We have already discussed in previous classes and posts that
Tolkien desired to do more than simply write a story when he set about The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the numerous other works in the
"Tolkien-verse" as we often call it.
He filled his world with languages, races, and histories which drew on
counterparts from our world in an effort to create a new mythology for
England. This was an ambitious and
highly unusual undertaking in and of itself since the creation of mythologies
associated with lands or nations is not common in this day and age, nor even
during Tolkien's heyday (as opposed to ones associated with religions or
peoples, which persist to this day).
But how
was Tolkien to go about creating this mythology? We already discussed some of his sources in a
previous class, but this Wednesday we focused on the aforementioned languages
and also the more nebulous but no less important concept of dreams as a route
to historical understanding and experience.
First, the languages. Tolkien
created at least parts of over a dozen languages and dialects, with particular
attention to the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin, which are extremely well
realized. These languages owe their
construction in large part to human languages which Tolkien was fond of, such
as Finnish.
For
Tolkien, language was more than merely communicating thoughts, but more so
about becoming a tangible item of communication. In the mythos, the Ainur could communicate
amongst themselves through thought alone, but they chose to develop a language
and speak it, even though spoken language is a filter of sorts on pure
expression of an idea. Language is a
tangible thing though. Whether sonic (hearing
and speaking) or visual (reading and writing) it is perceived through human
senses directly and therefore gives the impression of something real. Or, more accurately, language represents a
combination of that which we can experience with our senses and that which our
minds can interact with as an idea. As
it is noted in The Notion Club Papers
on page 202, language can be thought of as "token (perceived by sense)
plus significance (for the mind)".
The aim
to make the mythos more tangible is also the rationale behind Tolkien's
frequent use of and reference to dreams in his works. From this class's readings, the obvious
example is that of Alboin from The Lost
Road. There are first some ties back
to Tolkien's roots in language to consider.
Alboin, like Tolkien, possessed an affinity for and love language, and
as he delves further into the Numenorian memories and learns more of the
associated languages, it helps to bring him closer to that history. Tolkien himself had a great love for old
languages, and had even written poetry in long dead languages during his life
time. Such things are described in
Flieger's Question of Time. But in the case of the Numenorian dreams,
Tolkien's picture of the mythos is made up of far more than just language. Language is a part of the experience, but
Alboin also gains the knowledge of those long dead men by vicariously living
fragments of their lives.
The Lost Road was originally conceived
as a time travel story by Tolkien in a pairing effort with C.S. Lewis. Yet dreaming the memories of events long
since past does not strictly speaking fit what we might define as time
travel. Alboin himself does not enter
the times he is able to experience, not with his own body. And he cannot change or affect anything that
occurs in the dreams, only experience the events which occurred for the
Numenorian characters. But this is still
a tangible and tactile sensation for Alboin.
It is something between living one's own life and learning of historical
events second hand as through reading of them.
The experience is static, like any already occurring piece of history,
but still tangible. This is not an alien
concept in fantasy work; similar methods are employed, for example, in more
contemporary fantasy works (apologies for stepping outside the Tolkien-verse
for a moment) like The Wheel of Time,
during which the protagonist at one point experiences the collective history of
a people through a series of dreams wherein he relives the memories of various
members of that people and gains a knowledge of their history thought long lost.
This is
in keeping with how Tolkien thought of his own creation process for the
universe of The Lord of the Rings and his associated work. He viewed the work as less literally a thing
of his own creation as opposed to a world he discovered through his own
mind. He cites the example of the Ents
specifically in his letter to Auden, noting that it and other elements of the
story had been "going on in the 'unconscious' for some time..." This seems to be a fairly close parallel to
what Tolkien writes about in his story of Alboin and his dreams. While Tolkien may not have literally gone to
sleep and experienced the tangible memories of Ents in Middle Earth (there is
indeed some speculation that the Ents might have been born out of a
subconscious reference to the ending of Shakespeare's Macbeth) they nevertheless came from his own mind without him
actively crafting them.
Finally,
bringing the topic back around to language, Tolkien creates a sort of link to
the past through his works. His purpose
in writing The Lost Road was
ostensibly to solidify this link from his mythology to the world of the present
day. His main conceit was that languages
provided the link, which he spells out in the chain of names for characters
which he traces back to the days of Numenor.
As Shippey notes in The Road to
Middle Earth, the plot of The Lost
Road was less important than Tolkien's theory of linguistic comprehension
of history. In that manner, the nature
of much of Tolkien's work can be seen in this light. Not creating just a story per se, but
creating the sensation of realness in his worlds, a thing that could
conceivably be real to the reader
J. M.
1 comment:
I think your argument for the sensory Secondary Reality is compelling, especially when considering Tolkien’s habit of describing languages or histories as having a certain “flavor.” For reasons unknown to me, Tolkien favors taste as the sense of choice when describing a character’s preference such as in The Lost Road with Alboin. As you say the flavor of tangible, thus giving the impression of a consistent Secondary Reality, and therefore “realness.” And what is more, this aesthetic taste is an inheritable trait, a heightened sense passed among subsequent generations. Tolkien, as we discussed in class on Wednesday, is claiming that language carries with it aspects of the physical, i.e. the tangible reality.
What remains, I believe, is the opportunity to push the sensory experience of Tolkien’s legendarium further, for he himself has described the works as having an atmosphere, a feeling of surrounding, a taste of a certain natural setting. These physicality’s allow the reader to experience the Secondary Reality through imagined sensory perception, and this, I believe, is one of the ways to insulate the internally consistent sub-creation. Words and language can only perceive so much until they inspire feeling, sight, taste, hearing, or touch. Yes, these things are all imagined, but sensory imaginations are, as you say, more tangible than simple images. Tolkien did not just use language as the backbone to a narrative, he created its physical, sensual form to fully convey the Secondary Reality.
- Katie B.
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