The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (36 page)

Great harm can be done, of course, by this potent mode of ‘myth' – especially wilfully. The right to ‘freedom' of the sub-creator is no guarantee among fallen men that it will not be used as wickedly as is Free Will. I am comforted by the fact that some, more pious and learned
than I, have found nothing harmful in this Tale or its feignings as a ‘myth'. . . . .

To conclude: having mentioned Free Will, I might say that in my myth I have used ‘subcreation' in a special way (not the same as ‘subcreation' as a term in criticism of art, though I tried to show allegorically how that might come to be taken up into Creation in some plane in my ‘purgatorial' story
Leaf by Niggle
(Dublin Review 1945)) to make visible and physical the effects of Sin or misused Free Will by men. Free Will is derivative, and is
only operative within provided circumstances; but in order that it may exist, it is necessary that the Author should guarantee it, whatever betides: sc. when it is ‘against His Will', as we say, at any rate as it appears on a finite view. He does not stop or make ‘unreal' sinful acts and their consequences. So in this myth, it is ‘feigned' (legitimately whether that is a feature of the real world or not) that He gave special ‘sub-creative' powers to certain of His highest created beings: that is a guarantee that what they devised and made should be given the reality of Creation. Of course within limits, and of course subject to certain commands or prohibitions. But if they ‘fell', as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things ‘for himself, to be their Lord', these would then ‘be', even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other ‘rational' creatures like Elves or Men. They would at least ‘be' real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even ‘mocking' the Children of God. They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote ‘irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Ores would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.) But whether they could have ‘souls' or ‘spirits' seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible ‘delegation', I have represented at least the Ores as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them. That God would ‘tolerate' that, seems no worse theology than the toleration of the calculated dehumanizing of Men by tyrants that goes on today. There might be other ‘makings' all the same which were more like puppets filled (only at a distance) with their maker's mind and will, or ant-like operating under direction of a queen-centre.

Now (you will reasonably say) I am taking myself even more seriously than you did, and making a great song and oration about a good tale, which admittedly owes its similitude to mere craft. It is so. But the things I have scribbled about, arise in some form or another from all
writing (or art) that is not careful to dwell within the walls of ‘observed fact'.

25 September 1954

76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

Dear Mrs Mitchison,

I have been plagued by business, troubles, illness, and journeys, or I should have written long before, and especially after your kind letter of last month: temporarily mislaid in a broil of exam-papers, galleys, and what not: after reading to the end of
The Lord
&c.

You have been most kind and encouraging to me, and your generous and perceptive review
¹
puts me in your debt. Yours is the only comment that I have seen that, besides treating the book as ‘literature', at least in intent, and even taking it seriously (and praising or ridiculing it accordingly), also sees it as an elaborate form of the
game
of inventing a country – an endless one, because even a committee of experts in different branches could not complete the overall picture. I am more conscious of my sketchiness in the archaeology and
realien
²
than in the economics: clothes, agricultural implements, metal-working, pottery, architecture and the like. Not to mention music and its apparatus. I am not incapable of or unaware of economic thought; and I think as far as the ‘mortals' go, Men, Hobbits, and Dwarfs,
³
that the situations are so devised that economic likelihood is there and could be worked out: Gondor has sufficient ‘townlands' and fiefs with a good water and road approach to provide for its population; and clearly has many industries though these are hardly alluded to. The Shire is placed in a water and mountain situation and a distance from the sea and a latitude that would give it a natural fertility, quite apart from the stated fact that it was a well-tended region when they took it over (no doubt with a good deal of older arts and crafts). The Shire-hobbits have no very great need of metals, but the Dwarfs are agents; and in the east of the Mountains of Lune are some of their mines (as shown in the earlier legends): no doubt, the reason, or one of them, for their often crossing the Shire. Some of the modernities found among them (I think especially of
umbrellas
) are probably, I think certainly, a mistake, of the same order as their silly names, and tolerable with them only as a deliberate ‘anglicization' to point the contrast between them and other peoples in the most familiar terms. I do not think people of that sort and stage of life and development can be both peaceable and very brave and tough ‘at a pinch'.
^fn34
Experience in two wars has confirmed me in that view. But
hobbits
are not a Utopian vision, or recommended as an ideal in their own or any age. They, as all peoples and their situations, are an historical accident – as the Elves point out to Frodo – and an impermanent one in the long view. I am not a reformer nor an ‘embalmer'! I am not a ‘reformer' (by exercise of power) since it seems doomed to Sarumanism. But ‘embalming' has its own punishments.

Some reviewers have called the whole thing simple-minded, just a plain fight between Good and Evil, with all the good just good, and the bad just bad. Pardonable, perhaps (though at least Boromir has been overlooked) in people in a hurry, and with only a fragment to read, and, of course, without the earlier written but unpublished Elvish histories. But the Elves are
not
wholly good or in the right. Not so much because they had flirted with Sauron; as because with or without his assistance they were ‘embalmers'. They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle-earth because they had become fond of it (and perhaps because they there had the advantages of a superior caste), and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce, even largely a desert, where they could be ‘artists' – and they were overburdened with sadness and nostalgic regret. In their way the Men of Gondor were similar: a withering people whose only ‘hallows' were their tombs. But in any case this is a tale about a war, and if war is allowed (at least as a topic and a setting) it is not much good complaining that all the people on one side are against those on the other. Not that I have made even this issue quite so simple: there are Saruman, and Denethor, and Boromir; and there are treacheries and strife even among the Orcs.

Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole ‘legendarium' contains a transition from a flat world (or at least an
with borders all about it) to a globe: an inevitable transition, I suppose, to a modern ‘myth-maker' with a mind subjected to the same ‘appearances' as ancient men, and partly fed on their myths, but taught that the Earth was round from the earliest years. So deep was the impression made by ‘astronomy' on me that I do not think I could deal with or imaginatively conceive a flat world, though a world of static Earth with a Sun going round it seems easier (to fancy if not to reason).

The particular ‘myth' which lies behind this tale, and the mood both of Men and Elves at this time, is the Downfall of Númenor: a special
variety of the Atlantis tradition. That seems to me so fundamental to ‘mythical history' – whether it has any kind of basis in real history,
pace
Saurat and others, is not relevant – that some version of it would have to come in.

I have written an account of the Downfall, which you might be interested to see. But the immediate point is that before the Downfall there lay beyond the sea and the west-shores of Middle-earth an
earthly
Elvish paradise Eressëa, and
Valinor
the land of the
Valar
(the Powers, the Lords of the West
^fn35
), places that could be reached physically by ordinary sailing-ships, though the Seas were perilous. But after the rebellion of the Númenóreans, the Kings of Men, who dwelt in a land most westerly of all mortal lands, and eventually in the height of their pride attempted to occupy Eressëa and Valinor by force, Númenor was destroyed, and Eressëa and Valinor removed from the physically attainable Earth: the way west was open, but led nowhere but back again – for mortals.

Elendil and his sons were the chiefs of the small ‘faithful' party that took no part in the attempt to seize world-power and immortality by force, and they escaped the drowning of Númenor, and were borne east on a great storm, and cast up on the west-shores of Middle-earth, where they established their realms. But there was no going back for them or any mortal men; hence their nostalgic mood.

But the promise made to the Eldar (the High Elves – not to other varieties, they had long before made their irrevocable choice, preferring Middle-earth to paradise) for their sufferings in the struggle with the prime Dark Lord had still to be fulfilled: that they should always be able to leave Middle-earth, if they wished, and pass over Sea to the True West, by the Straight Road, and so come to Eressëa – but so pass out of time and history, never to return. The Half-elven, such as Elrond and Arwen, can choose to which kind and fate they shall belong: choose once and for all. Hence the grief at the parting of Elrond and Arwen.

But in this story it is supposed that there may be certain rare exceptions or accommodations (legitimately supposed? there always seem to be exceptions); and so certain ‘mortals', who have played some great part in Elvish affairs, may pass with the Elves to Elvenhome. Thus Frodo (by the express gift of Arwen) and Bilbo, and eventually Sam (as adumbrated by Frodo); and as a unique exception Gimli the Dwarf, as friend of Legolas and ‘servant' of Galadriel.

I have said nothing about it in this book, but the mythical idea underlying is that for mortals, since their ‘kind' cannot be changed for ever, this is strictly only a temporary reward: a healing and redress of suffering. They cannot abide for ever, and though they cannot return to
mortal earth, they can and will ‘die' – of free will, and leave the world. (In this setting the return of Arthur would be quite impossible, a vain imagining.)

I am sorry that the Ice-bay of Forochel
⁴
has not (so far) been cast for any significant part. It is just ‘Elvish' for Northern Ice; and is a mere remnant of the colds of the North, the realm of the prime Dark Lord of earlier Ages. Arvedui, the last king of Arnor, is said, indeed, to have fled thither, and attempted to escape thence by ship, but to have been destroyed in the ice; and with him perished the last of the
palantíri
of the North Kingdom.

I am afraid this is a preposterously long letter; and perhaps presumptuous in its length, though your kindness and interest offer some excuse.

Soon after your visit, as pleasant as unexpected, I had a copy made of the chronology of the Second and Third Ages, for your perusal – purely annalistic and unmotivated. If it would still interest you, I will send it.