Growing roots and Springs to come

When one gets done reading LoTR and decides to further explore Tolkien's works, the work done about Tolkien and his own perception of his work, one has to make a choice: to believe in Tolkien or not. More specifically, it is very important what one makes of the fact that Tolkien answered in the affirmative to the following question

' “You broke the veil, didn’t you, and passed through?” She [d'Ardenne in The Man and the Scholar] adds that he “readily admitted” that he had done so ... Both question and answer betoken an awareness of and an acceptance of the word as one avenue into perception of the super-natural, the super-real.'  (Splintered Light, p.32)

or, if one rather see an unprompted expression of this view,

'I have long ceased to invent . . . . I wait till I seem to know what really happened' (Letters, 231)

Letter 131 should dispel any remaining doubt. If Tolkien is not being true is at best quirky at worse a lunatic who is giving a grandeur to his work and myths in general that is uncalled for, which could be enough reason not to read him for more than what one gets from a novel. For Tolkien's take on this, I point to the similarity this view has with Nokes' towards Alf and Faërie.

Whilst I don't fully understand him, I believe Tolkien and I think he is onto something. Thus, I intend to investigate what that entails mainly in the two following senses: how Tolkien approaches his sources and who is his work for. Finally, I will take a quick guess at - as many have - why Tolkien insists on this super-natural (which he might just call natural as he called fairies) reality of myths.

Tolkien's view of myth as real informs the way he appreciates and approaches his sources. Tolkien as a wanderer in Faërie who records what's there, does not invent, is not an academic. (On Fairy Stories, p.33) If he were constructing a point supporting himself on previous literature, he would be indebted to these predecessors of his and would need to cite them. (Letters, 131) Tolkien is instead partaking in the boiling Cauldron of Story that accumulated over time new motifs and bits of history. Tolkien is a cook selecting from the Cauldron, adjusting the salt and the richness of the soup he will serve. In his tale Smith of Wootton Major, Tolkien himself elaborates on the role of the cook and on whose soup it's. With the fay star in his brow, Smith wandered into Faërie and brought it back with him to his day-to-day life as a smith. Through his craft, he created the useful with special grace and also the delightful. But the day came where he had to part with the fay-star for it was not his:

"Some things ... They cannot belong to a man for ever, nor be treasured as heirlooms. They are lent." (Smith Wootton Major, p.41)

This gift to cook, and thus the soup, are not the cook's. It's under this light that one better understands Tolkien's approach towards the elements in the Cauldron... his sources. Tolkien seems less than thrilled with a genealogical approach to sources and origins of stories as seen throughout On Fairy Stories and in comments like: ''Túrin is the hero: a figure that might be said (by the people that like that sort of thing, although it is not very useful) to be derived from elements in Sigurd the Volsung." (Letters, 132) Although elements taken from the Cauldron might be found in other tales, a new story teller composes with it a new tale. Furthermore, take Tolkien's time travel tale, The Lost Road, in it Aelfwine tells (or would have told) the story of King Sheave as tampered with by Tolkien, one could say, since he adds Frothi's mill not elsewhere associated with Sheave. (The Lost Road, p.95, 107) For Tolkien this is a new tale not a derivative story. As a myth, Sheave and Frothi are alive and are as much and like they are told. The existence of myths is what informs this unapologetic mixing of myths, a better way to look at it would probably be: Tolkien's adds to the Tree of Tales not by planting a new tree altogether or even one that points to the first one, but by grafts from one branch in that most majestic Tree to another.

A related question then comes, who are the flowers in this Tree for and who else should be grafting onto the Tree? It's clear, if not from the breadth of his own work, from the essay On Fairy Tales that Tolkien doesn't think these stories are either pointless or have no bearing in people's lives. He is quick to point to these as sources of escape, consolation and healing. But more importantly, the higher art form of Fantasy is more sub-creative, which for Tolkien is what we are to be all about:

'Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Disgraced he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light ' (Mythopoeia, Tolkien)

In Tolkien's own desire to build a majestic whole he would leave 'scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.' (Letters, 131) Then, grafting onto the Tree and telling the tales that constitute the sap that sustains it should be a Human enterprise. One interesting process at play is that of this sustenance. If Tolkien intends to incite us to preserve myths 'wielding paint and music and drama,' what does he do to that end? He gives us elf-friends and he wants to make us understand - not fool us; remember, I chose to believe in Tolkien - that we live in One grand story. 

Since stories exist as much as they are told, story telling and 'recording' stories from Faërie are more than two sides of one coin, but they converge when the story teller is successful in commanding belief from the reader. Flieger has an interesting point concerning the relationship between 'elf-friends' and the life of the myth. Elf-friends experience and transmit to us a portion of the mythology as alive in their experience. (Tolkien's Legendarium, p.188) In Tolkien's, elf-friends are giving the newly recorded myths life - the first sap flowing into that graft. Moreover, the Prose Edda was meant to a christian audience that was being reintroduced to Norse myths. Gangleri was Snorri's 'engaged outsider' through whom he links 'the "outside" reader or hearer to the "inside" culture that generates the myths.' (Tolkien's Legendarium, p.188) Gangleri is the 'elf-friend' that promotes sap to flow again into that branch of the Tree.

What about his attempts to link all in One grand story? For the skeptic, think about how he provides origins for the game of golf and nursery rimes in the Shire and, more substantively, links Númenor with other mythological worlds neighboring history - Queen Elizabeth II being a descendant of Sheaf - and connects Aelfwine with historical viking invasions. (The Lost Road, p.8,) Given that our sub-creativity is our God-given rag of lordship and Christ's story is the ultimate myth, I don't think it's a stretch to point in this direction to explain Tolkien's weaving worlds into One grand story. (On Fairy Tales, p.88; Letters, 131) I believe that he wants to reaffirm the unity of Creation; we have been, together with the sub-created, grafted onto the one Tree of Life and thus given life.

"In Paradise perchance the eye may stray

from gazing upon everlasting Day

to see the day-illumined, and renew

from mirrored truth the likeness of the True." (Mythopoeia, Tolkien) 

PT

Sources:
Flieger, Verlyn. Splintered Light : Logos and Language in Tolkien's World, The Kent State University Press, 2012.
Tolkien, J.R.R. Smith of Wootton Major : Farmer Giles of Ham, New York : Ballantine Books, 1988 Flieger, Verlyn, and Carl F. Hostetter. Tolkien's legendarium : essays on The history of Middle-earth. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Tolkien, J. R. R., Humphrey Carpenter, and Christopher Tolkien. The letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
Tolkien, J. R. R., and Christopher Tolkien. The lost road and other writings : language and legend before "The lord of the rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Tolkien, J. R. R., The Tolkien Reader. New York: Del Rey, 1966.