The 'meaning of life' according to Tolkien

*

From Smith of Wootton Major - extended edition edited by Verlyn Flieger - Suggestions for the ending of the story page 81.

This is Tolkien reflecting on his draft of SoWM

I have edited this slightly for punctuation:

*

When the Smith comes home after surrendering the star, should any more be said about what became of him?


In [an] earlier draft it is said that he could go back to Fayery, for the mark of the star that had been on his brow was still visible to the folk of Fayery; but he could not go deep in, nor ever visit any new place or see any new thing that he had not already seen. 


(This has significance, of course; a time comes for writers and artists, when invention and 'vision' cease and they can only reflect on what they have seen and learned.) 


But that is not the whole point of the tale. Which includes sacrifice, and the handing on, with trust and without keeping a hand on things, of power and vision to the next generation. 


Also another point is that the visions of imagination are not enough; they are only pictures and imaginations. 


When wisdom comes, the mind - though enriched by imagination, having learned or seen distantly truths only perceptible in this way - must prepare to leave the world of Men and of Fayery.

***

Note: This passage brings-out the deep unity of Christian thought between C.S. Lewis and Tolkien -  the idea of the Good things of mortal life as being a matter of 'pictures and imaginations' that serve as distant and evanescent glimpses of eternal truths; which must be loved and learned-from yet renounced, let-go-of. The wise man must love the Good things of this world, yet consent voluntarily to leave this world; yet not from weariness or despair but in hope that the soul may attain utter fulfilment and satisfaction in the next. This hope comes from revelation, but is properly directed and strengthened by the pictures and imaginations of sub-creation.

*

What do hostile critics mean when they say Tolkien is morally simplistic?

*

The accusation that Lord of the Rings is morally simplistic - consisting of whiter-than-white goodies and blacker-than-black baddies - is extraordinarily common among those who dislike Tolkien considering that it is obviously, utterly, absurdly false.

But I think I now realise what they mean.

*

What they mean is not really what they say, that the characters are dichotomously distributed between Good and Evil...

What they mean is that LotR depicts the underlying Cosmic war of Good and Evil, the War of God and the angels and the free peoples; against Satan and the demons, their machines, slaves, servants and dupes.

The line between Good and Evil in LotR does not run between the characters (as the critics accuse) but within each character - no character is wholly either Good or Evil, but some mixture - however there is indeed a war afoot, and the sides are clear and distinct at a cosmic level, and each character chooses on which side they will try to fight.

*

And that is what the hostile critics recognise, and what they loathe - the traditional, and human universal conception of Unseen Warfare between good and evil:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/reality-of-unseen-warfare-excerpted.html

And their recognition and hatred of this depiction of life as fundamentally an Unseen Warfare is (often) precisely at the root of their visceral hostility to Tolkien - because the hostile critics implicitly recognise the reality of this war, but they have chosen not to fight on the side of Good.

***

Note: Something similar applies to many similar criticism of fantasy such as Lewis's Narnia and Rowling's Harry Potter. The best examples of the genre are morally complex at the individual level - but clear and simple at the cosmic level - and it is this real and objective metaphysical morality which modern critics loathe.

*

Torturing Gollum

*

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/05/torturing-gollum-implications.html

*

(Note: I thought this should probably be archived on the Tolkien blog, as well as the Miscellany.)

C.S Lewis on Substituted Love and Exchange in Charles Williams

*

From Arthurian Torso, 1948, condensed from pp 121-5.

Williams realises, as perhaps only great poets do, that poetry is after all only poetry. It is not a substitute for for philosophy or theology, much less for sanctification.

Not even Virgil can be saved by poetry... This poet from whose work so many Christians have drawn spiritual nourishment was not himself a Christian - did not himself know the full meaning of his own poetry... This is the exquisite cruelty: he made honey not for himself; he helped to save others, himself he could not save...

*

The problem of the virtuous pagan is for [Williams] a real one.

The fact that Virgil was a great poet does not in the least alter the fact that he cannot have had Christian faith, hope and charity; without which no man can be saved...

Virgil's death... Every possible grip has failed. The two things he loved, Rome and Augustus, have become, the one a nonentity, the other a swelling, gruesome, obscene, gargantuan shape... Virgil is overwhelmed in the mere flotsam and rubble of what had been his own poetic universe...

And that, as far as Nature goes, would have been the end of the story.

But the second part [of the poem] tells us that as Virgil was about to perish in the 'perpetual falling, perpetual burying', helpers rushed towards him, dived beneath him, caught him as he fell.

They had rushed from what was (to him) the far future, for this transaction is outside time.

All who have been or will be nurtured by Virgil's hexameters rushed back along the timeless corridors to save their 'master and friend', the 'holy poet', to place at his service the faith which they had and he lacked...

*

The present poems means what it says. I think the poet would have said in so many words, if asked, that any Christian Virgilian can this very night assist in the salvation of Virgil.

*

Arthurian Torso - CS Lewis on Charles Williams on Islam

*

From Arthurian Torso by Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis, 1948.

Lewis is here describing  C.W's Arthurian poem sequences on pages 124-5.

It is Lewis's most extended discussion of Islam (that I can recall, at any rate) and seems worth salvaging from obscurity for that reason.

*

Palomides the Saracen Knight, the unsuccessful lover of Iseult, comes out of Mohammedan Spain ‘through the green-pennon-skirted Pyrenees’ and the ‘cross-littered land of Gaul’ to Cornwall and the house of King Mark.

The anachronism whereby Islam is made contemporary with Arthur is deliberate: Islam was for Williams the symbol (as it is certainly the greatest historical expression) of something which is eternally the opposite of Sarras and Carbonek.

Islam denies the Incarnation. It will not allow that God has descended into flesh or that Manhood has been exalted into Deity...

*

It stands for all religions that are afraid of matter and afraid of mystery, for all misplaced reverences and misplaced purities that repudiate the body and shrink back from the glowing materialism of the Grail.

It stands for what Williams called ‘heavy morality’—the ethics of sheer duty and obedience as against the shy yet (in the long run) shameless acceptance of heaven’s courtesies flowing from the ‘homely and courteous lord’.

It is strong, noble, venerable; yet radically mistaken.

It had nibbled at Christianity almost form the beginning in the swarm of heresies which denied the full doctrine of Incarnation.

That is the point of the Prelude to The Region of the Summer Stars. St. Paul preached ‘the golden Ambiguity’—the irony beyond all ironies which the manger in the Bethlehem stable presents, the ‘physiological glory’. But the ‘ancient intellect’ shrank back from the new doctrine...

*

The prelude to Taliessin Through Logres is also concerned with this conflict between the ‘ambiguity’ of Incarnation and the heavy lucidity of mere Monotheism.

On the historical level it is a fact that ‘the Moslem stormed Byzantium’. On the spiritual level huge areas of the world fell back from the subtler and more ‘scandalous’ Faith—and fall back daily in the sub-Christian doctrines of Christ’s person which are dear to the modern world.

This is not the defeat of truth by simple error or of good by simple evil: it is the loss of living, paradoxical truths (for mere Monotheism blinds and stifles the mind like noonday sun in the Arabian deserts till we may well ‘call on the hills to hide us’).

It is the defeat of fine and tender and even frolic delicacies of goodness by iron legalism, the ‘fallacy of rational virtue’.

Islam is true so far as it affirms: we must rejoice that it conquered the old Dualism of Persia. But it affirms unity in such a way that ‘union is breached’; and then, however truly and with whatever grandeur the muezzin cried ‘Good is God’...

*

The mythic Oxford symbolism of Smith of Wootton Major

*

This seems apparent from the wonderful opening section:

There was a village once, not very long ago for those with long memories, nor very far away for those with long legs. Wootton Major it was called because it was larger than Wootton Minor, a few miles away deep in the trees; but it was not very large, though it was at that time prosperous, and a fair number of folk lived in it, good, bad, and mixed, as is usual.

It was a remarkable village in its way, being well known in the country round about for the skill of its workers in various crafts, but most of all for its cooking. It had a large Kitchen which belonged to the Village Council, and the Master Cook was an important person.

The Cook's House and the Kitchen adjoined the Great Hall, the largest and oldest building in the place and the most beautiful. It was built of good stone and good oak and was well tended, though it was no longer painted or gilded as it had been once upon a time.

In the Hall the villagers held their meetings and debates, and their public feasts, and their family gatherings. So the Cook was kept busy, since for all these occasions he had to provide suitable fare. For the festivals, of which there were many in the course of a year, the fare that was thought suitable was plentiful and rich.

There was one festival to which all looked for-ward, for it was the only one held in winter. It went on for a week, and on its last day at sundown there was a merrymaking called The Feast of Good Children, to which not many were invited.

No doubt some who deserved to be asked were overlooked, and some who did not were invited by mistake; for that is the way of things, however careful those who arrange such matters may try to be. In any case it was largely by chance of birthday that any child came in for the Twenty-four Feast, since that was only held once in twenty-four years, and only twenty-four children were invited. For that occasion the Master Cook was expected to do his best, and in addition to many other good things it was the custom for him to make the Great Cake.

By the excellence (or otherwise) of this his name was chiefly remembered, for a Master Cook seldom if ever lasted long enough in office to make a second Great Cake.

JRR Tolkien. Smith of Wootton Major. 1967

*

I shall comment on this section by section, unpacking what seems to me to be implied:

It was a remarkable village in its way, being well known in the country round about for the skill of its workers in various crafts, but most of all for its cooking.

Crafts imply the various branches of scholarship; cooking is, of course - as certainly intended, Christianity. And Wootton Major is clearly a mythic city not merely a village, since it has many specialist craftsmen and is a religious centre. Tolkien's mythic city was Oxford.

It had a large Kitchen which belonged to the Village Council, and the Master Cook was an important person.

Large kitchen implies a Cathedral (i.e. a large church) - the Master Cook is therefore a Bishop.

In the Hall the villagers held their meetings and debates, and their public feasts, and their family gatherings. So the Cook was kept busy, since for all these occasions he had to provide suitable fare. For the festivals, of which there were many in the course of a year, the fare that was thought suitable was plentiful and rich.

In this mythic Oxford, the Cathedral is the centre of human life - and all significant human affairs are conducted in a Christian context and location.

The Cook providing suitable fare indicates the Bishop's spiritual rule over (and likely presence at) all these meetings, debates, feasts, gatherings.

There was one festival to which all looked for-ward, for it was the only one held in winter. It went on for a week, and on its last day at sundown there was a merrymaking called The Feast of Good Children, to which not many were invited... it was largely by chance of birthday that any child came in for the Twenty-four Feast, since that was only held once in twenty-four years, and only twenty-four children were invited.

Every twenty four years means every generation - the feast of Good Children seems like the occasion at which the Bishop's successor is chosen - chosen from among who is good (so far as this can be judged), and chosen on the basis of divine Grace (by who has the star bestowed upon them) and chosen by how they respond to the Great Cake...

For that occasion the Master Cook was expected to do his best, and in addition to many other good things it was the custom for him to make the Great Cake. By the excellence (or otherwise) of this his name was chiefly remembered, for a Master Cook seldom if ever lasted long enough in office to make a second Great Cake.

So what is the Great Cake? Presumably a distillation of the Bishop's wisdom, something like a sermon or homily - what is to be determined is firstly how good the sermon, secondly which child receives the sermon as it should be received- upon that child the faery star (ennobling gift of supernatural Grace) is bestowed.
 
So, Wootton Major hints at an ideal, mythic city of an Oxford type - as Oxford should be: a primarily Christian centre, ruled by a Bishop, and under whose rule the scholarly Arts might flourish - and a place touched with and ennobled by the mystery of faery.
 
*