XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net
On Tue, 13 Aug 2013 10:47:59 +0200, Troels Forchhammer
wrote:
>In message
>Steve Hayes spoke these staves:
>>
>> On Mon, 12 Aug 2013 18:13:59 -0700 (PDT), R Davidovich
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> The Ainulindale, the Tolkien creation myth, is JRRT's halfway
>>> point between the pagan mythos he was emulating for Ancient
>>> England and the Hebrew/Christian Monotheistic system he accepted
>>> as the ideal.
>
>I would put that even stronger -- Tolkien accepted it as fact.
>
>However, one should not forget his complaint that the Arthurian world
>was, for his purposes, flawed because it explicitly contained the
>Christian faith:
>
> Also -- and here I hope I shall not sound absurd -- I was
> from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved
> country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its
> tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and
> found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There
> was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian,
> and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing
> English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there
> was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is,
> it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of
> Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I
> felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too
> lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For
> another and more important thing: it is involved in, and
> explicitly contains the Christian religion.
> For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me
> fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and
> contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth
> (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the
> primary ‘real’ world. (I am speaking, of course, of our
> present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian
> days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my
> essay, which you read.)
>Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (eds.), _The Letters of J.
>R. R. Tolkien_ (Kindle Locations 3052-3061).
>Letter no. 151 to Milton Waldman Late? 1951
Yes, Arthur was pre-English and post-English, with not much in between, though
perhaps with an English sub-test.
>Incidentally this is one of the things that I find is extremely
>interesting in connection with _The Fall of Arthur_, where Tolkien
>does include the Christian religion.
What Tolkien makes explicit in the Ainulindalë is not "religion" -- there is
no hint of religion there or anywhere else in Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos
(unlike the Arthurian cycle). What he does make explicit in the Ainulindalë,
however, is the Christian *worldview*.
>To avoid going into a long discussin of what precisely the quality
>was that Tolkien was seeking, let us just conclude that he wanted
>something that specifically did _not_ include the Christian religion
>explicitly, but he appears to also have wanted something that was
>nonetheless in accord with Christian beliefs. In the _Ainulindalë_ he
>created a cosmogonic myth that was essentially Christian in all but
>the names employed.
>
>>> On the other hand, JRRT's system has the elements of a future
>>> strong monotheism, in that Eru is the one who emanated or created
>>> the Ainur, awareness.
>>
>> The Ainulindalë makes explicit the Christian worldview on which
>> Tolkien's work is implicitly based.
>
>There is an essay pertaining to this by John William Houghton in Jane
>Chance's _Tolkien the Medievalist_ that I found very interesting.
>Houghton sums up his proposition nicely in this passage:
>
> The modern reader, finding the Ainulindalë very different
> from Genesis, might reasonably expect that if Eriol/Ælfwine
> had passed the Elvish story on to medieval thinkers, they
> would have found it equally strange, if not completely
> irreconcilable with their Christian faith. In fact, however,
> the commentary tradition -- and particularly the work of
> Saint Augustine of Hippo – allows Tolkien's myth to consort
> with Genesis at least as easily as the Timaeus does. [....].
> Had medieval theologians encountered the Ainulindalë, they
> would have found its picture of a double creation --
> creation as music in the song of the Ainur and then as fact
> in the word of Ilúvatar – reassuringly easy to fit into the
> schema of Augustine’s Christian-Neoplatonist synthesis.
>John William Houghton, 'Augustine in the cottage of lost play: The
>_Ainulindalë_ as asterisk cosmogony' in _Tolkien the Medievalist_ by
>Jane Chance (ed.)
>
>And if we exchanged Eru and Ilúvatar with their English equivalents,
>the One and All-father, the point would probably be even stronger
>(not to mention if we then interpret Eru, the One, as simply God).
>
>The set-up _within Arda_ with the Valar in charge of various spheres
>of existence on Arda is very much reminescent of pagan pantheons, but
>I agree that the _Ainulindalë_ creates a very Christian
>superstructure on this pagan set-up.
Early Christian theologians (eg St Justin Martyr) interpreted pagan deities as
angels, more specifically as fallen angels. See here for more:
http://khanya.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/angels-and-demons-and-egr
gores-book-review/
--
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)
|
