Literary Giants Literary Catholics (35 page)

Perhaps we should clarify exactly what Tolkien meant by his not being a “democrat”. He is voicing his contempt for the macrodemocracies of modern secular states with their tendency to centralize power in huge “democratically elected” political mechanisms that are increasingly distant from, and deaf to, the needs and aspirations of ordinary people. It is clear, however, that Tolkien’s insistence on the “spiritual principles” of humility and equality illustrates his placing of the integrity of the individual and the family at the very heart and center of political life. It is clear, in fact, that his views are convergent with the distributism of the Chesterbelloc and with the creed of “small is beautiful” expounded by Schumacher, both of which are merely popular applications of the Church’s teaching on subsidiarity.

Tolkien’s insistence on the “spiritual principles” at the heart of all reality, including the sociopolitical and sociocultural, found expression in the way that he viewed Creation and creativity. His reasoning was as follows: since man is made in the image of God, and since we know that God is the Creator, man’s own creativity must be a gift of God reflecting His “imageness” in us. Since, however, only God can create in the true or absolute sense by making something from nothing, our creativity is only subcreation in the sense that we make things from other things that already exist. Thus the potter molds his earthenware from clay; the artist paints his picture using oils or watercolors to bring to physical fruition his imaginative perception of a landscape or a human face or a still life; the storyteller or mythmaker uses words or possibly music as the means to bring to physical fruition his imaginative perception of the things, or images, about which he writes, recites, sings or plays. In each case our creativity employs real things, Creation, to subcreate something original yet subsistent upon the Creation itself. Thus, in Tolkien’s view, there is a hierarchy of Creation. At the top is God, as Creator; then comes Creation, which is the direct fruit of God’s primal creativity; finally, there is subcreation, whereby man partakes of the image of the Creator through the gift of creativity.

The sociopolitical and sociocultural impact of such a belief in the hierarchy of Creation can be seen from Tolkien’s discussion of true and false perceptions of life in his essay “On Fairy Stories”:

Not long ago—incredible though it may seem—I heard a clerk of Oxenford declare that he “welcomed” the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive mechanical traffic, because it brought his university into “contact with real life”. He may have meant that the way men were living and working in the twentieth century was increasing in barbarity at an alarming rate, and that the loud demonstration of this in the streets of Oxford might serve as a warning that it is not possible to preserve for long an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason by mere fences, without actual offensive action (practical and intellectual). I fear he did not. In any case the expression of “real life” in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more “alive” than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more “real” than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!

Tolkien is saying, of course, that a horse, as a living work of Creation—that is, having been made by God directly—is more real, more alive, than a car which, as a work of subcreation made by man, is lower in the hierarchy of creative value. Yet he is actually saying more than that. The car, as a product of “mass-production robot factories”, is actually a machine made by a machine! The artificial in the service of the artificial. Worse, the human beings working in the mind-numbing robot factories are actually servicing the machines. The alive in the service of the dead. Reality sacrificed on the altar of virtual reality.

But Tolkien is saying even more than this. What does he mean by insinuating that centaurs and dragons are more “alive”, and therefore within the hierarchy of creative value more “real”, than cars? Well, for one thing, he is referring to the fact that centaurs and dragons are animate creatures, albeit animated only by the imagination! Yet I believe he is saying something even more potent and important. He is saying that there is even a hierarchy within the realm of subcreation. He is saying that subcreation in the service of beauty and truth is better than subcreation for purposes of power. Put simply, art is better than technology. But why is he saying this? To answer that particular question, we have to return to the hierarchy of created value. If God is at the top, His Creation next and subcreation at the bottom, does it not follow that subcreation, being a gift from God, should be at the service of its Giver, its Source? Since God
is
the Beautiful and the True, so much so that all beauty and all truth, properly understood, are a reflection of Him, isn’t subcreation in the service of beauty and truth better than subcreation in the service of mere utility? Isn’t the former, subcreation in the service of God, whereas the latter is subcreation in the service of man?

Here, perhaps, we should remind ourselves that art, within the context of this discussion, is meant in terms of the liberal arts. Theology is an art. She is queen of the arts as she is queen of the sciences. Philosophy is an art. History is an art. Literature is an art. Within this context, we can see that Tolkien is agreeing with Josef Pieper that leisure is indeed the basis of culture. If we do not have time to study, to enjoy and indeed to practice the arts, we will not be truly alive and therefore not fully real—in the sense of not being as real as we are meant to be, as real as God meant us to be. Heaven forbid that we should stand before the Judgment Seat and be told that we are only virtually real!

All of this has merely served as a preamble to discussing the individual and community in Middle Earth, Tolkien’s subcreated world. There is not time to enter into the discussion itself. I thought it more important to provide the
key
by which we can enter Middle Earth and the tools by which we can apply the truths found therein to the truths we find in the created world in which we live. These principles, rooted in the author’s Catholic faith, are the animus by which Tolkien asks, and answers, fundamental questions about the individual and his relationship with the community of neighbors he is commanded to love. Throughout
The Lord of the Rings
, the perennial tension between the selflessness and the selfishness in human nature is felt palpably on almost every page. Tolkien illustrates, as only a master storyteller can, that only if selflessness, born of humility, prevails can the individual and the community prosper, and not only prosper but, ultimately, survive. In practical terms this means that self-sacrifice, that is to say, heroism—heroic virtue—is absolutely necessary as the antidote to spiritual obesity, that is to say, hedonism. Heroism or hedonism, that is the question. To be or not to be. To be as we were meant to be, or not to be as we were meant to be. That is the question.

And there is much else besides. Central to any understanding of
The Lord of the Rings
or
The Silmarillion
is the power of tradition as both a guide and protector of the community. Faced with the dynamics of time, which is sometimes given the misnomer of “progress”, tradition serves as both a steering wheel and a brake. Thus Middle Earth is strengthened by the knowledge of genealogy, by the longevity and immortality of the elves, and by the sheer “entishness” of the ents, who serve as the very quintessence of tradition—a tradition that is particularly applicable in terms of etymology and ecclesiology. Akin to the centrality of tradition is the nature of authority, both authentic and usurped, a question that is as central to, and therefore as applicable to, the liberal secularist world in which we live.

Ultimately, we should end with the ultimate—in the sense of the ultimate question to which all other questions owe their relevance and all other answers owe their rectitude. Toward the end of his life, Tolkien was asked by a young girl, “What is the purpose of life?” Tolkien’s reply will serve as the ultimate rationale for his beliefs vis-a-vis the individual and the community. The extent of the duty of the individual to the community, and its limits, and the extent of the community’s responsibility to the individual, and its limits, all spring from the duty of the one and the responsibility of the other to praise and love the One who gives meaning and life to both.

Enough of me. Here is Tolkien, answering the question “What is the purpose of life?”

So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the
Gloria in Excelsis
: Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.

   
And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. Praise the Lord . . . all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.

34

_____

T
HE LORD OF THE RINGS
was, without doubt, the most popular book of the twentieth century. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the film adaptation of Tolkien’s masterpiece has brought his work to a whole new generation of readers and moviegoers. Fifty years after its first publication, it is being read by more people than ever. It is, however, interesting that Tolkien’s popular success has been greeted with scorn by the liberal secularist denizens of the self-styled literati.

Why, one wonders, was there such an abysmal gulf between the views of the reading public and those of the self-styled “experts”? Perhaps it has something to do with the religious and political content of
The Lord of the Rings
. Certainly Tolkien’s stance, theologically and politically, was aeons removed from the position of his critics. He was a lifelong practicing Catholic and, as such, would elicit little sympathy from the ranks of the moral relativists who proliferate among the modern literati. Similarly, he was an opponent of socialism, in both its national and international guises, as well as a critic of the hedonism masquerading as capitalism, which is put forward as socialism’s only alternative. As such, he would alienate the intelligentsia of both the socialist and the antisocialist camps. Furthermore, Tolkien’s religious and political beliefs are made manifest in multifarious ways throughout his work, particularly in
The Lord of the Rings
itself.

Let’s examine the religious and political dimension of “the greatest book of the twentieth century”.

“
The Lord of the Rings
is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” This was Tolkien’s own judgment of his work. On another occasion, he wrote about a “scale of significance” in the relationship between himself, as author, and his work. At the very top of this scale of significance, enshrined as the most important of the “really significant” factors governing the nature of his work, was the fact that “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic”.

In what way is
The Lord of the Rings
“fundamentally religious and Catholic”? Although it is too subtle to be read merely as a formal or crude allegory, it is, in fact,
so
religious and Catholic, and so fundamentally so, that it is impossible to enumerate the many instances of what Tolkien called the religious “applicability” of his work in an essay of this length. In brief, however, the salient Christian features in
The Lord of the Rings
can be sketched as follows.

On the literal level, “the Lord of the Rings” is Sauron, described by Tolkien in
The Silmarillion
as “the greatest of Melkor’s servants”. Since Melkor is, in fact, Satan, as is made apparent in the creation story at the beginning of
The Silmarillion
, Sauron is actually the greatest of
Satan
’s servants and is, like his master, a fallen angel. As such, the evil in
The Lord of the Rings
is specifically and unequivocally
satanic
and demonic. There is, therefore, no moral relativism in Middle Earth. Followers of Sauron are quite literally going to hell.

On a deeper level, however, “the Lord of the Rings” is not Sauron at all. On the contrary, “the Lord of the Rings” is the same Lord that Tolkien worshiped as a Catholic, the one true God who reigns for all eternity. Samwise Gamgee, the hobbit, perceives as much when he affirms that “above all shadows rides the sun”. Sauron and his evil forces are referred to as “the Shadow”, whereas the sun is used by Tolkien, in
The Hobbit
as well as in
The Lord of the Rings
, as a symbol of God’s presence and a sign of the rarely perceived but nonetheless omnipresent hand of providence. Sauron might believe that he is the Lord of the Rings, but the wise, of whom Samwise is a shining example, know better. Again, there is no room for relativism or agnosticism in Tolkien’s world.

What, then, is the Ring? It is a symbol of sin in general and original sin in particular. The “one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them” is, in fact, the one sin to rule them all and in the darkness bind them: the original sin of Adam and Eve. How do we know this? It is revealed to us by Tolkien in one of the appendices to
The Lord of the Rings
, in which he states that the Ring was destroyed or “unmade” on 25 March. This, of course, is the Feast of the Annunciation, the day on which the Word was made flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The date of 25 March was also, according to medieval belief, when the Crucifixion took place. Taken together, the Annunciation and the Crucifixion destroyed or “unmade” original sin, signifying man’s redemption from Satan’s power.