XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   On Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:15:42 -0500, David Trimboli    
   wrote:   
      
   >In _Letters_, letter number 131 (I'm reading this from the second   
   >edition of _The Silmarillion_), Tolkien is discussing how his stories   
   >revolve around the themes of Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. He   
   >describes the difference between Art and Power. He writes:   
   >   
   >    The Enemy in successive forms is always 'naturally' concerned with   
   >    sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines; but the   
   >    problem: that this frightful evil can and does arise from an   
   >    apparently good root, the desire to benefit the world and others*   
   >    — speedily and according to the benefactor's own plans — is a   
   >    recurrent motive.   
   >   
   >The footnote reads:   
   >   
   >*  Not in the Beginner of Evil: his was a sub-creative Fall, and hence   
   >    the Elves (the representatives of sub-creation par excellence) were   
   >    peculiarly his enemies, and the special object of his desire and   
   >    hate — and open to his deceits. Their Fall is into possessiveness and   
   >    (to a less degree) into perversion of their art to power.   
   >   
   >I don't understand the phrase "sub-creative Fall." I understand the   
   >difference between sub-creation and power. Does the phrase simply mean   
   >Melkor did not practice sub-creation, and his desire to dominate and   
   >order all things, to exercise power, took over his existence?   
      
   It's not very clear.   
      
   Does the "sub-creation" refer to Tolkien's world, in which both elves and   
   Melkor are his own sub-creations?   
      
   Or does it refer to the elves specifically as a sub-creation within that   
   world?   
      
   The querstion of power has echoes of C.S. Lewis's space trilogy, where there   
   were similar notions that power intended to be beneficial gets perverted to   
   evil.   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes   
   Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm   
        http://www.goodreads.com/hayesstw   
        http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)