Tolkien wrote gospel. First, he adopts the appropriate style. The Bible mixes high and low registers in an attempt to translate the realm of the divine to the plane of mortals who must be made to understand them; Tolkien also mixes high and low registers in The Lord of the Rings. But even more to the point, he claims to have translated his works from Westron to English (see the appendix to The Lord of the Rings), much in the same way that Christ (through the gospels) translated the divine truths of our world, according to Christian theology.
Westron is a higher language and represents a higher truth, because it is older than English (the stories of Middle Earth form a collection of legend for modern England, so its languages must be older than English). Tolkien makes the link between old age and high truth clear in the appendix to The Lord of the Rings. While the orcs speak a degraded and foul speech, the enemies of Sauron cling to what is ancient “in language no less than in other matters.” The ancient languages are closer to the divine because they are closer to creation, and on the flipside, newer language is further from that truth since it has been appropriated by Evil. Since a moral (and theological) continuum is juxtaposed on top of the age of languages, Tolkien’s translation of the Red Book of Westmarch from the older Westron into modern English is similar to Christ’s translation of higher truth to the sphere of mortals.
The Lord of the Rings can be gospel only insofar as Middle Earth is not Tolkien’s invention. If Tolkien is attempting to translate some greater truth to us, then that greater truth must actually exist somewhere. If it does not exist somewhere out there, a mere novel would be appropriate, not gospel.
And Tolkien does seem to imply that he did not invent Middle Earth, that it is a place he can access through experiences like dreams, something he hints at repeatedly, whether in The Lost Road, The Notion Club Papers, or his own letters. This is all well and good, but what about sub-creation? Tolkien dedicates a significant portion of On Fairy Stories to explaining the term. It almost certainly applies to his own work. But how can he both discover his world and create it? He is the creator of his own world, breathing words into the void, while also the translator rendering an external truth intelligible to us. How is this possible?
The answer may lie in Christianity. Insofar as Tolkien is sub-creator, he is like God. Insofar as Tolkien is translator, he is like Christ. Christ and God form one dialectical unity, so Tolkien might see no problem with being both sub-God and sub-Christ.
Of course, Christ was translating the divine truth of one world to the inhabitants of that same world, while Tolkien is translating the truth of Middle Earth to the inhabitants of our modern world. In order to become the sub-Christ, Tolkien would be better off explaining Middle Earth to Hobbits than he is explaining it to us.
And yet, in a way, we are the inhabitants of Middle Earth. Tolkien’s work is meant as a body of legend for modern day England. It was always meant to include us.
This has far-reaching implications for what Tolkien actually meant by sub-creation. On its face, it is just a comparison between the work of a world-builder and the work of God (the ultimate world-builder). A writer can sub-creates simply by imagining a world totally sealed off from our own and committing its description to paper. But Tolkien’s own work implies that sub-creation is more than that. Perhaps we are only sub-creators if we actually insert ourselves as creators and translators into our own (“real”) world, literally doing the same work as the Creator.
In fact, if we are not careful enough, we could accuse Tolkien of having a God complex. To the secular mind, what is the difference between Tolkien’s work and Christ’s gospels? Only that we believe in one, and don’t believe in the other. If the Bible were lost to the sands of time, and The Lord of the Rings were found by archaeologists in hundreds of years, it could easily form the basis of a new religion, a new explanation for the origin and meaning of the world, because after all, Middle Earth is interwoven with our own world.
But Tolkien did not have a God complex, because he was a Christian, and fervently believed in the difference between God’s creation and his own work: one is true, while the other is merely homage. Granted, it is fundamentally the same work, yet Tolkien’s creation is sub, because how could it not be? Tolkien knows for a fact that God created the universe, and that is that. Sub-creation is almost exactly like creation, except that it is not.
When Tolkien mixes the high and low styles, when Tolkien tells us he has translated The Lord of the Rings from its original Westron, he is situating himself as sub-Christ, translating the knowledge of Middle Earth (our own world) so that it may be available to humans today. But the genius of the philologist is equally essential to his work as sub-God. Sprinkling stylistic and linguistic variations throughout Middle Earth—variations across races, space, and time—is part of what makes his sub-creation internally consistent, since any world approaching reality has this kind of complexity. Thanks to his knowledge of language, Tolkien both perfects his world and writes gospel.
By looking at Tolkien’s language, it is possible to guess at the very heart of Tolkien’s relationship to Middle Earth, as well as his idea of sub-creation. It is through the combination of the sub-Christ and the sub-God within him that Tolkien becomes a true sub-creator. Real sub-creation is inherently dialectical, relying on both the creation of a world and its translation to our own world. Moreover, if Tolkien’s work existed in a vacuum, if he had not taken great pains to connect it to the modern world, if both worlds were not one and the same according to Tolkien, he could never be sub-Christ, because Christ did not bridge the gap between two separate worlds; he translated the world to itself. If we aspire to be sub-creators, we have no choice but to take up our tools and start tinkering with our very own world.
Westron is a higher language and represents a higher truth, because it is older than English (the stories of Middle Earth form a collection of legend for modern England, so its languages must be older than English). Tolkien makes the link between old age and high truth clear in the appendix to The Lord of the Rings. While the orcs speak a degraded and foul speech, the enemies of Sauron cling to what is ancient “in language no less than in other matters.” The ancient languages are closer to the divine because they are closer to creation, and on the flipside, newer language is further from that truth since it has been appropriated by Evil. Since a moral (and theological) continuum is juxtaposed on top of the age of languages, Tolkien’s translation of the Red Book of Westmarch from the older Westron into modern English is similar to Christ’s translation of higher truth to the sphere of mortals.
The Lord of the Rings can be gospel only insofar as Middle Earth is not Tolkien’s invention. If Tolkien is attempting to translate some greater truth to us, then that greater truth must actually exist somewhere. If it does not exist somewhere out there, a mere novel would be appropriate, not gospel.
And Tolkien does seem to imply that he did not invent Middle Earth, that it is a place he can access through experiences like dreams, something he hints at repeatedly, whether in The Lost Road, The Notion Club Papers, or his own letters. This is all well and good, but what about sub-creation? Tolkien dedicates a significant portion of On Fairy Stories to explaining the term. It almost certainly applies to his own work. But how can he both discover his world and create it? He is the creator of his own world, breathing words into the void, while also the translator rendering an external truth intelligible to us. How is this possible?
The answer may lie in Christianity. Insofar as Tolkien is sub-creator, he is like God. Insofar as Tolkien is translator, he is like Christ. Christ and God form one dialectical unity, so Tolkien might see no problem with being both sub-God and sub-Christ.
Of course, Christ was translating the divine truth of one world to the inhabitants of that same world, while Tolkien is translating the truth of Middle Earth to the inhabitants of our modern world. In order to become the sub-Christ, Tolkien would be better off explaining Middle Earth to Hobbits than he is explaining it to us.
And yet, in a way, we are the inhabitants of Middle Earth. Tolkien’s work is meant as a body of legend for modern day England. It was always meant to include us.
This has far-reaching implications for what Tolkien actually meant by sub-creation. On its face, it is just a comparison between the work of a world-builder and the work of God (the ultimate world-builder). A writer can sub-creates simply by imagining a world totally sealed off from our own and committing its description to paper. But Tolkien’s own work implies that sub-creation is more than that. Perhaps we are only sub-creators if we actually insert ourselves as creators and translators into our own (“real”) world, literally doing the same work as the Creator.
In fact, if we are not careful enough, we could accuse Tolkien of having a God complex. To the secular mind, what is the difference between Tolkien’s work and Christ’s gospels? Only that we believe in one, and don’t believe in the other. If the Bible were lost to the sands of time, and The Lord of the Rings were found by archaeologists in hundreds of years, it could easily form the basis of a new religion, a new explanation for the origin and meaning of the world, because after all, Middle Earth is interwoven with our own world.
But Tolkien did not have a God complex, because he was a Christian, and fervently believed in the difference between God’s creation and his own work: one is true, while the other is merely homage. Granted, it is fundamentally the same work, yet Tolkien’s creation is sub, because how could it not be? Tolkien knows for a fact that God created the universe, and that is that. Sub-creation is almost exactly like creation, except that it is not.
When Tolkien mixes the high and low styles, when Tolkien tells us he has translated The Lord of the Rings from its original Westron, he is situating himself as sub-Christ, translating the knowledge of Middle Earth (our own world) so that it may be available to humans today. But the genius of the philologist is equally essential to his work as sub-God. Sprinkling stylistic and linguistic variations throughout Middle Earth—variations across races, space, and time—is part of what makes his sub-creation internally consistent, since any world approaching reality has this kind of complexity. Thanks to his knowledge of language, Tolkien both perfects his world and writes gospel.
By looking at Tolkien’s language, it is possible to guess at the very heart of Tolkien’s relationship to Middle Earth, as well as his idea of sub-creation. It is through the combination of the sub-Christ and the sub-God within him that Tolkien becomes a true sub-creator. Real sub-creation is inherently dialectical, relying on both the creation of a world and its translation to our own world. Moreover, if Tolkien’s work existed in a vacuum, if he had not taken great pains to connect it to the modern world, if both worlds were not one and the same according to Tolkien, he could never be sub-Christ, because Christ did not bridge the gap between two separate worlds; he translated the world to itself. If we aspire to be sub-creators, we have no choice but to take up our tools and start tinkering with our very own world.
- JS
3 comments:
Auerbach is right to point to the union of high and low styles as a characteristic of the Gospel texts. But, interestingly, it is largely by means of very plain, direct narrations that sublime and transcendent events are related. Tolkien seems to approach his writing from almost the opposite direction: the glory and nobility of the events described is clear from the first, conveyed in reverent style. The prosaic, humble quality of his writing derives from the perspective of the hobbit eye-witnesses and the attention to precise details of the inner consistency of the world of Middle-Earth.
I think you're on to something with sub-creators also being sub-translators—not just Godlike but also Christlike. But a Christ-figure does more than translate divine realities into human terms. Is there a sense in which Tolkien can be said to have suffered to redeem his creation?
~LJF
I think that you are absolutely correct when you discuss how a sub-creator must be a creator of a “real” world and a translator. Indeed, Tolkien is more committed to both tasks than any other authors. Specifically, the letter in which he criticizes the Dutch translator for altering place names really demonstrates that he must exist as the sole translator of the story in order to defend his position as the sole sub-creator of the Middle-earth. Otherwise, the Middle-earth would be the sub-creation of someone else.
In today’s reading, we had the opportunity to further investigate what Tolkien means by “real.” In the Notion Club Papers, he explicitly states that there are two orders of reality, and the mythology indeed exists as a secondary reality, since our imagination can allow us to visualize and experience the events in the world of story. Because of the existence of the secondary reality that is brought to life by human imagination, Tolkien’s imaginary history of the Middle-earth can also be real in our imagination. Therefore, he created a “real” world by constructing this imaginary storyline in the LOTR.
Meanwhile, I am a little curious about whether you mean “translate” in the literary sense. If not, what other activities would you consider to be acts of “translation”?
RC
I obviously agree that Tolkien was writing something like gospel, but I am not convinced that he meant Westron to be more elevated in style than English. Rather, he argues that he has tried to "English" the hobbits' original Westron to make it as similar in style as possible. The more divine languages that he created would be Quenyan and Sindarin, with the former being spoken by the Elves in Valinor, the latter those who stayed in Middle earth. And yet, even so, I do not think Tolkien would equate Quenyan with divine speech, thus the continuing problem of translation. RLFB
Post a Comment