07.04.14 "On Fairy-Stories" by J.R.R. Tolkien Collection of Quotes pgs. 113-154
This was the collection of quotes I had promised two days ago; chalk up my lying to getting a clean and organization bug up my butt; I ended up cleaning the house and my own room. I'd be upset I lied but I kind of found it to be a fantastic time of purging away dirt and disorganization. Anyways, here are the quotes I promised.
These quotes are from the collection of essays by J.R.R. Tolkien called The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. I recommend this book to any of you who enjoy Tolkien's writing, and who would like to read more of his work that does not relate to his own personal fiction. As the title suggests, this collection of essays are critical essays on different books such as Beowulf and the essay I got to finish before I had to give the book back to the library is about the nature of fairy-stories and what makes a true fairy-story; a fantastic read that I recommend. I hope these quotes inspire you to go out there and read it for yourself.
"For the trouble with the real folk of Faerie is that they do not always look like what they are; and they put on the pride and beauty that we would fain wear ourselves. At least part of the magic that they wield for the good or evil of man is power to play on the desires of his body and his heart."
pg. 113
"[...] For if elves are true, and really exist independently of our tales about them, then this also is certainly true: elves are not primarily concerned with us, nor we with them. Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet."
pg. 113
"But if a waking writer tells you that his tale is only a thing imagined in his sleep, he cheats deliberately the primal conceiving mind, of imagined wonder. It is often reported of fairies (truly or lyingly,) do not know that they are workers of illusion, that they are cheaters of men by 'fantasy'; but that is quite another matter. That is their affair. Such trickeries happen, at any rate, inside tales in which the fairies are not themselves illusions; behind the fantasy real wills and powers exist, independent of the minds and purposes of men."
pg. 116
"So with regard to fairy-stories, I feel that it is more interesting, and also in its way more difficult, to consider what they are, what they have become for us, and what values the long alchemic processes of time have produced in them. In Dasents' words I would say: 'We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.' Though, oddly enough, Dasent by 'the soup' meant a mishmash of bogus pre-history founded on the early surmises of Comparative Philology; and by 'desire to see the bones' he meant a demand to see the workings and proofs, that led to these theories. By ' the soup' I mean the story as it is served up by its author or teller, and by 'the bones' its sources or material--even when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not, of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup."
pg. 120
"Let us take what looks like a clear case of Olympian nature-myth: the Norse god Thorr. His name is Thunder, of which Thorr is the Norse form; and it is not difficult to interpret his hammer, Miollnir, as lightning. Yet Thorr has (as far as our late records go) a very marked character or personality, which cannot be found in Thunder or in lightning, even though some details can, as it were, be related to these natural phenomena: for instance, his red beard, his loud voice and violent temper, his blundering and smashing strength. None the less is it asking a question without much meaning, if we inquire: which came first, nature-allegories about personalized thunder in the mountains, splitting rocks and trees; or stories about an irascible, not very clever, red-beard farmer, of a strength beyond common measure, a person (in all but mere stature) very like the Northern farmers, the baendr by whom Thorr was chiefly beloved? To a picture of such a man Thorr may be held to have 'dwindled', or from it the god may be held to have been enlarged. But I doubt whether either view is right--not by itself, not if you insist that one of these things must precede the other. It is more reasonable to suppose that the farmer popped up in the very moment when Thunder got a voice and face; that there was a distant growl of thunder in the hills every-time a story-teller heard a farmer in a rage."
pg. 124 | italics added by me
"If we use childadult or grown-up in a bad sense (it has also legitimately a good one). The process of growing older is not necessarily allied to growing wickeder, though the two do often happen together. Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder; but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive. But it is one of the lessons of fairy-stories (if we can speak of the lessons of things that do not lecture) that on callow, lumpish, and selfish youth peril, sorrow, and the shadow of death can bestow dignity, and even sometimes wisdom."
pg. 137
"If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults. They will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can."
pg. 137
"To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode."
pg. 140
"'Dear Sir,' I said--'Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-Creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that more from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons--'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.'"
pg. 144
"Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured! If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion."
pg. 144
"Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative made, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker."
pg. 145
"The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive.' In its fairy-tale--or otherworld--setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does no deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to a child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accomplished by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality."
pg. 153-154
"In such stories when the sudden 'turn' comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a roment gazes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of a story, and lets a gleam come through.
"Seven long years I served for thee,
The glassy hill I clamb for thee,
The bluidy shirt I wrang for thee,
And wilt thou not wauken and turn to me?"
He heard and turned to her."
pg. 154
These quotes are from the collection of essays by J.R.R. Tolkien called The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. I recommend this book to any of you who enjoy Tolkien's writing, and who would like to read more of his work that does not relate to his own personal fiction. As the title suggests, this collection of essays are critical essays on different books such as Beowulf and the essay I got to finish before I had to give the book back to the library is about the nature of fairy-stories and what makes a true fairy-story; a fantastic read that I recommend. I hope these quotes inspire you to go out there and read it for yourself.
"For the trouble with the real folk of Faerie is that they do not always look like what they are; and they put on the pride and beauty that we would fain wear ourselves. At least part of the magic that they wield for the good or evil of man is power to play on the desires of his body and his heart."
pg. 113
"[...] For if elves are true, and really exist independently of our tales about them, then this also is certainly true: elves are not primarily concerned with us, nor we with them. Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet."
pg. 113
"But if a waking writer tells you that his tale is only a thing imagined in his sleep, he cheats deliberately the primal conceiving mind, of imagined wonder. It is often reported of fairies (truly or lyingly,) do not know that they are workers of illusion, that they are cheaters of men by 'fantasy'; but that is quite another matter. That is their affair. Such trickeries happen, at any rate, inside tales in which the fairies are not themselves illusions; behind the fantasy real wills and powers exist, independent of the minds and purposes of men."
pg. 116
"So with regard to fairy-stories, I feel that it is more interesting, and also in its way more difficult, to consider what they are, what they have become for us, and what values the long alchemic processes of time have produced in them. In Dasents' words I would say: 'We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.' Though, oddly enough, Dasent by 'the soup' meant a mishmash of bogus pre-history founded on the early surmises of Comparative Philology; and by 'desire to see the bones' he meant a demand to see the workings and proofs, that led to these theories. By ' the soup' I mean the story as it is served up by its author or teller, and by 'the bones' its sources or material--even when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not, of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup."
pg. 120
"Let us take what looks like a clear case of Olympian nature-myth: the Norse god Thorr. His name is Thunder, of which Thorr is the Norse form; and it is not difficult to interpret his hammer, Miollnir, as lightning. Yet Thorr has (as far as our late records go) a very marked character or personality, which cannot be found in Thunder or in lightning, even though some details can, as it were, be related to these natural phenomena: for instance, his red beard, his loud voice and violent temper, his blundering and smashing strength. None the less is it asking a question without much meaning, if we inquire: which came first, nature-allegories about personalized thunder in the mountains, splitting rocks and trees; or stories about an irascible, not very clever, red-beard farmer, of a strength beyond common measure, a person (in all but mere stature) very like the Northern farmers, the baendr by whom Thorr was chiefly beloved? To a picture of such a man Thorr may be held to have 'dwindled', or from it the god may be held to have been enlarged. But I doubt whether either view is right--not by itself, not if you insist that one of these things must precede the other. It is more reasonable to suppose that the farmer popped up in the very moment when Thunder got a voice and face; that there was a distant growl of thunder in the hills every-time a story-teller heard a farmer in a rage."
pg. 124 | italics added by me
"If we use childadult or grown-up in a bad sense (it has also legitimately a good one). The process of growing older is not necessarily allied to growing wickeder, though the two do often happen together. Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder; but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive. But it is one of the lessons of fairy-stories (if we can speak of the lessons of things that do not lecture) that on callow, lumpish, and selfish youth peril, sorrow, and the shadow of death can bestow dignity, and even sometimes wisdom."
pg. 137
"If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults. They will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can."
pg. 137
"To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode."
pg. 140
"'Dear Sir,' I said--'Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-Creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that more from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons--'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.'"
pg. 144
"Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured! If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion."
pg. 144
"Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative made, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker."
pg. 145
"The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive.' In its fairy-tale--or otherworld--setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does no deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to a child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accomplished by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality."
pg. 153-154
"In such stories when the sudden 'turn' comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a roment gazes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of a story, and lets a gleam come through.
"Seven long years I served for thee,
The glassy hill I clamb for thee,
The bluidy shirt I wrang for thee,
And wilt thou not wauken and turn to me?"
He heard and turned to her."
pg. 154