The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (87 page)

^fn7
Christian marriage is not a prohibition of sexual intercourse, but the correct way of sexual temperance – in fact probably the best way of getting the most satisfying
sexual pleasure
, as alcoholic temperance is the best way of enjoying beer and wine.

^fn8
Since
clifian
=‘cleave, stick', it is plain that
foxes clife
and
clifwyrt
originally = burdock.
clófa
is prob. an MS error for
glófa
through mixing the names.

^fn9
Especially as I find allusions and references to it creeping into Mr Lewis' work, such as his latest novel.
⁴

^fn10
I think ‘criticism' – however valid or intellectually engaging – tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require
practice
, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off). Indeed (if I dare yet venture on any criticism again) I should say that I think it gets in your way,
as a writer
. You read too much, and too much of that analytically. But then you are also a born critic. I am not. You are also a born reader.

^fn11
Intending the word to be understood in its ancient meanings, which continued as late as Spenser – a murrain on Will Shakespeare and his damned cobwebs.

^fn12
Though I have thought
about
them a good deal.

^fn13
It is, I suppose, fundamentally concerned with the problem of the relation of Art (and Sub-creation) and Primary Reality.

^fn14
Not in the Beginner of Evil: his was a sub-creative Fall, and hence the Elves (the representatives of sub-creation par excellence) were peculiarly his enemies, and the special object of his desire and hate – and open to his deceits. Their Fall is into possessiveness and (to a less degree) into perversion of their art to power.

^fn15
As far as all this has symbolical or allegorical significance, Light is such a primeval symbol in the nature of the Universe, that it can hardly be analysed. The Light of Valinor (derived from light before any fall) is the light of art undivorced from reason, that sees things both scientifically (or philosophically) and imaginatively (or subcreatively) and says that they are good' – as beautiful. The Light of Sun (or Moon) is derived from the Trees only after they were sullied by Evil.

^fn16
Of course in reality this only means that my ‘elves' are only a representation or an apprehension of a part of human nature, but that is not the legendary mode of talking.

^fn17
It exists indeed as a poem of considerable length, of which the prose version in
The Silmarillion
is only a reduced version.
¹

^fn18
His name is in actual origin Anglo-Saxon:
earendel
‘ray of light' applied sometimes to the morning-star, a name of ramified mythological connexions (now largely obscure). But that is a mere ‘learned note'. In fact his name is Elvish signifying the Great Mariner or Sea-lover.

^fn19
A name that Lewis derives from me and cannot be restrained from using, and mis-spelling as Numinor. Númenóre means in ‘Elvish' simply Westernesse or Land in the West, and is not related to
numen
numinous, or
νούμєνον
!
²

^fn20
Elrond symbolises throughout the ancient wisdom, and his House represents Lore – the preservation in reverent memory of all tradition concerning the good, wise, and beautiful. It is not a scene of
action
but of
reflection.
Thus it is a place visited on the way to all deeds, or ‘adventures'. It may prove to be on the direct road (as in
The Hobbit
); but it may be necessary to go from there in a totally unexpected course. So necessarily in
The Lord of the Rings,
having escaped to Elrond from the imminent pursuit of present evil, the hero departs in a wholly new direction: to go and face it at its source.

^fn21
The view is taken (as clearly reappears later in the case of the Hobbits that have the Ring for a while) that each ‘Kind' has a natural span, integral to its biological and spiritual nature. This cannot really be
increased
qualitatively or quantitatively; so that prolongation in time is like stretching a wire out ever tauter, or ‘spreading butter ever thinner' – it becomes an intolerable torment.

^fn22
It is only in the time between
The Hobbit
and its sequel that it is discovered that the Necromancer is
Sauron Redivivus
, growing swiftly to visible shape and power again. He escapes the vigilance and re-enters Mordor and the Dark Tower.

^fn23
The Hobbits are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the specifically
human
race (not Elves or Dwarves) – hence the two kinds can dwell together (as at Bree), and are called just the Big Folk and Little Folk. They are entirely without non-human powers, but are represented as being more in touch with ‘nature' (the soil and other living things, plants and animals), and abnormally, for humans, free from ambition or greed of wealth. They are made
small
(little more than half human stature, but dwindling as the years pass) partly to exhibit the pettiness of man, plain unimaginative parochial man – though not with either the smallness or the savageness of Swift, and mostly to show up, in creatures of very small physical power, the amazing and unexpected heroism of ordinary men ‘at a pinch'.

^fn24
Nowhere is the place or nature of ‘the Wizards' made fully explicit. Their name, as related to Wise, is an Englishing of their Elvish name, and is used throughout as utterly distinct from Sorcerer or Magician. It appears finally that they were as one might say the near equivalent in the mode of these tales of Angels, guardian Angels. Their powers are directed primarily to the encouragement of the enemies of evil, to cause them to use their own wits and valour, to unite and endure. They appear always as old men and sages, and though (sent by the powers of the True West) in the world they suffer themselves, their age and grey hairs increase only slowly. Gandalf whose function is especially to watch human affairs (Men and Hobbits) goes on through all the tales.

^fn25
The hostility of (even good) Dwarves and Elves, a motive that often appears, derives from the legends of the First Age; the Mines of Moria, the wars of Dwarves and Orcs (goblins, soldiery of the Dark Lord) refer to the Second Age and early Third.

^fn26
But as each has disliked this or that, I should (if I took all the criticisms together and obeyed them) find little left, and am forced to the conclusion that so great a work (in size) cannot be perfect, nor even if perfect, be liked entirely by any
one
reader.

^fn27
That is, I will draw it as much better as my little skill allows, in black. But it should of course properly appear in white line on a black background, since it represents a silver line in the darkness. How does that appeal to the Production Department?

^fn28
N = ng as in
ding
.

^fn29
It nearly has, even in hasty sketch!

^fn30
Since ‘mortality' is thus represented as a special gift of God to the Second Race of the Children (the
Eruhini
, the Children of the One God) and not a punishment for a Fall, you may call that ‘bad theology'. So it may be, in the primary world, but it is an imagination capable of elucidating truth, and a legitimate basis of legends.

^fn31
Inside this mythical history (as its metaphysic is, not necessarily as a metaphysic of the real World) Creation, the act of Will of Eru the One that gives Reality to conceptions, is distinguished from Making, which is permissive.

^fn32
Only the
first
person (of worlds or anything) can be unique. If you say
he is
there must be more than one, and created (sub) existence is implied. I can say ‘he is' of Winston Churchill as well as of Tom Bombadil, surely?

^fn33
There are thus no temples or ‘churches' or fanes in this ‘world' among ‘good' peoples. They had little or no ‘religion' in the sense of worship. For help they may call on a
Vala
(as
Elbereth
), as a Catholic might on a Saint, though no doubt knowing in theory as well as he that the power of the Vala was limited and derivative. But this is a ‘primitive age': and these folk may be said to view the Valar as children view their parents or immediate adult superiors, and though they know they are subjects of the King he does not live in their country nor have there any dwelling. I do not think Hobbits practised any form of worship or prayer (unless through exceptional contact with Elves). The Númenóreans (and others of that branch of Humanity, that fought against Morgoth, even if they elected to remain in Middle-earth and did not go to Númenor: such as the Rohirrim) were pure monotheists. But there was no temple in Númenor (until Sauron introduced the cult of Morgoth). The top of the Mountain, the Meneltarma or Pillar of Heaven, was dedicated to Eru, the One, and there at any time privately, and at certain times publicly, God was invoked, praised, and adored: an imitation of the Valar and the Mountain of Aman. But Númenor fell and was destroyed and the Mountain engulfed, and there was no substitute. Among the exiles, remnants of the Faithful who had not adopted the false religion nor taken part in the rebellion, religion as divine worship (though perhaps not as philosophy and metaphysics) seems to have played a small part; though a glimpse of it is caught in Faramir's remark on ‘grace at meat', Vol. II p. 285.
⁴

^fn34
The chief way in which
Hobbits
differ from experience is that they are not cruel, and have no blood-sports, and have by implication a feeling for ‘wild creatures' that are not alas! very commonly found among the nearest contemporary parallels.

^fn35
‘gods' is the nearest equivalent, but not strictly accurate.

^fn36
The story of Beren and Lúthien is the one great exception, as it is the way by which ‘Elvishness' becomes wound in as a thread in human history.

^fn37
There is only one ‘god': God,
Eru Ilúvatar.
There are the first creations, angelic beings, of which those most concerned in the Cosmogony reside (of love and choice) inside the World, as Valar or gods, or governors; and there are incarnate rational creatures, Elves and Men, of similar but different status and natures.

^fn38
This was a delusion of course, a Satanic lie. For as emissaries from the Valar clearly inform him, the Blessed Realm does not confer immortality. The land is blessed because the Blessed dwell there, not vice versa, and the Valar are immortal by right and nature, while Men are mortal by right and nature. But cozened by Sauron he dismisses all this as a diplomatic argument to ward off the power of the King of Kings. It might or might not be ‘heretical', if these myths were regarded as statements about the actual nature of Man in the real world: I do not know. But the view of the myth is that Death – the mere shortness of human life-span – is not a punishment for the Fall, but a biologically (and therefore also spiritually, since body and spirit are integrated) inherent part of Man's nature. The attempt to escape it is wicked because ‘unnatural', and silly because Death in that sense is the Gift of God (envied by the Elves), release from the weariness of Time. Death, in the penal sense, is viewed as a change in attitude to it: fear, reluctance. A good Númenórean died of free will when he felt it to be time to do so.

^fn39
There were evil Númenóreans: Sauronians, but they do not come into this story, except remotely; as the wicked Kings who had become Nazgûl or Ringwraiths.

^fn40
The Elves often called on Varda-Elbereth, the Queen of the Blessed Realm, their especial friend; and so does Frodo.

^fn41
Take the Ents, for instance. I did not consciously invent them at all. The chapter called ‘Treebeard', from Treebeard's first remark on p. 66, was written off more or less as it stands, with an effect on my self (except for labour pains) almost like reading some one else's work. And I like Ents now because they do not seem to have anything to do with me. I daresay something had been going on in the ‘unconscious' for some time, and that accounts for my feeling throughout, especially when stuck, that I was not inventing but reporting (imperfectly) and had at times to wait till ‘what really happened' came through. But looking back analytically I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature, and life. They owe their name to the
eald enta geweorc
²
of Anglo-Saxon, and their connexion with stone. Their part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war. And into this has crept a mere piece of experience, the difference of the ‘male' and ‘female' attitude to wild things, the difference between unpossessive love and gardening.

^fn42
Not any better I think than
The Marvellous Land of Snergs,
Wyke-Smith, Ernest Benn 1927. Seeing the date, I should say that this was probably an unconscious source-book! for the Hobbits, not of anything else.

^fn43
The name, spelt this way, also entered the United States, 2 or 3 generations ago, from Canada. I recently had some correspondence with a family in Texas.