The Notion Club Papers (NCPs) is an unfinished (posthumous) novel by JRR Tolkien. The Notion Club was a fantasy version of The Inklings. My overview of NCPs is at: http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-companion-to-jrr-tolkiens-notion-club.html. I was winner of the Owen Barfield Award for Excellence 2018.
Thursday, 10 December 2015
Tolkien's Tree - a collage
Made from pieces of bark retrieved from the remains of 'Tolkien's Tree' - his favourite Pinus nigra found in Oxford's Botanical Gardens,
and damaged in a storm of 2014, such that it had to be cut down.
And so I paid homage...
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Let me say (however belatedly), I am delighted you did! There's something lovely about the depiction being made out of parts of the object depicted! But what a sorrowful sight the poor tree in the process of being cut down is (however advisable in the circumstances). I can't remember if any of the photos depict him in Merton College garden, but it looked sadly changed, arboreally speaking, too, on my recent visit, after years away.
We lately had a love Christmas tree taken down which we had rejoiced to see living on in the garden - it had prospered at once too well and too irregularly, being finally taller than the house but with trunk curving like a palm, a scary prospect in high winds.
Or current one will, happily, take a while to get anything like that tall and dangerous, assuming it survives the end-of-season move outside.
Thank you for the film link! Wow! Scary to see those two branches go - whew! I have no idea if there were other options - for such a tall (and therewith heavy!) tree - but I feel sure that the agony (in its degree) of such necessities when they were necessary (or prudent, advisable, etc.) was something Tolkien felt strongly. The mutability of the long-lived and otherwise long-enduring is such a deep theme in Tolkien (as far as I can see). Delightful, again, in its way, to see the skillful, careful felling - the weight of trees can make this deadly dangerous work!
A fascinating feature of the time-travel aspect of The Notion Club Papers - is the necessarily 'past' yet somehow possibly - and licitly - accessible?
Fascinating as well to re-encounter Lewis 'interacting' with such things on my latest time through Out of the Silent Planet, recently. How would the inescapable loss of real beauty be experienced, even in an unfallen world? And how ought we to encounter it? I'm now re-enjoying his further 'interaction' with such matters in Perelandra. It's also a very Williams-y theme - strikingly in Cranmer, for instance, but also in his treatment of the Grail offering food-of-choice, etc.
My apologies for the dozy typos: "love">"live", "Or">"Our"!
3 comments:
Let me say (however belatedly), I am delighted you did! There's something lovely about the depiction being made out of parts of the object depicted! But what a sorrowful sight the poor tree in the process of being cut down is (however advisable in the circumstances). I can't remember if any of the photos depict him in Merton College garden, but it looked sadly changed, arboreally speaking, too, on my recent visit, after years away.
We lately had a love Christmas tree taken down which we had rejoiced to see living on in the garden - it had prospered at once too well and too irregularly, being finally taller than the house but with trunk curving like a palm, a scary prospect in high winds.
Or current one will, happily, take a while to get anything like that tall and dangerous, assuming it survives the end-of-season move outside.
Wishing you a joyful Christmastide meanwhile,
David Llewellyn Dodds
@David - Thanks. This video shows why the tree needed to be cut down - I suppose even Tolkien would have acknowledged the necessity?...
https://vimeo.com/108059963
Thank you for the film link! Wow! Scary to see those two branches go - whew! I have no idea if there were other options - for such a tall (and therewith heavy!) tree - but I feel sure that the agony (in its degree) of such necessities when they were necessary (or prudent, advisable, etc.) was something Tolkien felt strongly. The mutability of the long-lived and otherwise long-enduring is such a deep theme in Tolkien (as far as I can see). Delightful, again, in its way, to see the skillful, careful felling - the weight of trees can make this deadly dangerous work!
A fascinating feature of the time-travel aspect of The Notion Club Papers - is the necessarily 'past' yet somehow possibly - and licitly - accessible?
Fascinating as well to re-encounter Lewis 'interacting' with such things on my latest time through Out of the Silent Planet, recently. How would the inescapable loss of real beauty be experienced, even in an unfallen world? And how ought we to encounter it? I'm now re-enjoying his further 'interaction' with such matters in Perelandra. It's also a very Williams-y theme - strikingly in Cranmer, for instance, but also in his treatment of the Grail offering food-of-choice, etc.
My apologies for the dozy typos: "love">"live", "Or">"Our"!
David Llewellyn Dodds
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