Tolkien Day! (a bit late)
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. However, that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I feel. For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should chiefly be grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe to my mother, who clung to her conversion and died young, largely through the hardships of poverty resulting from it.
Certainly I have not been nourished by English Literature, in which I do not suppose I am better read than you; for the simple reason that I have never found much there in which to rest my heart (or heart and head together). I was brought up in the Classics, and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer. Also being a philologist, getting a large part of any aesthetic pleasure that I am capable of from the form of words (and especially from the fresh association of word-form with word-sense), I have always best enjoyed things in a foreign language, or one so remote as to feel like it (such as anglo-Saxon). But that is enough about me."
~Letter 142 to Robert Marry, S.J., grandson of Sir James Murray (founder of Oxford English Dictionary close friend of the Tolkien family.
Dec. 1953
...
P.S-- I got my blue CP3 for MVP shirt today. It's a bit big but manageable..hopefully it'll shrink when i wash it.
I'm pleased. =)
Certainly I have not been nourished by English Literature, in which I do not suppose I am better read than you; for the simple reason that I have never found much there in which to rest my heart (or heart and head together). I was brought up in the Classics, and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer. Also being a philologist, getting a large part of any aesthetic pleasure that I am capable of from the form of words (and especially from the fresh association of word-form with word-sense), I have always best enjoyed things in a foreign language, or one so remote as to feel like it (such as anglo-Saxon). But that is enough about me."
~Letter 142 to Robert Marry, S.J., grandson of Sir James Murray (founder of Oxford English Dictionary close friend of the Tolkien family.
Dec. 1953
...
P.S-- I got my blue CP3 for MVP shirt today. It's a bit big but manageable..hopefully it'll shrink when i wash it.
I'm pleased. =)