Literary Giants Literary Catholics (44 page)

Tom Shippey, an Anglo-Saxon scholar and Tolkien expert, states in his book
The Road to Middle Earth
that in “Anglo-Saxon belief, and in European popular tradition both before and after that, 25 March is the date of the Crucifixion”. It is also, of course, the Feast of the Annunciation, the celebration of the Absolute Center of all history as the moment when God Himself became incarnate as man. As a Catholic, Tolkien was well aware of the significance of 25 March. It signified the way in which God had “unmade” original sin, the Fall, which, like the Ring, had brought humanity under the sway of the Shadow. If the Ring, which is “unmade” at the culmination of Tolkien’s Quest, is the “one ring to rule them all . . . and in the darkness bind them”, the Fall was the “one sin to rule them all. . . and in the darkness bind them”. On 25 March the one sin, like the One Ring, had been “unmade”, destroying the power of the Dark Lord.

There are, of course, many other examples of divine mercy shining forth from the pages of Tolkien’s masterpiece—too many to mention in a solitary article. It is, however, very comforting in the midst of these dark days that the most popular book of the twentieth century, and the most popular movie of the new century, draw their power and their glory from the light of the Gospel.
Deo gratias
.

44

_____

A Response to Dr. Murphy’s “Response
”

T
HERE IS SOMETHING A LITTLE FISHY
about Dr. Murphy’s “response” to my article “True Myth: The Catholicism of
The Lord of the Rings
”—fishy in the sense that it is a large red herring. It seems to me, having read his “response”, that the whole argument he constructs is nothing more than a nebulous nonsense that will waft away at the first faint breeze of logical, not to say theological, reality. Ultimately, as we shall see, his less-than-edifying edifice is built upon non sequiturs constructed on fallacious foundations. On the assumption that there is a good deal of truth to be derived from mythology, it can be said, quite truthfully, that Dr. Murphy’s position is far less substantial than the castles of the fairies.

Dr. Murphy endeavors to downplay Tolkien’s assertion that
The Lord of the Rings
is “of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” by quoting another of Tolkien’s letters in which he describes the work as “fundamentally linguistic in inspiration”. He implies thereafter that the linguistic foundations are as important as the religious. It is, however, interesting that he fails to quote another letter by Tolkien in which the author of
The Lord of the Rings
states unequivocally that the religious element is more important than the linguistic. I say that it is interesting because this particular letter forms the basis of my whole approach to understanding
The Lord of the Rings
in my book
Tolkien: Man and Myth
. Clearly Dr. Murphy has read my book, because he quotes from it selectively throughout his article. Why, therefore, did he fail to quote the very letter that both refutes his own suggestion that religious and linguistic elements are of equal importance and also forms the foundation of my own argument that he is presumably endeavoring to refute?

It is curious that Dr. Murphy asserts that “Tolkien would not want us to take his own suggestions about the meaning of his work as the last word”. Possibly not. Yet, as Tolkien states specifically, he knows “more than any investigator”. Consequently, assuming that Tolkien is correct in this assertion (and I believe that he is), his words are more reliable than any other words on the subject. I would go further. I would assert that we ignore Tolkien’s words at our peril. The author is the anchor that keeps us bedded in the underlying realities that constitute a work. Once we begin to ignore the author, we inevitably drift away from the true meaning of the work. Tolkien’s “guardian Angel, or indeed God Himself” might know more about
The Lord of the Rings
than does the author himself, but since we are not at liberty to ask them personally (except perhaps in prayer), we should treat Tolkien as the most reliable arbiter of his own work. To reiterate, therefore, we can assume quite safely that
The Lord of the Rings
is indeed a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and that the Catholic dimension is the most important of the really significant factors that animate the book.

Tolkien’s secularist admirers never fail to remind us that Tolkien denied that
The Lord of the Rings
could or should be seen as an allegory. Thus, for instance, Dr. Murphy complains that “Pearce omits from his article any discussion of the difference between myth and allegory, a distinction that was important to Tolkien”. He then quotes from Tolkien’s famous essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”, in which Tolkien complained that the “defender” of a myth, “unless he is careful, and speaks in parables . . . will kill what he is studying by vivisection, and. . . will be left with a formal and mechanical allegory”. Ironically, Dr. Murphy has unwittingly destroyed his own case by the very words of Tolkien that he has sought to employ in his prosecution of it. In this passage, Tolkien is speaking of the dangers of reducing the myth to “a
formal
and
mechanical
allegory” while advocating that the critic employ the more careful and subtle allegorical approach implied by the use of parables.

It is a truth invariably missed by those allergic to allegory that Tolkien’s attacks on allegory always and invariably refer
specifically
to this “formal and mechanical” kind. Tolkien considered this form of allegory, exemplified most notably perhaps by Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress
and C. S. Lewis’
Pilgrim’s Regress
, as being too crude in its mode of conveying the truth. Tolkien preferred the subtler allegorical approach of mythology whereby the
facts
of the story become
applicable
to the
truth
that is present in our own lives. This
applicability
of the literal meaning of a story to the world beyond its pages is no less “allegorical” than other forms of allegory; it is a difference in degree, not essence. It is less formal, less mechanical, more subtle, but no less allegorical. Thus, for example, Tolkien stressed that “any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more ‘life’ a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations.)”

“The truth is”, wrote C. S. Lewis, that allegory is “one of those words which need defining in each context where one uses it.” In his early work,
The Allegory of Love
, Lewis defined allegory in its formal, mechanical or crude form, as follows:

On the one hand you can start with an immaterial fact, such as the passions which you actually experience, and can then invent
visibilia
(visible things) to express them. If you are hesitating between an angry retort and a soft answer, you can express your state of mind by inventing a person called
Ira
(Anger) with a torch and letting her contend with another invented person called
Patientia
(Patience).

Lewis, like Tolkien, often denied that his work was allegorical in this strict sense of the word. In December 1958 he wrote to a correspondent denying that Aslan was an “allegory”.

By an allegory I mean a composition (whether pictorial or literary) in which immaterial realities are represented by feigned physical objects, e.g. a pictured Cupid allegorically represents erotic love (which in reality is an experience, not an object occupying a given area of space) or, in Bunyan a giant represents Despair.

Although Lewis denied that Aslan was “formally and mechanically allegorical” in this crude sense, he would clearly have conceded that Aslan is meant to
remind
the reader of Christ, without specifically representing him per se. Similarly, Gandalf in his death and resurrection is meant to remind us of Christ without any suggestion that we are ever meant to think that he is meant to be Christ Himself. He “dies” as Gandalf the Grey and is washed white in the blood of his sacrifice, returning resplendently transfigured as Gandalf the White. Frodo is depicted as Christlike in his carrying of the Ring, which, like the Cross, is an emblem of evil or sin; yet he is clearly not intended to be seen literally as Christ.

Tolkien’s depiction of the Christlike in
The Lord of the Rings
parallels the Christo-subtle images evoked by the great and anonymous Anglo-Saxon
scop
who first recounted the story of Beowulf. Indeed, we should not be the least surprised to discover that Tolkien’s approach to the Christocentric applicability of his myth parallels the applicability of the actions of the hero of the Anglo-Saxon epic. Beowulf reminds us of Christ at several points throughout the narrative, but we are never meant to see Beowulf
as
Christ Himself. Clearly Tolkien had drawn deep draughts of inspiration from the subcreative well of this profoundly Christian poem.

There is, in fact, such an abundance of applicable Christian images throughout
The Lord of the Rings
that one scarcely knows where to start or when to stop. Aragorn is the symbol of kingship, that is, authentic authority, and his kingship reminds us not only of Christ himself but of the desire of Englishmen for the return of the true, that is, Catholic, king—the king in exile—whether the resonance surrounding him be Arthurian or Jacobite or both. The “sword that is broken”, the symbol of Aragorn’s kingship, is reforged at the anointed time—a potent reminder of Excalibur’s union with the Christendom it is ordained to serve. One wonders, in fact, whether the very name of Aragorn could be linked to Catherine of Aragon, the saintly queen who, with the support of the Pope, refused heroically to grant a divorce to Henry VIII, staying true to her Catholic faith while her adulterous husband declared himself head of the Church of England. Obviously we are not intended to believe that Aragorn is Catherine of Aragon! It is not a formal allegory, but a story that is applicable allegorically.

Might we not see in the two characters linked ingeniously by Tolkien through the employment of a phonetic anagram, Theoden and Denethor, the victory of Christian hope (hence
Theo
den) over pagan despair (hence Dene
thor
)? Clearly Theoden is not God; neither is Denethor, Thor. Yet the applicability of their actions to the reality of paganism and Christendom enriches the myth beyond measure. It is not a question of this allegorical applicability impoverishing or “murdering” the myth, as Dr. Murphy implies, but of its breathing the life of God, or “Eru, the One”, into it. Again, Tolkien declared in one of his published letters that, as a Catholic who believed in the Fall, he perceived human history as the Long Defeat with only occasional glimmers of final victory; paralleling these words, Galadriel states specifically in
The Lord of the Rings
that she and the Lord of the Galadhrim have, “together through ages of the world . . . fought the long defeat.” The elves, like mankind, are exiled in time and, to employ the language of the
Salve Regina
, are like the “poor banished children of Eve” sending up their sighs, “mourning and weeping in this vale of tears”. Unlike men, however, the elves are marooned in immortality and are trapped in the Long Defeat of the vale of tears for centuries unnumbered. No wonder the elves call death “the gift of Iluvatar” (that is, God) to man. The elves are painfully aware of the poignant difference between immortality and eternal life. Thus the
Salve Regina
culminates in the faithful Christian’s acknowledgement of this gift of death in the plea that, “after this our exile”, we may be shown “the Blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus”.

One is tempted to continue. The Christian applicability, like Tolkien’s proverbial “road”, goes ever on and on. I shall, however, desist from this seemingly endless tangent and, for the sake of brevity, return to the specific accusations leveled at me by Dr. Murphy. One particular statement of mine was, in Dr. Murphy’s estimation, “absurd even by Pearce’s standards”. My “absurd” statement reads as follows:

Ultimately,
The Lord of the Rings
is a sublimely mystical Passion Play. The carrying of the Ring—the emblem of Sin—is the Carrying of the Cross . . . the Quest is, in fact, a Pilgrimage.

“A pilgrimage”, counters Dr. Murphy, “is a journey to a sacred place; the quest leads to Mordor, hardly a shrine of holiness. . . . I fail to see how the quest can possibly be a carrying of the cross
and
a pilgrimage.” Although I shall (almost!) resist the temptation to suggest that this statement is “absurd even by Murphy’s standards”, I cannot help but be perplexed at how Dr. Murphy, who claims to be a Catholic, can fail to see how the carrying of the cross is
not
a pilgrimage. Doesn’t every Catholic believe that life itself is a pilgrimage during which we have to carry our crosses in imitation of Christ? Isn’t every Christian’s life a carrying of the cross
and
a pilgrimage? Is this not, in fact, the ultimate applicability of
The Lord of the Rings
—that we have to lose our life in order to gain it; that unless we die we cannot live; that we must all take up our cross and follow Him? And as for the assertion that “a pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place”, whereas “the quest leads to Mordor, hardly a shrine of holiness”, I might remind Dr. Murphy that all pilgrimages are designed to lead us to heaven, to our resurrection after death. The road to the Resurrection passes via the via dolorosa to Calvary. There is no other route. Thus the path to the Mystic West (Tolkien’s mystical vision of heaven inspired by the visionary voyages of Saint Brendan) passes via Mordor to Mount Doom. The parallels are obvious because they are intentional. Tolkien knew the way to heaven, and Frodo and Sam discovered it. The Way of Life
is
the Way of the Cross.