Tolkien, Faery, and Myth

[vison]

[Note: I moved this from the thread in the Tolkien Movies forum about about Philippa Boyen's comments about the Hobbit films not being episodic. - VtF]

I have always found Tolkien's ideas about Faery to be extremely weird. "Fairy tales" are very, very, very seldom about Fairies at all. Right offhand, I can't think of one so-called Fairy Tale that has even one fairy in it. Except maybe Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella, and those Fairies were not quite in the Tolkien Style. Tolkien wanted Faery to be a certain thing, but just wanting it doesn't make it so. In Middle Earth, his ideas shine and are wonderful, but in the real Earth where many generations of children were told "fairy tales", his ideas just don't fit those tales. I wish he hadn't been so intent on creating a mythology - because one man can't create a mythology, a myth is organic and grows out of the real Earth. He didn't create a myth, he wrote a wonderful novel in LOTR.

The Hobbit could be a good movie, but it can't have the "tone" of the book and succeed as a movie. Tolkien's kids were kids many, many, many years ago, and a tale that thrilled them (we assume it did) isn't going to cut it now for modern moviegoers. Kids who read books, or who have books read to them, are a different matter.

I seldom agree with solictr, but he's spot on in his views on the tone of PJ's movies.

[Padme]

I agree with Vison on the Feary aspects that Tolkien tried to convey in his books. He tries to protray his non-human peoples with more depth and intelligence than all the other fairy tales do, his Elves don't live in trees and bake cookies, they aren't short onery people in tights. He protrays every race with flaws and redemptive qualities, at least to me he does. And this is one reason I like his writing.

However, I will view the movie as just that a movie. In all honesty I will always like LoTR more as a book, it just has more depth than the movies can protray in 3+ hours.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I have always found Tolkien's ideas about Faery to be extremely weird. "Fairy tales" are very, very, very seldom about Fairies at all. Right offhand, I can't think of one so-called Fairy Tale that has even one fairy in it. Except maybe Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella, and those Fairies were not quite in the Tolkien Style. Tolkien wanted Faery to be a certain thing, but just wanting it doesn't make it so. In Middle Earth, his ideas shine and are wonderful, but in the real Earth where many generations of children were told "fairy tales", his ideas just don't fit those tales.

vison, have you read "On Fairy-Stories"? If not, you should; it is a brilliant essay. And it is considered to be probably the leading treatise on the subject written in the last century or more, since the work of Andrew Lang (it was, in fact, originally delivered as part of a series of lectures designed to honor Andrew Lang). Tolkien was definitely speaking from a very deep set of knowledge.

As Tolkien points out in the essay:

fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, rolls, giants or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and ll things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.

Stories that are actually concerned primarily with "fairies', that is with creatures that might in modern English be called 'elves', are relatively rare, and as a rule are not very interesting. most good 'fairy-stories' are about the aventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches. Naturally so; for if elves are true, and really exist independently of our tales about them, then this also is certainly true: elves are not primarily concerned with us, nor we with them. Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet. Even upon the borders of Faërie we encounter them only at some chance crossing of the ways.1

The definition of a fairy-story—what it is, or what it should be—does not, then, depend on any definition or historical account of elf or fairy, but upon the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country. I will not attempt to define that, nor to describe it directly. It cannot be done. Faërie cannot be caught in a net of words;
for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible. It has many ingredients, but analysis will not necessarily discover the secret of the whole. Yet I hope that what I have later to say about the other questions will give some glimpses of my own imperfect vision of it. For the moment I will say only this: a “fairy-story” is one which touches on or uses Faerie, whatever its own main purpose may be: satire, adventure, morality, fantasy. Faërie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic—but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific, magician. There is one proviso : if there is any satire present in the tale, one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away. Of this seriousness the medieval Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an admirable example.

1. This is true also, even if they are only creations of Man's mind, 'true' only as reflecting in a particular.

All of the common fairy tales that we are all familiar with fit in this definition. Part of the problem is that we are mostly familiar with the bastardized forms of these tales that have been popularized by Disney. Which is a shame. But Tolkien knew more about what made fairy stories important than any man who has lived for a long time. One should not ignore that knowledge.

In my humble opinion, of course.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I agree with Vison on the Feary aspects that Tolkien tried to convey in his books. He tries to protray his non-human peoples with more depth and intelligence than all the other fairy tales do, his Elves don't live in trees and bake cookies, they aren't short onery people in tights. He protrays every race with flaws and redemptive qualities, at least to me he does. And this is one reason I like his writing.

Tolkien despised the modern depiction of Elves and Fairies as dimunitive creatures (that is one of the main reasons he disliked Shakespeare, since his depiction of them in A Mid-summer Nights Dream was a prime influence in moving in that direction). He notes in his lecture/essay that Andrew Lang had similar feelings. Those are not the kind of fairy stories that he was influenced by.

[WampusCat]

I wish he hadn't been so intent on creating a mythology - because one man can't create a mythology, a myth is organic and grows out of the real Earth. He didn't create a myth, he wrote a wonderful novel in LOTR.

It would require a separate thread -- or maybe two -- to respond to this. there is so much in these short sentences that I disagree with. But none of it has anything to do with The Hobbit or the upcoming films of it. Or at least not much.

Well, I can't resist.

One man can't create a mythology. True. But one man can, through his intuition and skill, tap into the universal consciousness where myths are born and pull from it a new story with the deeper resonance of true myth.

A Jungian analyst I knew who specialized in studying myths' connections to the psyche of a culture and individuals once told me that Tolkien wrote The Myth for our time. All the stories we know as myth were originally told by an individual. They arise from a deeper place, but they come to life through a storyteller's art.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Wampus, I agree. I also have quite a bit more to say about the subject, but I don't have the time or energy for right now. The one thing that I'll add is that Tolkien denied - and I agree with him - that LOTR is a novel.

[solicitr]

I think I would agree. After all, we don't even know if "Homer" was one man or several or simply an organic accretion, or even if a Homer lived what earlier strains he wove together- but what emerged is, unquestionably, Myth: and Ilium's topless towers still resonate 2700 years later.

[vison]

But. But.

What "fairies" was Tolkien annoyed about? What were they "before" Shakespeare did his number on them? Where were they? Who were they? Where did they come from? What were their names? What stories were there about them?

I've read "On Faery" several times and, while it pains me to say what you won't like, Voronwë, I thought it was largely incomprehensible. He utterly failed to tell me what the blazes he was on about. He could not make me see the Perilous Realm - because his Perilous Realm has nothing whatsoever to do with the fairies and elves and brownies in the stories I grew up hearing and reading.

The Irish have "fairy" stories. There are dozens of them, some well-known and some not. The "fairies" in those tales are nothing like the fairies in Shakespeare, but more to the point, they would be gobsmacked by Galadriel or Elrond.

There are those who believe that elves and fairies and brownies and all that ilk are the remnants of the little brown people our ancestors drove out of Europe and into extinction. The shore people, they were called in Greece. In Scotland, they were the "fey", the little brown Picts, and the Celts took their land and then told stories about them. Tricksters, taking their revenge on the conquerer. That was the way my Scotch granny explained it to me, and it makes as much sense as any other explanation.

While I love LOTR and especially Galadriel, I never saw Galadriel as anything but human. A great Queen, but a human Queen nonetheless. She was not "the other", she just lived longer.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I've read "On Faery" several times and, while it pains me to say what you won't like, Voronwë, I thought it was largely incomprehensible.

Well, I can't ask more than that you tried to read it. If you found it "incomprehensible" there isn't much for us to talk about, now is there? It's a shame though, because you might have gotten answers to some of the very questions that you just asked if you had found it comprehensible. But each to their own.

[vison]

I've read "On Faery" several times and, while it pains me to say what you won't like, Voronwë, I thought it was largely incomprehensible.

Well, I can't ask more than that you tried to read it. If you found it "incomprehensible" there isn't much for us to talk about, now is there? It's a shame though, because you might have gotten answers to some of the very questions that you just asked if you had found it comprehensible. But each to their own.

I read it several times. Not "tried to read it". As a matter of fact, I just read it again recently, and am at the moment rereading The Battle of Maldon and Farmer Giles of Ham. "On Faery" does not answer my questions. I reread it specifically for that reason, thinking that perhaps it was too long since I read it before and maybe I forgot something.

While I like LOTR very much and regard it as one of my favourite books, it is, in the end, IMHO, a novel and but one of many I love.

I don't mean that in any sense that lessens the importance of the book. I don't mean that "a novel" is LESS than the "myth" Tolkien was intent on. As a matter of fact, I regard The Novel as the supreme artistic achievement of human kind and I mean that.

Maybe Tolkien thought novels were somehow lesser than myth. If so, he was wrong.

[solicitr]

What Tolkien was perhaps thinking of more than anything was the Elves as depicted in the Middle English poem Sir Orfeo: fullsized, but uncanny and dangerous. A modern take on the same idea can be found in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (an excellent book in grand pseud0-Regency style), or, on a lighter (but still uncanny) note, Pratchett's Lords and Ladies.

As for Tolkien himself: the closest he got to actuallty depiciting Faerie would be Smith of Wooton Major: a tale of a mortal man's travels in the Perilous Realm.

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I think that JRRT would have regarded the Silmarillion as his 'myth:' the Lord of the Rings was a Romance.

[vison]

What Tolkien was perhaps thinking of more than anything was the Elves as depicted in the Middle English poem Sir Orfeo: fullsized, but uncanny and dangerous. A modern take on the same idea can be found in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (an excellent book in grand pseud0-Regency style), or, on a lighter (but still uncanny) note, Pratchett's Lords and Ladies.

As for Tolkien himself: the closest he got to actuallty depiciting Faerie would be Smith of Wooton Major: a tale of a mortal man's travels in the Perilous Realm.

----------

I think that JRRT would have regarded the Silmarillion as his 'myth:' the Lord of the Rings was a Romance.

Ah, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Lord_M and I were talking about that very book yesterday. I did not like it. I found it distressingly twee and while I hated to give up, I did give up. I cared not one whit, not the littlest whit, what was going to happen to anyone next, and so I closed it firmly and put it back on the shelf where it sits to this very day.

Smith of Wooton Major. Yes, a nice story, I quite liked it.

A testy Irish friend of mine beat me severely about the head and ears when I called LOTR a "romance". But, you know, it is one and a splendid one at that. She will never forgive me, but I can deal with that.

Speaking of Irish. "Come away human child", as in Yeat's poem and in the older songs and stories, is "uncanny" or "fey" in the sense my granny would have meant it. There, the "little people" (and they were called "the little people") steal a human child away and many years later she returns, still a child, to a family that had aged without her. They were "fairies" in the Irish and Scotch sense.

Tolkien did spend a fair amount of time in Ireland, although it is my understanding that he did not "like" the Irish tales. Can't recall where I read that.

[Teremia]

By incredible coincidence, I am just reading "Smith of Wootton Major" for the first time -- aloud, to my kids.

Enjoying it so far. I liked the bit about the fancy cake better than the bit about wandering around Faerie, though. Must be my age showing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I read it several times. Not "tried to read it". As a matter of fact, I just read it again recently, and am at the moment rereading The Battle of Maldon and Farmer Giles of Ham. "On Faery" does not answer my questions. I reread it specifically for that reason, thinking that perhaps it was too long since I read it before and maybe I forgot something.

I'm sorry, vison, but if you found it "incomprehensible" you "tried to read it"; you did not "read it". Reading something implies comprehending it.

[Inanna]

At the same time, isn't it the duty of the writer to make it comprehensible? At least that's what we are told, over and over again.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Absolutely. But "On Fairy-Stories" is perfectly comprehensible. It has been read and appreciated by thousands, if not millions of people over the years, and is considered to be one of the most important academic treatises on its subject ever written. Should the author be condemned because one person found it incomprehensible? Or even several?

[Primula Baggins]

As vison said, she was rereading from her own background, and what Tolkien had to say did not provide answers to the questions she had. They may have been different questions than yours, Voronwë.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm talking about the specific questions that she posted in this thread that she said were not answered for her, but which Tolkien does address in the essay.

[Padme]

My question is how much did Fairies and Elves change after the spreed of Christianity into the Nordic cultures? My understanding is that is when the whole concept changed for both sets of beings. From more majestic beings to what we now call Fairies and Elves, and that part of that was due to certain aspects being more like God and that did not go over well with the Pope, since humans were to be the most like God. Or something like that....

[vison]

Reading something implies comprehending it.

Yes, of course. You're correct. The word "incomprehensible" was the wrong word or the right word in the wrong place. I comprehended the essay, but do not agree with it. My incomprehension is not of the words he wrote, but of the mindset that gave birth to them.

I'm going to try this once more, but you and I are not going to agree on this. However, I guess I feel it's worthwhile for me to try to express my thoughts/opinions even though they vary from yours.

The essay On Faery did not answer my questions. This is probably because I don't understand the place Tolkien was coming from. A poor expression "coming from" but it will have to do. He didn't write that essay to answer any questions of mine, but to express his own ideas.

Tolkien seemed, IMO, to be profoundly not satisfied with the "state" or "condition" of England's "mythology". He seemed, IMO, to think one of two things: that there WAS a mythology that had been bastardized or destroyed; or that there was NOT a mythology that was a cohesive whole. Or both. In either case, he wanted to fix that.

He seemed to be aware of a Perilous Realm that I am not aware of, and never was. The folk tales I was taught, and that I read avidly, were not set in that place. The beings who populated Tolkien's Perilous Realm are not the fairies or brownies or elves that I was familiar with. He didn't like those beings; he thought, or so I work out from what he wrote, that they had been - what? Spoiled? Made less exalted? Made more common? Muddled up?
Well, very likely they were. Those are very old stories and things change over centuries. But they are not a "mythology". King Arthur, unsatisfactory though King Arthur is, is about as close to a "mythology for England" as you are going to get.

His view is not my view. I think Tolkien had a romantic longing for a place and time that never existed and so he created that place and time and he did so brilliantly. Beautifully. It is the prehistory of England as it could have been, or maybe should have been. The Northwest of the Old World.

Tolkien didn't much like the modern world. He chose to spend his career in the past, either the real past or one he created.

Maybe we needn't bring Disney into this, but I will say that Disney had as much right to make Disney versions of some stories as anyone else did and if the stories are commercialized or trivialized or spoiled, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I thought PJ did that to LOTR, you see.

A lot of words leading nowhere, I guess, is what I'm writing. I can read and love LOTR over and over. But the minute I try to fix it into "the real world" it crumbles in my hands. It's a story, a novel, a romance, and taken as a whole it is beautiful and important.

Tolkien, so I understand, thought that The Silmarillion was more important than LOTR. I see why he thought that, it was because it was the history of the world he created. As a story, a novel, or a romance, it fails for me, but that's not surprising because it was never meant to be a story, a novel, a romance. Taken as history, it is another thing entirely.

None of the Elves (fairies) that Tolkien created are in the Faeryland I know. The closest beings to them are The Hobbits. They seem, to me, to be much like the brownies or little people, and it's fun (fun, as in a pleasure) to imagine that might be so.