Tolkien Day! (It is back!) ;)
"The Hobbit, which has much more essential life in it, was quite independently conceived: I did not know as I began it that it belonged. But it proved to be the discovery of the completion of the whole, its mode of descent to earth, and merging into 'history'. As the high Legends of the beginning are supposed to look at things through Elvish minds, so the middle tale of the Hobbit takes a virtually human point of view-and the last tale blends them.
I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) Anyway all this stuff* is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world, it is indeed usually at strife. This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. It has various opportunities of 'Fall'. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as 'its own', the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator - especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, - and so to the Machine (or Magic). " ~Letter 131 to Milton Waldman
“The Shire-hobbits have no very great need of metals, but the Dwarfs are agents; and in the east of the mountains of Lune are some of their mines (as shown in the earlier legends): no doubt the reason, or one of them, for their often crossing the Shire. Some of the modernities found among them (I think especially of umbrellas) and probably, I think certainly, a mistake, of the same order as their silly names, and tolerable with them only as a deliberate ‘anglicization’ to point the contrast between them and other peoples in the most familiar terms. I do not think people of that sort and stage of life and development can be both peaceable, and very brave and tough ‘at a pinch’.** Experience in two wars has confirmed in me in that view. But hobbits are not a Utopian vision, or recommended as an ideal in their own or any age. They, as all peoples and their situations, are an historical accident-as the Elves point out to Frodo-and an impermanent one in the long view. I am not a reformer nor an ‘embalmer’! I am not a ‘reformer’ (by exercise of power) since it seems doomed to Sarumanism. But ‘embalming’ has its own punishments.” ~Letter 154 to Naomi Mitchison, September 1954
Footnote **”The chief way in which Hobbits differ from experience is that they are not cruel, and have no blood-sports, and have by implication a feeling for ‘wild creatures’ that are not alas! Very commonly found among the nearest contemporary parallels.
...
There are certainly a lot resistance to thinking of LotR as being an allegory by Tolkien but as he said in the preface to LotR, one cannot be wholly unaffected to experience. I find that very true when one writes anything creative... somehow personal experiences do sometimes take part in how it influences what we write.
And obviously, any passage in the Letters about hobbits deserve a spot in my Tolkien Days. ;)
I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) Anyway all this stuff* is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world, it is indeed usually at strife. This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. It has various opportunities of 'Fall'. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as 'its own', the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator - especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, - and so to the Machine (or Magic). " ~Letter 131 to Milton Waldman
“The Shire-hobbits have no very great need of metals, but the Dwarfs are agents; and in the east of the mountains of Lune are some of their mines (as shown in the earlier legends): no doubt the reason, or one of them, for their often crossing the Shire. Some of the modernities found among them (I think especially of umbrellas) and probably, I think certainly, a mistake, of the same order as their silly names, and tolerable with them only as a deliberate ‘anglicization’ to point the contrast between them and other peoples in the most familiar terms. I do not think people of that sort and stage of life and development can be both peaceable, and very brave and tough ‘at a pinch’.** Experience in two wars has confirmed in me in that view. But hobbits are not a Utopian vision, or recommended as an ideal in their own or any age. They, as all peoples and their situations, are an historical accident-as the Elves point out to Frodo-and an impermanent one in the long view. I am not a reformer nor an ‘embalmer’! I am not a ‘reformer’ (by exercise of power) since it seems doomed to Sarumanism. But ‘embalming’ has its own punishments.” ~Letter 154 to Naomi Mitchison, September 1954
Footnote **”The chief way in which Hobbits differ from experience is that they are not cruel, and have no blood-sports, and have by implication a feeling for ‘wild creatures’ that are not alas! Very commonly found among the nearest contemporary parallels.
...
There are certainly a lot resistance to thinking of LotR as being an allegory by Tolkien but as he said in the preface to LotR, one cannot be wholly unaffected to experience. I find that very true when one writes anything creative... somehow personal experiences do sometimes take part in how it influences what we write.
And obviously, any passage in the Letters about hobbits deserve a spot in my Tolkien Days. ;)