was a reactionary even among reactionaries - but HC was a very mainstream, flexible, left-liberal intellectual pundit - often to be heard on the radio as a presenter or interviewer, comfortable in the fashionable world of The Arts.

*

Humphrey Carpenter was highly competent and professional, but he didn't really have anything distinctive to say - or rather his own views were simply those of his class and time, hence come across as shallow and predictable.

(For instance HC wrote Secret Gardens a 'group biography' about the authors of children's stories, terribly disappointing, a book which harped on the note that the characteristic feature of children's book authors was that they never grew up...)

The HC Tolkien biography is therefore always at its weakest when it moves away from facts to their interpretations.

*

Like many or most modern biographers, Carpenter tries to explain enduring adult traits in terms of childhood events: distinctive childhood events are causally linked with distinctive adult traits.

e.g. HC asserts that the death of Tolkien's mother left JRRT a pessimist. This sounds reasonable, but is nonsense; HC has no way of knowing any such thing, and there is no 'scientific' evidence for a link between maternal death and pessimism and plenty of exceptions (not least CS Lewis).

Then again - due to his being deeply leftist in assumptions - HC tries to explain things which should be assumed.

For instance, Tolkien's delight in all-male company in The Inklings is normal in global and historical terms, and it is the modern tendency for mixed sex groupings at work and in leisure which is a first time experiment.

Mystifyingly, much is made of Tolkien's 'ordinaryness' - and HC tries to excuse this, or explain it. The solution to the mystery is probably that moderns have developed an expectation that 'writers' should have sensational biographies - but it is precisely this 'post-romantic' expectation which is at fault, and there is no reason at all why writers should have vivid lives (and many reasons why they should not).

*

These faults in Carpenter stem, ultimately, from his insufficient sympathy and liking for Tolkien.

The mammoth labour of working with difficult primary sources, the years of note taking, the difficulties of collation, the relentless focus on a specific individual - all this will swiftly become a hated drudgery - a job of work - unless sustained by genuine interest and affection; a commission done for money and career is just not the same thing at all.

*

The process of writing a full scale, official biography of somebody whom you do not actually love therefore tends to produce in writers a growing resentment against the biographical subject; which leads to petty (or not so petty) acts of revenge - or at least to using the subject as a means to advance the biographers career (by false emphasis and distortions (rather than trying to write the best possible biography).

The most extreme example is Lawrance Thomson's biography of Robert Frost; and Humphrey Carpenter's Tolkien and Inklings books are very mild by comparison - but there is animus at work, albeit in the background.

*

The Inklings biography has distorted scholarship for decades because it continually asserts that the Inklings were nothing but a group of Lewis's friends who met for a while. This is contrasted with the straw man (apparently derived from a writer called Charles W Moorman III) of a group of homogeneous and selected people self-consciously and strategically engaged on some activity such as Christian evangelism.

Both alternatives are false. Carpenter's Inklings biography is absurd in its self defined task of writing a book about nothing but the ephemeral and trivial; a book trying to prove there is nothing to write a book about!

*

Carpenter regards the Inklings primary concerns as either absurd or mistaken, and simply cannot believe that serious people could believe or want what Tolkien, Jack Lewis or Williams believed or wanted - but if he did believe it then he would loathe it.

So HC can therefore only explain-away or excuse or ignore the core features of Tolkien, and of Lewis and the other Inklings.

And after he has done this, there is indeed not much left: just a group of Lewis's friends meeting to entertain each other. Nothing more. Silly to mention it really...

*

On the other hand, people such as myself recognize and want to understand what was going on in that last generation of strong and distinctively British Christian spirituality and major literary achievement.

Williams remains enigmatic, but Tolkien and Jack Lewis are towering giants that are for many moderns our main link with a lost world of honesty, beauty and virtue; the world of myth; the world of real Christianity.

*

But for Humphrey Carpenter this was not the case. He was a pleasant and likeable personality; a well adjusted member of the intellectual and arts elite; he was clever, hard-working and efficient; but not a man of great insight, nor of heroic stature, nor of great integrity.

And HC was a man whose motivations, life and ideology were essentially hostile to Tolkien and the other Inklings.

So despite his crucial contributions, Carpenter's position among Tolkien scholars is modest: and the real exemplars are deep and non-mainstream writers with a positive personal affinity with Tolkien, enabling them to attain to major interpretations and insight - Christopher Tolkien, TA Shippey and Verlyn Flieger.

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Tolkien and Women - a word

2011-09-05T14:39:00.000+01:00

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The word is 'unspoiled'.

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I am immensely grateful for the two volume JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide by Scull and Hammond - however, unsurprisingly perhaps, the authors prefer to judge Tolkien by current standards of political correctness rather than the opposite.

(In this they follow the lead of Humphrey Carpenter in his official biography of 1977; whenever Tolkien's views differ from Carpenter's - Carpenter as representative of modern liberal opinion - the un-argued assumption is that Tolkien is wrong.)

*

For instance, from Tolkien's letter to his son Michael of 6-8 March 1941, Scull and Hammond quote the section: "Before the young woman knows where she is... she may actually fall in love. Which, for her, an unspoiled natural young woman, means that she wants to become the mother of the young man's children, even if that desire is by no means clear to her or explicit..."

Scull and Hammond then comment: "Today (in the West) few would suggest that all young women desire motherhood and cannot be happy otherwise..."

They refer to 'all' young women and miss-out the word 'unspoiled'.

*

It is perfectly obvious that Tolkien (along with almost everyone who lived up until 1965, and still at least 80 percent of people alive today) would have regarded the majority of modern young women today as 'spoiled'. And therefore Tolkien is perfectly accurate in his generalization.

*

Later in the letter Tolkien says: "you may meet in life (as in literature) women who are flighty, or even plain wanton ... women who are too silly to take even love seriously, or are actually so depraved as to enjoy 'conquests', or even enjoy the giving of pain - but these are abnormalities, even though false teaching, bad upbringing, and corrupt fashions may encourage them. Much though modern conditions have changed feminine circumstances, and the detail of what is called propriety, they have not changed natural instinct."

*

Tolkien is often regarded as being obviously mistaken in his view of women on the evidence that most modern women are unlike the women Tolkien describe.

But Tolkien was not mistaken.

Tolkien simply regarded most modern women as having been spoiled by false teaching, bad upbringing and corrupt fashions.

*

Morgoth versus Sauron - Tolkien on the nature of evil

2011-08-06T12:10:00.002+01:00

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What follows is one of the most interesting, and important, explanations of the nature of evil I have ever encountered; as exemplified by Tolkien's legendarium and as understood by Tolkien.

It makes understandable the difference between the primary evil of Morgoth (Lucifer), and the secondary and derivative evils (such as Sauron, and Saruman) as seen in later ages.

My comments and reflections on this appear on my Miscellany blog:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/08/tolkien-and-nature-of-evil-morgoth.html

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J.R.R.Tolkien, written c. 1958, edited and published by Christopher Tolkien in The History of Middle Earth volume X: Morgoth's Ring, Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Excerpts follow:

*

Sauron was ‘greater’, effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First. Why? Because, though he was far smaller by natural stature, he had not yet fallen so low.

Eventually he also squandered his power (of being) in the endeavor to gain control of others. But he was not obliged to expend so much of himself. To gain domination over Arda, Morgoth had let most of his being pass into the physical constituents of the Earth – hence all things that were born on Earth and live on and by it, beasts or plants or incarnate spirits, were liable to be ‘stained’.

Morgoth at the time of the War of the Jewels had become permanently ‘incarnate’: for this reason he was afraid, and waged the war almost entirely by means of devices, or of subordinates and dominated creatures.

Sauron, however, inherited the ‘corruption’ of Arda, and only spent his (much more limited) power on the Rings; for it was the creatures of earth, in their minds and wills, that he desired to dominate. In this way Sauron was also wiser than Melkor-Morgoth. Sauron was not a beginner of discord; and he probably knew more of the ‘Music’ than did Melkor, whose mind had always been filled with his own plans and devices, and gave little attention to other things.

The time of Melkor’s greatest power, therefore, was in the physical beginnings of the World; a vast demiurgic lust for power and the achievement of his own will and designs, on a great scale. (…)

*

Thus, as ‘Morgoth’, when Melkor was confronted by the existence of other inhabitants of Arda, with other wills and intelligences, he was enraged by the mere fact of their existence, and his only notion of dealing with them was by physical force, or the fear of it. His sole ultimate object was their destruction.

Elves, and still more Men, he despised because of their ‘weakness’: that is their lack of physical force, or power over ‘matter’; but he was also afraid of them. He was aware, at any rate originally when still capable of rational thought, that he could not ‘annihilate’them: that is, destroy their being; but their physical ‘life’, and incarnate form became increasingly to his mind the only thing that was worth considering.

Or he became so far advanced in Lying that he lied even to himself, and pretended that he could destroy them and rid Arda of them altogether. Hence his endeavor always to break wills and subordinate them to or absorb them into his own will and being, before destroying their bodies. This was sheer nihilism, and negation its one ultimate object:

Morgoth would no doubt, if he had been victorious, have ultimately destroyed even his own ‘creatures’, such as the Orcs, when they had served his sole purpose in using them: the destruction of Elves and Men. (…)

*

Melkor could do nothing with Arda, which was not from his own mind and was interwoven with the work and thoughts of others: even left alone he could only have gone raging on till all was leveled again into a formless chaos. And yet even so he would have been defeated, because it would still have ‘existed’, independent of his own mind, and a world in potential.

Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and co-ordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction.

(It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.)

*

Sauron had, in fact, been very like Saruman, and so still understood him quickly and could guess what he would be likely to think and do, even without the aid of the palantíri or of spies; whereas Gandalf eluded and puzzled him.

But like all minds of this cast, Sauron’s love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and thought the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all the inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron’s right to be their supreme lord), his ‘plans’, the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself.

*

Morgoth had no ‘plan’: unless destruction and reduction to nil of a world in which he had only a share can be called a ‘plan’.

But this is, of course, a simplification of the situation. Sauron had not served Morgoth, even in his last stages, without becoming infected by his lust for destruction, and his hatred of God (which must end in nihilism).

*

Sauron could not, of course, be a ‘sincere’ atheist. Though one of the minor spirits created before the world, he knew Eru, according to his measure. He probably deluded himself with the notion that the Valar (including Melkor) having failed, Eru had simply abandoned Ea, or at any rate Arda, and would not concern himself with it any more.

It would appear that he interpreted the ‘change of the world’ at the Downfall of Numenor, when Aman was removed from the physical world, in this sense: Valar (and Elves) were removed from effective control, and Men under God’s curse and wrath.

If he thought about the Istari, especially Saruman and Gandalf, he imagined them as emissaries from the Valar, seeking to establish their lost power again and ‘colonize’ Middle-earth, as a mere effort of defeated imperialists (without knowledge or sanction of Eru).

His cynicism, which (sincerely) regarded the motives of Manwë as precisely the same as his own, seemed fully justified in Saruman. Gandalf he did not understand. But certainly he had already become evil, and therefore stupid, enough to imagine that his different behaviour was due simply to weaker intelligence and lack of firm masterful purpose. He was only a rather cleverer Radagast – cleverer, because it is more profitable (more productive of power) to become absorbed in the study of people than of animals.

*

Sauron was not a ‘sincere’ atheist, but he preached atheism, because it weakened resistance to himself (and he had ceased to fear God’s action in Arda). As was seen in the case of Ar-Pharazon.

But there was seen the effect of Melkor upon Sauron: he spoke of Melkor in Melkor’s own terms: as a god, or even as God. This may have been the residue of a state which was in a sense a shadow of good: the ability once in Sauron at least to admire or admit the superiority of a being other than himself. Melkor, and still more Sauron himself afterwards, both profited by this darkened shadow of good and services of ‘worshippers’.

*

But it may be doubted whether even such a shadow of good was still sincerely operative in Sauron by that time.

His cunning motive is probably best expressed thus. To wean one of the God-fearing from their allegiance it is best to propound another unseen object of allegiance and another hope of benefits; propound to him a Lord who will sanction what he desires and not forbid it. Sauron, apparently a defeated rival for world-power, now a mere hostage, can hardly propound himself; but as the former servant and disciple of Melkor, the worship of Melkor will raise him from hostage to high priest.

But though Sauron’s whole true motive was the destruction of the Númenóreans, this was a particular matter of revenge upon Ar-Pharazon, for humiliation. Sauron (unlike Morgoth) would have been content for the Númenóreans to exist, as his own subjects, and indeed he used a great many of them that he corrupted to his allegiance.

*

Note - Melkor could not, of course, ‘annihilate’ anything of matter, he could only ruin or destroy or corrupt the forms given to matter by other minds in their subcreative activities.

Note – [Sauron’s] capability of corrupting other minds, and even engaging their service, was a residue from the fact that his original desire for ‘order’ had really envisaged the good estate (especially physical well-being) of his ‘subjects’.

(...)

Melkor incarnated himself (as Morgoth) permanently. He did this so as to control the hroa, the flesh or physical matter, of Arda. He attempted to identify himself with it. A vaster, and more perilous, procedure, though of similar sort to the operation of Sauron with the Rings.

Thus, outside the Blessed Realm, all matter was likely to have a Melkor ingredient, and those who had bodies, nourished by the hora of Arda, had as it were a tendency, small or great, towards Melkor: they were none of them wholly free of him in their incarnate form, and their bodies had an effect upon their spirits.

But in this way Morgoth lost (or exchanged, or transmuted) the greater part of his original angelic powers, of mind and spirit, while gaining a terrible grip upon the physical world. For this reason he had to be fought, mainly by physical force, and enormous material ruin was a probable consequence of any direct combat with him, victorious or otherwise.

*

This is the chief explanation of the constant reluctance of the Valar to come into open battle against Morgoth. Manwë's task and problem was much more difficult than Gandalf's.

Sauron's, relatively smaller, power was concentrated; Morgoth's vast power was disseminated. The whole of Middle-earth was Morgoth's Ring, though temporarily his attention was mainly upon the North-west. Unless swiftly successful, War against him might well end in reducing all Middle-earth to chaos, possibly even all Arda.

*

It is easy to say: It was the task and function of the Elder King to govern Arda and make it possible for the Children of Eru to live in it unmolested. But the dilemma of the Valar was this: Arda could only be liberated by a physical battle; but a probable result of such a battle was the irretrievable ruin of Arda. Moreover, the final eradication of Sauron (as a power directing evil) was achievable by the destruction of the Ring. No such eradication of Morgoth was possible, since this required the complete disintegration of the matter of Arda.

The last intervention with physical force by the Valar, ending in the breaking of Thangorodrim, may then be viewed as not in fact reluctant or even unduly delayed, but timed with precision. The intervention came before the annihilation of the Eldar and the Edain.

*

Morgoth though locally triumphant had neglected most of Middle-earth during the war; and by it he had in fact been weakened: in power and prestige (he had lost and failed to recover one of the Silmarils), and above all in mind.

He had become absorbed in kingship, and though a tyrant of ogre-size and monstrous power, this was a vast fall even from his former wickedness of hate, and his terrible nihilism.

He had fallen to like being a tyrant-king with conquered slaves, and vast obedient armies.

(...)

***

On JRR Tolkien's The Marring of Men

2011-07-25T21:09:00.002+01:00

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My only official Tolkien-related publication:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2008/09/tolkiens-marring-of-men.html

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Rank and Pay of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis

2011-07-25T21:06:00.000+01:00

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Charlton BG. Warren H Lewis was an Honorary Major, with Captain as his substantive rank. On W.H. Lewis’s military rank. The chronicle of the Oxford University C.S. Lewis Society. 2007; 4: 36-37.

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Warren Hamilton 'Warnie' Lewis was only an honorary Major, and held the substantive rank of Captain.

C.S. Lewis’s brother Warren Hamilton (‘Warnie’) Lewis (June 16, 1895 - April 9, 1973) is, frequently (and correctly) referred-to, as ‘Major Lewis’. However, it is worth noting that Warnie’s rank of major was honorary, and his ‘substantive’ rank was actually captain – one rank below that of major.

I received this information from Dr Alistair Massie; Curator of the National Army Museum in London. At my request, he looked-up the relevant Army Lists for W.H. Lewis and sent me photocopies. These photocopies are now lodged at the Marion E Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois, USA.

Warren Lewis was a volunteer (he was Irish by nationality, hence not subject to conscription) who served in the Royal Army Service Corps for 18 years from 1914-1932. He retired from regular Army Service in 1932 with the rank of captain, after which he was placed on the Reserve of Officers. On 24 August 1939 he was brought back onto active army service (this was just before the UK’s declaration of war on Germany in the 1939-1945 World War, when reservists were recalled). Warnie then became a temporary major on 27 Jan 1940 until he was accorded the honorary rank of major on 27 March 1947 upon becoming permanently retired.

This means that from the time that Warnie was a temporary major he was entitled to be called major, and he went straight to being an honorary major, so he did not revert to being called captain. Nonetheless, his retirement pay remained only that of a captain.

The significance of this information is that Warnie's Army career was apparently an un-distinguished one. British Army officer’s ranks are second lieutenant, lieutenant, captain then major – and it would usually be expected that a career officer with 18 years of service would retire with the substantive rank of major (or higher). Yet Warnie did not attain any promotion in the 15 years of service from becoming a captain in 1917 until his retirement in 1932. His promotion to Major in 1940, after being recalled in 1939 from the reserve of officers, was just a temporary or 'acting' major rank (presumably to perform a specific job in a specific situation), and this continued until he was retired in 1947 as honorary major – but still on the lesser pay of a retired captain.

WH Lewis’s apparently mediocre early-life professional army career makes all the more remarkable and praiseworthy Warnie's post-retirement development into a respected member of the famous and intellectually-distinguished group of Oxford Inklings, the author of seven published books of French history, and a diarist of high reputation.

This late-blooming of Warren’s abilities as a writer and conversationalist was perhaps due to the influence of daily contact with his brother Jack, supplemented by frequent association with the other Inklings [1].

1. Diana Pavlac Glyer. The company they keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as writers in community. Kent, Ohio, USA: Kent State University Press, 2007.

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If history is myth; then modern socio-politics is also myth

2011-07-24T17:55:00.000+01:00

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Since the core Inklings project (as made explicit in the TCBS and Notion Club) was the recovery of history as myth; this project (which I too embrace) naturally extends to modern politics, to our current interpretation and understanding of what has happened, and what is happening.

We need, that is, to get away from - or rather subordinate to secondary status - the usual secular explanation, prediction and agenda for what happened to our culture (political, economic, scientific/ technological, socio-psycho-logical etc) - and over-arch these with a 'mythic' (but naturally mythic and True) understanding.

This will enable us, indeed encourage us, to take a step back from the noise and lies of 'current affairs', alliances and interventions, to focus on the task of recovery and reconnection, and to 'work' at an altogether different level and in an altogether different mode (because with altogether different objectives).

This step back becomes not just possible but absolutely necessary since the mythic analysis makes clear that unless the myth is restored then all our efforts (no matter what their explicit intentions) will turn to the Enemy's benefit.

But the myth in question is the fullness of Christianity; that is a pre-modern Christianity in which the world is 'animate' (that is what myth means) and this animate world is understood and prophesied in Christian terms.

So, by this account, the Inklings were trying to backfill-Christianity - that is to fill-in the mythology 'behind' Christianity so that it will again become animated and comprehensive.

This includes a pre-modern cosmology (as described by Lewis's medieval lectures and essays); a conception of the world in which animals, trees landscapes were alive and in relation to humans (as depicted in Narnia and Middle Earth); and in which the world there was a restoration of purposive influences for Good or Ill: God and Devil, Angels and Demons (including gods and goddesses and nature spirits; and for Tolkien there was national, racial, linguistic and familial spiritual heredity.

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The Notion Club visualized by Afalstein

2011-07-14T23:28:00.000+01:00

http://afalstein.deviantart.com/art/Notion-Club-Papers-The-Club-110360917

http://afalstein.deviantart.com/art/The-Notion-Club-Papers-Camera-70801596

Although (I suppose I should point out) the illustrations of the characters are not consistent with Tolkien's descriptions of their appearances; I like all of these pictures, which seem to capture something of the spirit of the Club.

Is reward more dangerous than punishment?

2011-06-12T07:01:00.000+01:00

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From The Letters of JRR Tolkien - letter number 131 to Milton Waldman, 1951:

The Downfall [of Numenor] is partly the result of an inner weakness in Men - consequent, if you will, upon the first Fall (unrecorded in theses tales), repented but not finally healed.

Reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment!

The Fall is achieved by the cunning of Sauron in exploiting this weakness. Its central theme is (inevitably, I think, in a story of Men) a Ban, or Prohibition.

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If it is indeed true that reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment, then this is a truth which has been lost from our culture.

I take it that 'reward on earth' means material goods, worldly pleasures.

If it is true, then we are in big trouble, and have been in big trouble for several generations - since for us there is nothing that is real except 'on earth', and indeed for us there is no such thing as 'reward'.

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We don't even think of earthly happiness as a reward because in modern culture we don't believe there is anybody or any-thing to do the rewarding; we don't believe in God, we don't believe that the universe cares about what we do.

We regard happiness as simply the natural state of things.

So, if we personally are not happy at this moment, if anybody is unhappy ever, then this can only be because it is someone's fault.

Since happiness is regarded as spontaneous, unhappy people must have been made unhappy - ultimately by other people.

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For our culture the contrast with 'reward on earth' is not reward in heaven (we don't believe in heaven), nor even anything to do with reward (we don't believe in rewards), and certainly not in hell (hell is a wicked joke); but the opposite of reward on earth is simply 'misery on earth'.

Modern culture has no higher value than comfort.

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We moderns cling to the comforts of life like the devil-worshipping Numenoreans, but not heroically - our elites are anything-but heroic.

Rather than be deprived of the comforts of life, our elite want the 'right' to be killed quickly and painlessly.

So this is what we have come to! A culture focused upon the process of dying - not death as a state (we don't believe in that), but merely on the process of dying.

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Ours is a very different state from Numenorean hubris - who determined to conquer the gods and achieve eternal life (because life for them - on their earthly paradise, with their enhanced powers of mind and body - was such delight).

We have killed the gods, hence rendered each and every life meaningless, purposeless, alienated - so we ask 'nothing more' than that life feels pleasant, right up to its end.

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Of course, logically, we ought to be killing ourselves sooner rather than later; why put it off? - do it while we can still implement our choices for ourselves.

But somehow, we don't believe our own nihilism to that extent.

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How Tolkien could/ should have published The Silmarillion

2011-06-11T14:39:00.000+01:00

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JRR Tolkien died in 1973 leaving The Silmarillion unfinished; and a book of that name was published just four year later in a version made by Christopher Tolkien, assisted by Guy Gavriel Kay.

The 1977 Silmarillion achieved internal consistency, and consistency with The Lord of the Rings, but at the cost of being (in my opinion) an artistic failure.

It was a massive disappointment to me at the time, and I still prefer never to read it - and I get the feeling that many Tolkien lovers agree with this evaluation.

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JRR Tolkien failed to publish the Silmarillion during his lifetime precisely because he could not achieve the twin objectives of artistic success and consistency with the Lord of the Rings.

One or the other had to give way - and with the 1977 Silmarillion it was artistry which gave way...

But since 1977, Christopher Tolkien has acknowledged the problems with the 1977 Silmarillion and has made available a treasure trove of his father's work relevant to the Lord of the Rings, including Unfinished Tales and twelve volumes of The History of Middle Earth.

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Within these 13 volumes there are works of superb artistry, but in many literary forms; and varying states of finish and completeness; and defective in consistency with each other and (even more) with The Lord of the Rings.

Yet as Christopher Tolkien states in the introduction to volume one of The Book of Lost Tales:

...beyond the difficulties and the obscurities, what is certain and very evident is that for the begetter of Middle-Earth there was a deep coherence and vital interrelation between all its times, places, and beings, whatever the literary modes, and however protean some parts of the conception might seem when viewed over a long lifetime.

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So, in principle, Tolkien might have chosen to publish The Silmarillion as a compendium of various modes of writing, varying in finish and completeness and of various fictional provenance - held together by some kind of editorial apparatus.

This would, I think we can now perceive, have been greatly preferable.

We might have had all the most beautiful and suggestive parts of the History of Middle Earth presented as translations of the fragmentary survivals of a pre-historic age, from widely varying times and by many different hands - some good copies, some misunderstood or garbled, some defectively transcribed by various hands - but each piece having some intrinsic artistic value, providing some valuable extra detail, making some distinctive moral or aesthetic point, or deepening the underlying transcendental reality of the whole.

The editor might have made various suggestions for harmonizing the mutual inconsistencies of these histories with each other and with The Lord of the Rings (which could have been presented as almost entirely authoritative - since that was how the public regarded it, by that time).

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This mode of presentation might sound fanciful, but it was (e.g. according to TA Shippey, in Road to Middle Earth) almost exactly how Tolkien envisaged presenting his legendarium to the public when he began it (Tolkien's 'mythology for England' idea, a body of writings which could - in principle - be continued by other hands than his).

And there is evidence that he did at various times actually begin the process of doing this: not least during the 1945-6 era when writing the Notion Club Papers, and then again in the mid 1960s when he created some remarkable, deliberately 'garbled' versions of the Numenor legend called (by Christopher Tolkien) The Drowning of Anadune and published with the Notion Club Papers in volume nine of the History of Middle Earth.

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The Drowning of Anadune was an artistically fine piece of work (especially considering it was an unrevised draft), something which could stand alone as a story; envisaged as being written by men long after the fall of Numenor and after the departure of the elves.

It was done in the mid 1960s (that is, after the Lord of the Rings had been published, which had included a 'definitive' outline of the history of Numenor) contains many 'errors' of the type which might plausibly have been expected under such circumstances: most strikingly that the Elves and the Valar are conflated into a single category of immortals.

But the Drowning of Anadune contains much vivid detail, and striking writing - better in overall effect, in my opinion, than the dry annalistic style of the equivalent Akallabeth in the 1977 Silmarillion).

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Maybe, sometime, someone will be able to take the artistic option to publishing a version of The Silmarillion: that is to present 'the best of' Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle Earth in a reading version with minimal but helpful (pseudo) editorial apparatus; a version that maintains the fictional history, and sustains the sub-created secondary world.

But it will always be a matter for regret that JRR Tolkien did not do this himself.

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Lowdham and Jeremy's 'research' expedition

2011-06-08T06:25:00.000+01:00

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From The Notion Club Papers, pages 266-8 (re-paragraphed):

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'Well,' said Jeremy, 'we stuck to the west coasts as much as we could, staying by the sea, and walking as near to it as possible, when we did not go by boat. Arry is an able seaman, and you can still get small sailing craft in the West, and sometimes an old sailor to help who can still handle a boat without petrol.

'But after our wreck we did not sail again till we got round to North Devon. We actually crossed by boat from Bideford to South Wales in July, and then we went on to Ireland, right up the west coast of it by stages.

'We took a look at Scotland, but no further north than Mull. There seemed nothing for us there, no feel in the air at all. So we went back to Hibernia.

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'The great storm had left more traces there than anywhere, and not only in visible damage. There was a good deal of that, but much less than you would expect, and it did not interest us so much as the effect on the people and the stories that we found going about.

'People in Galway - well, for the matter of that, from Brandon Hill to Slieve League seemed to have been pretty well shaken by it, and were still scared for weeks afterwards. If the wind got up at all, as of course it did from time to time, they huddled indoors; and some would begin to trek inland.

'We both heard many tales of the huge waves "high as hills" coming in on the Black Night. And curiously enough, many of the tale-tellers agreed that the greatest waves were like phantoms, or only half real: "like shadows of mountains of dark black wicked water". Some rolled far inland and yet did little damage before, well, disappearing, melting away.

We were told of one that had rolled clean over the Aran Isles and passed up Galway Bay, and so on like a cloud, drowning the land in a ghostly flood like rippling mist, almost as far as Clonfert.

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'And we came across one old man, a queer old fellow whose English was hardly intelligible, on the road not far from Loughrea. He was wild and ragged, but tall and rather impressive. He kept pointing westward, and saying, as far as we could gather: "It was out of the Sea they came, as they came in the days before the days".

'He said that he had seen a tall black ship high on the crest of the great wave, with its masts down and the rags of black and yellow sails flapping on the deck, and great tall men standing on the high poop and wailing, like the ghosts they were; and they were borne far inland, and came, well, not a soul knows where they came.

'We could get no more out of him, and he went on westward and vanished into the twilight, and who he was or where he was going we did not discover either.

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'Apart from such tales and rumours we had no real adventures.

'The weather was not too bad generally, and we walked a lot, and slept pretty well. A good many dreams came, especially in Ireland, but they were very slippery; we couldn't catch them. Arry got whole lists of ghost-words, and I had some fleeting pictures, but they seldom fitted together.

'And then, when we thought our time was up, we came to Porlock.

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'As we crossed over the Severn Sea earlier in the summer, Arry had looked back, along the coast to the south, at the shores of Somerset, and he had said something that I couldn't catch. It was ancient English, I think, but he didn't know himself: it faded from him almost as soon as he had spoken.

'But I had a sudden feeling that there was something important waiting for us there, and I made up my mind to take him back that way before the end of our journey, if there was time. So I did.

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'We arrived in a small boat at Porlock Weir on Saturday, September 13th. We put up at The Ship, up in Porlock itself; but we felt drawn back shorewards, and as soon as we had fixed our rooms we went out and turned westward, going up onto the cliffs and along as far as Culbone and beyond.

'We saw the sun set, dull, hazy, and rather grim, about half past six, and then we turned back for supper.

'The twilight deepened quickly, and I remember that it seemed suddenly to grow very chilly; a cold wind sprang up from the land and blew out westward towards the dying sun; the sea was leaden. We both felt tired and anxious, for no clear reason: we had been feeling rather cheery.

'It was then that Arry turned away from the sea and took my arm, and he said quite clearly, and I heard him and understood him: Uton efstan nu, Treowine! Me ofthyncth thisses windes. Mycel wen is Deniscra manna to niht.

'And that seemed to break my dreams. I began to remember, and piece together a whole lot of things as we walked back to the town; and that night I had a long series of dreams and remembered a good deal of them.'

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'Yes,' said Lowdham, 'and something happened to me at that moment, too. I began to see as well as to hear. Treowine, that is Wilfrid Trewyn Jeremy, and I seemed to have got into the same dream together, even before we were asleep.

'The faces in the hotel looked pale and thin, and the walls and furniture only half real: other things and faces were vaguely moving behind them all. We were approaching the climax of some change that had begun last May, when we started to research together.

'Anyway, we went to bed, and we both dreamed; and we woke up and immediately compared notes; and we slept again and woke and did the same. And so it went on for several days, until we were quite exhausted.

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'So at last we decided to go home; we made up our minds to come back to Oxford the next day, Thursday.

'That night, Wednesday, September 17th, something happened: the dreams coalesced, took shape, and came into the open, as you might say. It seemed impossible to believe when it was over that years had not slipped by, and that it was still Thursday, September 18th, 1987, and we could actually return here as we had planned.

'I remember staring incredulously round the dining-room, that seemed to have grown strangely solid again, half wondering if it was not some new dream-trick. And we went into the post-office and a bank to make sure of the date!

'Then we crept back here secretly, a week ago, and stayed in retreat until yesterday, conferring and putting together all we had got before we came out of hiding.'

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Comment: I love this section of the Notion Club Papers.

There has been a great storm, caused by the spiritual dream connection established by the Notion Club between the fall of Numenor and modern times. Lowdham and Jeremy stagger out into the great storm, having taken on the personae of characters from Numenor - and disappear for several months.

The above is an account of their activities.

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Why do I like it so much? I think the idea of two friends roaming the British Isles seeking... something: some breakthrough: they will know it - only - when they find it. They go to places where they have a hunch they will find it, and monitor their own states, especially their dreams...

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It is rather like the children's game of seeking a hidden something, where the clue is 'getting warmer' as you walk towards the hiding place, 'getting colder' as you walk away from it.

I imagine that, if you really got stuck, this would have to be the way forward, the way to proceed.

I have never done this like Lowdham and Jeremy as a geographical quest, but it pretty much describes my personal reading quest when I got stuck mentally, philosophically, in the early 2000s.

But it took more than one summer vacation to find what I blindly sought.

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TCBS – Inklings – Notion Club

2011-06-04T19:40:00.000+01:00

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Tolkien loved clubs, but the first and most influential was the TCBS (Tea Club, Barrovian Society) formed in 1911 at King Edwards School in Birmingham. The story has been told by John Garth in his superb book – Tolkien and the Great War (TGW), 2003.

There were four core long-term members: Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, RQ Gilson, Geoffrey Bache Smith (GBS); plus Vincent Trought who died from an illness in 1912. Gilson and Smith both died in the 1914-18 war.

The club began as a purely recreational and convivial group but (TGW p137) ‘Somewhere along the line the TCBS had decided it could change the world (…) Tolkien had told them that they had a ‘world shaking power’ and (…) they all believed it’.

And, of course - as it turned-out, and in ways unanticipated - Tolkien was perfectly correct.

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So, how did the TCBS hope to change the world?

‘Smith declared that, through art, the four would have to leave the world better than they found it. Their role would be to drive from life, letters, the stage and society that dabbling in and hankering after the unpleasant sides and incidents in life an nature (…) to re-establish sanity, cleanliness, and the love of real and true beauty in everyone’s breast.’ (page 105).

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Gilson: [In a vision…] “I suddenly saw the TCBS in a blaze of light as a great moral reformer (…) England purified of its loathsome insidious disease by the TCBS spirit. It is an enormous task and we shall not see it accomplished in our lifetime.” (page 105)

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Tolkien: “the fairies came to teach men song and holiness”. Song and holiness: the fairies had the same method and mission as the TCBS. (page 107).

Tolkien: “What I meant (…) was that the TCBS had been granted some spark of fire – certainly as a body if not singly – that was destined to kindle a new light, or, what is the same thing, rekindle an old light in the world; that the TCBS was destined to testify for God and Truth in a more direct way even than by laying down its several lives in this war.”

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So, the TCBS was a club devoted to the transcendental virtues of Truth, Beauty and Virtue – perhaps especially Beauty and Virtue. They were to teach song and holiness…

What of Tolkien’s later clubs – The Inklings and the fictional Notion Club? Were they too devoted to song and holiness?

I would say yes. But not explicitly, and not wholly.

The TCBS was refined from a larger and more frivolous club following disillusionment with the way that conversation was becoming superficial, glib, and facetious. It was only the core four who were the idealists.

Among the Inklings there was, really, only Jack Lewis and Tolkien who were idealists in the TCBS sense – and probably Tolkien more than Lewis. For the other members the Inklings were more of a stimulating social group.

But for Tolkien, I sense that the Inklings retained at least a residue of his youthful hopes as epitomized by the TCBS – and that this came through in a more purified form in the Notion Club where there was, again, a core of serious activist idealists surrounded by a larger group of pleasant, convivial but somewhat facetious types.

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What of Charles Williams? Was he not part of the core? I tend to think not. Contrary to what some people say, Tolkien was certainly very fond of Williams while Williams was alive (he turned against him more than a decade later – probably as a result of discovering the extent of Williams involvement in occult magic, or perhaps his philanderings).

But Williams was not engaged in the same project as Jack Lewis and Tolkien – the aim to “rekindle an old light in the world”.

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At some point both Lewis and Tolkien became aware that they were not going to be able to “re-establish sanity, cleanliness, and the love of real and true beauty in everyone’s breast” – but only in the breasts of a few. Lewis described himself the last of the almost-extinct dinosaurs in his Cambridge University inaugural lecture in the early 1950s, and Tolkien’s valedictory lecture at Oxford a few years later has a similar elegiac tone.

Tragically, England as a nation was not - after all - going to be purified of its loathsome insidious disease by the TCBS spirit.

Fortunately, like the fairies, the works of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien continue to teach many individual men song and holiness - in England and around the world.

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The Question of Pengolod - Superb Numenorean Fanfiction

2011-06-02T17:43:00.000+01:00

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I have no idea whether The Question of Pengolod by the pseudonymous Ansareg is well known among Tolkien fans - but if not it should be:

http://www.ansereg.com/mpqp_series.htm

This is a really good novel (I have read it twice, slowly and with relish) - constantly interesting, frequently deep - and set in Numenor at the time when explorations of Middle Earth were just beginning.

The novel is written so as to fit seamlessly and correctly into the Tolkien Legendarium.

It is almost like finding a lost work by the man himself.

There is a particularly beautiful and moving section concerning the midsummer ritual of Erulaitalë on the mountain Meneltarma. This scene had a significant impact on me, and my perspective on life.

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The web site also contains some really excellent essays, such as this:

http://www.ansereg.com/TheUnnaturalHistoryofTolkiensOrcs.pdf

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However, as the author clearly and politely labels - so that it can be avoided by those who wish to avoid it - the web site also contains a fair bit of 'slash' fiction, if you know what that is. This kind of thing will (ahem) not appeal to everyone - to put it mildly.

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Tolkien speaks from the past to us now?

2011-05-30T07:25:00.000+01:00

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I continue to be astonished by coming across sections of the Notion Club Papers whose significance I had missed, but which jump-out at me on re-reading.

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NCPs, Night 65 (page 228).

[Frankley] "Well, I think there's a difference between what really happened at our meetings and Nicholas's record [of the Notion Club]. (...)

[Ramer] "People of the future, if they only knew the records and studied them, and let their imagination work on them, till the Notion Club became a sort of secondary world set in the past: they could [re-view the past as a present thing]."

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Coming in the midst of a section of debate about whether it is possible really to experience the past as it truly was, this has the force of a personal statement from Tolkien (via Ramer).

A further comment makes clear that the pre-requisites of direct contact with the legendary or mythic past are not 'literal' factuality of record keeping, but derives - as Ramer says - "from the profundity of the emotions and perceptions that begot them and from the multiplication of them in many minds..."

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Among other things, I get the eerie sense of a coded message planted by Tolkien back in 1946 for the reader today, that if the reader lets his imagination work on these feigned records of a fictional club, they may become real, in the sense of a secondary world set in the past.

At one level the process recommended may (I think Tolkien is saying) provide a mode of access to the real Inklings and their concerns. But this achieved will itself allow further things to happen.

One touchstone of the reality of the past is a sort of non-subjectivity. That the perceived past does not merely mirror or amplify the current reader's understanding, but is capable of surprising and informing the present. Capable of inducing a different perspective.

This new perspective then enables the current reader to perceive things (past and present) that were previously inapparent, which may then induce a further change in perspective.

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(Of course, such perspectival shifts are not necessarily good, can be harmful as well as helpful. The new perspective that induces further perspectival shifts might prove to be a trap. As we see all around us.)

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C.S Lewis as dreamer

2011-05-25T22:07:00.001+01:00

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Roger Lancelyn Green contributes a chapter on Lewis as a dreamer to C.S Lewis at the breakfast table: and other reminiscences, edited by James Como and published in 1980.

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Green gives accounts of some of Lewis's recorded dreams, and his use of dream images or pictures as a basis for his fictions:

"Lewis confessed to drawing many ideas for scenes and characters in his stories from mind pictures that came to him either waking or asleep (...).

"When we were discussing dreams and the imaginative literary use to be made of them, I complained that though I dreamed frequently, I seldom remembered anything from my dreams.

"I shall never forget the vehemence with which he turned on me and exclaimed: 'Then you may thank God that you don't!'

"And he went on to explain that he had suffered most of his life from appalling nightmares - which he remembered only too well when he awakened. This personal trial he put to very good and convincing use in the chapter called The dark island in The voyage of the Dawn Treader.

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Once again it is clear that Lewis, like Tolkien, was much less of a 'plain man' than he is sometimes portrayed; and that his creativity was of the mystical (or shamanistic) kind, based on the 'irrational' associative cognition of visions and dreams.

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The Inklings were historians

2011-05-22T19:35:00.002+01:00

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Although The Inklings are usually considered to be a literary group, they were really much more like historians.

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With the exception of Robert 'Humphrey' Havard (scientist and doctor) all of the main members took an historical perspective on their subject: Tolkien was a philologist, Jack Lewis wrote about medieval literature and society, Charles Williams published several historical 'potboilers' - and some, such as Warnie Lewis and Gervase Mathew - were straightforward historians, who wrote history books.

But the core Inklings had a specifically mythical interest in history.

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This was partly intrinsic to the individuals (and a major reason for their friendship), but found an early formulation in the first books of Owen Barfield - Poetic Diction and History in English Words which had a major impact on both Lewis (who had been friends with Barfield since they were undergraduate contemporaries) and Tolkien.

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The key activity shared by Lewis and Tolkien - and to very varying degrees by the other Inklings - was the recovery of the mythic vision of history.

That was what the Inklings meetings were about.

Yes they were a writing group, and a social group; but what was being written and what kept the group together around Lewis had this core, implicit, purpose and tendency.

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More importantly, it is why the group is still of interest today.

Because the problem for which mythic history is proposed as (at least the start of) a solution is by now very bad indeed, and much worse than in the 1930s and 1940s.

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The Inklings were not just historians, nor even historians of ideas: they were engaged in trying to reconnect the modern mind with an historical mode of thought, a mythic mode of thought - by argument, by scholarship, and of course by the imagination.

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John Wain versus C.S. Lewis and the nature of The Inklings

2011-05-16T09:41:00.002+01:00

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The English 'man of letters' John Wain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wain

published an early autobiography called Sprightly Running in 1963, the last year of C.S. Lewis's life, in which he reflected on the period when he was a member of The Inklings.

Although Wain liked and respected the Inklings, especially revering Nevill Coghill about whom he wrote an intensely-felt memoir, he conceptualized them as not only reactionary, but actually a counter-revolutionary group:

"The group had a corporate mind" that was both powerful and clearly defined. They were "politically conservative, not to say reactionary; in religion, Anglo- or Roman-Catholic; in art, frankly hostile to an manifestation of the 'modern' spirit", "a circle of instigators, almost incendiaries, meeting to urge one another on in the task of redirecting the whole current of contemporary art and life."

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C.S. Lewis immediately published a long letter strongly disputing this analysis of the Inklings in the January 1963 edition of the journal Encounter (he had presumably seen a review copy of the book) in which Lewis - while graciously thanking Wain for saying many kind things about him, and stating clearly that he regarded Wain as a friend ('friend' being a word Lewis used sparingly and rigorously).

Lewis focused on the ideological differences between various Inklings, the non-overlapping nature of some of the friendships within the group, and stating that "Mr Wain has mistaken purely personal relationships for alliances."

In essence, Lewis hotly denied that the Inklings were self-consciously an explicitly strategic, reactionary, counter-revolutionary 'cell'.

*

Yet, of course, as we now recognize, Wain was substantively correct in every respect except that of supposing that the Inklings was self-conscious in their instigation and incendiary activities.

The Inklings were indeed - at their core of Jack Lewis, Tolkien and Charles Williams, and during their peak years of 1939-45 - a group of Christian reactionaries with very large scale ambitions to redirect the current of modern art and life.

This was very obvious to Wain who opposed this re-directing of art and life back to a pre-modern and religious spirit (at least, he did during the early decades of his life, when he was known as an anti-establishment figure, one of the 'Angry Young Men' of the 1950s - although in later years Wain's work, for instance on Samuel Johnson, strikes me as itself reactionary - or at least nostalgic for the pre-modern era).

That was why the Inklings were friends, that was an essential basis of their friendship: necessary but not sufficient.

*

The reason for the continued interest in the Inklings is precisely what Wain stated.

But of course, Wain's analysis was itself from a 'modern' perspective; a perspective which sees 'political' activity as necessarily self-conscious and explicit.

Whereas the reality was that the Inklings did not subscribe to this view of politics.

Lewis, Tolkien and Williams were individually, and passionately, engaged in recovering a pre-modern, a Christian spirit for life - with re-connecting with the thread of this spirit as it came down through the centuries - a thread which was almost broken, a spirit which they themselves were among that last examples.

And this, at least, was explicitly perceived - Lewis spoke of himself as a dinosaur left over from a previous era, Tolkien spoke of fighting the long defeat, Williams blurred pre-modern past and present and expounded (in The Descent of the Dove) a history of Christendom in which he discerned a two thousand year thread coming through Anglicanism right down to his own spiritual engagement.

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The substantive disagreement of Wain and Lewis over the true nature of the Inklings was only, therefore, a quibble over the degree of self-consciousness with which their counter-revolutionary activities was being pursued; there was no disagreement of the fact and tendency of the Inklings endeavors.

The Inklings were thus in effect precisely as Wain described them: instigators and incendiaries.

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Dom Jonathan Markison OSB = Gervase Mathew OSB

2011-05-15T22:30:00.000+01:00

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Just for the record, I agree with the identification of one of the (peripheral) members of the Notion Club Papers called Dom Jonathan Markison as probably based-on the real-life (peripheral) Inkling Gervase Mathew.

This resemblance was noted by Perry C. Bramlett, Joe R. Christopher in I am in fact a hobbit, 2002.

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In the NCP list of member there is the brief entry "Dom Jonathan Markinson, OSB . New College, Master of St Cuthbert's Hall. [Polymath]"

Markison has several brief interjections in the text of the NCPs, one on an obscure point of history, another which mentions he had 'dabbled' in about 100 languages, and others of a philological nature.

OSB = Order of Saint Benedict - a Roman Catholic monk; Benedictines are addressed as Dom = Dominus or Master. St Cuthbert's Hall is an imaginary Oxford College, presumably named after the Anglo Saxon Saint.

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Gervase Mathew OP (The Order founded by St Dominic; OP = Order of Preachers - a Roman Catholic Friar) was at Blackfriars Hall, the Dominican college attached to Oxford University. He was a renowned polymath - who apparently knew everybody and something about 'everything'.

Dominicans and Benedictines are traditionally among the most scholarly of Roman Catholic religious orders.

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Anti-dwarf prejudice - justified?

2011-05-06T12:04:00.000+01:00

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When the Fellowship encounter the elves of Lothlorien, Eomer's horsemen and the doormen at Edoras it is clear that there is a pretty general prejudice against dwarves among the other free peoples of Middle Earth.

Is this justified?

Well, yes it is!

*

The reason is that the dwarves are proud and pride is a sin.

Dwarvish pride comes out as a hypersensitivity to personal insults, such that at any moment (whether among friends or foes) a dwarf may feel himself slighted and reach for his axe.

When combined with the great courage and strength of dwarves (the best of all infantry soldiers among the free peoples - with the exception of Numenoreans), this makes dwarves dangerous people to have around.

*

Of course, in Gimli we have the best of dwarves - that much is made clear: Gimli is an exception.

*

Gimli's companions seem to accept the general view that dwarves are trouble, and argue along the lines of 'yes we know about dwarves - but, Gimli was specially chosen by Elrond, he is a member of the Fellowship, he is different from the general run of dwarves - and we will vouch for his behaviour'

(Which is code for: 'don't worry, we will keep him under control...').

*

Yet even Gimli is bad enough! - very nearly provoking suicidal fights with Lothlorien elves and the Riders of Rohan - fights which would have been fatal to the battle against Sauron.

*

So, we conclude that the prejudice against dwarves as such is reasonable, dwarves usually are trouble; but the best people (Galadriel, Eomer, the guards at Edoras) are (rightly, on the whole) able to evaluate the evidence, trust their instincts, and make an exception in the case of Gimli.

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An Experiment with Time by J.W Dunne and the Inklings

2011-05-01T09:32:00.005+01:00

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This famous book of the late 1920s and 30s was a major influence on The Inklings, and forms a background to the Notion Club Papers.

*

One of the most striking aspects of C.S Lewis's The Dark Tower is the following:

" '... that we see the future is certain. Dunne's book proved that - '

"MacPhee gave a roar like a man in pain.

" 'It's all very well, MacPhee,' Orfieu continued, 'but the only thing that enables you to jeer at Dunne is the fact that you have refused to carry out the experiments he suggests. If you carried them out you would have got the same results that he got, and I got, and everyone got who took the trouble. Say what you like but the thing is proved. It's as certain as any scientific proof whatever.' "

*

Dunne had recorded his dreams in detail and in writing the instant he awoke. The method he describes is very specific, and he is clear that unless this method is followed, then the necessary information will not be available.

Dunne's conclusion - surveying these results, from himself and others - was that some parts of some dreams consisted of recollections of past events (especially the day preceding the sleep) mixed with anticipations of future events - quite thoroughly mixed, so that which-was-which only became apparent later.

My sense is that Lewis and Tolkien both accepted this by the late 1930s into the 1940s, sought an explanation, and discussed its implications - presumably in Inklings meetings.

*

Let us assume that Dunne was right and that Lewis and Tolkien were right to accept his evidence.

And let us take the evidence of the Dark Tower and the Notion Club Papers to conclude that Dunne's experiments were replicated, were verified, at least by Lewis and Tolkien and (probably) some other of the Inklings.

Then why has this idea died-out? Why do so few people nowadays believe that dreams can predict the future?

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The reason is easy enough to understand on reading Dunne - that the dreams were a mixture of past, future and apparently irrelevant material - but there was no way to evaluate which elements were predictive until after they had been confirmed.

So, although Dunne seemed to show convincingly that some aspects of some dreams were visions of the future - this had no practical value: specifically this knowledge offered no powers.

You could not - therefore - use future visionary dreams to make money (e.g from bets), manipulate people, avoid disasters or anything of that kind.

To the modern mind, this means that Dunne's work seemed trivial, hence ignorable, and was eventually discarded (without consideration) as being fake, or gullible, or something...

*

That dreams contained visions of the future was, of course, believed by everyone until a few hundred years ago - and probably is believed by the vast majority of people in the world even now. But in ancient times, the ability to interpret dreams, and decode the future visions - so that the knowledge they contained might become useful, was regarded as a rare gift (and one associated with a lot of fakery).

*

On the other hand, if Dunne was correct (and I find the testimony of Lewis and Tolkien hard to ignore) then this is very interesting for what it tells us about the human condition.

Among other things, it suggests to me the following:

1. That dreams have a natural function - and not just related to memory (the past) but also to the future.

2. That this natural function happens during sleep - and does not require conscious awareness (since most people most of the time do not recall dreams - and Dunne's results depend on specific techniques of rapid recall, association and the making of an objective record, which techniques were apparently not done by anyone before him; and by very few since).

3. That - therefore - the natural function of dreams is not predictive; and that the use of dreams to predict the future is a special, individual, learned skill.

4. My guess as to one function of dreams is that they locate us in the world in an unconscious, implicit, non-verbal way; that dreams provide our relation to reality, our embeddedness in time, which we carry with us as a background to waking, conscious life.

5. That it is therefore possible that the lack of dreams, or of dreams of the right kind (perhaps as a result of some illness, or unnatural lifestyle, or drugs or something) might cause alienation: might cause someone to feel isolated, un-integrated with life, solipsistic, that life has no meaning nor purpose.

- of course this alienated state is compatible with the individual serving a social function, or operating at a high level in specific roles, or wielding power, or having high status. But that person is subjectively cut-off from the stream of time.

- sounds like the modern condition to me.

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NCPs and The Dark Tower by C.S. Lewis

2011-04-30T07:48:00.000+01:00

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Following a reminder from commenter HenryOrientJnr I belatedly got around to reading CS Lewis's posthumously published and unfinished story The Dark Tower - which was projected to be a part of the Science fiction trilogy - following on from Out of the Silent Planet.

It is an excellent story - but that aside, the relationship to the Notion Club Papers is striking.

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(Verlyn Flieger has noted some of the following points in A Question of Time, although I had previously overlooked them.)

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The Dark Tower (DT) was probably written around 1939, which places it chronologically closer to Tolkien's The Lost Road in 1937, then to the Notion Club Papers of 1945-6.

The opening of DT is strikingly similar to the NCPs - a group of intellectual colleagues discussing and debating the possibilities of time travel - both obviously (DT explicitly) having been influenced by An Experiment with Time by J.W Dunne.

The time travel discussion group in the Dark Tower becomes an experimental group, as a machine for watching another time is unveiled - and a member gets exchanged with a copy of himself in that other time.

In broad terms this resembles the way in which the Notion Club's experiments with dreaming begin with observation of the last days of Numenor, but go on to establishing a physical connection with that time (and were at one point probably aiming at the presence of NCP members at the fall of Numenor).

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My presumption is that Tolkien heard or read the DT (since it was written when the Inklings were at their height) and took this organizational and plot aspect from it for the NCPs.

As was typical of Tolkien, he mulled over the Dark Tower and the Inkling discussions on time travel for several years before trying to use them in fiction; and it was equally typical of Lewis to use this material much more quickly - so these 'companion pieces' were drafted about six years apart!

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Can elves repent?

2011-04-28T17:21:00.000+01:00

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Following on from the idea about why orcs neither surrender nor accept mercy,

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/03/do-orcs-deserve-mercy.html

is the idea that this may not be because orcs are demons (i.e. fallen angels, fallen maia) - but because orcs are corrupted elves; and that once fallen elves cannot repent.

*

The idea is that Tolkien's elves are - roughly - between Men and Angels - an incarnate angel or a higher form of human than Man.

But it may be that in Tolkien's world higher forms than Man - including elves - are incapable of repentance, therefore incapable of being forgiven.

*

There may be some exceptions to this, but it seems that while Men are already fallen by the time that they enter history, and that therefore all 'good' Men in Tolkien have - in a sense - repented and been forgiven (but, of course, may fall again - but can then again repent and be forgiven again) the higher rational beings of Tolkien's universe seem to be unable to repent once they have been corrupted.

Although even Morgoth is offered a chance or two to repent, and Saruman, and Feanor - none of them take it (or have I missed someone?), and it is possible that they could not take this chance (although maybe there is an obligation to offer it? Perhaps even the Valar do not know whether repentance is possible for themselves? - perhaps only Eru knows for sure).

*

This could be the great advantage of Men - and the reason why Men are destined to dominate and displace other species. Although they are worse (more evil) than elves in most respects, worse even than ents, and overall maybe (maybe) even worse than dwarves - Men can repent.

No matter how deep the hole they have dig for themselves, and no matter their moral feebleness, weakness of will, and recidivism - Man can (and do) repent and try again.

But not so elves - once a bad elf, always a bad elf...

Maybe.

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Tolkien as a Lucid Dreamer of Faery

2011-04-14T12:09:00.000+01:00

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The Notion Club Papers open with Ramer's accounts of what are often termed Lucid Dreams - that is, dreams in which the dreamer is aware they are dreaming, has some degree of control of the dream, and in which the dream experience feels real.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

One question is whether Tolkien uses Lucid Dreaming as a literary device (although at the time he was writing there was no concept of Lucid Dreaming - but there was a long tradition of dreams of this type - whether shamanic, mystical, prophetic or pure imagination or fantasy - e.g. 'opium dreams'); or whether, on the other hand, Tolkien was using Ramer to report his own experiences.

I have argued in this blog that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Tolkien was indeed expressing his own dream experiences in a fictional form.

*

This inference has now been confirmed for me by a personal experience of Lucid Dreaming!

From this it is even clearer that Ramer's experiences are consistent with being precise reports of the experience of Lucid Dreaming.

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From the perspective of the NCPs, the striking feature of a Lucid Dream is the feeling of sensory contact with the dream world.

In most instances, dreams are 'dreamy' - they have a feeling of imprecise unreality due to the constant shifting of association and the shortness of memory - so that the dream is happening to the dreamer (who is trying, but failing, to make sense of it), rather than in Lucid Dreams being dreamed-by the dreamer.

The Lucid Dream is not 'dreamy' - except in that it is known to be a dream, and that events unfold in a somewhat slow motion and emphatically experienced way. By contrast, it is more sensitively appreciated and considered than normal everyday reality: as if realer than real.

*

Furthermore, in a Lucid Dream moral agency is preserved: the dreamer consciously makes choices. This chimes with Tolkien's discussion in NCPs that there is potential for evil influences to enter dreams, but that this can only happen if the influences are invited by the dreamer.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2010/10/evil-minds-attacking-during-sleep.html

By contrast, normal dreaming is not subject to the agency of the dreamer, and the dreamer is not responsible for what he dreams - because he cannot help what he dreams.

*

Assuming that Tolkien was indeed a Lucid Dreamer - and one for whom this was a regular experience, rather than my own one off experience - this leads onto further speculations.

The Lucid Dream turns out to be phenomenologically (experientially) identical to Tolkien's description of how elves might create Faerian Drama (as described in the essay On Fairy Stories and again discussed in the NCPs) - I mean the presumed elves experience of creating this kind of drama.

*

Furthermore, the rather overwhelming experience of Lucid Dreaming raises may of the problems about fantasy, its validity - and the nature of that validity, and the potential benefits and hazards; matters with which Tolkien so often grappled in his writings.

After all, Lucid Dreaming approximates to being given Absolute Power, and none knew better than Tolkien that Absolute Power has a strong tendency to corrupt.

*

In sum, I am suggesting that Faery, for Tolkien, was directly experienced via Lucid Dreams; and in that sense he was an intermittent visitor to Faery; and perhaps in that sense it was fear of a cessation of Lucid Dreaming which provoked Tolkiens mid-life poem The Sea Bell/ Frodo's Dreme/ Looney - and when the Lucid Dreams had actually stopped in Tolkien's experience, provoked Tolkien's late story of Smith of Wootton Major. The story was his farewell to Faery.

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I make the tentative guess that Tolkien was always aware of the fragility and unpredictability of his ability to experience Lucid Dreams of Faery; and that when Tolkien stopped having Lucid Dreams in later life, he was (as it were) no longer 'allowed' to visit Faery himself, but had only fading memories of these experiences, and the hope that the ability would be passed-on to others - as the Faery star was passed-on by the eponymous Smith.

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Tolkien's Notion Club Papers completed... (a speculative treatment)

2011-04-09T21:51:00.005+01:00

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(This is a combined and edited version of some previous posts, describing my idea of how JRR Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers might have ended-up.)

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Having brooded (some would say obsessively - and they would be right!) over Tolkien's Notion Club Papers for a couple of years, I am now going to speculate about where the NCPs were tending; what the NCPs would have been about and what they would have been like - if ever Tolkien had finished the novel.

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In a nutshell, I believe that the Notion Club Papers were intended to serve an extremely important purpose: to rescue modern England from its spiritual malaise.

At least - that was what the Notion Club themselves would be depicted as doing fictionally - and the finished book would be intended to make this possible in the mundane world.

Tolkien's ouvre (his Legendarium) was intended to make a mythology for England; the Notion Club Papers were intended to link his mythical Legendarium to modern England. (I got this from the work of Verlyn Flieger - especially her book Interrupted Music.)

*

I suggest that the NCPs would - ultimately (if finished) - have provided a feigned history of the processes that brought Tolkien's historical myth/s into action in the modern world.

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What was Tolkien 'rescuing' England from?

This is made explicit in the NCPs:

[Jeremy] ..."Sometimes I have a queer feeling that, if one could go back, one would find not myth dissolving into history, but rather the reverse: real history becoming more mythical - more shapely, simple, discernibly significant, even seen at close quarters. More poetical and less prosaic, if you like.(...)

"They're not wholly inventions. And even what is invented is different from mere fiction; it has more roots." (...)

"[The roots are] In Being, I think I should say," Jeremy answered; "and in human Being; and coming down the scale, in the springs of History and the designs of Geography - I mean, well, in the pattern of our world as it uniquely is, and of the events in it as seen from a distance. (...)

"Of course, the pictures presented by the legends may be partly symbolical, they may be arranged in designs that compress, expand, foreshorten, combine, and are not at all realistic or photographic, yet they may tell you something true about the Past."

*

With the NCPs Tolkien was intending to tell us something true about the past, something that we need to know because at present England's past is merely history, when it should be myth.

The Notion Club Papers were intended to make England's history into myth - i.e. to reverse the process of myth dissolving into history described by Jeremy in the quote above.

Tolkien wanted, that is, contemporary history to dissolve into myth; and the NCPs were (as they evolved) aimed at achieving this.

*

Arguably, Tolkien achieved his goal, although by other and less direct means - in the sense that many people (like myself) nowadays 'use' Tolkien's Legendarium as a myth by-which (and through-which) they understand and interpret the current world.

We do this despite the lack of an explicit and comprehensive mythical link between the Legendarium (saturated, as it is, with purpose and meaning) and the nihilistic modern world of objective irrelevant 'facts' and purely-individual subjectivities.

However, in order for this to have happened via the NCPs, they would need to have needed to end-up very differently from how they set out: in literary terms, the NCPs would have required very substantial re-writing, in ways which we can only extrapolate from hints and glimmerings.

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The basic situation which the Notion Club inhabit is an Oxford (England, Western Civilization) that is out-of-contact with Faery: in more general terms, a society out-of-contact with myth. Hence vulgar, coarsened, materialistic; without depth, meaning or purpose.

The action of the Notion Club throughout the novel, I speculate, would have been aimed at restoring this contact between Faery and England; and indeed I speculate that the climax of the novel would have been precisely this re-establishment of contact.

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As scholars and writers, the Notion Club would have been aware of the necessity for human contact with Faery (i.e. with myth) in order that their work (as well as their lives) may be profound, imaginative and ennobled - and rise above mere 'utility'.

The means by which the club would restore contact with myth would, I assume, be the usual ones employed by Tolkien and of which hints exist in the incomplete and surviving NCP text: by a quest, by a hero who is an 'elf friend', and by a 'messenger' between Faery and the mundane world.

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As they stand, the NCPs are - to me - an endlessly fascinating fragment, full of evidence about Tolkien and his deepest concerns; but it seems to be a work of extremely limited appeal (at least, I only know of two or three other people than myself who find it at all interesting or enjoyable!) - and therefore I assume that the story in its present form would either be unpublishable, or else destined only for a microscopically small cult audience.

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If the NCPs had been completed they would therefore, I believe, have ended-up very differently from the way they exist at present.

The overall purpose of the NCPs (within Tolkien's books) would have been to provide a frame for Tolkien's legendarium - in other words, a pseudo-historical 'explanation' for how the legends of the elves, Numenor and ancient Middle Earth were transmitted to our times (transmitted specifically to England, and even more specifically to Oxford).

In other words, approximately to link The Silmarillion, Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to the modern reader by a feigned history.

*

The Notion Club Papers novel would, then, describe how a link between Middle Earth (this modern world) and Faery was re-established.

*

The shape of the novel would presumably have been the same as Tolkien's other works - some kind of heroic quest in which the hero or heroes come into contact with 'Faery' and an ennobled by contact with 'higher things' and made wiser by their experience.

Clearly, the Notion Club Papers would therefore require need a protagonist with whom the reader would identify. That is a character whose thoughts and feelings the reader would get to know in the course of the story.

But such characters are lacking (or indirect and inexplicit) in the current NCP drafts.

*

The existing form of the NCPs, i.e. the literary conceit of their being the formal minutes of club meetings, would therefore need to be dropped or relaxed; to bring in much more direct forms of narrative or reportage.

This was already beginning to happen in the later parts of the NCPs, with the introduction of letters from Lowdham (plus some footnotes), and an extended 'dream sequence' which reports Lowdham's inner state during an Anglo Saxon episode.

So, in the NCP novel there would be a great expansion of such letters, and also probably diaries and journal entries - so as to bring the reader into more direct contact with the action.

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In terms of character, the ANC would therefore need to get inside at least one of Guildford, Ramer, Lowdham and Jeremy.

My guess is that the protagonist would have been Guildford - the recorder, who would become the narrator, and would speak directly to the reader (to posterity) about the collection of minutes, letters, poems, fragments and journal entries which he has gathered and collated with the aim of preservation and propagation.

Probably, Guildford would have remained a rather background character in terms of the action and excitement, and it would have been the extrovert Lowdham in particular would emerged as the most obvious hero - supported by Jeremy who would, I guess, end-up being the main person responsible for achieving the quest to re-connect with Faery.

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I suspect the Ramer character might therefore have receded in importance. His role might be in learning the languages necessary to interpret the documentary material eventually recovered from Faery by Lowdham and Jeremy.

Ramer's role at the end of the ANC would perhaps be as scholarly interpreter of the texts brought back to Oxford by Jeremy (who seems not to be skilled as a philologist or historical linguist).

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I would imagine that Lowdham - accompanied by Jeremy - would make the breakthrough to physical contact with faery: set sail for the West with Jeremy, be responsible for navigating the boat, and eventually actually land in Faery where he would meet his father - and the High elves.

But then Lowdham would stay-behind in faery (with his father) and Jeremy would be the one who returned to England bringing the legendarium - especially the Red Book of Westmarch and Bilbo's Translations from the Elvish.

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In sum, the Notion Club Papers would be presented as a collection of minutes, letters, journal entries etc. collected by Guildford concerning the Notion Club in general and Lowdham and Jeremy in particular - telling the story of how a link between faery and England was re-established by the efforts of the Club - firstly in dreams then ultimately by a voyage to Faery.

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However, the link between Faery would be firstly psychic, and only secondly physical - the early parts of the NCPs are concerned with the initial glimpses of myth and faery via dreams, then a break-through of visionary material from the past - so powerful that it had an actual physical effect on Oxford and nearby areas of England (the storm replicating the downfall of Numenor).

This stage would also provide sufficient linguistic information for the Notion Club (with its linguistic, historical and philological expertise) to be able to interpret the extensive documentary material which would eventually be brought back by Jeremy.

*

This requires an intermediary: Dolbear - who turns-out to be a wizard/ angel/ messenger from Faery.

*

The character of Dolbear jumps-out of the Notion Club Papers as somebody about whom there is more than meets the eye. Almost everything he says is wise and cuts-deep. He seems to understand more of what is going-on than anyone else.

We know Dolbear has certainly been working, independently, with Ramer even before the meetings were reported and also later with Lowdham - on their dreams and interpretations.

Dolbear is also hinted to be a kind of grey eminence at the least; someone greatly respected by the other members (underneath their chummy chaffing) and probably somebody who is - in fact - actually stage-managing the whole process by which the Notion Club re-establishes contact with Faery.

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In this sense Dolbear resembles Gandalf - who is a wizard or an 'angel' in disguise; in the sense of being a higher being from the undying lands who is a messenger and catalyst. Probably the reader would not have access to Dolbear's inner life - he would (like Gandalf) be observed rather than experienced.

Dolbear would make things happen, by hints and directions and providing key pieces of information - never by force. And at the end of the story Dolbear would return (like Gandalf) whence he came - to Faery.

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This is (I speculate) the meaning of Dolbear seeming to sleep though the meetings, yet remain apparently aware of everything which is happening in them - indeed more aware of the implications of the meetings than are the active participants.

I suspect that during sleep Dolbear is in contact with Faery and with the Notion Club at the same time. He is therefore a conduit or passageway linking Oxford and the undying lands - he transmits the proceedings of the Notion Club to Faery, and receives instructions of what to do.

Dolbear's trance-like states of sleep are therefore (I believe) the specific means by which the inhabitants of Faery are encouraging the renewed contact between England and Faery which the Notion Club themselves seek.

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The Oxford setting is highly significant, as is the general similarity between the Notion Club and The Inklings.

*

Tolkien saw himself as the inheritor of an English racial memory of Faery. In his earliest legends (now published as Lost Tales) England had indeed been a part of Faery - with a place to place mapping between mythic and modern places, and England was especially favoured for this reason.

Tolkien regarded this inherited memory as coming down his mother's side of the family, and therefore centred in Warwickshire (Mercia).

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And Tolkien had less strong but similarly mystical feelings about Oxford as he did about the nearby West Midlands of England, and of course he spent most of his working life at the University, and this was where most of his friends lived.

But mostly, for Tolkien, Oxford had a special role in scholarship related to Faery. And from a practical point of view, Oxford in the early and mid-twentieth century was the perfect place from which knowledge of Faery might have been disseminated throughout the rest of England.

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So, my guess is that the NCP novel would have described the Inkling's-like Notion Club in Oxford as having first established a psychic link with Faery - with visionary material glimpsed during dreams, then having recovered extensive documentary evidence from Faery, and brought it back to Oxford for secret safe-keeping, translation and dissemination.

The benefits of this mythic, faery knowledge would then enhance first the Notion Club members, then the rest of the University, with elven craft, depth, wisdom and mystery.

A special quality in the work of the Notion Club, and Oxford, would have been recognized by the English (who were genetically predisposed to appreciate it) and the effects and benefits would have been spread throughout England by means of Oxford's role in educating the administrators and teachers of the rest of England.

*

So, in order to re-establish contact between Middle Earth and Faery there would need to be efforts form both sides: both a push and a pull.

On the one hand there was a push from the members of the Notion Club, who sensed the shallowness and literalness of their world, the damage of materialism, and the ugliness of industrialization (e.g. Ramer's horrible dream of Oxford through the ages) - and sought to enrich life by contact with Faery.

And on the other hand there was a pull from the inhabitants of Faery. The elves were assumed to have benign intentions towards humans and seek to help them.

*

Especially the inhabitants of Faery wish to help Men to adopt an attitude of love towards nature; to become 'elvishly' capable of disinterested craft, art, science and scholarship as things to be loved for their own sakes, rather than as a means to another end.

*

In sum - the The Notion Club Papers would (I imagine) describe how the post-medieval process of 'myth turning into history' would be reversed; and first the Notion Club, then Oxford, then England, then maybe eventually the World - might again connected with Faery, and re-enchanted by elvish wisdom and suffused with an elvish perspective.

*

In practice, the finished Notion Club papers were intended to be the first Tolkien book which people should read: a modern science fiction type novel which would explain how the Annals (Silmarillion legends) and Romances (Hobbit and Lord of the Rings) came to England, and were translated for a general audience.

Having read the Notion Club Papers - mainstream fiction of a familiar type - the modern reader would be prepared for to move onto reading the much stranger and less familiar Annals and Romances; and would (at some level) then be able to treat them as (or as if) an historical reality.

***

Do orcs deserve mercy?

2011-03-06T14:12:00.000Z

*

A post by Troels sparked a thought to explain the fact that orcs are never offered a chance to surrender nor taken prisoner by the 'goodies' in the Lord of the Rings, but instead never surrender and are always slaughtered.

http://parmarkenta.blogspot.com/2011/02/lord-of-rings-as-transitionary-work.html

He relates this to the evolution of the idea of orcs as originating as demons and ending-up as ruined elves or men.

On the concept of orcs as ruined free folk, they should always be offered a chance to 'repent' and be taken prisoner - in a post-LotR letter Tolkien says that orcs never in fact take this chance, since they are so indoctrinated that they believe they would be horribly tormented by their enemies.

This sounds a bit unlikely; humans that are orclike are terrified of dying, often cowardly and inclined to surrender and hope for the best.

BUT if orcs are indeed demons - and as demons are 'fallen angels', then orc-demons are (according to the theology I have read - and in this respect unlike humans) incapable of repentance; therefore deserve no mercy - or, at least mercy, would be futile.

And this could explain why orcs seem never to surrender (despite being cowardly) and never are (at least not that we see) offered mercy or taken prisoner by elves, men or dwarves.

*

Legolas, Gimli and the key passage of Lord of the Rings

2011-02-26T08:36:00.000Z

From Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien:

***

'We will come', said Imrahil; and they parted with courteous words.

'That is a fair lord and a great captain of men,' said Legolas. 'If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been its glory in the days of its rising'.

'And doubtless the good stone-work is the older and was wrought in the first building,' said Gimli. 'It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.'

'Yet seldom do they fail of their seed,' said Legolas. 'And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli.'

'And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess,' said the Dwarf.

'To that the Elves know not the answer,' said Legolas.

***

Ever since I began reading the Lord of the Rings way back in 1972, this has struck me as one of the key passages in the book: perhaps the single most important key.

But my reason for thinking this has changed over the years.

My understanding of the implications of this passage has, indeed, almost reversed.

This passage is about two aspects of the human condition, seen from two perspectives: fecklessness versus idealism; or, this-worldliness versus other-worldliness.

At first I identified with the elf and dwarf in terms of dismay at the restless distractability of Men - their inability to follow-through and finish any difficult task, the fact that their arts and crafts are always flawed, imperfect; men are always looking for something different, failing to keep their attention on the job.

Compared with dwarves and elves, men are shallow - almost like children. And the best of men are the Numenoreans like Imrahil, who are ennobled by an infusion of elvish blood and spirituality.

(Dwarves are conceived as a separate species, while Men and Elves are con-specific - and can interbreed, despite their differences.)

But from an elvish perspective this means that - at best - Men are merely second-rate and mortal elves. The best of Men's work - their arts and crafts - is nearly, but not quite, as good as the elves - and in architecture inferior to the dwarves.

The ultimate reason is Men's psychology: Men cannot stick to a difficult job right through to the end.

From the perspective of dwarves, the works of Men are a sequence of promising starts and disappointing results: 'merely 'might have beens'.

This my younger self perceived, and sadly agreed with.

But the wiser elf Legloas is not content to leave Gimli with the last word.

Although he does not understand, he recognises the limit of his understanding - and admits as much. Legolas perceives that the triumph of Men is part of providence, of the divine plan for Middle Earth - and therefore that there must be more to it than the accident of superior fertility.

Gimli and Legolas both perceive that the distractability of Men is a flaw in this world, in terms of what Men can achieve on Middle Earth.

But the elf seems to recognize that Men's distractability may be a consequence of something higher than either elf or dwarf can perceive - that Men may (in a nutshell) be distracted by something not of this world - that Men are unfitted for Middle earth because their destiny lies elsewhere.

Of course this was precisely what Tolkien believed, and what lies behind this passage and which lends it such depth and fascination. It explains my fascination with this passage, and also it explains why I missed the deeper meaning for so long - until I read and understood the Marring of Men/ Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth.

As such this famous passage represents and illustrates the method and secret of LotR - its subtle glimpses of depths and vistas beyond the frame of the story.

***

Note: the fact that this exchange between Gimli and Legolas was omitted from the movie version of LotR is a strike against the movie, and represents a failure to appreciate the core message of the book. I say this despite being a great admirer of the movies.

Death in Tolkien

2011-02-14T15:10:00.000Z

*

In LotR and its appendices, Tolkien makes clear how Men must (in this 'fallen' world) accept the inevitability of death, and the severance of soul from body - with the soul leaving this world and uncertainty over what happens next.

Thus the necessity for hope - for Men to believe in the reality and trust in the power and benign nature of The One.

*

For elves, by contrast, death is not inevitable, and they know that the One is real and powerful and benign; they know too what happens after their death - and that soul and body may be reunited by reincarnation.

Yet elves do not know what happens after the end of the world, which the elves know they will be there to experience - and elves, too, can rest only on hope that The One will - in ways unknown - make this right.

*

So, Men will suffer severance of soul from body and do not know what will then happen while Elves may suffer severance of soul from body but may have this 'healed' during the life of the world.

And Men go to another place where they may hope for something greater than this world has to offer, while elves will suffer annihilation in this world and may hope for something greater than this world has to offer, after the destruction of the world.

For both Men and elves alike hope is therefore prescribed - although for elves there is no need for faith since they know.

(This may be a point in favor of Men, a chance for them to exercise a higher virtue than that of which elves are capable.)

*

But in The Marring of Men and the associated material, Tolkien injects what seems like a personal note - the wisdom of a life time of reflection on death, when he acknowledges that Men's dread of death is rational: it is rational for Men to fear the severance of body and soul (even though, in this world, they must accept it, and must not try to avoid it: must not cling to life).

His proposed solution is that before The Fall the body and soul were taken, together, into the next world (in the same way and presumably by the same means as happened with the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, Tolkien states): that the original plan of The One was that Men's soul never-was severed from their bodies.

*

So we get a situation in the Silmarillion and LotR which resembles the pre-Christian times when a virtuous and courageous pagan had hope but no real reason for hope beyond death; other than a content-less faith that (somehow) things would (eventually) be made right.

*

Depth in Tolkien

2011-02-13T16:34:00.000Z

*

The main reason that the Lord of the Rings has such depth - so that it feels like real life - is not that it is internally-consistent (plenty of fantasy is that), nor even that it is immensely detailed (although in that respect it is indeed unsurpassed); but that LotR has a sense of depth: of vistas glimpsed, and sometimes opening-out but never quite sufficient to satisfy curiosity.

To put it another way, LotR has a magnificent back-story, which is 'complete', but of which we seldom get more than tantalizing glances.

In a nutshell, Tolkien had a ready made back-story by using the vast and mostly-worked-out Silmarillion Legendarium as the glimpsed background.

Tom Shippey, in The Road to Middle Earth, spelled-out how this effect was attained and why Tolkien valued this so much.

*

But Shippey also describes that this created a big problem when it came to preparing the Silmarillion for publication - since there was no background (because the Silamrillion gave an objective account of everything, right back to the beginning of the world).

Tolkien himself was perfectly aware of the problem, and discussed it explicitly, sought various answers - but never answered the problem to his satisfaction - and the Simarillion was not published during his lifetime.

*

The result was that - in my opinion - when the single volume Silmarillion of 1977 was published, it was an artistic failure.

It was just dull; a great disappointment. It was consistent and it was complex - but, as well as having no characters with whom the reader could identify (no Hobbits, nor even Men from whose perspective we could perceive things), and as well as the problem of having no 'frame' to define what exactly it purported to be; it was just too consistent.

However, almost by accident, the problem of depth was later solved for the Silmarillion Legendarium over the next couple of decades by the publication of first Unfinished Tales then another twelve volumes of the History of Middle Earth.

*

What we have now is multiple versions of Silmarillion legends in the form of unfinished drafts and proposed versions, free-standing and finished but inconsistent segments, editorial discussions from both JRR and Christopher Tolkien, prose and poems, notes and appendices... and much else.

We have, in other words, a vast and implicit depth - so long as we take the stance that these are fragmentary and distorted Annals of lost real history.

In this case depth comes not from a back-story, but from the (spontaneous human) tendency to infer a back-story - or a true and complete version - of which the thirteen volumes (or, perhaps more accurately, the nine-or-so volumes of material which refer to pre-LotR history) are the remaining evidence.

Like 19th century philologists, we must struggle to recover the lost truth behind these 'records' - and it is an endless and fascinating task - tantalizing in just the same kind of way as the scattered references to ancient Silmarillion history embedded in LotR.

*

Paradoxically, Tolkien's failure to finish the Silmarillion, followed by the indispensable and irreplaceable labours of his son Christopher, has given us exactly what JRRT would have wanted us to have.

(Ignoring the false start of the one volume 1977 Silmarillion - which we might choose to regard from this perspective as merely a 'forgery' by later hands - rather like Macpherson's Ossian!)

*

JRR Tolkien's theology of The Fall and Resurrection

2011-02-06T09:40:00.002Z

From The History of Middle Earth Volume 10 - edited by Christopher Tolkien - excerpted from pages 330-333.

With regard to King Finrod, it must be understood that he starts with certain basic beliefs, which he would have said were derived from one or more of these sources: his created nature; angelic instruction; thought; and experience.

1. There exists Eru (The One); that is, the One God Creator, who made (or more strictly designed) the World, but is not Himself the World. This world, or Universe, he calls Eä, an Elvish word that means 'It is', or 'Let It Be'.

2. There are on Earth 'incarnate' creatures, Elves and Men: these are made of a union of hröa and fëa (roughly but not exactly equivalent to 'body' and 'soul'). This, he would say, was a known fact concerning Elvish nature, and could therefore be deduced for human nature from the close kinship of Elves and Men.

3. Hröa and fëa he would say are wholly distinct in kind, and not on the 'same plane of derivation from Eru', but were designed each for the other, to abide in perpetual harmony. The fëa is indestructible, a unique identity which cannot be disintegrated or absorbed into any other identity. The hröa, however, can be destroyed and dissolved: that is a fact of experience. (In such a case he would describe the fëa as 'exiled' or 'houseless'.)

4. The separation of fëa and hröa is 'unnatural', and proceeds not from the original design, but from the 'Marring of Arda', which is due to the operations of Melkor.

5. Elvish 'immortality' is bounded within a part of Time (which he would call the History of Arda [Arda is roughly the earth and solar system]), and is therefore strictly to be called rather 'serial longevity', the utmost limit of which is the length of the existence of Arda. A corollary of this is that the Elvish fëa is also limited to the Time of Arda, or at least held within it and unable to leave it, while it lasts.

6. From this it would follow in thought, if it were not a fact of Elvish experience, that a 'houseless' Elvish fëa must have the power or opportunity to return to incarnate life, if it has the desire or will to do so. (...)

7. Since Men die, without accident, and whether they will to do so or not, their fëar must have a different relation to Time. The Elves believed, though they had no certain information, that the fëar of Men, if disembodied, left Time (sooner or later), and never returned.

* (…)

[Finrod] uncovers a concomitant tradition that the change in the condition of Men from their original design was due to a primeval disaster, about which human lore is unclear, or Andreth is at least unwilling to say much. He remains, nonetheless, in the opinion that the condition of Men before the disaster (or as we might say, of unfallen Man) cannot have been the same as that of the Elves.

That is, their 'immortality' cannot have been the longevity within Arda of the Elves; otherwise they would have been simply Elves, and their separate introduction later into the Drama by Eru would have no function.

He thinks that the notion of Men that, unchanged, they would not have died (in the sense of leaving Arda) is due to human misrepresentation of their own tradition, and possibly to envious comparison of themselves to the Elves.

For one thing, he does not think this fits, as we might say, 'the observable peculiarities of human psychology', as compared with Elvish feelings towards the visible world.

[Tolkien refers here to Finrod's observations that (in these respects, being different from elves) Men seem to feel they are visitors to the earth (Arda), not 'at home', in exile, perpetually dissatisfied, rapidly wearying of things, seeking of novelty, seeking of a satisfaction on earth which they never can achieve... From this he infers that men were not made for this world only.]

* (…)

[Finrod] therefore guesses that it is the fear of death that is the result of the disaster. It is feared because it now is combined with severance of hroa and fea.

But the fear of Men must have been designed to leave Arda willingly or indeed by desire - maybe after a longer time than the present average human life, but still in a time very short compared with Elvish lives.

Then basing his argument on the axiom that severance of hroa and fea is unnatural and contrary to design, he comes (or if you like jumps) to the conclusion that the fea of unfallen Man would have taken with it its hroa into the new mode of existence (free from Time).

In other words, that 'assumption' was the natural end of each human life, though as far as we know it has been the end of the only 'unfallen' member of Mankind.

[Tolkien refers here to Mary, the Mother of Jesus; and the ancient Catholic tradition that she died willingly and was bodily assumed directly to Heaven. However, the Eastern Orthodox Catholic tradition would not agree with Tolkien's Roman Catholic belief that Mary was 'unfallen'.]

***

My comments:

I regard JRR Tolkien as one of the wisest and most profound of men, and further I take the above discussion seriously as an attempt - within the subcreation of his Legendarium - to grapple with ultimate matters.

Furthermore, I find his reasoning compelling.

*

Note what he says about the necessary assumptions. In the case of the Elven King Finrod, these assumptions were based on his created nature; angelic instruction; thought; and experience.

In the case of Men (who have not lived among the 'angels' (Valar) as had elven King Finrod; the assumptions would be based on created nature, thought, experience - and any traditions concerning divine 'revelation'.

His conclusion is that the Fall (conceived as a turning away from God, and a worship of the Satanic figure of Melkor/ Morgoth - which is a turning away from love to power) led to fear of death, as a severance of (immortal) soul and (mortal) body which is unnatural and horrible.

Eru's original plan was that this would not have happened, but that Men on willingly accepting death at the end of their time on earth would go (body and soul) to another world (i.e. Heaven) which was out of Time.

Following the fall, and a time of fallen-ness where Men's souls were indeed severed from bodies at death, an alternative plan was devised by Eru whereby he himself would become a Man, and thereby (mystically) enable souls which had left the world without their bodies to be reunited with their proper bodies, using (roughly speaking) the 'memory' of the body which was retained by the soul.

*

This was (Tolkien explains elsewhere) the mechanism for elven reincarnation - a new body was 'regenerated' from the memory of the soul.

But the souls of Men were not like this (the special elven gift was memory), nor was reincarnation the destiny of Men.

After all, the souls of dead Men had left Arda (whereas elven souls remained in Arda), and were in a domain out of Time.

*

Only intervention by Eru could heal this situation, and any healing must allow for the free will of Men (which was part of the essence of Men and the 'reason' or purpose of their creation).

Against this was not just the free will of Men to reject any or all of the assumptions or to prefer power to love; but there was also the fact of the presence of evil in the fabric of the world (the tainting of the created world by Morgoth); the purposive evil of Morgoth himself, his allies (Sauron) and his corrupted servants - Balrogs, Dragons, Orcs; and the opposition of free Men who (each, by choice or assent) took Morgoth as their God.

This is Tolkien's indirect description of the Fall and Resurrection; and his explanation of the need for Resurrection.

*

Inter alia, Tolkien's description of Finrod's assumptions is also a description of Faith (belief in the reality of Erus and his nature), Hope (called Estel - by which knowledge of Eru implies goodness of divine purpose) - and the distinctive Christian virtue of Charity (Love, Agape) is implied by the contrast with Pride and Power-seeking which are distinctive sins of the two Falls of Men - the primary fall of the worship of Morgoth in the unrecorded history, and the secondary historical fall of Numenor into pride and power - finally capped by the Numenorean King again reinstating the worship of Morgoth - supervised by Morgoth's priest Sauron.

*

The elven 'argument from desire'

2011-02-02T18:28:00.002Z

From JRR Tolkien "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" in Morgoth's Ring: History of Middle Earth volume 10 (edited by Christopher Tolkien) page 343:

Desire

"The Elves insisted that 'desires', especially such fundamental desires as are here dealt with, were to be taken as indications of the true natures of the Incarnates, and of the direction in which their unmarred fulfilment must lie.

"They distinguished between desire of the [soul] (perception that something right or necessary is not present, leading to desire or hope for it); wish, or personal wish (the feeling of the lack of something, the force of which primarily concerns oneself, and which may have little or no reference to the general fitness of things);
illusion, the refusal to recognize that things are not as they should be, leading to the delusion that they are as one would desire them to be, when they are not so.

"The last might now be called 'wishful thinking', legitimately; but this term, the Elves would say, is quite illegitimate when applied to the first.

"The last can be disproved by reference to facts. The first not so.

"Unless desirability is held to be always delusory, and the sole basis for the hope of amendment.

"But desires of the [soul] may often be shown to be reasonable by arguments quite unconnected with personal wish. The fact that they accord with 'desire', or even with personal wish, does not invalidate them.

"Actually the Elves believed that the 'lightening of the heart' or the 'stirring of joy' (to which they often refer), which may accompany the hearing of a proposition or an argument, is not an indication of its falsity but of the recognition by the [soul] that it is on the path of truth.)"

Comment: Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth may by Tolkien's most explicit statement (or, at least, discussion) of his deepest beliefs, albeit stated in terms of his legendarium. Here, yet again, is the argument from desire, which he shared with C.S Lewis - that when humans desire something deeply that is not of this world, then this may be taken as 'evidence' that something which fully gratifies this desire is to be found in another world, the world that humans are 'made-for', where humans would be 'at home' (which is not this world).

The pride of Feanor

2011-02-02T18:27:00.002Z

*

Being himself a creative genius of a high order, Tolkien felt a temptation of pride which was perhaps greater than for most.

In his depiction of the elf Feanor - he showed how pride can destroy everything which the greatest creative genius can achieve, and more.

*

Feanor was by far the most gifted among the gifted race of elves: as a scholar he invented the written script, as a craftsman he created many wonders but especially the Silmarils: three indestructible jewels of beauty unequalled by any products of human art, in which the light of the Two Trees was captured.

Gandalf said that, above all else in the world, he would wish to see the incomparable hand and mind of Feanor at work at the height of his powers.

Even the greatest of 'the gods' (except for 'the One' creator God - Eru) - the premier Archangel Melkor (later re-named Morgoth, by Feanor) could not match Feanor's creative genius, and coveted the Silmarils above all.

*

Yet Feanor's pride, his possessiveness concerning his own creations, was such that it led to many disasters for the elves: failure to restore the light of the Two Trees (after Morgoth had them destroyed), mass disloyalty, dishonesty and disobedience among the Noldor elves for generations, slaughter of the Teleri and destruction of their wonderful ships, betrayal and death of Noldor kindred, fruitless wars in Middle Earth with huge suffering and death for many centuries, exile from the care of the Valar - most of the major tragedies of the Silmarillion stories.

And all stemming back to the pride of Feanor.

*

Tolkien depicted the same process at many levels, from Melkor himself, to the first and primary Fall of Man into the worship of Morgoth (unpublished in his life but described in the History of Middle Earth Volume X), to the second Fall of the men of Numenor (who developed the most powerful technological civilization ever in Middle Earth), to individual examples such as Sauron and Saruman (minor gods or angelic figures), to Boromir and Denethor.

In Tolkien's world, as in ours, prideful creative genius often leads first to astonishing achievements of power - else there would be no temptation - then to ruin and loss.

For Tolkien, there is no creative achievement so great that it cannot be undone and reversed by pride.

*

And yet - we live, now, in a society which esteems and promotes pride - indeed depends upon pride for its very sustenance.

Of all the many moral inversions of political correctness - this is the most serious, the most damaging, the most damning.

*

Free-will, purpose, prophecy and providence in Tolkien

2011-01-23T16:16:00.000Z

*

From The Quest of Erebor in Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkien (edited by Christopher Tolkien, published 1980)

*

"Listen to me, Thorin Oakenshield! [said Gandalf]. "If this hobbit goes with you, you will succeed. If not, you will fail. A foresight is on me, and I am warning you."

(...)

Looking hard at Gandalf, [Gimli] went on:

"But who wove the web? I do not think I have ever considered that before. Did you plan all this then, Gandalf? (...)

Gandalf did not answer at one.

He stood up and looked out of the window, west, seawards; and the sun was then setting, and a glow was in his face.

He stood so a long while silent.

But at last he turned to Gimli and said:

"I do not know the answer. For I have changed since those days, and I am no longer trammelled by the burden of Middle Earth as I was then.

"In those days I should have answered you with words like I used to Frodo, only last year in the spring.

"Only last year! But such measures are meaningless.

"In that far distant time I said to a small and frightened Hobbit: Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker, and you therefore were meant to bear it.

"And I might have added: and I was meant to guide you both to those points.

"To do that I used in my waking mind only such means as were allowed to me, doing what lay to my hand according to such reasons as I had." (...)

[Then Frodo said]: "I understand you a little better now, Gandalf, than I did before. Though I suppose that, whether meant or not, Bilbo might have refused to leave home, and so might I.

"You could not compel us. You were not even allowed to try." (...)

Gandalf said:

"It might all have gone very differently indeed.

The main attack was diverted southwards, it is true; and yet even so with his farstretched right hand Sauron could have done terrible harm in the North, while he defended Gondor, if King Brand and King Dáin had not stood in his path.

When you think of the great Battle of Pelennor, do not forget the Battle of Dale. Think of what might have been. Dragon-fire and savage swords in Eriador! There might be no Queen in Gondor. We might now only hope to return from the victory here to ruin and ash.

"But that has been averted – because I met Thorin Oakenshield one evening on the edge of spring not far from Bree.

"A chance-meeting, as we say in Middle-earth."

***

The Lord of the Rings is permeated by a deep understanding of the Christian concept of how free-will is compatible with with purpose, prophecy and providence.

When such matters seem seem paradoxical, or merely muddled, this is well worth pondering.

*

The Notion Club Papers - why England, why Oxford?

2011-01-21T11:26:00.005Z

*

In the Notion Club Papers as it might have become (i.e. 'Annals of the Notion Club' - ANC - as I term this imaginary production of Tolkien's) the main theme is (I infer) the re-establishment of a link between Faery and contemporary Middle Earth (i.e. the modern world).

But why England, among all of Middle Earth?

*

In a nutshell, Tolkien saw himself (in some way, at some level) as the inheritor of an English racial memory of Faery - in his earliest legends (now published as Lost Tales) England had indeed been a part of Faery, and was especially favoured for this reason.

Tolkien regarded this memory as coming down his mother's side of the family, and therefore centred in Warwickshire (Mercia).

*

But why Oxford?

Tolkien had less strong but similarly mystical feelings about Oxford as he did about the nearby West Midlands of England, and of course he spent most of his working life at the University.

From the earliest writings now published in Lost Tales and in Tolkien and the Great War (by John Garth) we find Oxford given a special role in scholarship and related to Faery.

And from a practical point of view, Oxford in the early and mid-twentieth century was the perfect place from which knowledge of Faery might have been disseminated throughout the rest of England.

*

So, my guess is that the ANCs would have described the Inkling's-like Notion Club in Oxford as having first established a psychic link with Faery - with visionary material glimpsed during dreams, then having recovered extensive documentary evidence from Faery, and brought it back to Oxford for secret safe-keeping.

The benefits of this mythic knowledge would then enhance first the Notion Club members, then the rest of the University, with elven craft, depth, wisdom and mystery.

This special quality in the work of the Notion Club, and Oxford, would have been recognized by the English (who were genetically predisposed to appreciate it) and the effects and benefits would have been disseminated throughout England by means of Oxford's role in educating the administrators and teachers of the rest of England.

*

So, in order to re-establish contact between Middle Earth and Faery there would need to be efforts form both sides: both a push and a pull.

On the one hand a push from the members of the Notion Club who sense the shallowness and literalness of their world and their work, the damage of materialism and the ugliness of industrialization (e.g. Ramer's rather horrible dream of Oxford through the ages) - and seek to enrich it by contact with Faery.

And on the other hand a pull from the inhabitants of Faery. The elves were assumed (see Tolkien's back-story essay for Smith of Wooton Major) to have benign intentions towards humans and seek to help them.

Especially the inhabitants of Faery wish to help Men to adopt an attitude of love towards nature; to become 'elvishly' capable of disinterested craft, art, science and scholarship as things to be loved for their own sakes, rather than as a means to another end.

(So that these arts and crafts are not merely practised - as so often in the modern world - for the power, prestige or money they might yield.)

*

In sum - the Annals of the Notion Club would (I imagine) describe how the post-medieval process of 'myth turning into history' would be reversed; and first the Notion Club, then Oxford, then England, then maybe eventually the World, would be re-enchanted by elvish wisdom and suffused with an elvish perspective.

***

[And - as things have turned-out - Tolkien actually succeeded in his desire to fulfill this aspiration, to an extent which he would hardly have dared to hope-for; but via the Lord of the Rings as its focus, rather than by means of the Notion Club Papers.]

*

Who is Dolbear? A wizard/ angel/ messenger from Faery

2011-01-21T10:45:00.001Z

*

The character of Dolbear jumps-out of the Notion Club Papers as somebody about whom there is more than meets the eye.

Almost everything he says is wise and cuts-deep.

He seems to understand more of what is going-on than anyone else.

He seems to be a kind of grey eminence at the least, greatly respected by the other members (underneath their chummy chaffing) and probably somebody who is - in fact - actually stage-managing the whole process by which the Notion Club re-establishes contact with Faery.

(We know Dolbear has certainly been working, independently, with Ramer even before the meetings were reported and also later with Lowdham - on their dreams and interpretations.)

*

In this sense Dolbear resembles Gandalf - who is a wizard or an 'angel' in disguise; in the sense of being a higher being from the undying lands who is a messenger and catalyst.

A catalyst in chemistry is an agent which facilitates a chemical reaction yet itself remains chemically unchanged by the reaction.

This would apply pretty exactly to Dolbear. I would guess that his character is solid, and would not change throughout the story.

And we would not have access to Dolbear's inner life - he would (like Gandalf) be observed rather than experienced.

He would make things happen, by hints and directions and providing key pieces of information.

And at the end of the story Dolbear would return (like Gandalf) whence he came - to Faery.

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This is (I speculate) the meaning of Dolbear seeming to sleep though the meetings, yet remain apparently aware of everything which is happening in them - indeed more aware of the implications of the meetings than are the active participants.

I suspect that during sleep Dolbear is in contact with Faery and with the Notion Club at the same time.

He is therefore a conduit or passageway linking Oxford and the undying lands - he transmits the proceedings of the Notion Club to Faery, and receives instructions of what to do.

Dolbear's trance-like states of sleep are therefore (I believe) the specific means by which the inhabitants of Faery are encouraging the renewed contact between England and Faery which the Notion Club themselves seek.

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An imaginary completed Notion Club Papers - form and character

2011-01-21T10:24:00.001Z

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The Notion Club Papers were probably written over a period of about 9 months between late 1945 and the middle of 1946.

As they stand there are a fascinating fragment, full of evidence about Tolkien and his deepest concerns; but of extremely limited appeal and either unpublishable or else destined only for a small cult audience.

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If the NCPs had been completed they would, I believe, have ended-up very differently from the way they exist at present.

As argued by Verlyn Flieger in Interrupted music, I believe the purpose of the NCPs would have been to provide a frame for Tolkien's legendarium - in other words, a pseudo-historical 'explanation' for how the legends of the elves, Numenor and ancient Middle Earth were transmitted to our times (transmitted specifically to England, and even more specifically to Oxford).

How a link between Middle Earth (this modern world) and Faery was re-established.

The name I will give to this imaginary completed book is Annals of the Notion Club (or ANC for short; drawing upon the work of Flieger and of TA Shippey in describing Tolkien's fascination for 'Annals' - and their hinted depths beyond)

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The shape of the Annals of the Notion Club would have been the same as Tolkien's other works - some kind of heroic quest in which the hero or heroes come into contact with 'Faery' and an ennobled by contact with 'higher things' and made wiser by their experience.

This implies that the ANC must have had a hero or heroes, and that (for dramatic interest) the reader would need to know the thoughts and feelings of this hero or heroes.

In other words, there would need to be characters - something which is lacking or indirect and inexplicit in the current NCPs.

In other words, character, feelings, thoughts would need to be more explicit - more novelistic.

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The form of the NCPs, i.e. the literary conceit of their being the formal minutes of club meetings, would therefore need to be dropped or relaxed; to bring in much more direct forms of narrative or reportage.

This was already beginning to happen in the later parts of the NCPs, with the introduction of letters from Lowdham (plus some footnotes), and an extended 'dream sequence' which reports Lowdham's inner state during an Anglo Saxon episode.

So, in the ANC there would be a great expansion of such letters, and also probably diaries and journal entries - so as to bring the reader into more direct contact with the action.

*

In terms of character, the ANC would therefore need to get inside at least one of Guildford, Ramer, Lowdham and Jeremy.

My guess is that it would have been Guildford - the recorder, who would become the narrator, and speaking directly to the reader (to posterity) about the collection of minutes, letters, poems, fragments and journal entries which he has gathered and collated with the aim of preservation and propagation.

Probably, Guildford would have remained a rather subordinate character in terms of the action and excitement, and the extrovert Lowdham in particular would have emerged as the most obvious hero - supported by Jeremy who would - I guess, end-up being the main person responsible for achieving the quest to re-connect with Faery.

I suspect the Ramer character might therefore have receded in importance. His role might be in learning the languages necessary to interpret the documentary material eventually recovered from Faery. He might have done this in collaboration with Lowdham, or mostly on his own - but Ramer's role at the end of the ANC would perhaps be as scholarly interpreter of the texts brough back to Oxford by Jeremy (who seems not to be skilled as a philologist or historical linguist)

I would imagine that Lowdham would make the breakthrough, be responsible for navigating the boat and actually arriving in Faery; but then would stay-behind in faery (with his father) and Jeremy would be the one who returned to England bringing the legendarium.

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In sum, the ANC would be presented as a collection of minutes, letters, journal entries etc. by Gulidford concerning the Notion Club in general and Lowdham and Jeremy in particular - telling the story of how a link between faery and England was re-established by the efforts of the Club - firstly in dreams then ultimately by a voyage to Faery.

The link between Faery would therefore be firstly psychic, and then secondly physical - such that at first there were glimpses, then a break-through of visionary material from the past having physical effect in England (the storm replicating the downfall of Numenor), then an actual voyage to Faery and the return of extensive documentary material - including recovered knowledge of how to understand it.

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Curing the 'vulgarization' of England - from Smith of Wootton Major

2011-01-08T13:16:00.001Z

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As I infer and guess, the basic situation in The Notion Club Papers is that of Smith of Wooton Major; as explained by Tolkien in the essay which describes the back-story and is published in the (marvellous!) extended edition of 2005 by Verlyn Flieger.

The basic situation is, therefore, a 'vulgarized' Oxford, England, Western Civilization - a society out-of-contact with Faery: in more general terms, a society out-of-contact with myth.

Hence vulgar, coarsened, materialistic; without depth, meaning or purpose

The action of the Notion Club throughout the novel, I speculate, would have been aimed at restoring this contact between Faery and England; and indeed I speculate that the climax of the novel would have been precisely this re-establishment of contact.

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From Tolkien's essay about SoWM:

"The crafts of Wootton, on which their present prosperity was based, actually owed their fame and commercial success in the beginning to the special skill and 'artistic' quality which contact with Faery had given to them.

"But the commercial success had for some time begun to have effect. The village had become comfortable and self-satisfied. The artistic quality of its products was declining, and to some extent also their traditional manual skill, though this had not yet affected their market

"But the village was in a danger which it did not see: a dwindling of its prosperity, which would not be maintained for ever by 'good name' and established connexions with eastern customers, nor by mere industry and business acumen. If the thread between the villagers and Faery was broken it would go back to its squalid beginnings.

"The vulgarization of Wootton is indicated by Nokes. He is obviously a somewhat extreme case, but clearly represents an attitude fast spreading in the village and growing in weight.

"The festivals are becoming, or have already become, mere occasions for eating and drinking. Songs, tales music dancing no longer play a part - at least they are not provided for (as is the cooking and catering) out of public funds, and if they take place at all it is in family parties, and especially in the entertainment of children. (...)

"History and legend and above all any tales touching on 'faery', have become regarded as children's stuff, patronizingly tolerated for the amusement of the very young.

"This situation is evidently one that has aroused the concern of Faery. Why? It is plainly shown that Faery is a vast world in its own right, that does not depend for its existence upon Men, and which is not primarily nor indeed principally concerned with Men.

"The relationship must therefore be one of love: the Elven Folk, the chief and ruling inhabitants of Faery, have an ultimate kinship with Men and have a permanent love for them in general.

"Though they are not bound by any moral obligation to assist Men, and do not need their help (except in human affairs), they do from time to time try to assist them, avert evil from them and have relations with them, especially through certain men and women whom they find suitable.

"They, the Elvenfolk are thus 'beneficent' with regard to Men, and are not wholly alien, though many things and creatures in Faery itself are alien to Men and even actively hostile. Their good will is seen mainly in attempting to keep or restore relationships between the two worlds, since the Elves (and still some Men) realize that this love of Faery is essential to the full and proper human development.

"The love of Faery is the love of love: a relationship towards all things, animate and inanimate, which includes love and respect, and removes or modifies the spirit of possession and domination. Without it even plain 'Utility' will in fact become less useful; or will turn to ruthlessness and lead only to mere power, ultimately destructive.

"It is probable that the world of Faery could not exist without our world, and is affected by the events in it — the reverse being also true. The 'health' of both is affected by state of the other.

"Men have not the power to assist the Elvenfolk in the ordering and defence of their realm; but the Elves have the power (subject to finding co-operation from within) to assist in the protection of our world, especially in the attempt to re-direct Men when their development tends to the defacing or destruction of their world.

"The Elves may thus have also an enlightened self-interest in human affairs." (...)

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Comment:

As scholars and writers, the Notion Club would have been aware of the necessity for human contact with Faery (i.e. with myth) in order that their work (as well as their lives) may be profound, imaginative and ennobled - and rise above mere 'utility'.

The means by which the club would restore contact with myth would, I assume, be the usual ones employed by Tolkien and of which hints exist in the incomplete and surviving NCP text: by a quest, by a hero who is an 'elf friend', and by a 'messenger' between Faery and the mundane world (certainly a human messenger, and probably an elven messenger as well).

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The essential meaning and purpose of the Notion Club Papers

2011-01-07T11:57:00.000Z

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Having brooded (some would say obsessively - and they would be right!) over Tolkien's Notion Club Papers for a couple of years, I am now going to move on to speculations about where the NCPs were tending; what the NCPs would have been about and what they would have been like - if ever Tolkien had finished the novel.

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In a nutshell, I believe that although the Notion Club papers went through several stages in their development, and had several purposes, in the end they were intended to serve an extremely important purpose: to rescue modern England.

More exactly, since Tolkien's ouvre (his Legendarium) was intended to make a mythology for England; the Notion Club Papers were intended to link his mythical Legendarium to modern England.

Of this much I was persuaded by the work of Verlyn Flieger - especially her book Interrupted Music.

But I would go somewhat further and suggest that the NCPs would ultimately (if finished) have provided the actual operative myth which brought Tolkien's historical myth/s into action in the modern world.

In other words, the purpose of the NCPs was nothing less than to 'save' England (and perhaps other places too).

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What was Tolkien 'saving' us from?

This is made explicit in the NCPs:

[Jeremy] ..."Sometimes I have a queer feeling that, if one could go back, one would find not myth dissolving into history, but rather the reverse: real history becoming more mythical - more shapely, simple, discernibly significant, even seen at close quarters. More poetical and less prosaic, if you like.(...)

"They're not wholly inventions. And even what is invented is different from mere fiction; it has more roots." (...)

"[The roots are] In Being, I think I should say," Jeremy answered; "and in human Being; and coming down the scale, in the springs of History and the designs of Geography - I mean, well, in the pattern of our world as it uniquely is, and of the events in it as seen from a distance. (...)

"Of course, the pictures presented by the legends may be partly symbolical, they may be arranged in designs that compress, expand, foreshorten, combine, and are not at all realistic or photographic, yet they may tell you something true about the Past."

*

I believe that with the NCPs Tolkien was intending to tell us something true about the past, something that we need to know because at present England's past is merely history, when it should be myth.

The Notion Club Papers were intended to make England's history into myth - i.e. to reverse the process of myth dissolving into history described by Jeremy in the quote above.

Tolkien wanted, that is, contemporary history to dissolve into myth; and the NCPs were (as they evolved) aimed at achieving this.

*

Arguably, Tolkien has in fact already achieved his goal, although by other and less direct means - in the sense that many people (like myself) nowadays 'use' Tolkien's Legendarium as a myth by-which (and through-which) they understand and interpret the current world.

We do this despite the lack of an explicit and comprehensive mythical link between the Legendarium (saturated, as it is, with purpose and meaning) and the nihilistic modern world of objective irrelevant 'facts' and purely-individual subjectivities.

However, in order for this to have happened via the NCPs, they would need to have needed to end-up very differently from how they set out: in literary terms, the NCPs would have required very substantial re-writing, in ways which we can only extrapolate from hints and glimmerings.

But I believe that this extrapolation to an 'ideal' and finished Notion Club Papers can indeed be made - albeit only in outline - and this I hope to explain and demonstrate over the next several blog entries.

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A superhero Fellowship of the Ring

2011-01-05T07:08:00.001Z

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In an idle moment I found myself speculating about who would have made up The Fellowship of the Ring, if the members had been chosen on the basis of their 'power' (instead of being representative of the different races and types in Middle Earth, and by Elrond and Galndalf's intuitions.).

This is the list I came up with:

1. Gandalf (Leader of resistance to Sauron. Elvish ringbearer, Maia.)
2. Elrond (Leader of the free peoples of Middle Earth, very old yet with undiminished powers, prophet, greatest healer, Elvish ringbearer, great warrior)
3. Galadriel (Main elvish leader, elvish ringbearer, tremendous powers of foresight and mind-reading, great warrior).
4. Arwen (as a sort-of reincarnation of Luthien, who recovered a Silamril, would be expected to have great powers of enchantment).
5. Glorfindel (clearly an elf of tremendous strength with power to intimidate the Nazgul)
6. Aragorn (the greatest of men - and most of the greatest Middle Earth heroes have been men; hunter, tracker, warrior. A Man is needed in the Fellowship; since men, and hobbits, have an existential freedom of will denied to elves and Gods who are a part of the earth).
7. Sam Gamgee (as bearer of the One ring; since Sam is the person in middle earth with - apparently - the greatest resistance to the power of the Ring (possibly excepting Bilbo - who is too old to participate.)

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Tolkien and the sea-yearning - the meaning of Earendil

2011-01-03T07:10:00.000Z

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I was always puzzled by Tolkien's emphasis on the sea as an ultimate yearning.

In the Notion Club Papers there are the examples of Lowtham (and, especially, his father), and of the Numenoreans (the greatest mariners among all Men, perhaps even greater than the greatest elves), and of the Imram poem.

In Lord of the Rings all elves (even those whose ancestors have always dwelt inland, among the woods) are said to harbour a sea-yearning; indeed most of the most admirable and heroic characters (Aragorn being an exception) have this longing.

And Tolkien's original legendarium hero- Earendil - was of course a mariner. Also the very early Aelfwine character, who visited fairyland and linked it to England.

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This has always struck me as strange - since Tolkien did not write very much detail about the sea in the way that he wrote about trees and mountains.

It seems to me that Tolkien's own sea longing was deeply buried, and that - unlike his heroes - in his actual behaviour Tolkien seems not to have had a need to get into boats and launch out onto the waves.

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But Earendil may be the clue.

In essence, this complex and changing character was an 'angel'; a messenger, and specifically a messenger from earth to heaven.

Earendil also became an actual angel, apparently; being transformed from a human (elf or man) to a spiritual and semi-divine form.

And (perhaps) Aelfwine was 'merely' a diluted and more materialistically-plausible version of Earendil the messenger; bringing back knowledge of the elves to Middle earth.

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I think Tolkien regarded the sea longing as an aspect or representation of saintliness, where sainthood is conceptualized as being a link between the earthly and heavenly realms, the saint as intercessor for humankind with God.

And that Tolkien saw this - on the one had - as the highest conceivable human calling; yet on the other hand - not his personal calling.

So Tolkien wrote-about the sea-longing as representing sainthood - the highest aspiration; but did not himself share this longing to a significant extent, and did not regard himself as a saint nor called to strive for sainthood.

He was, pretty much, happy enough with trees.

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More specifically still, I would say that the sea-longing stands for ascetic sainthood - the launch into the unknown and placing oneself (ultimately, whatever strivings are needed for navigation) at God's mercy.

The single-minded pursuit of holiness.

The obvious link here is Tolkien's Imram versions of the St Brendan legend, which appears in the NCPs.

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Spiritual striving towards sanctity is, at some level, what Tolkien's mariner heroes are doing - when their sea-desire is not corrupted into power-seeking and conquest (as happened to the Numenoreans).

*

In real life, Tolkien achieved the lower (although still highly admirable) aim of communion with nature in the forms of a well-tilled landscape, of woodland and forest especially, and with yearning glances in the direction of distant mountain peaks.

But although the even-higher yearning towards the sea fascinated Tolkien, it was probably somewhat alien to his nature.

He repeatedly, compulsively, with fascination and admiration, wrote about those individuals (and races) who were subject to this sea-yearning, and seemed to accord them the highest esteem - yet I would guess Tolkien himself did not directly share this yearning, which is why he wrote comparatively little about the sea itself, and even less about the experience of sea-going.

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My hopes for The Notion Club Papers - separate cover publication

2010-12-26T11:10:00.000Z

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Although I am forced to admit that when I have recommended reading the NCPs I have found that other people's responses have usually been under-whelming; nonetheless my main hope is that at some point this will be published under separate cover; prefaced by the relevant Lost Road material, and marketed as something-like:

'The Notion Club Papers: an unfinished novel by JRR Tolkien'.

This might conceivably happen if, or when, the History of Middle Earth is re-issued - at which point the present Lost Road volume might be shorn of its Lost Road material and re-named The Quenta Silmarillion.

(This would itself provide a much more readable, 'Silmarillion' than the current 1978 compilation - and highly marketable, especially with its Last Battle/ end of time conclusion.)

The Lord of the Rings material might be re-organized into a three volume unit (instead of three and one third volumes, as at present) - with the great selling point of the Epilogue.

This would liberate volume IX of such a putative second edition of HoME to be dedicated to The Notion Club Papers, and might attract a smallish but devoted 'cult' readership of people like myself; that is to say, Tolkien-o-philes who (for some reason) might become utterly obsessed with this story!

And the prospect of a 'new novel' by Tolkien would surely attract enough publicity to justify the venture.

Well, I can dream...

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Tolkien and the 'good German' - The Lost Road fragment

2010-12-09T13:56:00.000Z

Christopher Tolkien, from The Lost Road:

"From Elendil's words at the end of The Lost Road there emerges a sinister picture: the withdrawal of the besotted and aging king from the public view, the unexplained disappearance of people unpopular with the 'government', informers, prisons, torture, secrecy, fear of the night; propaganda in the form of the 'rewriting of history' (...); the multiplication of weapons of war, the purpose of which is concealed but guessed at; and behind all the dreadful figure of Sauron, the real power, surveying the whole land from the Mountain of Numenor.

"The teaching of Sauron has led to the invention of ships of metal that traverse the seas without sails, but which are hideous in the eyes of those who have not abandoned or forgotten Tol-Eressea; to the building of grim fortresses and unlovely towers; and to missiles that pass with a noise like thunder to strike their targets many miles away.

"Moreover, Numenor is seen by the young as overpopulous, boring, 'over-known': "every tree and grass-blade is counted", in Herendil's words; and this cause of discontent is used, it seems, by Sauron to further the policy of "imperial" expansion and ambition that he presses on the king.

"When at this time my father reached back to the world of the first man to bear the name "Elf- friend" he found there an image of what he most condemned and feared in his own."

The History of Middle Earth volume 5 - edited by Christopher Tolkien - The Lost Road. 1987. Paperback edition - page 77.

JRRT's son, Christopher, has said that in decribing Numenor, Tolkien was thinking of the Nazis in Germany - who took over in 1933.

As a philologist of Germanic languages, Germany was the centre of Tolkien's intellectual world; and he was appalled by the change in this beloved culture under National Socialism.

In The Lost Road, he reflects on the moral conflicts of a person caught up in such political processes - where a beloved country becomes evil; and the dreadful dilemma between the short term and immediate duty to family, and the ultimate duty to 'God'.

Much of this shortish fragment (about 35 continuous pages, with a few dozen other pages of fragments) of an unfinished novel consists of an agonized discussion between Elendil - leader of the 'good Numenoreans' - and his son Herendil who has been partially corrupted by the majority of evil Numenoreans (led, from behind the throne, by the evil demon (fallen angel) Sauron (who at that time was man-like, exceedingly beautiful, intelligent and eloquent, and of greater than human stature).

Herendil urges his father to adopt a quietist attitude, withdrawing from public life, refraining from criticism of the regime. To be a 'good German' in the Middle Earth equivalent of a National Socialist tyranny. Elendil cannot bring himself to do this. Herendil fears the secret spies, the torture chambers, and being killed as a human sacrifice to the devilish Morgoth.

And there the fragment stops.

How similar are Dolbear & 'Humphrey' Havard? John Havard's opinion

2010-11-20T15:57:00.002Z

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I have been in contact with John Edward Havard, eldest child of the Inkling Robert Emlyn Havard (1901-1985) - who was nicknamed by the other Inklings things like 'Humphrey', 'UQ/ Useless Quack' and the 'Red Admiral' (with reference to a red beard Havard sported while serving in the Royal Navy during the 1939-45 war).

According to an early comment, Havard is the model for the character Dolbear in the Notion Club Papers.

Although I recognized several similarities (and also differences) between the biography of Havard and that of the fictional Dolbear, I was curious to know whether Havard's son saw any similarities in personality and manner between the fictional and factual versions.

In a nutshell - according to Havard's son, there seems to be some biographical similarities, and a couple of similarities of appearance, but on the whole there is apparently little similarity of personality or manner.

This suggests that Tolkien's use of real life Inklings as models for the Notion Club was based on scattered superficial resemblances rather than on any profound identity of character.

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From two e-mails from John Havard to Bruce G Charlton - 19 and 20th November 2010. Quoted with the author's permission.

Page references are to Volume IX of the History of Middle Earth - Sauron Defeated, edited by Christopher Tolkien and published by Houghton Mifflin 1992.

*

John Havard speaks:

"On page 5, in what Christopher Tolkien assumes is an early draft, there is the first “List of Members”. Here Dolbear is explicitly identified as Havard, the only occasion that this occurs and Christopher suggests that the name is derived from a well known pharmacist in Oxford.

"A much fuller list of members occurs on page 11 at the beginning of the second edition of the Papers, but they now appear to have little relation to individual inklings, nor with the Colleges given or the dates of birth. The ages are some thirty years later than those of the 1940s Inklings and are not even relatively correct. My father was among the youngest of the Inklings while Dolbear is the oldest, and I know of no connection that he had with Wadham.

"The descriptions are perhaps more relevant. Dolbear is described as a chemist who concerns himself with philosophy, psychoanalysis and gardening. Father’s first degree was in chemistry and he did have philosophical interests. Also he had earlier practiced Freudian psychology at the Warneford. He had a fairly large garden though I do not think this was a major interest, he usually had someone to look after it for him. He is described as having a red hair and beard, which father did have when younger, and the nickname “Ruthless Rufus” which could bear some relation to Humphrey or the Useless Quack.

"Page 12. There is an entry for Night 54 which was written by Dolbear when the meeting was held in his house. Individual Inklings did visit us from time to time mostly for social reasons or to go for walks but I was aware of no meetings.

"Pages 18-20. This is the most extensive reference that I have been able to find. Dolbear contributes to the discussion on space travel making use of his scientific background. This is quite consistent with father’s interests, he did comment to Lewis about the text of Out of the Silent Planet and the other novels about space travel.

"The incident where he appears to go to sleep and wake suddenly sounds more like Alice’s Dormouse than anything I can relate to. (He falls asleep again on page 36).

"Page 33. Lowdham says “There is no difficulty with Rufus. The drink urge explains most of him”. This is no doubt intended to be jocular but relates little to reality. Father drank beer but rarely spirits.

"Pages 80 – 81. After the collapse of Jeremy, Dolbear growls “leave him alone”. This may be reference to father’s medical experience but “growls” does not ring a bell.

"I was somewhat taken aback by Dolbear’s directness and gruff manner as I do not recognise this behaviour as typical of father, though I cannot say what may have happened in many years of Inkling meetings.

"I did not find much of father’s character that I recognised in Dolbear when I was reading the Papers. I had the impression that Tolkien was more interested in providing light relief while he followed up the topics discussed than in any serious exploration of character."

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The Epilogue to On Fairy Stories

2010-11-10T15:29:00.001Z

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I first read Tolkien's essay On Fairy Stories about 1975, and liked it a lot - except for the Epilogue, which made no sense to me. It still made no sense to me when I re-read the essay about three years ago.

But I can understand it now, having become a Christian in the meantime.

Indeed, I can now perceive that this is one of the most important things that Tolkien ever wrote - because it was apparently the point when he justified to himself his own longstanding desire to write Fantasy.

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Epilogue to On Fairy Stories, by JRR Tolkien - excerpts with my notes in [square brackets].

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"Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.

"If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality.

"The peculiar quality of the “joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.

"It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?”

"The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist).

"But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world." (...)

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[Tolkien is saying that successful fantasy is that which generates the peculiar emotion of joy, from a 'turn' in the story that he terms the eucatastrophe (the 'good catastrophe'). He is saying that this joy comes from recognition of a truth, and that this truth is ultimately a human version of the good news of the Christian story.

[In other words, while successful Fantasy does indeed offer legitimate satisfactions such as 'recovery, escape, consolation' there is even more to Fantasy than this.

[Tolkien is stating that the reason for Fantasy's power to delight and inspire, is that it is a 'far-off gleam or echo' of Christian story - and therefore that this power comes ultimately from God - and not from the artist. It is divinely inspired - and not a product of craft or artistry.]

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(Epilogue continued)

"I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature.

[Tolkien means that the Fantasy writer, he is talking of himself, has had the impulsion to write Fairy Stories implanted by God - or rather than God has used the desire (which is probably in origin a corrupt and prideful desire) for his own purposes.]

"The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe.

"But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation.

[This is the key sentence. The 'desire and aspiration of sub-creation' which Tolkien himself experiences 'has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation' - in other words, Tolkien's deep longing to write Fairy Stories can contribute - in however small a scale - to God's plan for the world. Tolkien goes on to spell this out:]

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"The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” (...)

"But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on.

"The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.”

"The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed.

"So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.

[This is, of course, precisely what the character Niggle does in the story Leaf by Niggle which - in most editions - accompanies the essay On Fairy Stories. Niggle's detailed picture of a many-leaved tree and its surrounding environment (or rather, his imagined ideal for such a picture) becomes real in heaven; is indeed added-to heaven, and assists in the salvation of human souls.]

*

"All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know."

*

[Tolkien is saying that all real Fantasies will 'come true' in God's time, but we cannot know in advance what 'coming true' will entail except that each real Fairy Tale will be recognizably its worldly self, yet also transfigured into some unimaginably greater eternal form.]

*

Philology in the Notion Club Papers

2010-11-09T15:28:00.001Z

*

Tolkien was a philologist by profession, and his professional career spanned the tail-end of the 'romantic' era of philology and the establishment of philology as a professional academic specialization - en route (as it turned out) to its fragmentation and extinction into linguistics, sociolinguistics and so on.

*

It is often forgotten that Nietzsche was a philologist in his early academic career, at a time when philology was somewhere near the zenith of prestige in academia.

At that point philology was something of a 'master discipline' in the German university system; a creative science which fused history and intuitive speculation in a rediscovery of culture and modes of thought.

Tom (T.A.) Shippey's The Road to Middle Earth is, of course, the indispensable study of Tolkien as philologist - and is probably the most important book ever written about Tolkien.

*

Shippey describes Tolkien's method of going from words to speculate on the roots of words, and from there to inferences about the kind of life which would have led to words having that set of association and connotations.

In this sense, the Tolkien cosmology began with his iterative speculations on a possible society which might have led to the word Earendil as it appeared in the Old English poem Crist.

Tolkien often asserted this in interviews - that the language came first, and the mythic fantasy served (merely) to create a situation which might have generated the language.

*

As might be expected, The Notion Club Papers is full of philology - both the main protagonists (Ramer in Part One and Lowdham in Part Two) are professional philologists. And Lowdham is, in this respect, the most like Tolkien.

Indeed, The NCPs served as the stimulus for Tolkien to invent (or discover) yet another language, following-on from Quenya (language of the high elves in the undying lands) and Sindarin (language of the grey elves of Middle Earth and the exiled Noldor): this time Adunaic (everyday langauge of the Numenoreans).

*

Among the real world Inklings, it was probably the marginal and occasional figure of Owen Barfield who influenced Tolkien most, in a philological sense (Tolkien seemed to have been utterly dismissive of Jack Lewis's dabblings in philology in his book Studies in Words; although he had good things to say - including a mention in The NCPs - about Lewis's partial invented language of Old Solar).

Barfield wrote a book called Poetic Diction, adapted from his BLitt thesis, that had a major impact on Tolkien, and the whole way he thought about words and history.

(As I understand it) Barfield explained that modern words differ from ancient words not merely in meaning, but in their whole nature - ancient words refer to things which have no equivalent among modern words.

So that a single ancient usage - especially of a word like 'spirit' - had numerous *simultaneous* connotations; which cannot actually be captured by a linear and sequential list of all the specific meanings of that word in its various usages.

*

This is exactly the point made by Jeremy in The NCPs when he talks of real history becoming more mythical - as one goes further back in time:

"Sometimes I have a queer feeling that, if one could go back, one would find not myth dissolving into history, but rather the reverse: real history becoming more mythical - more shapely, simple, discernibly significant, even seen at close quarters. More poetical and less prosaic, if you like." [Page 227]

*

I see one of the therapeutic aspects of writing The NCPs was a recovery of Tolkien's delight in philology, epitomized by the exuberant act of commencing to invent a new language.

Yet, somewhat ironically, even as he renewed his delight in philology, and even as he had (from 1945) just attained promotion to a more senior Professorship in Oxford (indeed, one of the most prestigious academic Chairs in the world), Tolkien was also turning-away from professional academic philology towards the philology of his own imagined world.

From onward, 1945 Tolkien barely published any heavyweight academic philology - although he would normally have been expected to do so. His best energies went instead into his creative writings, and into the philology which underlay them.

It is likely that a crucial change in perspective behind this came from the writing of the lecture and essay On Fairy Stories, during which he clarified to himself the validity, the importance, of sub-creation - that sub-creation might actually be more important than academic philology.

And of course history has proved him to be correct. Academic philology has disappeared, while Tolkien's sub-creative writing (including his 'old fashioned, romantic philology) has gone from strength to strength.

*

More on the Christian element in The NCPs

2010-11-08T22:54:00.000Z

*

Ramer speaking on page 195.

I have already transcribed most of this passage (which I described as wilfully obscure) in an earlier entry on theology in The NCPs - http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2009/11/notion-club-theology.html - here I will try and explicate it, somewhat, line by line. My comments are in [square brackets]:

"Dreaming is not Death. The mind is still, as I say, anchored to the body. [At death, according to (Thomist) Roman Catholic theology, the soul separates from the body - but this does not happen during sleep.]

"It is all the time inhabiting the body, so far as it is in anywhere. And it is therefore in Time and Space: attending to them. It is meant to be so. [While alive we are meant to function in time and be located in space - 'meant' here presumably refers to the divine plan for human life on earth.]

"But most of you [ i.e. Those of you who are Christian.]

"will agree that there has probably been a change of plan [As a result of the Fall, presumably - or perhaps as a result of the incarnation - I'm not sure.] ;

"and it looks as if the cure is to give us a dose of something higher and more difficult. [The cure, I think, refers to human life now, after the fall. "Higher and more difficult would then mean by comparison to how things would have been in Eden, before the fall. Or it may refer to life since the the incarnation of God as Jesus Christ, as contrasted with pagan of ancient Jewish life - the Christian life being higher and more difficult than either of these.]

"Mind you, I'm only talking of the seeing and learning side, not for instance of morality. [I think this probably refers to the transcendental 'goods' of truth and beauty, but not the other one which is morality. I think Tolkien means that God's intention with dream experiences is about exposing humans to something higher and more difficult in the realms of Truth and Beauty, not Morality.] -

"But it would feel terribly loose without the anchor [meaning the soul altogether cut loose from the body would feel terribly loose.].

"Maybe with the support of the stronger and wiser [I think stronger and wiser refers to angels, and the idea that the detached soul needs to be escorted and looked after by angels - which is a traditional belief found in some of the early Fathers of the Church.] -

"and how it could be celestial [i.e. if the soul was being protected by angels.];

"but without them it could be be bitter, and lonely [i.e. To be a lone soul cut loose from its body.].

"A spiritual meteorite in the dark looking for a world to land on. I daresay many of us [Perhaps he means those who did not get angelic assistance?]

"are in for some lonely Cold before we get back." [Before we get back may refer to purgatory, perhaps? I'm not sure.]

"But out of some place beyond the region of dreams, now and again there comes a blessedness, and it soaks through all the levels, and illumines all the scenes through which the mind passes out back into waking, and so it flows out into this life. [Tolkien means that God sometimes communicates with us in dreams, a foretaste of heavenly bliss.]

"There it lasts long, but not forever in this world, [Just a foretaste, not the full experience - although in this an Eastern Orthodox Christian would make an exception for some Saints, those who are considered to live for sustained periods in both heaven and this world.]

"and memories cannot reach its source. [Its source, presumably, is in divine grace and revelation - and not deriving from experiences which we might remember.]

"Often we ascribe it to the pictures seen on the margin radiant in its light, as we pass by and out. But a mountain far in the North caught in a slow sunset is not the sun." [That is to say, the blessedness comes from God, not from that which is illuminated by God.]

*

In sum, Tolkien seems to be free-associating on the question of what is the ultimate salvation-related human relevance of spiritual experiences in dreams.

Tolkien states that: "the cure is to give us a dose of something higher and more difficult" and that since modern life substantially blocks divine communications during the waking state (or at least it does so for many people, Tolkien included at this point in his life) by excessive noise, chatter and other distractions; this dose is given us - at least partially - during sleep.

This was a very important factor for Tolkien - that dreams were part of creativity, and creativity was (for modern men, who are advanced in corruption) a vital pathway of divine communication.

This links-up with his ideas about sub-creation - the role of fantasy. For Tolkien, the sub-creation of fantasy world is not just an entertainment, but has a profound theological dimension (as he makes clear in the closing passages of his essay On Fairy Stories, when he talks of the Gospel story and relates it to sub-creation).

*

The nature of Tolkien's psychological breakdown - inferred from The NCPs

2010-11-08T16:40:00.001Z

*

What follows are my (informed, I hope) speculations about the nature of JRR Tolkien's psychological breakdown 1945-6.

My impression is that this was not really a matter of anxiety and depression, but a matter of alienation brought-on by overwork - in sum, Tolkien was so busy, so 'hassled', that he had become cut-off from the source of his creativity.

And that source of Tolkien's creativity was in dream and trance states in which he experienced images with perceived special significance.

(These images were, I believe, mostly visualized - as described by the character Ramer, and later Jeremy; but sometimes there was probably linguistic generation, of words and text fragments, as described by the character Lowdham.)

*

Tolkien (I believe) found himself so busy and worried by imposed tasks that (for the first time in his life - and probably the last) he was unable either to dream/ day dream or else unable to connect his dreams/ daydreams with the rest of hs life - and so his life felt meaningless and lost its purpose.

Fortunately, Tolkien seems to have understood very well what what he was going through and why; and his response was to take some time away from work (three weeks), have a complete change of scene, to create as much unstructured time as possible, and - via The Notion Club Papers - to return to his roots, his deepest and most spontaneous motivations, aiming to rebuild from this firm foundation.

His strategy took a few months to have a significant effect, but was completely successful - so much so that the NCP novel lost its raison d'etre and was abandoned unfinished.

*

Specifically, Tolkien's work was done at the meeting place of fantasy and creative thought with scholarship and reason.

Tolkien relied on the world of fantasy and creativity (which I believe he accessed in dream and also in a creative state of altered consciousness - a light trance) to generate the raw material of his creativity, which he then organized logically using his intelligence; and he also relied on the fantasy mode of thinking to evaluate his ideas - either to validate then as 'true' or to reject them as merely contrived invention.

So, Tolkien's world is, to an unmatched extent, both coherent and has a visceral base of reality - the world seems discovered rather than invented.

*

This therapeutic aspect of NCPs can best be seen in Part One of the published version - which is highly confessional in nature - but by Part Two the fictive element, the plot, has begun to take charge.

Tolkien's self-therapy via writing the NCPs is quite different in its aim from that of psychoanalysis - although psychoanalysis is alluded to via the character of Dolbear, who is stated to have such interests.

Freudian analysis assumes that dreams are a way to get part the mind's censor; by contrast Jungian analysis assumes that dreams are a method of healing the psyche, including learning how to heal the mind.

But for Tolkien, dreams (and creativity in general) are potentially glimpses of divine Truth - in the sense that dreams (and similar experiences of altered consciousness) can be ways that God communicates with a mind that is too-much distracted by the 'noise' and chatter of modern life - this much is made clear throughout part one of the NCPs.

So, for Tolkien to be cut-off from the source of creativity and truth-validation of dreams was also for him to be cut off from God. In other words, he had become too distracted and hassled by over-work to hear the communications of God.

*

The fundamental therapy of writing the NCPs was, then - perhaps - to re-establish communication with his creative roots in dream and unstructured day-dreaming meditation or trance - to heal himself by dreaming, and by considering and meditatibg-upon his dreams - especially those recurrent dreams and dream images which he had been experiencing for some three decades - since at least 1914 (when he painted the Land of Pohja).

The process does indeed sound superficially like Jungian therapy - but this is deceptive.

Tolkien was not (I believe) trying to recover his creativity (for example in order to re-commence writing the Lord of the Rings - although this was in fact what actually happened).

Nor was Tolkien trying to make himself calmer and less miserable (although this happened as well).

But I suspect the primary self-therapeutic purpose of writing The NCPS was for Tolkien to re-establish a proper relation to God; and that the flow of creativity and feeling of energy and purpose were 'merely' an index that the divinely-inspired messages were again 'getting through'.

*

Another Ramer-Tolkien parallel identified - The Land of Pohja painting

2010-11-08T16:02:00.003Z

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From The Notion Club Papers, page 194.

[Ramer] "Here are some of the [dream] fragments of this kind. (...)

"And over and over again, in many stages of growth and many different lights and shadows, three tall trees, slender, foot to foot on a green mound, and crowned with an embracing halo of blue and gold."

*

These are depicted, precisely, in a painting done by Tolkien on 27 December 1914 and entitled The Land of Pohja.

The painting is reproduced on page 44 of J.R.R. Tolkien: artist and illustrator, by WG Hammond and C Scull, Harper Collins: London, 2004.

Since the Notion Club Papers were being written in early 1946, this means that Tolkien had probably had his dream of the three tall trees 'over and over again' for a period of more than thirty years!

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The Notion Club Papers as Tolkien's self-therapy

2010-11-05T10:37:00.005Z

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Having established that Tolkien was having a 'nervous breakdown' at the time he was writing The Notion Club Papers (from late 1945 to middle 1946) -

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2010/10/1945-6-tolkiens-darkest-time-whilst.html

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2010/10/evidence-to-prove-tolkiens-nervous.html

- it is fascinating to consider why Tolkien should have commenced writing this new book at such a time.

*

At this time, Tolkien was feeling ill, anxious, miserable - he was suffering from great pressure, responsibility, and over-work (due to doing two Professorial jobs at the same time - including teaching material he did not know well and disliked).

Yet, during all this Tolkien wrote, and re-wrote - scores of pages of text, and began the invention of a new language. (The story runs to about 150 printed pages in the History of Middle Earth, plus a similar amount of supplementary material on language etc.)

This strongly suggests to me that writing the NCPs was therapeutic to Tolkien - in some way it made him feel better - otherwise he would not have done it.

*

So, if writing the NCP was indeed therapeutic, then the subject matter and form of NCP is presumably telling us about Tolkien's deepest and most urgent satisfactions.

These include at least the following:

1. The Inklings - the great importance to Tolkien (at this point in his life) of the group of mature male friends who are fictionalized as the Notion Club.

2. History - the deep yearning Tolkien had to experience history.

3. Language - that Tolkien would begin to invent yet another imaginary language at this time shows how powerful was this urge - as Lewis said, he had lived 'inside' language.

4. Inheritance and heredity - Tolkien's conviction that his own tastes and abilities were substantially a product of the Suffield ancestors on his mother's side; and that his feeling for history and language derived from generations of West Midlanders going back at least to Saxon times.

5. Myth. The mythical aspects of history, language and heredity burst through from ancient times to transform the modern - these things are not bare facts but become rich, suggestive-of and replete-with personal significance.

The over-arching purpose of the NCPs is to link Tolkien's whole fantasy world with real history - to link the (much needed) spiritual truths of mythic reality (especially the emerging 'Lord of the Rings') with the mundane, materialist reality of modern life.

*

When reading the NCPs, therefore, it is fascinating to bear in mind the conditions under which the book was written; and to consider the degree of urgency which impelled Tolkien to write what he wrote, at the time he wrote it.

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The Notion Club Papers are Tolkien's Charles Williams novel

2010-11-05T10:10:00.001Z

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This idea strikes me as so obviously true, that I am amazed I haven't realized the fact before.

(Even if I read it somewhere, which I don't recall, I never realized it.)

The NCP's are structured like a C.W. novel - a novel about how the supernatural and mythical breaks through into normal everyday life.

This would explain why there is no character in the NCPs that is like Charles Williams - C.W. is present in the novel's structure, rather than its personnel.

*

The Notion Club Papers also, in this respect, makes a companion piece to C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength (THS) - which is often recognized as being Williams-influenced.

Furthermore, THS forms the final part of a trilogy which began with Out of the Silent Planet (OotSP).

It is well known that OotSP was the product of a game between Tolkien and Lewis in which they decided to write an example of the kind of book that they both liked; on tossing a coin Tolkien was allocated the topic of time travel - which led to the unfinished Lost Road story, while Lewis was allocated space travel - which led to OotSP, Perelandra and THS.

This bet, and the resulting stories, happened before WW II and before C.W. came to live in Oxford- therefore the initial stories (Lost Road and OotSP) were not affected by C.W.

However, by the time that Lewis's trilogy had reached THS, and Tolkien's Lost Road had undergone major revision to become the NCPs, then Williams influence via Inklings meetings had become profound.

*

So another aspect of Tolkien's Notion Club Papers is that they could be considered in terms of expressing Tolkien's views of the kind of novel which Charles WIlliams wrote. Tolkien's other fiction is either set in an imagined or an historical world; but in the NCP's both imagination and history are blended with a contemporary setting - each influencing the other.

*

However, unlike both Lewis in THS, and Williams in his novels, the themes of the NCPs do not include a focus on the warfare waged in this world by supernatural evil - this represents one of the important differences between Tolkien and his friends.

Tolkien disapproved of those who took a close interest in evil and its workings - and he objected to these aspects of Lewis's work.

Presumably Tolkien would have been made exceedingly uncomfortable by (what he would have regarded as) the dangerous fascination with magic and the occult which was recurrently exhibited by Charles Williams.

*

Evidence to prove Tolkien's psychological breakdown 1945-6

2010-10-30T17:49:00.006+01:00

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I suppose that it is well known among expert scholars that Tolkien had a psychological breakdown in 1945-6 -

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2010/10/1945-6-tolkiens-darkest-time-whilst.html

- especially since the publication of The JRR Tolkien Companion Guide Chronology edited by Christina Scull & Wayne G Hammond (2006).

But the fact does not seem generally known among Tolkien fans.

Yet it is a fact of considerable interest - especially in terms of the composition of Lord of the Rings, its prolonged interruption from 1944 to the second half of 1946; and it gives added interest to the unfinished Notion Club Papers novel composed during this hiatus and (I suspect) conveying information concerning Tolkien's strange state of mind.

*

When I first read Humphrey Carpenter's authorized biography of Tolkien, it seemed clear to me that some personal facts had been left out - and I read something to confirm this sometime later - I think it was an interview with Carpenter.

Reading the Notion Club Papers, about five years ago, perhaps? - I became intrigued by the experiences of altered consciousness described in that novel - and strongly suspected that they were Tolkien's own experiences. The novel was begun at the Christmas period of 1945 and was worked-on over the next months (probably).

Reading Warnie Lewis's selected dairies (Brothers and Friends) I noticed two entries which confirmed my suspicions:

Saturday 15 December 1945: "Tollers [i.e. Tolkien] and I went out by the 9.35 [train] on Tuesday morning and spent a pleasant day together; he spoke with much more frankness about his domestic life that he has ever used to me before, and did me good in making me realize how trivial after all are the things which I have to complain of at [the] Kilns."

Tuesday 2nd April 1946: "An exquisite sping morning, J[ack] poor devil in Manchester. To the Bird and baby where I was joined by Humphrey [Havard], Tollers and Chris[topher Tolkien]. Tollers looking wonderfully improved by his restcure at Stonyhurst, and in great spirits (having packed his wife off to Brighton for ten days). He has shut up his house and he and Chris are living at the Bear at Woodstock..."

My impression was confirmed on re-reading Tolkien's selected letters - To Michael Tolkien 1 November 1963: "...I was never obliged to teach anything except what I loved (and do) with an inextinguishable enthusiasm. (Save only for a brief time after my change of Chair in 1945 - that was awful.)

*

This was amply confirmed by the Chronology (Quotes) :

Page 296 - Christmas vacation 1946-August 1946. Tolkien writes during 'a fortnight of comparative leisure' around Christmas 1945 [the beginnings of The Notion Club Papers].

Page 297 - End of 1945-early 1946 ...But neither [Simonne d'Ardenne] nor Tolkien are in sufficiently good health to do extensive work.

Page 298 - End of February-March 1946. Tolkien is ill, the result of various worries.

Page 299 - 20 March 1946. ... He is unwell, and although his doctor has ordered him to apply for a term's leave, he realizes that this is impossible in the present academic plight, short of a complete collapse. He is, however, going away for a while...

25 March - 1 April 1946. Tolkien stays at New Lodge in Stonyhurst, Lancashire (...). In a letter to Stanley Unwin on 21 July 1946 he will say that he came 'near to a real breakdown' around this time, and went away and 'ate and slept and did nothing else, by orders, but only for three weeks, and not for the six months that my doctor prescribed...

Page 301 - Early June 1946. ... he is unwell and also heavily engaged with an extremely difficult term...

Page 302 - 21 July 1946. Letter to Stanly Unwin... I have been ill, worry and overwork mainly, but am a good deal recovered... I hope after this week actually to - write.

Page 305 - c 23 September 1946... Tolkien returns again to The Lord of the Rings [delayed by the 'tiresome business of the election to the Merton Chair'].

So by September, and probably a few weeks earlier Tolkien was recovered.

*

This makes the dates of Tolkien's psychological problems building-up to become severe approx December 1945 - and resolving around July of 1946.

*

1945-6 Tolkien's darkest time - whilst writing the Notion Club Papers

2010-10-30T09:44:00.003+01:00

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Tolkien seems to have written most of The Notion Club Papers during the darkest time of his life - the period of somewhat more than a year following his appointment to the Merton Chair of English Language and literature in June 1945.

The root of the problem seems to have been over work and stress brought on by the fact that he took on the duties of the new professorship (from October of 1945) while overlapping with duties of his previous professorship (in Anglo Saxon, at Pembroke College). So he was doing a double work load, plus all the extra work of taking on a new job.

Another factor he refers to in later correspondence was that this was the only period of his academic life when he had to teach subjects in which he was not interested, and that he absolutely hated this. I am unsure exactly what aspect of teaching that this comment refers to - but the wound was lasting.

The Chronology of late 1945 into 1946 - published in JRR Tolkien: a companion and guide by C Scull and WG Hammond in 2006 - is studded with references to Tolkien's overwrought mental state at this time - including the need to take a period of absence from work on medical advice.

In a nutshell, Tolkien suffered what would loosely be termed a 'nervous breakdown' at this period - an illness characterized, it seems, by anxiety and depression.

And it was precisely during this period he wrote the Notion Club Papers, with their accounts of strange psychological experiences, especially of dream states and perceived travel to other times and places.

It seems reasonable to imagine that Tolkien was going through something similar at this time - however modified these experiences were in the telling (previous entries in this blog detail the specific documented links between Tolkien's experiences and those of Ramer - I would guess that this is the tip of an iceberg of correspondences).

It is interesting that Tolkien, despite the extreme psychological stresses, did not stop writing; but worked out these experiences in fictional terms.

It may also be significant that when Tolkien resumed work on the Lord of the Rings after the break at this time, the book had firmly become a deeper and more serious book than it was when he embarked upon it as a sequel to the hobbit.

My feeling is that the nervous breakdown experience of late 1945-1946 had a permanent effect on Tolkien - and that the effect was beneficial to his writing; on the one hand increasing its emotional depth, and on the other hand - and this is very speculative - giving him a surer access to altered psychological states, especially dreams, which provided a bedrock of other-worldly sub-creative reality to the Lord of the Rings.

I tend to think that without the nervous breakdown of 1945-6, and without the experience of writing the Notion Club Papers - the Lord of the Rings would have been a different and lesser book.

*

Who is Wilfrid Jeremy? C.W? C.R.T?

2010-10-30T08:47:00.002+01:00

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While I realize that the Notion Club members do not have exact correspondences with the real life Inklings, there is clearly a germ of some real life Inklings in them :- Ramer as Tolkien (in views and experiences), Loudham as Dyson (in personality), Dolbear as Havard (pretty exact depiction, I guess!).

The great absences are Lewis - who was the leader of the real life Inklings - and Williams, who died shortly before the NCPs were written.

The absence of Lewis is explained in term of the Notion Club spending so much time talking *about* Lewis.

But what of Williams?

Could Williams contribute to the character of Jeremy perhaps?

My suspicion comes from the frequent bird-like comparisons of Jeremy - perhaps Tolkien found something bird-like in the mannerisms of Williams?

But Williams was older than Tolkien - whereas Jeremy comes across as a younger, more eager, impulsive member of the Notion Club.

So my main identification is with Christopher Tolkien.

I have no idea whether the young Christopher Tolkien was bird-like in some of his mannerisms - but I would not be surprised if he was.

Also this would fit with Jeremy's relative youthfulness among the other club members, and his taking on the role of the eternal 'son' in the reborn 'avatars' of the NCP plot.

Christopher Tolkien does not mention any such relation between himself and Jeremy, but then he does not discuss Jeremy's relation to the real Inklings, whereas he does for all the other major characters - which might be a significant omission!

So those are my guesses for the germ of Jeremy - probably Christopher Tolkien, perhaps a dash of Charles Williams.

*

Real history becoming more mythical

2010-10-28T06:34:00.000+01:00

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[Jeremy] ..."Sometimes I have a queer feeling that, if one could go back, one would find not myth dissolving into history, but rather the reverse: real history becoming more mythical - more shapely, simple, discernably significant, even seen at close quarters. More poetical and less prosaic, if you like."

"In any case, these ancient accounts, legends, myths, about the far past, about the origins of kings, laws, and the fundamental crafts, are not all made of the same ingredients.

They're not wholly inventions. And even what is invented is different from mere fiction; it has more roots."

"Roots in what?" said Frankley.

"In Being, I think I should say," Jeremy answered; "and in human Being; and coming down the scale, in the springs of History and the designs of Geography - I mean, well, in the pattern of our world as it uniquely is, and of the events in it as seen from a distance.

"A sort of parallel to the fact that from far away the Earth would be seen as a revolving sunlit globe; and that is a remote truth of enormous effect on us and all we do, though not immediately discernable on earth, where practical men are quite right in regarding the surface as flat and immovable for practical purposes.

"Of course, the pictures presented by the legends may be partly symbolical, they may be arranged in designs that compress, expand, foreshorten, combine, and are not at all realistic or photographic, yet they may tell you something true about the Past.

"And mind you, there are real details, what are called facts, accidents of land-shape and sea shape, of individual men and their actions, that are caught up: the grains on which the stories crystallize like snowflakes.

There was a man called Arthur at the centre of the cycle."

The Notion Club Papers - page 227.

*

Comment:

At the end, I think Tolkien is alluding to the small, and unpredictable, 'facts' around which myth grows.

There was a man called Arthur at the centre of the cycle - the idea is that someone of this name triggered the myth-making.

Somehow, once a myth has grown, it is impossible to discern these specific facts, and their relevance is either limited or non-existent (because it is the myth which matters) - yet it is also a fact that the myth grew here and nowhere else, around these seeds and not others.

This may simply be a case of human knowledge being very limited.

*

I saw this process at work when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash, under sordid circumstances.

Immediately beforehand she had been unpopular; immediately after she was killed a vast mythic edifice mushroomed and pushed aside everything which had been before.

There was a grain of truth, or a few grains, at the centre of this myth - but mostly it was an archetypal construction of a beautiful princess and devoted young mother, filled with compassion for the suffering world - there seemed to be elements of Mary - Mother of God, Galadriel and Cinderella.

It did not last, The oral process stripped it away because - well who really knows why.

Probably because the Diana myth did not fulfill a need or serve a purpose; but then, who really knows - explicitly - what specific purpose individual myths are serving?

*

The daimonic force of great myths and legends

2010-10-26T11:38:00.000+01:00

*

From The Notion Club Papers by JRR Tolkien – in Sauron Defeated, Volume IX of the History of Middle Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien.

Page 228, Ramer speaking:

“I don’t think you realize, I don’t think any of us realize, the force, the daimonic force that the great myths and legends have.

“From the profundity of the emotions and perceptions that begot them, and from the multiplication of them in many minds – and each mind, mark you, an engine of obscured but unmeasured energy.

“They are like an explosive: it may slowly yield a steady warmth to living minds, but if suddenly detonated, it might go off with a crash: yes, might produce a disturbance in the real primary world.”

*

This is surely a profound truth.

People do live by myths, or aspire to – and if they lack noble myths (as people mostly do at present), then they live by sordid myths.

And myths have daimonic force.

*

One current myth with daimonic force are the ‘trickster’ stories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster) , which underlie much popular culture – myths concerning a protagonist who is amoral, un-idealistic, selfish, hedonistic. Someone who breaks the rules, not for higher or transcendent goals, but for their own benefit.

Thieves and fences, serial seducers, bon viveurs, escapists, bounty hunters, skivers and sturdy beggars, druggies and drunks, guns for hire, rock stars and rappers, wide boys, liars, blaggers and charm merchants.

*

This myth (or rather, the many myths and stories featuring this archetypal figure) has such force because these protagonists are (we imagine) living by id not super-ego, by instinct not training; and thereby in touch with ‘life’ –that connection so painfully missing in the world of the bureaucratic state which we inhabit.

Tricksters are also (supposedly, we would like to believe) indestructibly happy – utterly unconcerned by the future, able to evade all attempts to entrap them with duty, escaping again and again into living for the moment hedonism.

The trickster comes to the fore when other myths are not possible or cannot be conceived, when (in a world where pleasure is the only ‘real’ good) the choice seems between deadly dutiful planned conformity and impulsive parasitic selfishness.

*

Typically this myth is enacted unconsciously - but not always. There are those (especially among intellectuals) who deliberately take-upon themselves this role, and propagandize it.

There embrace of the daimonic then becomes literally demonic; inflated with pride they are sometimes rewarded with extra-ordinary, quasi-hypnotic powers of mind control and fascination.

They defend themselves with mockery, with promises of invulnerable pleasure to those who follow their teachings, and - if pressed - with the burning conviction that all good is pretense and hypocrisy and that they alone are the truth-tellers.

Although unable to construct or create, in our degenerate, weak, faddish society; such tricksters eild great influence; and the myths of tricksters divert any possibility of constructive dissatisfaction into chaotic predation and self-destruction.

*

Yes, myth does have daimonic force, easily powerful enough to destroy anything; and the only force which can restrain destructive myth is creative myth.

*

Evil minds attacking during sleep

2010-10-06T10:27:00.000+01:00

From The Notion Club Papers - an unfinished novel by JRR Tolkien. In Sauron Defeated - The History of Middle Earth Volume IX. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. 1992. Pages 195-7.

"'[Ramer said:] ...it is largely a rest-time, sleep. As often as not the mind is inactive, not making things up (for instance). It then just inspects what is presented to it, from various sources - with very varying degrees of interest, I may say. It's not really frightfully interested in the digestion and sex items sent in by the body.'

"'What is presented to it, you say?' said Frankley. 'Do you mean that some of the presentments come from outside, are shown to it?'

"'Yes. For instance: in a halting kind of way I had managed to get on to other vehicles; and in dream I did it better and more often. So other minds do that occasionally to me. Their resting on me need not be noticed, I think, or hardly at all; I mean, it need not affect me or interfere with me at all; but when they are doing so, and are in contact, then my mind can use them. The two minds don't tell stories to one another, even if they're aware of the contact. They just are in contact and can learn.

"'After all, a wandering mind (if it's at all like mine) will be much more interested in having a look at what the other knows than in trying to explain to the stranger the things that are familiar to itself.'

"'Evidently if the Notion Club could all meet in sleep, they'ld find things pretty topsy-turvy,' said Lowdham.

"'What kind of minds visit you?' asked Jeremy. 'Ghosts?

"'Well, yes of course, ghosts,' said Ramer. 'Not departed human spirits, though; not in my case, as far as I can tell..'.

"'Beyond that what shall I say? Except that some of them seem to know about things a very long way indeed from here. It is not a common experience with me, at least my awareness of any contact is not.'

"'Aren't some of the visitors malicious?' said Jeremy. 'Don't evil minds attack you ever in sleep?'

"'I expect so,' said Ramer. 'They're always on the watch, asleep or awake.

"'But they work more by deceit than attack. I don't think they are specially active in sleep. Less so, probably. I fancy they find it easier to get at us awake, distracted and not so aware. The body's a wonderful lever for an indirect influence on the mind, and deep dreams can be very remote from its disturbance.

"'Anyway, I've very little experience of that kind - thank God!

"'But there does come sometimes a frightening... a sort of knocking at the door: it doesn't describe it, but that'll have to do. I think that is one of the ways in which that horrible sense of fear arises: a fear that doesn't seem to reside in the remembered dream-situation at all, or wildly exceeds it.

"'I'm not much better off than anyone else on this point, for when that fear comes, it usually produces a kind of dream- concussion, and a passage is erased round the true fear-point.

"'But there are some dreams that can't be fully translated into sight and sound. I can only describe them as resembling such a situation as this: working alone, late at night, withdrawn wholly into yourself; a noise, or even a nothing sensible, startles-you; you get prickles all over, become acutely self-conscious, uneasy, aware of isolation: how thin the walls are between you and the night.

"'That situation may have various explanations here. But out (or down) there sometimes the mind is suddenly aware that there is a night outside, and enemies walk in it: one is trying to get in.

"'But there are no walls,' said Ramer sombrely. 'The soul is dreadfully naked when it notices it, when that is pointed out to it by something alien. It has no armour on it, it has only its being. But there is a guardian.

"'He seems to command precipitate retreat. You could, if you were a fool, disobey, I suppose. You could push him away. You could have got into a state in which you were attracted by the fear. But i can't imagine it.

"' I'ld rather talk about something else.' "

Comment:

At this point in The Notion Club Papers, Ramer seems to be Tolkien's mouthpiece. I assume that the experiences he describes were, more or less, those of Tolkien (specific examples of this are confirmed in several footnotes by Christopher Tolkien).

This was written, according to the Chronology published in JRR Tolkien: a companion and guide by Hammond and Scull, at around the lowest point in Tolkien's life - associated with him doing the work of two Oxford Professorships at the same time (coving his move from the Pembroke chair of Anglo Saxon to the Merton chair of English Language and Literature), and also having to teach subjects in which he had no interest.

At any rate, it seems that Tolkien had direct personal experience of dreams in which he felt himself under attack by malicious minds.

C.S Lewis drew upon similar experiences in his work - most obviously in the Screwtape letters; and the work of Charles Williams is permeated with the phenomenon. These matters were discussed in The Inklings meetings.

So, seventy years ago it was apparently the case that highly prestigious and able individuals (who had and continue to have a major cultural influence) were openly discussing the 'supernatural' workings of evil purpose in the universe.

Seventy years later, to do so is - for mainstream public discourse, at least in the UK - taken to be evidence of craziness or simple-mindedness (the sort of thing that only 'fundamentalists' might engage in).

Is this progress? What discoveries were made over recent decades that rendered this kind of discussion absurd? Are we (as individuals, as a culture), nowadays, smarter, more insightful, wiser, more-learned, more honest than the circle of Tolkien and Lewis?

Or are we, perhaps, inferior in almost every respect - individually and culturally? So it seems.

In which case they are likely to know better than we; and we should be prepared to learn from them - or at the very least to take seriously what they took seriously.

Ghosts in the Notion Club Papers

2009-11-15T22:47:00.003Z

The Notion Club Papers seem to suggest that JRR Tolkien believed in ghosts.

On page 179, the subject of haunting is introduced in a way that suggests that all members of the Notion Club accept the reality of the phenomenon.

Ramer is describing his idea of how to use 'the history of things whose paths have, at some point of time or space, crossed the path of my body'.

He argues that the mind uses the memory of its body and that memory may be one example of a record of past events which is embodied in a specific form. He adds that 'disintegration of the form destroys the memory'.

In trying to elucidate this idea, he brings up the example of 'a haunted house', to which Jeremy responds that 'All houses are haunted.' to which Ramer promptly replies 'I agree', and the next participant, Frankley, adds his opinion that 'haunting and atmosphere (which I suppose is what Jeremy means), are something added by accident of history (...) They're not part of the house itself, qua house.'

What is striking is the lack of disagreement among the Notion Club concerning the premise that house haunting is a real phenomenon. The discussions are instead concerned with the precise mechanism of haunting.

Ramer says that 'if you destroy an actual house, qua house, you also destroy, or dissipate, the special haunting. If a haunted house were pulled to pieces, it would stop being haunted, even if it were built up as accurately as possible again. Or so I think, and so-called 'psychical' research seems to bear me out.'

Jeremy points out that 'you can go a long way, short of destruction, without wholly banishing atmosphere or laying ghosts (...). Bricking up windows, changing staircases, and things like that.'

To which Lowdham adds a funny story about a 'well authenticated' case of a haunted house in which builders raised a floor level after which the ghost’s feet were seen walking along under the level of the new ceiling.

[I have heard a version of this story told about Treasurer's House in the city of York, England - but this was reported in 1953, after the writing of the NCPs].

Ramer concludes with the comment that 'I expect there are in fact lots of neglected chances of historical research, with proper training; especially among old houses and things more or less shaped by man.'

So, the NCP consensus is that some hauntings are real, and might even be used for historical research. My reading of this, and the tone of the passage, leads me to suspect that Tolkien was reporting both his own belief in the reality and nature of haunting, and perhaps also the consensus of the Inklings - as if they had had similar conversations to the Notion Club.

On page 196 the conversation again moves onto the subject of ghosts when Jeremy asks Ramer about the nature of other minds that come into contact with Ramer's mind during dreams:

"What kind of minds visit you?" asked Jeremy. "Ghosts?"

"Well, yes of course, ghosts," said Ramer. "Not departed human spirits, though; not in my case, as far as I can tell. Beyond that what shall I say? Except that some of them seem to know about things a very long way indeed from here. It is not a common experience with me, at least my awareness of any contact is not.'

My usual assumption is that Ramer is channeling Tolkien - and if so, then the NCPs suggest that Tolkien had considerable interest in, and experience of, hauntings and ghosts; and that (as was the case for dreams) he regarded hauntings and ghosts as potentially a source of useful historical and geographical information.

Of course such unconventional beliefs of JRR Tolkien can be ignored or simply dismissed; on the other hand, if such an intelligent and well-informed a group as the Inklings really did believe in hauntings and ghosts, there exists the possibility that they may have been right!

Notes added 26 March 2010 - On 24 November 1944 JRRT wrote to his son Christopher about an Inklings meeting at which they had "some illuminating discussion of 'ghosts' ". Presumably this real life Inklings formed the basis of the discussion of ghosts in the Notion Club Papers. Letters of JRR Tolkien, H Carpenter and C Tolkien, 1981 page 103.

The shamanistic creative method of JRR Tolkien

2009-11-08T09:36:00.008Z

*

Tolkien's remarkable creative method has been elucidated by TA Shippey in his Road to Middle Earth; and amply confirmed by the evidence from the History of Middle Earth (HoME) edited by Christopher Tolkien.

In a nutshell, Tolkien treats his 'first draft' as if it were an historical text of which he is a scholarly editor. So when Tolkien is revising his first draft his approach is similar to that he would take when preparing (for example) an historically-contextualized edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or Beowulf.

So, as he reads his own first draft, he is trying to understand what 'the author' (himself) 'meant', he is aware of the possibility of errors in transcription, or which may have occurred during the historical transmission. He is also aware that 'the author' was writing from a position of incomplete knowledge, and was subject to bias.

*

This leads to some remarkable compositional occurrences. For example, in the HoME Return of the Shadow (covering the writing of the first part of Lord of the Rings - LotR) Tolkien wrote about the hobbits hiding from a rider who stopped and sniffed the air. The original intention was that this rider was to be Gandalf and they were hiding to give him a surprise 'ambush'. In the course of revision the rider became a 'Black Rider' and the hobbits were hiding in fear - the Black Riders were later, over many revisions, and as the story progressed, developed into the most powerful servants of Sauron.

This is a remarkable way of writing. Most writers know roughly what they _mean_ in their first draft, and in the process of revising and re-drafting they try to get closer to that known meaning. But Tolkien did the reverse: he generated the first draft, then looked at it as if that draft had been written by someone else, and he was trying to decide what it meant - and in this case eventually deciding that it meant something pretty close to the opposite of the original meaning.

In other words, Tolkien's original intention counted for very little, but could be - and was, massively reinterpreted by the editorial decision. The specifics of the incident (rider, sniffing) stayed the same; but the interpretation of the incident was radically altered. This pattern is often seen throughout the HoME - specific details are retained, while the meaning of these is transformed throughout the process of revision.

(By contrast, most authors maintain the interpretation of incidents throughout revisions, but change the specific details.)

*

This corresponds to the transmission of texts through history - specific and striking incidents tend to be remembered and preserved - while (due to historical changes in culture, assumptions, background knowledge etc) these incidents get hugely re-interpreted in 'anachronistic' ways. So the incident may stay the same, but its meaning may be reversed.

I have seen this with a couple of folk tales during my life. When I was a child King Midas - everything he touched turned to gold - was regarded as a cautionary tale of greed leading to (potential) death (since his food and drink were also turned to gold). But nowadays, the Midas Touch is regarded as something desirable - it means the ability to make money in any situation. Presumably the benefits of wealth are now regarded as greater than survival!

"Shooting yourself in the foot" used to mean a deliberate act of self-wounding with the aim of being invalided away from the front line of a war. Someone shot themselves in the foot on purpose, but pretended it was an accident. But it now means almost the reverse - an accidentally self-inflicted wound.

In both cases a striking detail is preserved, but its meaning is transformed.

*

Tolkien's compositional technique recognizes this process - and Tolkien approached his first draft of composition as if the draft were the end product of this type of misinterpretation or distortion. So, his draft containing the striking detail of the sniffing rider'; but it is as if Tolkien assumed that the meaning of the detail had been misunderstood by one of the copyists via whom the text had been transmitted to Tolkien.

But why did Tolkien write in this way? I think there are two reasons. The first is that he was by profession a philologist: a scholarly editor, a man concerned with old and fragmentary and distorted texts - and he brought this skill and perspective to his fictional writing.

But secondly it relates to Tolkien's creative processes - which were 'shamanistic' (and it is one of the purposes of this blog to demonstrate the fact, since it comes through so strongly in the Notion Club Papers). By shamanistic, I mean that I believe much of Tolkien's primary, first-draft creative, imaginative work was done in a state of altered consciousness - a 'trance' state or using ideas from dreams. The re-writing was done in clear consciousness, with full critical faculties brought to bear.

*

This combination of creating a dreamlike first draft which is then used as the basis for scholarly and meticulous revisions is not unusual among creative people, perhaps especially poets. Robert Graves wrote about this a great deal.

And neither is it unusual for poets to treat their 'inspired' first draft as material for editing. The first draft - if it truly is inspired - is interpreted as coming from elsewhere - from divine sources, from 'the muse', or perhaps from the creative unconscious; at any rate, the job of the alert and conscious mind is to 'make sense' of this material without destroying the bloom or freshness derived from its primary source. In this respect, and others, Tolkien wrote more like a poet than a novelist.

This is, I believe, why Tolkien did not see himself as inventing, rather as understanding. He was not consciously inventing his first drafts but rather 'transcribing' material which came to him during altered states of consciousness, by a process of inspiration which was not under his control. When revising this primary material, if he found that key evidence was missing, he could try and interpolate it like a historian by extrapolation from other evidence, linking between the inspired material; or he could await further poetic inspiration, which might provide the answer.

This interpretation is also consistent with Tolkien's oft stated remarks that the Legendarium came from the language; in the sense that words were often primary data which required to be understood - for example the Anglo Saxon word Earendil. As Tolkien's Legendarium evolved, the meaning of Earendil (the myth behind the word) changed - but the word remained.

Or, the meaning of the Beren and Luthien story changed (Beren was originally an elf) - but key details of the story remained constant.

*

Tolkien - I think - regarded these key words or key story elements as his primary source material, material which must be preserved throughout revision because it had been inspired. The interpretation of these emotionally-charged, entities (words, story elements, images, artefacts) might change, might even reverse, but the entity should be kept the same throughout all these changes, because that was what had been 'given' to Tolkien from his primary sources, accessed during his most profound creative states.

*

Personality of JRR Tolkien: classic creative genius

2009-11-04T13:02:00.004Z

That JRR Tolkien was a first rank creative genius is a matter of judgment at this stage; but there are reasonable grounds for suggesting that this is by now close to being an established objective fact based on consensus and influence - for instance, TA Shippey makes a strong case in 'Author of the Century'.

HJ Eysenck, the eminent psychologist, wrote a book about Genius (1995) shortly before his death and synthesizing a lifetime's research; where he described the typical features of a creative Genius whether in science or the arts. As well as needing 'luck', the Genius also needed very high intelligence (IQ), a strong ego, and - most controversially - Eysenck argued that creativity was associated with a moderately high level of the personality trait termed Psychoticism.

Very high Psychoticism is associated with psychotic mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and also with antisocial psychopaths; very low Psychoticism includes all sorts of traits which are generally regarded as socially desirable such as a friendly and empathic personality, self discipline and conscientiousness. An extremely high level of Psychoticism would usually rule out creative achievement. In general, it is better to be low in Psychoticism oneself, and to have neighbours low in Psychoticism; however, moderately high (but not very high) levels of Psychoticism have one very positive feature: that of enhancing creativity.

For Eysenck, creativity is part way to insanity, in the sense that the weird experiences and crazy ideas of insanity are an extreme version of the processes of creativity. Creativity is therefore seen as a version of the thought processes occurring during dream, the wide ranging associations between material. He also notes that creative people have much higher than average levels of psychotic illness, alcohol and drug usage - and various other signs indicating that the trait of creativity is associated with a tendency towards altered states of consciousness.

Most people who are high in pure, wide-associative-field creativity are not able to achieve much with it, due to low intelligence or the other aspects of a high Psychoticism personality. So there is a very important distinction between creativity and creative achievement - and most highly creative people do _not_ achieve highly; not least because their creativity is usually associated with antisocial traits and rather poor self-discipline.

It is the rare combination of high creativity with high IQ and a strong sense of self (ego strength) which potentially allows high levels of creative achievement. From here on I will say nothing more about ego strength (which is a poorly defined concept) and focus on combination of high IQ and moderately-high Psychoticism as a basis (although not the whole story) for high creative achievement.

In surveying the Notion Club Papers in particular, but in the context of everything I have read by and about JRR Tolkien, I would regard him as a classic creative Genius: with a very high IQ and moderately high Psychoticism.

That Tolkien had a very high IQ would not be disputed by those who know of his biography and very rapid ascent to academic eminence; and the reports of those who knew him. High general intelligence is associated with the ability to understand and learn very rapidly, to solve novel problems, and to reason abstractly. Tolkien was always perceived, and from a young age, as extremely quick-witted.

However, I would argue that Tolkien also showed signs of moderately high Psychoticism such as a tendency towards experiencing altered states of consciousness, and moderately low levels of self-discipline and conscientiousness as evidenced by his truly amazing lack of ability to finish projects in which he was not very interested - such as the Clarendon textbook about Chaucer, over which he spent several decades before abandoning unfinished, or the preface to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (which could have been finished in a few days but was delayed for about a decade until Tolkien died before publishing it). The new Chronology of Tolkien's life (in the recent JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide) is replete with similar examples.

This trait of moderately low conscientiousness goes back to school days and his early university career where, despite his high intelligence and ability, he took two attempts to achieve a financial award to attend Oxford, and even then failed to get a scholarship but instead attained a lower level of funding called an exhibition. And his first university course was 'classics' - the conventional high status Oxford degree, but which did not much interest Tolkien. After scraping a low second class mark in his first set of classics examinations (and only getting that high a mark due to the philological part of the course - otherwise he would have received a disgraceful 'third'), Tolkien switched to an English degree mostly consisting of his beloved philological studies - and excelled from that point onwards, receiving a full Oxford Professorship (the pinnacle of his profession in the UK) at the remarkably early age of 32 (and despite his years of service in the 1914-18 war).

In other words there is a consistent pattern throughout Tolkien's life of very high achievement when doing things that he loved, combined with a near-inability to do things which he did not love. This is a classic pattern of moderately-high Psychoticism seen in many (but not all) creative Geniuses - they do _not_ excel at things that do _not_ engage their deepest interest. Another example was Einstein, whose early scholarly career was somewhat mediocre until the point when he could work on exactly that subject which most engaged him. Einstein was of course - par excellence - the epitome of an imaginative, visualizing, intuitive creative genius.

Therefore Tolkien, like many creative geniuses, could work incredibly hard and fast on topics which deeply interested him; but was almost unable to get himself to work on topics which - although he felt a duty to do them - did not interest him deeply.

To see the difference between a highly intelligent person like Tolkien with moderately high Psychoticism/ high creativity and lowish Conscientiousness; and a person of similar intelligence but with low Psychoticism and high Conscientiousness - one need look no further than his friend CS Lewis.

Lewis could make himself work hard and regular hours even on matters which bored him but which he felt he ought to do - for example correspondence - at which he laboured for about 2 hours per day in later life. Meanwhile Lewis was publishing around a book a year plus scholarly articles and journalism: a vast volume of _finished_ work.

Yet Lewis was not so creative as Tolkien. He is of course much more creative than most people; but in comparison with Tolkien his fecundity was more a matter of selecting, combining and extrapolating from his vast fund of knowledge. And Lewis had a tendency to lapse into pastiche, which is evidence of his lower mode of creation (Tolkien by contrast would lapse into bathos - which is more the mark of a first rank creative genius when having an off-day - think of some of Wordsworth's lamest poems...).

Lewis did have 'visions', or images - from which his fictions often arose (eg the vision of a faun with a parcel which was elaborated into the Narnia books) - but Lewis was not in the same league as Tolkien in terms of creative imagination: the ability deeply to imagine a believable world (believable to the reader and inhabitable by the reader because it was believed and inhabited by the author).

One can also see this in their poetry - Lewis was a skilled versifier, while Tolkien was a lyric poet who at times (albeit rarely, like all but the greatest lyric poets) achieved greatness (e.g. Three rings for the elven kings...', or 'Where now the horse and the rider?").

Like other true lyric poets, Tolkien in his own poetic loves focuses on very specific phrases which have a mystical depth and resonance for him, such as "éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended" or "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað" . This, I take it, is evidence of the highly creative mind, that finds wider associations than usual mortals can discover.

By contrast, Lewis - although a greater and more productive critic of English Literature than Tolkien - seems to me both to interpret as well as write poetry much more narrowly and literally - more as if it were a technical form of prose (which of course is true of almost all so-called-poetry, almost all of the time - i.e. most soi disant lyric poetry is a kind of manufactured fake, displaying borrowed plumes).

Tolkien has often been described as if he were a rather dull character who never did much - that is probably most people's take home image from Humphrey Carpenter's biography. A rather typically stuffy and inhibited English Professor of his stuffy and inhibited era. But the truth is far in the opposite direction: JRR Tolkien was an extraordinary man, with an extraordinary mind, and living at an extraordinarily vivid and creative time - he was not just intellectually brilliant but _wildly_ creative.

In my opinion, when we think of what Tolkien was like, or of who Tolkien most resembled, we should be making comparisons with other imaginative, creative, idiosyncratic geniuses of something like the stature of Einstein. Yes, really.

Tolkien as mystic

2009-11-04T06:44:00.003Z

It is well known that Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and attended mass frequently throughout his life. However, the comments of Ramer suggest that (unlike Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis) Tolkien may in addition have had religious or spiritual experiences, and probably some of his personal beliefs were related to these experiences.

However, these experiences (if that is what they are) are only discussed in fictionalized (or semi-fictionalized) form in Tolkien's work as published so far (so far as I know), perhaps because these experiences were private, or of dubious orthodoxy; or since Tolkien seems to have regarded specifically religious discourse as the province only of priests, accredited theologians and the like (one of the reasons that he was apparently uncomfortable with C.S. Lewis's highly successful explicitly religious writings).

On page 195 of the Notion Club Papers volume, Ramer comments that during sleep the mind inspects material that is presented to it from various sources. The club member Frankley picks up on the word 'presented' and asks whether this means that some of the material come from outside.

Ramer replies: "Yes. For instance: in a halting kind of way I had managed to get onto other vehicles; and in dream I did it better and more often. So other minds do that occasionally to me. Their resting on me need not be noticed, I think, or hardly at all; I mean, it need not affect me or interfere with me at all; but when they are doing so, and are in contact, then my mind can use them. The two minds don't tell stories to one another, even if they're aware of the contact. They are just in contact and can learn."

This strikes me as such an unusual idea that, again, I would regard Ramer as here reporting what was essentially Tolkien's own personal mystical or spiritual experience that was perceived as telepathic contact between his mind and other minds, occurring in dreams, and in which some of these other minds were non-human, and from outside the earth.

This interpretation emphasises the conviction behind the frequent assumptions of Tolkien scattered throughout his works that knowledge obtained in dreams may provide true information which would otherwise be unavailable; although he always makes clear that dreams can be confused, memories are often incomplete and distorted, and that human sinfulness and imperfection may warp the reporting and interpretation.

More than this, Tolkien (via Ramer) also states that there dream experiences have informed him that there is purposive evil in the universe, with a specific purpose of harming humans (among other things, presumably), and that this evil may have widespread influence on humanity via dream experiences.

The reality of purposive evil is of course a major element in Tolkien's legendarium including LotR. This is a view of life which is mainstream among humans throughout most of the modern world, and has been universal (so far as we know) throughout most of history and until recently - yet of course it is not now part of the moral system of secular modern societies, where 'evil' is regarded as only the 'privation', or lack, of good (as Ralph Waldo Emerson termed it).

But the modern secular elite ruling class does not believe in evil as either positive or pervasive. To talk of evil in everyday elite life in the way that Tolkien does here is to elicit sniggering condescension at best, or more likely to be regarded as a deranged and dangerous reactionary.

Nonetheless, it is clear that in 'real life' Tolkien believed in the reality of purposive evil, and this is also a major theme in his works where such evil operates spiritually in dreams as well as materially in the waking world.

There are two notes to this above passage which expand on the point - one which is part of the fictional text on pages 195-6 purportedly authored by the fictional Notion Club Secretary Nicholas Guildford, in relation to the telepathic 'reading' of other minds in contact. This concludes with:

"There's a danger there, of course. You might inspect a mind and think you were looking at a record (true in its own terms of things external to you both), when it was really the other mind's composition, fiction. There's lying in the universe, some very clever lying. I mean, some very potent fiction is specially composed to be inspected by others and to deceive, to pass as record; but is made for the malefit of Man. If men already lean to lies, or have thrust aside the guardians, they may read some very maleficial stuff. It seems that they do."

['Malefit' is a word invented by Tolkien meaning the opposite of 'benefit']

This is amplified by note 47 printed on page 217 which is an early version of this passage, containing the following more explicit account of what Tolkien was driving-at:

"To judge by the ideas men propogate now, their curious unanimity, and obsession, I should say that a terrible lot of men have thrust aside the Guardians, and are reading very maleficial stuff.'

The nature of the 'Guardians' will be elucidated later in the main text as printed. But the first draft makes clear that Ramer (and perhaps Tolkien?) is making the suggestion that purposive evil can perhaps work in dreams to mislead misguided human minds, en masse, to believe false and damaging stuff; and that this may be an explanation for the coordinated deluded behaviour that Ramer sees in mainstream public opinion.

Whether this description of the operations of evil reflects Tolkien's real life conviction, his real life suspicions, or is a purely fictional device - it is a remarkable idea: the idea that humankind has been, and presumably is being, corrupted and led to disaster by wrong human choices made during dreams, and by deliberately false knowledge spread by purposive evil during dreams.

I have never come across anything like this idea before - yet it is just one of the many amazing and haunting ideas which Tolkien scatters through the NCPs; and provides yet more evidence of the depth of fecundity and profound originality of Tolkien's creativity.

Notion Club theology

2009-11-01T08:13:00.002Z

From about page 193 of Tolkien's Notion Club Papers, the conversation takes on an implicitly theological turn.

The main difference between the Notion Club and the real life Inklings, is that the Inklings probably spent much of their time discussing Christian matters - with the exception of Owen Barfield (an Anthroposophist but who only rarely attended due to living in London), the core shared features of the Inklings were two-fold: they were friends of Lewis, and they were Christians. The nature of the Christianity varied across a fairly wide spectrum from Roman Catholic (Tolkien and Harvard), through Anglo Catholic (Charles Williams) to more protestant wing Church of England (the Lewis brothers - although CSL certainly moved towards Catholicism as he got older).

The Inklings was, like the Notion Club, primarily a society for reading aloud new writings - it was a writers group (as Diana Pavac Glyer makes clear in her superb book on the Inklings - The Company They Keep). Conversation was typically stimulated by whatever was read; however, aside from the issues related to writing (the club's primary purpose) it seems that Inkling conversation was typically of a moral nature, underpinned by shared Christianity.

However, the NCPs do not contain any explicitly Christian discussion. There is nothing to contradict an assumption of shared Christianity among its members, but certainly this aspect is not obvious. The discussions of time and space travel, telepathy, dream knowledge - are all Inklings themes, but in NCP presented apart from the Christian underpinnings they would have had in 'real life'.

The NCP does, however, contain a few pages where 'theology' comes nearer the surface.

Ramer comments on p. 193 that his dreams are sometimes like fragments of a larger whole, with separate dreams actually being somewhat like pages taken from a book. So that, over time, and bringing together memories of several dreams, Ramer gradually realizes that he has been glimpsing parts of a greater whole.

This is certainly a major theme of Tolkien's work. Throughout his whole adult life his fascination with, and presentation of, his own work was as if they were fragments and glimpses of a greater whole - a whole now either lost or at least inaccessible. (TA Shippey's Road to Middle Earth has a brilliant exposition of this aspect of Tolkien.)

Consistent with my understanding of Ramer as Tolkien's lightly-fictionalized mouthpiece, Ramer describes how he feels a larger significance in dreams than is explicable from their actual content, and he explains this on the basis of their fragmentary nature. The most famous and earliest example of this in Tolkien is when as an undergraduate before WWI he was fascinated by a reference to 'Earendil' in an otherwise rather uninteresting Anglo Saxon poem Crist. In a sense the whole Legendarium is an elaboration of this 'fragment' - the Legendarium being the recreated 'lost' whole from which this fragment was presumed to have come.

The Green Wave dream makes an appearance on page 194, as another example of a significant fragment. This was a dream of a vast wave coming over the green land, sometimes with ships riding its crest. The dream was recurrent with Tolkien in real life, also his son Michael (apparently spontaneously so) and is given to Faramir in the Lord of the Rings, and here to Ramer. (Tolkien once said that Faramir was the character in LotR which most resembled him - except for being much braver!) In LotR (as here, in the earlier NCPs) this fragment of the wave came from the larger tale of the destruction of Numemor, and the wave brought the ships of the faithful Numemoreans to Middle Earth where they founded the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor.

Other apparently significant dream fragments reported by Ramer are an empty throne on top of a mountain (I am not sure what this is - perhaps the sacred mountain Meneltarma in Numenor - with the throne empty due to the action of Sauron in introducing the worship of Morgoth?); a wide plain before the feet of a steep ridge with above it an immense sky blazing with equally placed stars rising as a vertical wall not bending to a vault (presumably the edge of the flat, disc world just prior to the destruction of Numenor and the creation of the round globe earth); a dark shape passing across the sky blotting out the stars as it goes (reminiscent of the Nazgul in LotR, but here maybe the eagles of the Lords of the West at the destruction of Numemor?); a tall grey, round tower on the sheer end of the land (perhaps the tower hills on Middle Earth, awaiting the arrival of the great wave?).

Then, on page 194, the report takes an explicitly religious turn when Ramer says: "...one does sometimes see and use symbols directly religious, and more than symbols. One can pray in dreams, or adore. I think I do sometimes, but there is no memory of such states or acts, one does not revisit such things. They're not really dreams. They're a third thing. They belong somewhere else, to the other anchorage, which is not to the body, and differ from dreams more than Dream from Waking.

"Dreaming is not Death. The mind is still, as I say, anchored to the body. It is all the time inhabiting the body, so far as it is in anywhere. And it is therefore in Time and Space: attending to them. It is meant to be so. But most of you will agree that there has probably been a change of plan; and it looks as if the cure is to give us a dose of something higher and more difficult. Mind you, I'm only talking of the seeing and learning side, not for instance of morality. But it would feel terribly loose without the anchor. Maybe with the support of the stronger and wiser it could be celestial; but without them it could be be bitter, and lonely. A spiritual meteorite in the dark looking for a world to land on. I daresay many of us are in for some lonely Cold before we get back."

I believe this is not only theoretical, nor is it fictional; but it is I think an account of Tolkien's own personal experiences and understanding.

This passage is, however, very obscure; indeed I suspect it is wilfully obscure for the reason that Tolkien is speaking directly of his profoundest intuitions.

Such deliberate obfuscation reminds me of a phrase from Robert Frost's poem Directive: "I have kept hidden in the instep arch/ Of an old cedar at the waterside/ A broken drinking goblet like the Grail/ Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it...". Tolkien does not want 'the wrong ones' to understand him. Or of what Robert Graves meant when he said that ancient poetry was often 'pied' or deliberately obscure in a way that only those other bards who were initiated into the same tradition (and inspired by the muse) could understand. Tolkien wants his full meaning to be understandable only to devout Christians.

So, rather than trying to explicate Tolkien's theological meaning, and I am not sure that I can; I will just say that this passage deserves study by anyone who wants to understand Tolkien's deepest convictions, hopes and fears.

And I think the same applies to what follows; a passage that seems to me as beautiful and as deep as anything Tolkien ever wrote.

Ramer continues: "But out of some place beyond the region of dreams, now and again there comes a blessedness, and it soaks through all the levels, and illumines all the scenes through which the mind passes out back into waking, and so it flows out into this life. There it lasts long, but not forever in this world, and memories cannot reach its source. Often we ascribe it to the pictures seen on the margin radiant in its light, as we pass by and out. But a mountain far in the North caught in a slow sunset is not the sun."

Ramer as Tolkien

2009-10-19T11:38:00.005+01:00

Several of the characters in the Notion Club seem to contain elements of Tolkien. But the main protagonist of Part 1, Michael George Ramer, seems to contain some of the most surprising - including aspects of belief and behaviour which do not (so far as I know) come through in other writings by or about Tolkien.

In particular, Ramer gives very detailed accounts of psychological experiments concerned with 'telepathic' attempts at space and time travel, mainly using dreams. These accounts are given in such extreme detail, and with considerable conviction, that they raise the likelihood that Tolkien made such experiments himself and had similar experiences (or even exactly the same experiences) as described by Ramer.

If Tolkien did not actually embark on these experiments and have these experiences, then the NCPs constitute evidence that he had at least thought about these matters in considerable detail, and followed through the possible outcomes of such experiments.

Ramer's accounts go beyond anything published elsewhere, as I mentioned, but there are at least three experiences of Ramer which are given specific endorsement by Christopher Tolkien in the notes, as having been actual experiences of his father - while others are fascinations that appear elsewhere in Tolkien's writing at times distant from the composition of the NCPs.

Therefore, my inclination is to assume that these specific confirmations are but the tip of an iceberg - and that pretty-much all of Ramer's comments are probably 'Tolkien talking'.

***

The NCPs start out with a critical discussion of a science fiction story which has been read out by Ramer - until Ramer is pressurized (mainly by Dolbear) into admitting that he had not 'made-up' the story about visiting another planet, but had actually been to the place: 'there is such a world, and I saw it - once.'

On page 173 Ramer begins to explain that he was attracted by the 'telepathic notion' that the mind can travel while the body is in a trance. He relates this to the phenomenon which he says 'cannot reasonably be doubted' that the future can be foreseen in dreams, and that there are 'authenticated modern instances' of visions of this type. Ramer describes this as a 'case of translation', a transference of observation which is usually obscured by the 'never ending racket of sense impressions'.

This interest in, or belief in, the possibility of 'telepathy' chimes with Tolkien's Osanwe-Kentar (published in the magazine Vinyar Tengwar in 1998 Vol 39). This was probably from work on the Silmarillion Legendarium around 1959-60 (more than a decade after the NCPs). Tolkien here asserts that direct communication of thoughts is possible not just for elves but men also, but it is subject to interference from spoken language. Also that men's abilities are weaker than the elves (especially the Eldar) due to men’s relative lack of control of the body.

Ramer then traces the sequence of his psychological experiments, and the ideas which lay behind them. On page 178 he says: 'I had the notion (...) that for movement or travelling the mind (when abstracted from the flood of sense) might use the memory of the past and the foreshadowing for the future that reside in all things, including what we call 'inanimate matter' (...) I mean, perhaps, the causal descent from the past, and the causal probability in the present, that are implicit in everything. At any rate, I thought that might be one of the mind's vehicles [for travelling in space and/ or time]'.

Ramer’s aim was 'to observe new things far off in Time and Space beyond the compass of a terrestrial animal.'

'...I thought that all I could do was to refine my observation of other things that have moved and will move: to inspect the history of things whose paths have, at some point of time and space, crossed the path of my body.'

'The mind uses the memory of its body. Could it use other memories, or rather, records? (...) The fragments, right down to the smallest units, no doubt, preserve the record of their own particular history, and that may include some of the history of the combinations they are entered into.'

(page 180) 'I expect there are in fact lots of neglected chances of historical research, with proper training, especially among old houses and things more or less shaped by man.'

'So I tried various experiments, on myself; various forms of training. It's difficult to concentrate, chiefly because it's difficult to get quiet enough. (...) I wanted to discover if my mind had any power, any trainable latent power, to inspect and become aware of the memory or record in other things. (...) I don't think I have any special talent for it. (...) It is difficult, and it is also frightfully slow. Less slow, of course, with things that have organic life, or any kind of human associations. (...) It's slow, and its faint. In inorganic things too faint to surmount the blare of waking sense, even with eyes shut and ears stopped.'

My interpretation is that, via Ramer, Tolkien is here either describing his own beliefs and self-experiments; or at the least his own potential beliefs and detailed thought-experiments. Either way, it is telling us something about Tolkien's personality which is considerably at odds with that rather hidebound reactionary which the young Humphrey Carpenter put forward in the authorized biography - a much stranger and intellectually unorthodox personality.

At this point, Ramer's experiments in trying to attain telepathic movement in time and space via inspecting the 'memories' located in other entities seems to have failed. However, at this point Ramer brings in the third 'thread' in his argument - which was the deliberate use of dreaming.

'Remember, I was also training my memory on dreams at the same time. And that is how I discovered that the other experiments affected them. Though they were blurred, blurred by the waking senses beyond recognition, I found that these other perceptions were not wholly un-noted; they were like things that are passed over when one is abstracted or distracted, but that are really 'taken in'. And asleep, the mind rooting about (...) in the day's leavings (...) would inspect them again with far less distraction, and all the force of its original desire.'

Again, to me, this passage has the feel of direct reportage.

Ramer then goes on to talk about some of the dreams: 'I used to get at that time very extraordinary geometric patterns presented to me, shifting kaleidoscopes especially, but not blurred; and other queer webs and tissues too. And other non-visual impressions also, very difficult to describe; some like rhythms, almost like music; and throbs and stresses.'

Again my impression is that Tolkien - via Ramer - is here striving to express something very difficult to express from his personal experience. This, especially, because the passage does not work very well in the narrative and stands-out as being unnecessarily detailed.

'But all the time, of course, I wanted to get off the earth. That's how I got the notion of studying a meteorite' (...) I took to hobnobbing with [a large meteorite in a public park]. (...) It seemed to be quite without results. ‘

However, later Ramer found that 'there had been results. It had evidently taken some time to digest [the memory records in the meteorite], and even partially translate them. But that is how I first got away, and beyond the sphere of the Moon, and very much further.'

This begins to sound more speculative, and yet the following reported experience is explicitly verified by Christopher Tolkien: Ramer reports that he got 'some very odd dreams or sleep experiences. Some were quite unpictorial, and those were the worst. Weight, for instance. Just Weight, with a capital W; very horrible. But it was not a weight that was pressing on me; you understand; it was a perception of, or sympathy in, an experience of almost illimitable weight.'

The note from Christopher Tolkien reads: 'My father once described to me his dream of 'pure weight''.

Ramer is struggling to describe a very strange dream experience, and it seems that it was also describing an actual dream of Tolkien's. This was not what Ramer desired from his dreams, and he again changed strategy:

(Page 183) 'I found it all very disturbing. Not what I wanted, or at least not what I had hoped for. So I turned more than ever to dream-inspection, trying to get 'deeper down'. I attended to dreams in general, but more and more to hose least connected with the immediate irritations of the body's senses. Of course, I had experienced, as most people have, parts of more or less rationally connected dreams and even one or two serial or repeating dreams. And I have had also the experience of remembering fragments of dreams that seemed to posses a 'significance' or emotion that the waking mind could not discern in the remembered scene. (...) Many of these 'significant patches' seemed to me much more like random ages torn out of a book.'

Christopher Tolkien's notes reads: 'Of this experience also my father spoke to me.'

So here we have further corroboration that Ramer is speaking of Tolkien’s experiences. And these experiences constitute an account of experiments in dreaming. In Verlyn Flieger's Question of Time she goes into great detail about the use of meaningful dreams not just in the NCPs but throughout Tolkien's whole corpus. It seems likely to me that this was a major interest of Tolkien’s, including a practical and self-experimental interest; and that he was discussing this via the mouthpiece of Ramer in a form where the whole matter could be discussed week by week in Inklings meetings.

I think it likely that a major motivation for writing the Notion Club Papers was precisely that it served as a semi-fictional vehicle whereby some of Tolkien's most strangest and most compelling beliefs and experiences could be presented candidly, yet somewhat indirectly, for detailed discussion in the safe and trusted context of the Inklings.

The fascination of the Notion Club

2009-10-18T21:50:00.001+01:00

I find the Notion Club Papers (NCPs) to be one of the most fascinating books I have ever read.

Some basic information can be found at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Notion_Club_Papers.

I was stimulated to read the NCPs by Verlyn Flieger's wonderful book on Tolkien: A Question of Time. Flieger's Interrupted Music adds even more depth of understanding.

There are several reasons why the NCPs are so compelling:

1. The book is an example of Tolkien writing a modern novel, with modern characters more or less in the science fiction genre.

2. The characters are somewhat based on the real life Inklings, and the nature of their conversations certainly resemble a kind of idealized Inklings meeting.

3. The characters of Ramer and Lowdham, Ramer in particular, embody aspects of Tolkien's personality which are seldom, or never, represented anywhere else in his published work.

Indeed, my feeling is that parts of the NCPs represent the most candid, most undisguised autobiography that Tolkien ever wrote (or at least that has been published so far). If I am correct about this, the reason is that the NCPs were written to be read privately to the real life Inklings (who were old and trusted friends) and probably would never have been published without considerable further revision (and opportunity for elaboration and concealment).

4. According to Flieger's speculations, the NCPs may have represented an extremely ambitious and complex attempt to 'frame' the whole of Tolkien's Legendarium - including the Silmarillion, The Numenor legends, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings - in a science fiction novel set in the future, the NCPs itself having an elaborate fiction of how it was discovered and edited, and was itself a fiction masquerading as fact.

So, while an unfinished and unpublished (until half a century later) novel, much of it in note form, is obviously something of somewhat limited and specialized literary appeal - in terms of Tolkien's life and work, the Notion Club Papers has a very important place.