Provenance of the Notion Club Papers - both fictional and true

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Note: Provenance - noun. The place of origin or earliest known history of something.   

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When he presents The Notion Club Papers in Sauron Defeated: Volume Nine of The History of Middle Earth (1992), Christopher Tolkien provides an Introduction (pp 145-53) and continues by presenting the NCPs as a free standing unit commencing on page 154 with a facsimile of the NCP title page before the Foreword, attributed to the fictional Editor of the NCPs, Howard Green. 

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These texts provide various accounts of the purported (feigned) history of the NCPs, which lead up to the conclusion that the NCPs are to be regarded by the reader as both fictional and true. 

1. The facsimile title page describes the full title as Leaves from the Notion Club Papers, emphasizing that these are a selection from an incomplete portion of the original NCPs. 

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2. The bottom of the page reads: Second edition MMXIV.

The Roman date means 2014 (next year!) - and that this is a second edition means that the NCPs, having only been discovered in 2012 (as we later discover) have already run into a second edition - which is surprising, given the apparently limited appeal of the text, but also allows for some pseudo-scholarly playfulness combined with making-a-significant-point, later in the Note to the second edition. 

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3. From the Foreword we are told that the NCPs were discovered by Howard Green on top of a sack of waste paper in Oxford University during the summer of 2012. There was no evidence of their origin. 

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4. Howard Green tells us that the NCPs as he found them had been prepared for publication - despite that they seemed merely to be the minute book recording the proceedings of a club for reading and conversation - and that many of the entries have no apparent interest to any outsider. There seem to have been originally reports of some hundred meetings spread over about a decade from 1980-90 (that is, about ten meetings per year).

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5. But, although the members of the club are named in the Foreword and in the main body of the text, the fictional editor Howard Green then tells us that no such club as the Notion Club ever existed; that there were no persons with such names, not even pseudonymously. This also applies to the club secretary Nicholas Guildford - which name is derived from a medieval dialogue (not named, but implicitly The Owl and the Nightingale which mentions one Master Nicholas of Guildford).

This discovery is atributed to Mr JR Titmass - whose name had the earlier version of Titmouse (given in Christopher Tolkien's introduction) - which I guess may be a sly joke on the name of the Inkling Charles L Wren (the titmouse or by its earlier name the titmase = small bird - the wren being the smallest British bird). 

(Wren was Tolkien's successor in the Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, and Tolkien sometimes found him irritatingly professional and pedantic.)

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In sum - at this point the provenance of the NCPs seem to be that they are a fictional composition of little interest recording the proceedings of a fictional club presented by a fictional secretary! 

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5.  Backtracking to Christopher Tolkien's Introduction, there are some quotations from earlier drafts of the Title Page and Foreword. 

The earliest presents the NCPs as 'a fragment of an apocryphal Inklings' Saga, made by some imitator at some time in the 1980s"

Which was replaced by "appears to have been written after 1989, as a apocryphal imitation of the Inklings Saga Book."

So - if 'apocryphal' carries meanings such as being of doubtful authorship, and having an exaggerated and/or unreliable and/or erroneous content; what might be implied by this term Saga Book?

Perhaps Saga Book refers to the journal of the same name published by the Viking Society, and which in its earliest editions carried accounts of the society Proceedings with exactly the same format as the shorter entries in the Notion Club Papers?

(see the earliest editions available on http://www.vsnr.org/saga-book/ ) 

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6. Note to the Second Edition describes that two more fictional scholars WW Wormald and DN Borrow have made an elaborate alternative interpretation of the provenance of the NCPs, challenging the interpretation of Howard Green. Green puts the date of composition in about 1940, more exactly "during or just after the Six Years' War" (in other words, the real time when Tolkien actually wrote the NCPs).

But Messrs Wormald and Borrow apparently claim that this is impossible, because the NCPs contain reference to two later events than the 1940s - that is the Great Explosion of 1975 and the Great Storm of Thursday, June 12th, 1987. If the NCPs had indeed been written in the 1940s this would mean that the author had foreseen these later events - which W. and B. regard as impossible, therefore they make an interpretation of the evidence which has the original manuscript copied after 1987 and the 1975 and 1987 incidents inserted at this later date.  

At one level this passage (on pages 156-8) is a parody of the kind of reasoning engaged in by historical textual critics - for instance Bible scholars who do not believe in the possibility of prevision/ precise prophecy, and must therefore attribute prophetic texts to later dates.

Note also that Tolkien/ Howard Green had changed his dating of the composition of the NCPs from the earliest draft which stated they were written "made by some imitator at some time in the 1980s" to the earlier date of the 1940s. 

Why did he do that? - because Tolkien has now got other and larger fish to fry...

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7. Howard Green concludes this section with a very important passage:

I am now convinced that the Papers are a work of fiction; and it may well be that the predictions (notably of the storm), though genuine and not coincidences, were unconscious: giving one more glimpse of the strange process of so-called literary "invention" with which the Papers are largely concerned.

My interpretation is that here is Tolkien speaking about how The Notion Club Papers, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and Quenta Silmarillion which they were designed to 'frame' - should be regarded by the reader: how he wanted them to be regarded by the reader.

Remembering that the Notion Club Papers was, at the time of writing, intended to be the entry-point into Tolkien's whole Legendarium - and therefore the 'plan' was that the Foreword to the Notion Club Papers would be the very first thing a Tolkien reader would ever encounter.

Tolkien wanted his works about Middle Earth/ Arda to be regarded as fictional and also containing genuine knowledge about the 'real world', which combination was made possible by the unconscious processes of literary invention as it is described in The Notion Club Papers.

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Charles Williams love affair with Phyllis Jones was not 'Platonic' (non-physical)

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It is generally supposed and often stated that Charles Williams long infatuation with Phyllis Jones was a wholly non-physical affair - yet this is contradicted by a passage I failed to notice until very recently (despite several re-reads) in Alice Mary Hadfield's Charles Williams: an exploration of his life and work.

From Page 72.

Probably in 1929, [Charles Williams] wrote to Phyllis, (...) What a year! (...) Do you remember offering to take me to The Ghost Train? But instead I took your arm - which to me was much like a weekend at Brighton - and we talked about almighty God... it was only the second time in my life I had taken - even so remotely as that - a woman's arm. And certainly certainly only the second time that the idea of kissing her had crossed my mind - as it did at Victoria. And took four months to eventuate, blessed be he.

So, kissing eventuated four months after the taking of the arm.

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The Ghost Train was a popular play of the time, written by Arnold Ridley who much later became very famous as Private Godfrey in the BBC classic sitcom Dad's Army.

The reference to 'a weekend at Brighton' is an old smutty joke for a 'dirty weekend' or adulterous holiday - Brighton being the classic location for such liasons - convenient for those living in London, but sufficiently remote. The participants in a weekend in Brighton were stereotypically (ahem) a boss and his younger secretary.

I'm not sure what is meant by the 'it' in 'as it did at Victoria' - but Victoria is the London railway station for the line which goes to... Brighton.

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So Williams is saying that for him (who had only ever taken his wife's arm before, and who had a bit of a 'thing' about girls' arms) the holding of Phyllis's arm was equivalent to an adulterous weekend together - he may even be referring to an actual weekend in Brighton - but either way, the tone of this passage is anything but Platonic!

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The Epilogue to Lord of the Rings - what difference does it make?

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The Epilogue to Lord of the Rings, and a polished preliminary draft, were published alongside The Notion Club Papers in the ninth volume of The History of Middle Earth (1992) edited by Christopher Tolkien.

http://memoirsoftheshire.webs.com/epilogue.htm

Considering that this was intended to be the final words of the LotR - and the end preferred by the author until an advanced stage of publication (perhaps early 1954) - the Epilogue has attracted surprisingly little interest and attention.

I think it makes a wonderful end to the story, and puts the book in a different and richer frame; but on the other hand the as-published LotR is perfection, so this is a minor quibble, really.

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There are two kinds of reader of LotR: the one for whom 'Well, I'm back', he said are the final words - and those who, like myself, pause and take a deep breath (and wipe away a tear), then turn to the Appendices.

For the latter type of reader, the Epilogue is likely to be an even more satisfying end.

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What are the advantages? In a nutshell the Epilogue emphasizes how the world has changed since the end of the Third Age and the departure of Elrond and Galadriel.

1. It brings the wheel full circle - the book began among the mundane affairs of the hobbits, and so it ends.

Very mundane in the sense of commencing with a rather stolid and unimaginative list of Questions and Answers about 'what happened next' to various major characters; as an example of the writing style of Samwise in The Red Book of Westmarch.

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2. A scene between Sam and his eldest (and elven-fair) daughter Elanor follows - which includes one of the most beautiful, poignant and personal passages Tolkien ever (nearly) published:

“Don't write any more tonight. Talk to me Sam-dad!” said Elanor, and drew him to a seat by the fire.

“Tell me,” she said, as they sat close together with the soft golden light on their faces, “tell me about Lórien. Does my flower grow there still, Sam-dad?”

“Well dear, Celeborn still lives there among his trees and his Elves, and there I don't doubt your flower grows still. Though now I have got you to look at, I don't hanker after it so much.”

“But I don't want to look at myself, Sam-dad. I want to look at other things. I want to see the hill of Amroth where the King met Arwen, and the silver trees, and the little white niphredil, and the golden Elanor in the grass that is always green. And I want to hear Elves singing.”

“Then, maybe, you will one day, Elanor I said the same when I was your age and long after it, and there didn't seem to be no hope. And yet I saw them, and I heard them.”

“I was afraid they were all sailing away, Sam-dad. Then soon there would be none here; and then everywhere would be just places and…”

“And what, Elanor?”

“And the light would have faded.”

“I know,” said Sam. “The light is fading, Elanor. But it won't go out yet. It won't ever go quite out, I think now, since I have had you to talk to. For it seems to me now that people can remember it who have never seen it. And yet,” he sighed, “even that is not the same as really seeing it, like I did.”

“Like really being in a story?” said Elanor. “A story is quite different, even when it is about what happened. I wish I could go back to old days!”

“Folk of our sort often wish that,” said Sam. “You came at the end of a great age, Elanor; but though it's over, as we say, things don't really end sharp like that. It's more like a winter sunset. The High Elves have nearly all gone now with Elrond. But not quite all; and those that didn't go will wait now for a while. And the others, the ones that belong here, will last even longer. There are still things for you to see, and maybe you'll see them sooner than you hope.”

Elanor was silent for some time before she spoke again. “I did not understand at first what Celeborn meant when he said goodbye to the King,” she said. “But I think I do now. He knew that Lady Arwen would stay, but that Galadriel would leave him. I think it was very sad for him. And for you dear Sam-dad.” Her hand felt for his, and his brown hand clasped her slender fingers. “For your treasure went too. I am glad Frodo of the Ring saw me, but I wish I could remember seeing him.” 

“It was sad, Elanor,” said Sam, kissing her hair. “It was, but it isn't now. For why? Well, for one thing, Mr. Frodo has gone where the elven light isn't fading; and he deserved his reward. But I have had mine too. I have had lots of treasures. I am a very rich hobbit. And there is one other reason, which I shall whisper to you, a secret I have never told before to no one, nor put in the Book yet. Before he went Mr. Frodo said that my time maybe would come. I can wait. I think maybe we haven't said farewell for good. But I can wait. I have learned that much from the Elves at any rate. They are not so troubled about time. And so I think Celeborn is still happy among his trees, in an Elvish way. His time hasn't come, and he isn't tired of his land yet. When he is tired he can go.” 

“And when you're tired, you will go Sam-dad. You will go to the Havens with the Elves. Then I shall go with you. I shall not part with you, like Arwen did with Elrond.”

“Maybe, maybe,” said Sam kissing her gently. “And maybe not. The choice of Luthien and Arwen comes to many Elanor, or something like it; and it isn't wise to choose before the time.” 

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3. And it ends with Tolkien's major symbol of the distance and difference between myth and history - the Western shore of (Middle) Earth/ The British Isles - as it were, looking out across to the abode of the elves and the gods; now inaccessible...

...Sam shut the door. But even as he did so, he heard suddenly, deep and unstilled, the sigh and murmer of the Sea upon the shores of Middle Earth.  

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Tolkien's elves - the opposite of dreamy...

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It is interesting that the subject of elves is associated with dreaminess, with misty imprecision - but in actuality Tolkien's elves are the opposite of dreamy.

Tolkien's elves are all clarity and precision.

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For high elves, the sacred is (or was, or will be) a matter of everyday reality: they lived with the gods (the Valar), and spoke with them face to face. This, for elves there is no gulf between the everyday and the divine.

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Elven eyesight is sharp, detailed, telescopic.

Elven voices are clear and pure.

Elven dreams are lucid - like a replay of the waking state.

Elven arts are crafts are exact, detailed, crisp.

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Mortals may be dazzled by the elves; high elves may even be perceived as surrounded by a shimmer or glow.

So the dreaminess of elves is a matter of mortal imperfection - not intrinsic to the elves.

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My favourite CS Lewis re-reads

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Of the books published in Lewis's lifetime these would be:

The Screwtape Letters/ Screwtape Proposes a Toast
The Great Divorce
Mere Christianity
The Abolition of Man 
Surprised by Joy
The Discarded Image

But I equally return often to re-read the numerous collections of essays on broadly Christian topics that were posthumously edited by Walter Hooper, and the three volume Collected Letters.

I don't re-read any of Lewis's fiction to anything like the extent I return to the above books - and when I do it is to focus on selected 'essay-like' passages of That Hideous Strength; however, I often re-listen to Brian Sibley's marvelous BBC radio dramatization of the Narnia Chronicles.

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Charles Williams had a (so-called) 'Cockney' accent because he wanted one

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St Alban's grammar school would at the time Charles Williams attended, would certainly have made it its business to eradicate local accents.

(St Albans is an anciently founded grammar school, and one of the high status English Public Schools, whose Headmasters were members of the Headmasters Conference.)

That was a non-optional part of what English public schools were about - core business for them. A public school education was designed to prepare its pupils to join the upper classes - and upper class membership could be detected by hard to fake attributes such accent, manners and detailed knowledge of etiquette etc.

Most of this training was done by the social milieu - such that boys would discipline each other into adopting the correct behaviours - and this would probably have been reinforced in class by formal elocution or 'speech' lessons, as well as by teachers mocking and shaming those who spoke with lower class accents in class.

So the probability is that anyone who emerged from an English private or public school around 1900 still having a regional accent must have actively resisted its eradication. This is somewhat plausible, given Williams lifelong assertion (reported by Alice Mary Hadfield) that the English 'middle classes ' (and not the upper classes) were the basis of the best and most distinctive literature. 

So either Charles Williams retained his 'Cockney' accent by choice, or else he had lost his regional accent by the time he left school but later re-adopted it, by choice.

But, either way, CW had a lower middle class 'Cockney'/ South East English regional accent essentially because he wanted one!

I think we can rule-out un-self-consciousness when it comes to CW! - since by all accounts his manners were exceptionally studied, formal, learned, distinctive.

If Williams spoke with an accent mistaken for Cockney - it was almost certainly by his deliberate choice.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/was-charles-williams-accent-deliberate.html

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A superb TV documentary about JRR Tolkien from 1992

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J.R.R.T.: A Film Portrait of J.R.R. Tolkien - release date 1996, but apparently completed in 1992

In case you haven't already seen it, this is a simply superb documentary - indeed, one of the best documentaries I have ever seen on any subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkmNHP58OhU

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Tolkien's most dreadful production - the 1960 revision of The Hobbit

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I have been reading the begun but (thankfully) nowhere near finished 1960 revision of The Hobbit which was done by JRR Tolkien, and is published in Part Two of The History of the Hobbit edited by John D Ratliff.

The draft consists of replacement passages amounting to some 30 pages and taking Bilbo and the Dwarves as far as arriving in Rivendell.

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The idea of the revision was to bring the Hobbit into line with Lord of the Rings in both a factual and tonal sense. This was a deeply flawed motivation, especially when applied to a first rank classic of children's literature, and could hardly fail to damage the book.

What resulted is rather horrible to read, at least it is horrible for anyone who loves Tolkien and who recognizes The Hobbit's special quality.

The very life has been drained from the Hobbit - its spark, verve, spontaneity are extinguished, smothered - its humour (in the old sense of humour - when a 'humorous' man was one of vivid and distinctive character).

The much derided avuncular asides are gone, but so is the vitality.

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The failure of the 1960 Hobbit betrays its misguided purpose, just as the vampiric bureaucratic prose of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (the one recommended by the modern Church of England) betrays Christianity - the hobbit, for all its flaws, is essentially a perfect book ^ (just as the Authorized Version is a perfect translation of the Bible) - and if you revise perfection there can be only one outcome.

^perfect - A perfect work of art is one at the highest level in that art, one which cannot in actuality be improved (any change making it overall worse), one which cannot be surpassed (only something different being done) - in this sense the following are perfect: Shakespeare's Hamlet, Mozart's Magic Flute, Rembrandt's sequence of self-portraits...

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[Note: An error of similarly tin-eared and destructive magnitude, but an error which has been enacted and imposed is currently poisoning the literary experience of tens of thousands of children - I mean the reordering of the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis; which retrospective juggling attempts to make kids read the books in pseudo-chronological order rather than by order of publication - that is with the Magician's Nephew first (instead of the correct first book, which is obviously The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). I have read all the arguments over this matter - but frankly find it embarrassing that anyone - especially the wonderful Walter Hooper - could seriously argue against the fact that the books should be read in order of publication. I say fact because, insofar as there is objectivity to literary criticism, this is about as obvious a fact as can be supposed. The re-ordering of the Narnia books was an act of literary vandalism of major proportions. The only consolation is that most kids seem to be ignoring it, in practice.]

Was Charles Williams's accent deliberately adopted - 'Mockney' rather than Cockney?

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In commenting on Charles Williams at another blog -

(http://theoddestinkling.mymiddleearth.com/)

- I suddenly had the idea that Charles Williams accent, which struck some of his Oxford friends as 'Cockney' was instead an affectation - or what we term 'Mockney' - a mock-Cockney accent, designed to give an impression that the speaker is 'a man of the people'.

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The possibility arises because Charles Williams was actually a University-educated Public Schoolboy whose father had been a clerk - yet CW struck others of that educated class (such as CS Lewis) as if he were of lower class origins and education.

Why should this be? - essentially, I think it was mostly Williams accent, plus perhaps some strange manners and mannerisms.

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But why would Williams have a superficially-Cockney accent and strange manners?

My answer: because he deliberately adopted them at some point in his youth or young adult life - for whatever reason CW wanted to appear as something other than he was, he wanted people to assume he was an outsider, of lower class origins.

By the time Williams met the Inklings, this affectation of accent had long since become an ingrained, spontaneous habit. 

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Plenty of English people have done and do the same - indeed English public life has been since the mid 1960s largely populated by people of upper middle class origin who try to appear to be of lower class or regional origin - ex Prime Minister Tony Blair (Fettes, Oxford, Mockney) being an example.

Why not Charles Williams? It is known he was extremely self-conscious, he struck most people as extremely affected (yet carried this off by his charisma and magnetism), he was very pro-Middle Class in his social views (and thereby implicitly unimpressed by the Upper Class), he seems to have habitually behaved in an odd and stand-out kind of fashion - wanted to be regarded as one of a kind.

He loved ritual and formalisms of his own devising - indeed, Charles Williams was exactly the kind of person deliberately to change his own accent in order to stand out and emphasize his outsider status and to identify with the lower class audiences of his London evening lectures, and the disciples who came from them.

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The more I think about it, the more plausible it becomes!

Charles Williams was a Mockney! - and one of the earliest examples of the type.

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Charles William's Platonism had no rationale for valuing mortal life

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Consider the following excerpt from near the end of Charles Williams novel The Place of the Lion.

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That strange impulse however, to which in the serious and gay humour
that possessed him he had given the name of the necessity, allowed [Anthony]
to wander slowly down the station road, till he saw Richardson walking
swiftly along to meet him; then he quickened his own steps. They looked
at each other curiously.

"And so," Richardson said at last, "you think that the common things
will return?"

"I'm quite certain of it," Anthony said. "Won't He have mercy on all
that He's made?"

The other shook his head, and then suddenly smiled. "Well, if you and
they like it that way, there's no more to be said," he answered.
"Myself, I think you're only wasting time on the images."

"Well, who made the images?" Anthony asked. "You sound like a medieval
monk commenting on marriage. Don't be so stuck-up over your old way,
whatever it is. What actually is it?"

Richardson pointed to the sky. "Do you see the light of that fire?" he
asked. "Yes, there. Berringer's house has been burning all day."

"I know, I saw it."

"I'm going out there," Richardson said and stopped.

"But--I'm not saying you're wrong--but why?" Anthony asked: "Isn't fire
an image too?"

"That perhaps," the other answered. "But all this--" he touched his
clothes and himself, and his eyes grew dark with a sudden passion of
desire--"has to go somehow; and if the fire that will destroy the world
is here already, it isn't I that will keep from it."

Anthony looked at him a little ruefully. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'd
hoped we might have talked more. And--you know best--but you're quite
sure you're right? I can't see but what the images have their place. Ex
umbris perhaps, but the noon has to drive the shadows away naturally,
hasn't it?"

The other shrugged. "O I know," he said. "It's all been argued a hundred
times, Jensenist and Jesuit, the monk and the married man, mystic and
sacramentalist. But all I know is that I must make for the End when and
as soon as I see it. Perhaps that's why I am alone. But since that's
so--I'd like you, if you will, and if restoration comes, to give this
book back to Berringer if he's alive, and to keep it if he isn't. What,"
he added, "what you call alive."

Anthony took the little parcel. "I will do it," he said. "But I only
call it alive because the images must communicate, and communication is
such a jolly thing. However, I'm keeping you and I mustn't do that...as
we sacramentalists say."

They shook hands. Then Anthony broke out again. "I do wish you
weren't--No; no, I don't. Go with God."

"Go with God," the other's more sombre voice answered. They stood for a
moment, then they stepped apart, their hands went up in mutual courteous
farewell, and they went their separate ways.

No-one saw the young bookseller's assistant again; no-one thought of
him, except his employer and his landlady, and each of them, grumbling
first, afterwards filled his place and forgot him. Alone and unnoticed
he went along the country road to his secret end. Only Anthony, as he
went swiftly to Damaris, commended the other's soul to the Maker and
Destroyer of images.

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In PotL the Platonic archetypes invade earth. These archetypes are that eternal reality of which earthly things, including people, are merely 'images'.

What happened in the above scene is that Richardson chose to yield to these archetypes, to end his mortal life, to die (by walking into the flames of a burning house - burning with archetypal fire)  and thereby enter the eternal world of real-reality. But Anthony affirmed his intention to saty in this world, resist the invasion of the archetypes, and thereby save the life of his fiancee.

This seems a very sensible thing to do! If the next world, the world after death, is indeed the real world, and this world is only a matter of images, shadows, inklings and glimpses of that real world, then why not die as soon as possible and enter reality?

Why not indeed - IF the Platonic metaphysics is regarded as true.

So, what reason does Anthony give for NOT doing exactly this - what is the best rationale Anthony can come up with for staying in this mortal life?

This is the key passage, upon which the whole plot of the book hinges. This is Anthony's credo:

...but you're quite sure you're right? I can't see but what the images have their place. Ex
umbris perhaps, but the noon has to drive the shadows away naturally,
hasn't it?"...

"... I only call it alive because the images must communicate, and communication is
such a jolly thing.

[Note: Ex umbris means Out of the shadows, and probably refers to a longer saying along the lines of Ex umbris ad lucem meaning Out of the shadows and into the light - in other words, from this mortal world of shadows and into the eternal world of clearly perceived reality.]

So this is Charles Williams bottom-line, ultimate reason for human mortal life -  the images must communicate, and communication is such a jolly thing.

In other words, no reason at all.

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And this is the intractable problem with Platonism - whether pagan or Christian - and if Christian Platonism whether that of Eastern Orthodoxy, or of Charles Williams, or indeed of CS Lewis in his Narnia books and elsewhere.

If this world is merely an image, shadow or at best foretaste of the reality which comes after death - then what is the point of it? What is the point of mortal human life? On this view there is none. It is at best an unfortunate trail, and the sooner it ends the better.

Platonism cannot answer the question of why stay alive if we get an opportunity to die - so long as we can be confident of entering this post-mortem world of truth and light.

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The current two rival dominant world views are: 1. some variant of the Platonic view which sees no necessity for mortal life, and 2. the secular idealism which sees no reality except mortal life - and a choice between Heaven-on-Earth here-and-now or else no Heaven at all.

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[To my knowledge, the only metaphysical system which both demonstrates the value, and indeed necessity, of mortal life, yet also acknowledges the primacy of the next world, is Mormonism. ]

Review of The Fall of Arthur by JRR Tolkien

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I think this is probably the most important work of Tolkien's to be published since The History of Middle Earth was finished.

It's not that this is anything like a 'must read' - because it isn't. I do not suppose many people would actually enjoy, or even get much out of, reading this 1000 line alliterative poem The Fall of Arthur; nor would they have the patience and interest to read the marvellous notes and commentaries by Christopher Tolkien.

This kind of book is a minority taste.

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But for people like myself, who are deeply concerned with Tolkien as a creative thinker, this book is of outstanding importance; since it reveals new aspects of, and perspectives on, what Tolkien was doing.

But the book will take me a while to assimilate.

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At present I will just make two comments.

1. Tolkien clearly intended to join-up his Arthur legend with his Middle Earth (Arda) legends. At the point this poem had reached, this occured at the deaths of Arthur and Lancelot - but it is plausible that having established this edge-to-edge join, Tolkien would have made further revisions to his Arthurian legend to integrate the two mythologies.

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2. This version of the Arthur legend is focused around the character of Guinevere - who is beautiful, cold-hearted, selfish and evil: she instigates the plots, and the main male characters - Arthur, Lancelot and Mordred - are in thrall to her fey glamour (only Gawain perceives her true nature).

This would make a terrific basis for dramatization whether on stage, TV, or movies - and could potenitally create a great and original female protagonist of Shakespearian stature (think Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra combined).

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Why have the Inklings become so popular? Four possible reasons

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1. As a by-product of the continual increase in popularity of JRR Tolkien and C.S Lewis.

Probably some truth in this - because the increased attention payed to the Inklings has had virtually no spin-off benefits on the other members: e.g. Charles Williams and Owen Barfield remain the preserve of enthusiasts and cults, Warnie Lewis's books are only obtainable from secondhand stores, and the same applies to Coghill - and so on...

2. An idyllic Oxford fantasy of a group of friends in beautiful surroundings (well, not Lewis's spartan and filthy rooms, but their setting at least!) - making an ideal focus for pilgrimages either by foot or virtually - through the medium of film and photographs.

3. The Inklings as a group of anti-modern, fantasy-oriented, counter-cultural authors seeking to establish a mythic view of life. True again, so far as it goes.

4. The Inklings as the last group of first rate traditional Christian English intellectuals. This is to perceive the Inklings as they did not perceive themselves but were perceived by others, specifically by those who disagreed with them: as a socio-political grouping.

In the wake of the  obvious failure of the linked phenomena of secularism and Leftism - our understanding of the characterization of John Wain's memoir has been transformed:

"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."

John Wain's critical evaluation of the Inklings as being 'now' (i.e. in the early 1960s) ideologically obsolete; has been transformed by the passage of fifty years into a recognition of the group's vital significance. 

*

Numenorean religion imagined

*

The King, though their host, was in silent seclusion that night, praying before the Erulaitalë. (...) [The next morning] they joined the vast progress of the Erulaitalë.

*

As soon as they had – with the crowd of several thousand – begun to ascend the mountain, Pengolod tapped Soup’s shoulder. “These caves we pass?”

Soup bowed his head and whispered, “The tombs of the Kings.”

Pengolod understood, instantly. The tombs were on the West side of the mountain road, facing Aman. Each one had a carved archway. The first one must have been the tomb of Elros, and its entry-way was heaped with fresh flowers, laid down by the people as they passed. As the road turned upwards, other tombs were present, each one with a carved archway. Some had graven names and faces, but as each ruler had a cave, it was easy to link the refuge to the ruler.

As they went forwards up the trail, the tombs’ carvings increased in both size and ornateness. Apart from Elros, only two of the past Kings merited offerings from the people: the monarch Telperien, who had preceded Tar-Minastir, received fruit and blooms from those who remembered her reign, and, curiously, Aldarion. The entry to his tomb was heaped with scrolls or graven stones, and twigs of green oiolairë. Pengolod picked up one of the stones; a common man’s name had been scratched upon it. He set it down, and moved along.

The marchers in their thousands were all silent, and all in white. White hoods were drawn up over reddening faces, and children and graybeards were helped along. Yet at the steepest part, the marchers put on a burst of eager speed, and their silence thrummed with a sense of imminent pleasure. Pengolod understood when they reached the plateau where the people gathered.

*

When they reached the top, a gentle wind struck instantly, cool and refreshing, drawn down from some higher air. Fresh grass brushed around their knees, and each blade, if stepped on, quietly righted itself, so that the multitude stood amidst a sea of living green.

Seeing some people looking at the sky, Pengolod turned his face upwards. There, circling surely too far for the mortals to see, were three eagles. Above them, he would have vowed that, though it was day, the dome of the heavens was deeper in its blue than it had been at the mountain’s foot. The plain purity of the space, wind and grass, stone and sky, was only fitting. For standing in the hallow of the Meneltarma, the sacred came in with each clean breath and thrummed in the turf beneath their feet.

Pengolod was struck to the heart. He had only felt such hallows, echoes of what Arda might be had it not been marred by evil, once or twice in Middle-Earth. But they had never been hallows of his people. The Elves really had transgressed against the Valar, he thought, and really were earthly, if they had no places as divine as this.

*

The plateau of the hallow was nearly full with its silent multitude. Pengolod’s host had drawn him and Soup to the western edge. They had waited there some time when the silent multitude parted for the King.

Pengolod was touched yet again by unexpected awe. Of all that mortal multitude, Tar-Minastir alone bore ornaments to the hallow, a gem-topped scepter in one hand, a sword in a ruel-bone sheath by his side, and a green branch that bore fringed red blossom, oiolairë in bloom.

He was leaner than Ciryatan in his white robes; in his youth, Minastir must indeed have been like to the Eldar. His strong face was indeed clean-shaven. Age had just begun to touch him. His dark hair, bound by a fillet of silver and a white gem, blew about his face, but his grey eyes stayed remote in their exaltation. He had the face of a man carrying a great and somber joy within him, anticipating this hour of communion with the One.

The crowd swayed in obeisance like the grasses as the King went by, progressing to the western brink of the plateau. Soup went to his knees, and stayed there; by a tug at his sleeve, Pengolod realized that he should do the same. The multitude were all kneeling by the time the King came to his place. Then he, the vessel for their prayers, began to speak.

*

The King’s words were simple, and half of them were lost in the endless wind. Tar-Minastir addressed Eru by many names; Illúvatar, the One, the Creator, the Endless, the Song and the Light. He offered up his thanks for the One’s many gifts to humans, naming the gift of life in Arda itself, the presence of the guarding Valar, the continuing richness of the summer and the sea, and the gift of victory in their recent battles.

Tar-Minastir held up the flowering branch. Then he laid it down on an undistinguished grey stone, one of a few boulders tumbled about. As he did this, the three eagles swooped down from their height, circling above Tar-Minastir in view of even the weakest mortal eyes. Nobody said anything, or even gasped, but a pulse of joy at the divine sign coursed through them all. Following this, all of them prostrated their kneeling selves in the direction of the stone, guided by the King, who did so first. Pengolod mirrored the crowd. There was no shame in the sign of honor and surrender. He felt himself given fully over to the place and moment.

The King was also the first to right himself. Now lifting the scepter, he addressed the throng. His words were simple. “We live in the Land of Gift, and all that comes to us here are the gifts of the One and the Many, Illúvatar and the Valar. Be blessed. Go forth, and be merry and fruitful. Peace has come again.” With this, he lowered the scepter, and began to move through the crowd once more. Once he passed, the folk began to stand. None of them left their places until he had begun the descent from the plateau.

*

Pengolod watched the crowd. Some looked happily dazed; a few were weeping, and others were thoughtful. Many folk went to where Tar-Minastir had been standing and looked westward for a few moments before leaving. Pengolod, curious as ever, joined the patient throng waiting to see what might be seen. Soup stayed by his side. Though the ritual was over, he was, Pengolod sensed, still eager; by the law of the hallow, he could not speak to explain what everyone was looking at. When they reached the edge, Soup pointed out to indicate where to look. 

Pengolod’s eyes raked all that was before them. He saw the central plains of Númenor. Like the Meneltarma as a mountain, the isle of Númenor was smaller than everyone spoke of it, the land below them largely in tillage and grazing, with vales here and there of clearly bounded woods. No wonder its mariners were restless. Beyond were the tree-fringed shores, and, past two great spurs of land embracing a bay, the great sweep of the sea. On the horizon, Pengolod saw at first a white glimmer. He fixed his eyes on it and saw there another land, beyond the great gulf of water, the shores of Avallonë.

Avallonë the fair, Tol Eressëa, Elven-home. One of the eagles swooped down, cutting his line of sight like a curved saber, before soaring to its two mates again. Joined in flight, the trio chevroned towards Avallonë. Pengolod felt the reproach in their unerring path westward; that he, too, should journey without tarrying to what was his. The sight clenched him with the Elves’ Sea-longing, even as the idea of departing the hallow wrenched him.

He knew now how forsaken the Elves had been all their time in Middle-Earth. Was there this sacredness there, where Elves might know it, or was it never for his folk to feel? Grief and fear touched him as the light turned gilded about them.

*

Pengolod felt a gentle pull on his sleeve turn into a hard tug. Turning to look at Soup, he realized that he had yet again sunk into one of those elvish reveries that seemed peculiarly long to mortals. He must ask later how long Soup had needed to pull at his sleeve. The sun was lowering, and only a few folk remained on the mountaintop. Two of them were their host and one of the King’s messengers, hovering in assumption that he had accepted Minastir’s invitation.

With all this, it still took a hard internal pull for Pengolod to make himself depart that place of doubled exaltation. He looked back. One other person stayed by the viewpoint, sitting cross-legged, smiling and serene. He looked back and nodded as Pengolod left, then closed his eyes to rest before taking the long path down. Even when, looking back, Pengolod could no longer see Avallonë on the horizon, he glimpsed his fellow pilgrim’s silver halo of hair, catching the lowering sun.

(...)

Once on the path, it went downwards swiftly, and they passed the mouths of the tomb-caves once more. Pengolod looked into the open mouth of one. There was only darkness within. The entire mountain was a riddle, he thought, and when you understood it, you were ready for the mountain’s heart.

Númenoreans knew well when they were ready, he recalled. They lay down to die of their own will, embracing their mortal fates. Pengolod, like all Elves, was convinced that they were going on to know in full what he had tasted, briefly, today.

Pengolod stopped rigid. Thinking of this, he remembered the man at the top, who had sat and smiled and stayed…Gripped by a chill of intuition, he turned around and looked up the path.

He was rewarded, after a fashion. Some people carrying a white stretcher were the last ones to come down, looking calm and a bit sad. The figure on the stretcher had a white cloak over its face. The carriers did not have smooth elvish steps. They rattled the stretcher, and the cloak fell away. It was indeed the man who had stayed on the mountain, serene still after his chosen death.

*

From Magweth Pengolodh: The Question of Pengolod by Tyellas 

http://www.ansereg.com/mpqp4.html

**

I regard this as a first rate piece of writing; furthermore, this passage was very important in the process of my becoming a Christian - so it has a special place in my heart.

*

The creativity of dreaming

*

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/dreams-are-grown-from-memories.html

*

What was the social dynamic of The Inklings?

*

Letter from C.S Lewis to Dom Bede Griffiths of Dec 21 1940

[Charles] Williams, [Hugo] Dyson of Reading, and my brother (Anglicans), and Tolkien and my doctor, Havard (your [Roman Catholic] church) are the 'Inklings'...

*

If we take this as the core Inklings grouping, it an be observed that there are three writers who would read out their work (Jack Lewis, Tolkien and Williams); and three (mostly) non-writers, who were listeners and commenters (Warnie Lewis, Dyson and Havard).

(In fact, Warnie Lewis later became a published author - and began writing his French histories in the second half of the Inklings period, from 1942.)

*

The non-writing listeners and commenters were probably important: a key to the success of the group.

I have (briefly, I didn't like them) been in a couple of writers groups in my early adulthood - and the problem was that everybody wanted to read their work and nobody really wanted to listen - didn't much enjoy listening. One effect of this was that comments from unwilling, unappreciative listeners were not much use to the writers.

*

Warnie and Havard were good listeners, and so was Jack - it being a much remarked-upon trait of his that he liked being read-to. Dyson did not like the Lord of the Rings, but I surmise he must have liked listening to most of the other things being read-out, or else someone so easily bored (as it seems) would not have commuted from Reading University nor continued attending when he got a fellowship in Oxford.

I suspect that the writers greatly prized the opportunity to read to the non-writers, and to hear their responses, as being a more representative audience than other writers; perhaps especially Warnie fulfilled that role of a 'plain reader' for Tolkien and Lewis, being a straightforward and typically military chap, who was nonetheless highly intelligent and well read.

*

The social dynamic was that the pattern of the evening was set by the writers and readers, but the success of that conversation which sustained the group was dependent on the response of the listeners, each of whom brought something distinctive to the ensuing discussions.

*

Is this CS Lewis's most famous sputter-and-point 'misogyny' passage?

*

What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instinct: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid.

*

In context, this comes from the section of Mere Christianity which is about the sin of Pride:

Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with £10,000 a year anxious to get £20,000 a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. £10,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride—the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power. For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys: there is nothing makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers. What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instinct: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid. It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again. Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on. If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy.

*

In the first place, in context we can see that this is in the middle of a list of examples of pride - following an example of pride in a man (somebody like a Boss or a General) and followed by an example of pride in a political leader (such as Hitler?) or nation (such as Germany?).

So, Lewis is not going out of his way to, errr, insult women - just providing a female-related example of the sin of pride, to go with the male example/s.

*

In the second place, why is this statement supposed to be evidence of misogyny?

Is the statement false?

Does anyone suppose that 'pretty girls' of this sort don't actually exist, and don't indeed 'spread misery' - and that this misery-spreading activity is 'quite often' not about sex; but instead about the desire for attention, adoration, money and privileges... about power?

If anyone supposes such women do not exist, or are so rare as to be statistically ignorable, or are typically motivated by powerful sexual appetites rather than 'pride and power'; well, I can only say that such people must either be blind to the workings of human society, or else have led exceptionally sheltered lives - or be dishonest.


* 

Review of Alister McGrath's biography: CS Lewis: a Life

*

Rating: Five stars from a possible Five.

I slightly dragged my feet in reading Alister McGrath's new biography of C.S Lewis (but only by a month!) because I have a suspicion of 'late' biographies from large commercial publishing houses (as tending towards unsympathetic, formulaic muck-raking) and also because I supposed that since McGrath is a famous and busy theologian, he would be unlikely to put enough time into the job.

I am pleased to report I was wrong on both counts; and that this is an extremely enjoyable and worthwhile biography of CS Lewis - to put alongside the Lancelyn Green/ Hooper pioneer, and the definitive George Sayer volume - and ideally to be read after these two.

The biography, indeed, reads as if it was specifically designed to be read after Sayer; since McGrath's biography is complemetary: providing many new details and amplifications in just those areas where Sayer says least - and relatively cutting back in coverage of those areas where Sayer says most.

Aside from a mild but recurrent dash of chronological snobbery resulting from McGrath's centre-Right social liberalism (such that he sometimes simply assumes without argument that Lewis was wrong on those points where he clashes with modern shibboleths in relation to sex, politics, education, scholarship etc.), I have nothing negative to say about this book!

It was gripping, insightful, informative and thoroughly worthwhile.

*

Was Charles Williams the grey eminence behind the Inklings - an hypothesis sketched

*

I think it is possible to construct a scenario by which Charles Williams is seen as the moving force behind the Inklings.

I am not at all sure whether this is true - but it is perhaps possible, and there is some evidence in its support.

*

If it is agreed that 1936 was the key year in which Lewis and Tolkien became serious and ambitious about their writings, and began to work together on some kind of 'project' (to reconnect modern man with mythology)

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/lord-of-rings-mostly-equals-hobbit-plus.html


then it is possible that this increase in seriousness and ambition was triggered by Williams' novel The Place of the Lion

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/tolkien-and-lewiss-annus-divertium-of.html

*

Indeed, another route for Williams influence may have existed via Fr Gervase Matthew - who met Charles Williams in London in early 1936 (according to AM Hadfield's biography of 1959), and may by this time have been attending Thursday evening Inklings meetings - as he certainly did later - although precise chronological evidence seems to be lacking.

*

Having, as I think likely, provided a crucial stimulus to Lewis and Tolkien's writing by the example of Place of the Lion - Williams then reinforced this during the wartime period of late 1939 to early 1945 (when CW died) as a lynch-pin of the Inklings meetings - and also meeting with Lewis and Tolkien as a trio and individually.

What must be remembered is that, although Williams was socially of lower status than Lewis and Tolkien; he was older, and as an author was of much greater status and experience and volume of production; also, both professionally and by personal friendship, Williams was a part of the mainstream prestigious Metropolitan literary world of England.

*

Add to this Williams' extraordinary charisma and fascination, and it seems probable that (as implied by Diana Pavlac Glyer, in The company they kept) Williams was the dominant figure in those Inklings meeting he attended; not in terms of organizing and controlling the meetings and dictating the subject matter of the conversation (that was surely Jack Lewis), but as the person who was most deferred-to, whose words carried greatest authority.

*

The fact that Lewis and Tolkien were preparing a Festschrift for Williams, even before he died, seems evidence of this kind of role. Inklings activities in the period after Williams death were at least partly focused on preparing this posthumous volume of Essays presented to Charles Williams.

After 1945, when the young scholar and author John Wain attended Inklings meetings, he said (in the memoir Sprightly Running) that the group had been permanently wounded by the death of Williams - which is indirect evidence for Williams' key role.

*

Although the Thursday evening Inklings meetings continued another four years (until late 1949) this period was marked by a larger and more variable number of personnel at the meetings, and what seems a less close and intense atmosphere than the war years when the inklings was built around the solid core of the Lewis brothers, Tolkien and Havard - with Williams perhaps providing a crucial binding and inspiring focus.

*

As I said, I am not sure about this. Certainly, (according to comments in his letters, and the understanding of those who knew him from London) the Inklings seems to have been less important to Williams than it was to Lewis and Tolkien - which could be interpreted as evidence against him having any kind of 'leadership' role.

But on the other hand, Williams need not have been consciously adopting any leadership role, nor need he have subscribed to the Lewis-Tolkien 'project', in order for him to have been a kind of father figure and originator of the Inklings most serious and ambitious aspect.

*

Two ways of being a Tolkien fanatic: pre- and post-Christian

*

Presumably there are numerous other ways - but I underwent a transition between the way in which I was a Tolkien fan in my youth and pre-Christian adulthood, and what came afterwards - what is now.

The transition was gradual, over several years; and indeed fairly closely related to becoming a Christian - especially to reading and writing about the story The debate of Finrod and Andreth (‘Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth’) - or the writing which I have dubbed "The marring of men": 

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

*

In my youth, Tolkien's world provided an alternative reality. It was a reality, of some kind, and it was something into which I projected myself.

Of course, at the same time as volitionally-projecting I was also passively absorbed-into this world.

The world of Tolkien in fact provided a thread running through my life - which was realler than most of my life - at least in memory and retrospect.

*

This gave rise to the question of the status of this reality of Tolkien's world.

On the one hand the reality was not objective, not factual, because the world was imagined; on the other hand the world was solidly-subjective (therefore not just a matter of wishful thinking) and it seemed an error simply to reject the factual objectivity.

More needed to be said than that it was all imagination and fantasy.

But I could not see quite how to say it, short of considering the whole of human experience to be a matter of imagination (which brought other problems: not least relativism and solipsism - then nihilism).

Somehow - to be true to experience - Tolkien's fantasy world had to be real despite being imagined.

*

When I became a Christian (the processes being gradual rather than instant), all this remained; but the nature of the reality of Tolkien's world was different - because my understanding of the nature of imagination changed.

I began to regard imagination of the kind displayed by Tolkien (that is, subcreation) to have properties akin to the divine revelation  of prophets. So, the Lord of the Rings was in fact true and real because it was divinely inspired: its truths were revelations.

Naturally, this does not make sense if the truths are seen as detachable facts (e.g. as providing information on the history of elves, hobbits, orcs etc.).

*

So, the situation seems to be that Tolkien's world is in fact true, but not factually true: the truth is not in the facts, which are explicitly imagined but in something else behind the facts, linking the facts, or the form of the imagined world.

I cannot explain - even to myself, leave aside explain to other people - how this works; but I do know that it does work.

Reality - and I mean real-reality, objective - is communicated from God, via Tolkien, by means of imagination and fantasy; therefore, this world is not a delusion, nor wishful thinking, nor an assertion of subjectivity, not (ultimately) invented but instead something given; this is solid: something to build life on.

* 

  

Three possible but not-existing Inklings collections I would love

*

1. A complete edition of the diaries of Warren Hamilton ('Warnie') Lewis - or if not complete then a selection at least treble the length of the current (absolutely wonderful, but far too brief) Brothers and Friends - edited by CS Kilby and ML Mead (1982).

2. A book named something like 'Walking tours of CS Lewis' - derived from his diaries and letters and lavishly illustrated with photographs and maps. 

3. A single volume, separate cover edition of The Notion Club Papers by JRR Tolkien.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/my-hopes-for-notion-club-papers.html

*

Tolkien and the new moon, rising - a surprising recurrent error

I tend to think of Tolkien as someone who was knowledgeable about the natural world, and the kind of person who (like myself) makes a point of looking at the moon when possible and following its phases. 

Certainly, it is known that the Lord of the Rings was interrupted for a prolonged spell in 1944-6 (when the Notion Club Papers were drafted) because of difficulty synchronizing the phases of the moon between different parts of the narrative. In fact he never quite managed to solve this problem - but it is a rather obscure matter, and doesn't mean much.

Yet Tolkien made the elementary mistake of recurrently describing his protagonists observing the New Moon Rising at night - when in fact the New Moon rises only during the day - after dawn, following the rising sun - indeed when it is newest the moon is invisible due to being lost in the light from the nearby sun.

(The time to see the New Moon is just after sunset, in the evening - when the New Moon is setting, not rising.)


Three examples:

The first comes from The Hobbit where Bard shoots Smaug the Dragon at the rising of the moon when the moon rose above the eastern shore and silvered [Smaug's] great wings... the waxing moon rose higher and higher.


Then we see something similar in the drafts of The Lord of the Rings published in the History of Middle Earth as The Return of the Shadow when Christopher Tolkien notes:

My father no doubt made this change on account of what he said about the Moon; for there was a waxing moon as the hobbits approached Weathertop, and it was 'nearly half-full' on the night of the attack: the attack was on 5 October...and there could not be a full or nearly full Moon on 24 September, the night passed with the Elves in the Woody End... On that night it must have been almost New Moon. … But it is an odd and uncharacteristic aberration that my father envisaged a New Moon rising late at night in the East.

Nonetheless, this mistake persisted into the published Lord of the Rings - so I conclude that the mistake was not uncharacteristic; but happened because JRR Tolkien believed that the moon could rise at night, after the sun had set; even when the moon was new or 'young' as he describes the rising moon after sunset at Weathertop in the published LotR. 

There is a further example when, in the house of Tom Bombadil, Frodo dreams about Gandalf, imprisoned on the tower of Orthanc:

In the dead night, Frodo lay in a dream without light. Then he saw the young moon rising; under its thin light there loomed before him a black wall of rock, pierced by a dark arch like a great gate.

That new moon rising, yet again! But why?

Perhaps it is related to the very origins of Tolkien's Legendarium, when he envisaged (as many people vaguely do) that the sun was created to illuminate the day, and the moon to illuminate the night - albeit going through phases or waxing and waning; so that there is always a light in the sky. 

From The Book of Lost Tales Volume 1 - Chapter: The Tale of the Sun and Moon:

...for twelve hours shall the Sunship sail the heavens and leave Valinor, and for twelve shall Silpion's pale bark [i.e. the moon] mount the skies, and there shall be rest for tired eyes and weary hearts.

It is strange, but perhaps not surprising, that such a belief (sun by day, moon by night) is so common given the contrary evidence avaiable to all - and that the crescent moon is mostly a daylight object if visible at all against the bright sky... 

But there, perhaps, is the answer. The moon is only noticed by most people when it is near the full, and such a moon is mostly a night sky object - so perhaps they assume (when they bother to think about it) that the moon is only visible at night, rising at dusk and setting at dawn...

Was Tolkien envious? - a bleg

*

I keep coming across people ascribing envy to Tolkien, as if it were a sin to which he were particularly prone.

Especially people say Tolkien felt envy of C.S Lewis (e.g. Lewis's fluency as a writer, or his fame, or his friendship with Charles Williams) - but I cannot myself recall a single instance of Tolkien expressing envy about anything; and particularly not about his friend Jack Lewis. The emotion seems alien to him.

But please correct me if I am wrong - does anybody know of any instance in which Tolkien really was envious?

*

A plausible non-explanation for why Tolkien and Lewis's friendship cooled...

*

It is plausible that the cooling of the once-close friendship between Tolkien and Lewis, while real, may have been over-played and over-explained. 

After all, how many male friendships last longer than Tolkien and Lewis's? (Leaving aside those which begin in childhood and youth.)

Male friendship is usually based in an alliance, a collaboration, working on something together.

Hence men friends tend to grow apart when circumstances change and the no longer have a shared project.

Quite likely The Lord of the Rings was that shared project which held Lewis and Tolkien together - and the end of writing LotR simply reduced the strength of the main factor holding them close - rather than there being some other factor which drove them apart.

Perhaps their friendship weakened (it never disappeared) mostly due to the loss of a powerfully-attracting magnetic field (i.e. LotR) rather than the addition of a repellant force/s (such as Charles Williams, Narnia books or Joy Davidman). 

* 

H/T - This interpretation arose from an e-mail exchange with Dr Christopher Mitchell of Wheaton College, Illinois.

A random thought about NCPs

*

There is, as it stands - as it comes to us, a gratuitous quality to the Notion Club Papers. Where is it coming from? Where is it going? It hasn't found its place. Yet it isn't a story. It is about things - almost like an essay.

*

Tolkien travelling on a dream-meteor

This remarkable and strange passage from The Notion Club Papers is an instance where I infer that Tolkien is being - in essence - autobiographical.

Of course I cannot be sure, but Note 32 indicates one of several instances in the NCPs in which a very strange dream reported by Ramer is confirmed as autobiographical by Christopher Tolkien - and it seems reasonable to suppose there are others which Christopher either did not reference or which were not known to him (see references at the end).

For me, the extreme strangeness of these dreams (given that several are confirmed) is evidence towards their autobiographical nature - given the context of how and why the Notion Club Papers was written, and the intended audience of Inklings.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/a-companion-to-jrr-tolkiens-notion-club.html


**


'But all the time, of course, I wanted to get off the Earth. That's how I got the notion of studying a meteorite, instead of mooning about with houses, ruins, trees, boulders, and all sorts of other things.

'There is a very large meteorite in a park, Gunthorpe Park in Matfield, where I lived as a boy, after we came back from abroad; even then it had a strange fascination for me. I wondered if it could have come from Malacandra. I took to hobnobbing with it again, in the vacs.

'Indeed, I made myself ridiculous and an object of suspicion. I wanted to visit the stone alone at night - to lessen the distractions; but I was not allowed to: closing hours were closing hours. So I gave that up. It seemed to be quite without results.'

'So the poor old stone was left all alone?' said Lowdham.

'Yes,' said Ramer. 'It was. It is a very long way indeed from home, and it is very lonely. That is, there is a great loneliness in it, for a perceiver to perceive.

'And I got a very heavy dose of it. In fact I can't bear to look at such things now. For I found, about the end of the long vac. two years ago, after my final visit, that there had been results. It had evidently taken some time to digest them, and even partially translate them. But that is how I first got away, out beyond the sphere of the Moon, and very much further.'

'Travelling on a dream-meteor!' said Frankley. 'Hm! So that's your method, is it?'

'No,' said Ramer. 'Not if you mean how I got the news of Emberu that I put into my tale. But I did work back into the meteorite's history, I think; though that sort of vehicle does not readily give any place or time references that can be related to our waking point.

'I did get, all the rest of that term, and I still do get occasionally, some very odd dreams or sleep-experiences: painful often, and alarming. 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.(Note 34)

'And Speed too. Heavens! waking up from that one was like hitting a wall, though only a wall of light and air in my bedroom, at a hundred miles a second - or rather, like knowing about it.

'And Fire! I can't describe that. Elemental Fire: fire that is, and does not consume, but is a mode or condition of physical being. But I caught sight of blazing fire, too: some real pictures. One, I think, must have been a glimpse of the meteorite hitting our air. A mountain corroded into a boulder in a few seconds of agonizing flame.

'But above, or between, or perhaps through all the rest, I knew endlessness. That's perhaps emotional and inaccurate. I mean Length with a capital L, applied to Time; unendurable length to mortal flesh. In that kind of dream you can know about the feeling of aeons of constricted waiting.

'Being part of the foundations of a continent, and upholding immeasurable tons of rock for countless ages, waiting for an explosion or a world-shattering shock, is quite a common situation in parts of this universe. In many regions there is little or no "free will" as we conceive it. Also, though they are large and terrific, events may be relatively simple in plan, so that catastrophes (as we might call them), sudden changes as the end of long repeated series of small motions, are "inevitable": the present holds the future more completely. A perceiving but passive mind could see a collapse coming from an immense distance of time.

'I found it all very disturbing. Not what I wanted, or at least not what I had hoped for. I saw, anyway, that it would take far too much of a mortal human life to get so accustomed to this kind of vehicle that one could use it properly, or selectively, at will. I gave it up.

'No doubt, when any degree of control was achieved, my mind would no longer have been limited to that particular vehicle or chunk of matter. The waking mind is not confined to the memories, heredity, or senses, of its own normal vehicle, its body: it can use that as a platform to survey the surroundings from. 

'So, probably, it could, if it ever mastered another vehicle: it could survey, in some fashion, other things where the meteorite (say) came from, or things it had passed in its historical journey. But that second transference of observation would certainly be much more difficult than the first, and much more uncertain and inefficient.

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Note 34 (by Christopher Tolkien): My father once described to me his dream of 'pure Weight', but I do not remember when that was: probably before this time.

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See also 

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/ramer-as-tolkien-1_19.html

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/another-ramer-tolkien-parallel.html

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What is communicating in dreams? Self, divine, demonic?

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It is striking how pervasive is the idea of dreams as a potential source of enlightenment, of information, and especially of divine revelations.

This is found among 'shamans' in animistic religions; and other mystics in many religions. And also within the Bible, for example in the New Testament, Joseph (earthly father of Jesus) was one whose dreams repeatedly brought divine revelations:

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Matthew

1: 20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

2: 13-14 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt:

19-20 But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life.

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It seems that altered states of consciousness are conducive to divine revelations - but why would this be?

And are these revelations most likely to benign, divine and true; or may dream revelations also be the be evil, demonic and false?

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My current understanding is that most dreams, most of the time, for most people have no deep meaning - nor are they divine in origin.

What seems to happen during dreaming sleep is that the mind is cut-off from the environment - the senses are, more or less, ignored - and the  material generated during sleep - parts of which may be remembered as dreams - comes from our memory.

In sum - during dreaming sleep the content of consciousness comes from inside (memories) rather than outside (senses).

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But, most cultures, and most Christians in particular, would acknowledge that the material of dreams could, in principle, also come from divine, from spiritual sources.

And I think there is a kind-of-consensus that spiritual influences in dreams are mostly benign, divine and true; and that it is exceptional, unusual and extreme for spiritual influences during sleep to be evil, demonic and false.  

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This seems to have been the view held by JRR Tolkien, as expressed in the mouth of his alter ego Ramer in the The Notion Club Papers
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/evil-minds-attacking-during-sleep.html:

'Aren't some of the [dream] 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...

'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...

'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.'

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The implication seems to be that 'secular dreams' are to do with the self, its experiences and memories; but in some people in some situations there may be revelatory dreams of divine origin.

While a revelation may be misinterpreted, perhaps only people of exceptional and deliberate depravity would be expected to experience revelatory dreams from malicious sources (demonic, evil-intending); and such people would usually bring the evil into the dream from their re-experienced memories.

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But why during sleep? Why should divine communications not happen more when people are awake and alert?

The answer is, I think, merely that sleep is the time when our mind is most closed off from its environment, this where other sources of 'noise' are at a minimum.

Spiritual communications are therefore clearer and stand-out better against the background in altered states of consciousness such as sleep - and relevant and significant divine revelation is usually remembered even during during sleep, despite that normal dream contents may rapidly be forgotten.

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Words versus pictures - Tolkien versus Lewis

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JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis were both dreamers, who used dream material in their stories - but the way in which they did this was very different, just as the atmosphere and feel of their books is very different.

Tolkien was a philologist through-and-through, whose writings came from his reflections on words and their history and derivations (see TA Shippey, The Road to Middle Earth).

In other words, Tolkien's stories were generated by the narratives of the words and the relationship between words in different languages - his stories often originated in inferences about how a word came to means what it did in a particular time and place.

Some of these words and languages apparently came to Tolkien during sleep- at least, if we believe that the experiences of Tolkien's alter-egos Ramer and Lowdham of The Notion Club Papers were based on Tolkien's own personal experiences.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/native-language.html 

That is to say, Tolkien's writing was an elaboration of mini-narratives - and the basic unit of his stories was, if not words and their history, little sequences of events

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/creative-method-fo-jrr-tolkien.html

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By contrast, Lewis seems to have worked from single, snapshot-like pictures, which he often saw in nightmares and dreams, and remembered (even though he often wished he did not have to remember them)

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/cs-lewis-as-dreamer.html

Other examples I recall having been attributed to Lewis's dreams are the Faun and lamp post in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Floating Islands in Perelandra and (I think) the 'stinging man' in the unfinished Dark Tower.

Lewis then consciously 'manufactured' stories to link between the pictures.

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I think his may explain why Tolkien was the better and purer storyteller of the two.

Tolkien's stories were dynamic narratives in their essence and origin, while the story element of Lewis serves to link the primary entities which were either static pictures, or else arguments and philosophical ideas.

So, Lewis's novels tend to break up into collages of set pieces and mini-essays (particularly apparent in That Hideous Strength)

...while Tolkien's are true and multi-stranded narratives - as would be expected frm a philologist.

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