. . . Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia
Lately we’ve been exploring the nature of dragons and their connection to the jewels which they are so famous for hoarding. I would like to address a few of the questions we grappled with during discussion. To begin with: What category of creature does “dragon” fall under: monster, animal, person– and is it the same category as Sauron or Morgoth?
Dragons do not seem to fit into any one category: they are monsters but also animals, but have a human-like rationality; they are hybrid and unfamiliar, but can be predictable. The only category they fall into completely is “imaginary.” Monsters are artifacts. Like mixing up adjectives and nouns (like “green sun”), we can mix up natural elements in new ways to create monsters (like dragons) in our secondary world. Dragons are an example of subcreation, but the kind of subcreation that acts back on us, making them terrifying and dangerous. Like Feanor creating the Silmarils that subsequently corrupt him, we create dragons that scare and threaten us. Worse than these threats, however, is this crucial aspect of a dragon’s nature: hoarding jewels.
What are Tolkien’s jewels? We can see clearly from his description of the Silmarils that they are much more than pretty stones:
“Yet that crystal was to the Silmarils but as is the body to the Children of Illuvatar: the house of its inner fire, that is within it and yet in all parts of it, and is its life. . . . Therefore even in the darkness of the deepest treasury the Silmarils of their own radiance shone like the stars of Varda; and yet, as were they indeed living things, they rejoiced in light and received it and gave it back in hues more marvelous than before” (Quenta Silmarillion ch. 7).
Jewels are good subcreations, through which the “refracted light” can shimmer. They are little incarnations, because the light inside is not from the subcreator, but the primary Creator. Now Morgoth, the destroyer of the subcreation of the Valar, would undoubtedly want to demolish these jewels completely. However, dragons are not creators or destroyers like Morgoth– they are not evil in the same way, wanting instead to hoard the gems, but not use them (for good or ill) or do away with them. Dragons effectively prevent anyone else from seeing the jewels in their splendor.
“There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light. . . . Dragons may not have much real use for all their wealth, but they know it to an ounce as a rule, especially after long possession, and Smaug was no exception” (The Hobbit ch. 12).
So why is it so essential that we defeat the dragon? If dragons are so dangerous, it certainly is tempting to leave them alone with their hoard and abandon all hope of seeing the jewels… but this is dissatisfying. We all want to see the dragon slain, don’t we? But even admitting that the dragon exists is embarrassing. Acknowledging the use of the imagination, especially to the extent of conjuring up dragons, is childish and unproductive, and we are embarrassed of that. We are afraid of the monster because we are afraid to use our imagination. And this fear may be warranted– dragons are indeed dangerous, as are the Silmarils and the Ring. But is this fear enough to let us be complacent with the dragon, and let him sit peacefully on his hoard?
No. The jewels are worth the fight. If the dragons are the worst of our imagination, the jewels are the best of it. If we give in to the fear of the dragon, we miss the jewels, which are more than just a subcreation of imagination: they hold the light! We are meant to see the jewels, and to want to make the jewels, as we are meant to subcreate because we are made in the image and likeness of the Creator. If we are afraid of our own imagination, we would never make good subcreations; if we never confront the dragon, we will never get to the jewels.
And if we cannot believe in the jewels– that the jewels are worth fighting a dragon for– how can we believe in the story of the greatest Jewel, the mother who held the Light in her womb? How can we believe in the story of the Incarnation, or the transformation of bread into flesh? A belief like this requires the imagination that the dragons guard by fear– only this time the stakes are much higher, since the imagination is not subcreating something new, but instead helping us to understand reality. Imagination used in this way fuels belief, and we must fight the embarrassment that condemns both imagination and belief as childish or unproductive. The glory and majesty of the jewels demand that we slay the dragon.
-LJE
3 comments:
You have captured the light of the Jewels beautifully! Yes, this is why we must fight the Dragon for the Jewels. I had not quite put it in such clear terms before, but you are right: we cannot abandon the work of the imagination out of embarrassment because that it is to abandon the eucatastrophe, too. How then do we fight? RLFB
I have always been fascinated by the dragons that Tolkein sub-created in his secondary worlds. Specifically, the conniving, evil, greedy, and ruthless Smaug. I thought the parallel you drew between the reason for human’s creation of dragons and Feanor’s creation of the Silmarils was extremely interesting. It was not something that I had considered before. The idea that we as sub-creators choose to create evil monsters because of our desire for fear and anxiety is a super interesting view into the human psyche. It is maybe through this idea that we view dragons as more complex than just pure evil. Since they are true sub-creations and we choose to incorporate them in our stories, we also thus make them complex and often a mix of humanlike and monsterlike characteristics. Thus, the point you make about Dragons only hoarding the jewels and not using them for good or evil is something that is very challenging to grapple with. Especially because the jewels in these stories are more than just shiny objects of affection like diamonds are in our earthly world. They represent something much greater and are a source of not only pure good but also divinity. So it is this dichotomy of what the dragon is, and also what it holds that creates the urge to battle with the dragon in order to recover the great jewels. I really enjoyed reading this post, it helped me better understand and grapple with the meaning and relationship between jewels and dragons.
TJG
Dragons have always stood out to me as sort of strange in Tolkien’s works. They are somewhat out of place even in a world inhabited by so many seemingly magical creatures, primarily out of their size and importance on the world. It’s a fantasy story- of course there will be dragons! When you stop treating their presence like a given though, it becomes a little stranger. They have a generally unknown origin, and they don’t get to tell you much about themselves either. Smaug, for example, has no information about him known prior to his arrival in Lake Town. Glaurung has only marginally more information, as we know he was made by Morgoth- but he is the only known example of a dragon’s actual origin. When combined with the fact that the Bible, as well as pagan folklore, speaks quite a bit about dragons, they largely serve to contextualize the story in an ancient, far off time, as well as provide a sort of “final boss” for many characters by showing the comparative value of their jewels.
-BTS
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