A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion

Transcription

1 A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion +Stratford Caldecott ABSTRACT Tolkien s vision of the cosmos around us and of the powers that shape it is expressed in the Ainulindalë, the opening chapter of The Silmarillion. It contains a description of Tolkien s philosophy of creation and creativity embedded in an account of God s creation of the world, beginning with Music, and connected with various patristic and mystical writings of the Christian tradition, as well as with the Kabbalah. This holistic vision of the universe in the light of Christian teaching gives us the basis for Christian ecology, and a hint of the writer s vocation. The popularity and influence of JRRT s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and the assiduous work of Christopher Tolkien in editing his father s unpublished notes and manuscripts over several decades, have drawn attention to the immense significance for Tolkien and for his readers of the mythological framework and detailed backdrop of the novels. This was hinted at in the novels themselves, and some fragments were published in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, but the full scope of Tolkien s mythological imagination was only revealed in the works published after his death. The first of these was The Silmarillion. This expresses Tolkien s vision of the cosmos around us and of the powers that shape it. It includes an extraordinary mythopoetic account of the divine creation of the world (the Ainulindalë), followed by a series of

2 68 The Journal of Inklings Studies epic adventures that explore the relationship of divine, angelic, and human freedom played out in pre-historical time. In shorter Works, such as the essay On Fairy-Stories and the story Leaf by Niggle, Tolkien also treats the theme of human creativity. He believes that our capacity to create is part of our resemblance to God. In every act of creation poesis we echo the divine creation of the world itself. The creation of whole worlds in fantasy is, Tolkien believes, the highest form of human creativity. In order to distinguish it from creation ex nihilo Tolkien refers to it as sub-creation and the worlds we create as secondary worlds. It is easy to see that, quite apart from their literary value and interest, Tolkien s narratives open up profound questions for religious studies, theology, and philosophy, including metaphysics. They also provide a metaphysical and theological perspective on God s own creation, the natural world, which Tolkien loved profoundly. Many of his younger readers in the 1960s were among those who formed the early Green or Ecological Movement. In what follows I want briefly to compare the Elvish account of creation in the Ainulindalë with the Hebrew account in the Book of Genesis. Then I would like to draw out the implications of the Ainulindalë for our understanding and appreciation of the natural world. Finally I will touch on Tolkien s philosophy of creativity, as both poet and novelist. Comparing Genesis with the Ainulindalë It may seem strange, even blasphemous, to compare inspired Scripture with the work of a novelist and fantasist, but be assured I am not trying to set the two texts on the same level. My starting point is the suggestion that mythopoeic thinking can be a way of expressing and exploring valid metaphysical intuitions. In the hands of a believing and devout Christian, moreover, like Tolkien or his friend C.S. Lewis, a fairy-tale or mythological narrative may be a way of approaching revealed truths from a new and interesting angle.

3 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 69 Antoine Faivre, a prominent researcher into esoteric streams of thought, in his Afterword to a study of the mystic Jacob Boehme by the physicist Basarab Nicolescu, postulates a commonality of nature between the human mind and the universe, such that they would be associated analogically, making the human mind capable of interiorizing, then of refracting in the form of images and symbols, the very structures which maintain the universe in its inmost parts [citing Goethe s Faust]. 1 Another physicist, Michael Heller a Roman Catholic priest and winner of the 2008 Templeton Prize speaks of the entanglement of the human mind with the Mind of God. For him, the structures that maintain the universe as mathematical in nature. The point here is that images and symbols constructed by man whether these be mathematical or mythic may be supposed to reflect in some way the archetypes and archetypal processes of creation. Faivre writes that among the visionaries whose imagination presents itself directly as creative, i.e. as capable of recreating and, in a sense, of reproducing the archetypal configurations, the ones who go furthest are those who take the mythic as their basis. It becomes their foundation, the support of their meditations, their springboard and heuristic tool, endowing their work with an aura of authenticity. The mythic, here, is a story experienced in images, a scenario organized in a triptych: first cosmology (even theogony) and anthropogony; then cosmology (or cosmography); and lastly eschatology. I want to apply these words to Tolkien, since I believe that in a stumbling, only partially conscious way, but in a way that bears comparison to more forthright mystics such as Boehme and Blake he was engaged in an attempt not merely to entertain (for it was not the desire to earn a living by writing that was his motivation for the Silmarillion), but to discover the truth about the world and express it in a mythological narrative. 1 Basarab Nicolescu, Science, Meaning, and Evolution: The Cosmology of Jacob Boehme (Parabola Books, 1991), p. 117.

4 70 The Journal of Inklings Studies His vision, however, was clouded and his narrative never achieved its final form. As his son Christopher has shown, in later life, far from perfecting it he was engaged in a process of dismantling and rationalizing it further. But insofar as the vision did condense into a relatively stable form the form of the published Silmarillion and related works we can glimpse his vision and discuss its implications. What does the Ainulindalë tell us about the creation of the world? According to the Elves, creation takes place in a series of stages. My list has ten, although Eru seems to act a total of seven times in all. 1. Eru or Ilúvatar, the One God, makes first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, the offspring of his thought. He speaks to them, propounding themes of music. The Ainur sing to him alone, each their own theme, gradually coming to understand each other and sing in harmony. 2. Now Eru proposes a new and mighty First Theme to all the Ainur together, which reduces them to amazed silence. He asks them to make their own music in harmony with this theme. They make the Great Music, and he sits and listens. 3. The greatest of the Ainur, Melkor, tries to make his own music and the result is discord a raging storm, as of dark waters around God s throne. 4. God stands, lifts his left hand, smiling, and a Second Theme arises. This theme too is defeated by Melkor. 5. Then God stands again, lifts his right hand, frowning ( his countenance was stern ), and begins a Third Theme deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came, which is the Theme of the Children of Ilúvatar (Elves and Men). 6. Melkor s theme continues alongside and entwines with the Third Theme, trying to drown the divine music, though its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own most solemn pattern. (This Theme represents the Fall and

5 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 71 subsequent historical time.) 7. God stands for the third time, his face terrible to behold, raises both hands, and brings the Music to an end with a single Chord, deeper than the Abyss, higher than the Firmament, piercing as the light of the eye of Ilúvatar. (The Passion?) 8. God leads the Ainur into the Void and shows them their Music in the form of light, of vision, rather than sound and hearing. He then takes the vision away and they become aware of Darkness for the first time. 9. God makes the world that was seen in vision and prefigured in the Music with the single word Eä! Let these things Be! 10. Some of the Ainur choose to descend into the world at its beginning, to shape its history according to the Music that they remember. In Genesis, of course, the stages are very different. In the first account of creation, they are divided into the familiar seven days. 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 2. On the second day, God separates the waters from the waters with the firmament between them. 3. On the third, the dry land appears and is covered in vegetation. 4. On the fourth, God creates the sun, moon, and stars On the fifth, the sea creatures and birds. 6. On the sixth, the animals and man. 7. On the seventh, God rests. 2 In Tolkien s tale, too, night and day are created before the sun and moon, since the earth is lit at first by lamps and later by trees.

6 72 The Journal of Inklings Studies The Deep Magic of Creation What points of contact can we find between these two accounts? Not many, I would say (leaving aside the numerical symbolism), though they are intended to be complementary. In some ways there is a closer correspondence with creation according the Koran, where we read: For to anything which We have willed, We but say the word, Be (Kun), and it is. 3 In the Genesis account, this command to exist is divided into seven particular commands addressed to the light, to the waters, to the earth, and so on. Obviously, whatever differences there are, the overall message is the same in the Elvish, Biblical, and Koranic accounts: the One God has created all things good, and he has done so out of nothing, through the exercise of absolute power. In the Elvish account, after the initial tuning up stage, there are three Themes proposed by God and a final Chord that brings the Music to an end. Since, as Tolkien tells us in a letter to Milton Waldman, he is writing for a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity, the threefold structure of the Music is unlikely to be a coincidence, although this does not mean we must automatically identify each theme with the Father, Son, and Spirit. In the subsequent history of Middle-earth, the first theme seems to correspond to the original harmony of creation before it is disturbed by Melkor that is, the Paradise of Arda illuminated by the great Pillars of Light, Illuin and Ormal. The second theme would correspond to the time of the Two Trees, which light up the sky after the Pillars have been destroyed. The third theme sees the birth of the Elves under the Stars, and of Men under the Sun and Moon. The final great Chord represents the bringing of the world to Judgement through the Incarnation and Passion of Christ. Genesis, of course, does not speak of Music. In Scripture, however, the Book of Job refers to the beginning of creation as 3 Surat An-Nahl, Sura # 16, Aya #

7 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 73 a time when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy (38:7), and there are many other hints in the Psalms and Wisdom literature. Numerous Christian thinkers have taken these hints. St Gregory of Nyssa, for example, believes that the perfection of this universe is a symphonic perfection that requires a diversity of sounds and instruments in order to form a rhythm and a harmony that are at once multiple and unique, a veritable song of praise for the unapproachable and unspeakable glory of God, composed by the Wisdom of God. 4 St John of the Cross writes that creatures will be for the soul a harmonious symphony of sublime music surpassing all concerts and melodies of the world, 5 adding that all these voices form one voice of music praising the grandeur, wisdom, and wonderful knowledge of God. 6 The musical metaphor came naturally to a poet such as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins describes how Christ calls on the angels to worship God, and how they do so in the form of song. But the song offered by Lucifer, like that of Melkor in Tolkien, Hopkins says, was a dwelling on his own beauty, an instressing of his own inscape, and like a performance on the organ and instrument of his own being; it was a sounding, as they say, of his own trumpet and a hymn in his own praise. Moreover it became an incantation: others were drawn in; it became a concert of voices, a concerting of selfpraise, an enchantment, a magic, by which they were dizzied, dazzled, and bewitched. They would not listen to the note which summoned each to his own place (Jude 6) and distributed them here and there in the liturgy of the sacrifice; they gathered rather 4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (Ignatius Press, 1995), p. 41. Cf. p The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. K. Kavanaugh OCD and O. Rodriguez OCD (Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979), p. 472, from John s own prose commentary on his Spiritual Canticle. 6 Ibid, p See also Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008), especially chapter 11 on the music of the spheres.

8 74 The Journal of Inklings Studies closer and closer home under Lucifer s lead and drowned it, raising a countermusic and countertemple and altar, a counterpoint of dissonance and not of harmony. I suppose they introduced a pathos as of the nobler nature put aside for the higher and even persuaded themselves that God was only trying them; that to disobey and substitute themselves, Lucifer above all, as the angelic victim of the world sacrifice was secretly pleasing to him, that self-devotion of it, the suicide, the semblance of sin was a loveliness of heroism which could only arise in the angelic mind; that it was divine and a meriting and at last a grasp of godhead. 7 He concludes that this rebellion of the angelic host marked the lower world, the world of matter, with the confusion, clashing, and wreck which took place in the higher one and was there repaired at once but not here all at once. Thus the Devil s first sin was not the temptation of Eve, but preceded the creation of the Garden. He tried to destroy by violence before he succeeded in ruining by fraud. We may also suspect a connection between the Elvish account of creation and the Kabbalah the Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation of Scripture developed since the twelfth century, and adapted by Christian writers such as the Neoplatonist Pico della Mirandola during the Italian Renaissance. This connection is suggested by Tolkien s association of the Left Hand of God with his smile and the Right with his sternness, for in the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life or the Tree of the Sephiroth a well-known conventional arrangement of the ten archetypal divine Names or Forces has three columns. The central column is associated with the divine Will and Grace, the right-hand column with Mercy, and the left-hand column with Severity or sternness. (Right and left may be reversed depending on the orientation of the Tree.) The importance of music and harmony in Tolkien s account would 7 The following meditation on the Exercises of St Ignatius is taken from Humphry House (ed.), The Notebooks and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford University Press, 1937), pp

9 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 75 also fit with a Kabbalistic influence, given the correspondence of the Sephiroth with the notes of a descending Octave, including the insertion of semitone intervals on the central column. (The Kabbalah is related to the Pythagorean tradition, for which musical harmony is fundamental.) An influence from the Kabbalah would also help to explain the structure of Tolkien s account in another way. Normally, according to Halevi, the Kabbalah posits four distinct levels of the creation, or worlds. 8 These correspond to the four letters of the divine Name in Hebrew, and the four levels of the Pythagorean Decad or Tetraktys. They may be correlated with Tolkien s account as follows: (1) Emanation, Azilut Fire or the Glory of the Lord (Ezek. 1:27); i.e. Tolkien s Secret Fire ; (2) Creation, Beriah, which corresponds to the Music of the Ainur; (3) Formation, Yezirah, which corresponds to the Vision of Light; and (4) Making, Asiyyah, which corresponds to the material world of being, into which certain of the Ainur descend at the beginning of time. There is no evidence, as far as I am aware, that Tolkien consciously drew upon the Kabbalah in the construction of his creation myth, though he was so widely read it would not surprise me if he knew something of this tradition. Nevertheless, he came from the background of English Romanticism, where both the Kabbalah and Neoplatonism were almost de rigueur. The analogies between Tolkien and William Blake are particularly strong, since Blake like Tolkien composed vast mythological stories about the soul of England, and Blake was certainly familiar with the Kabbalistic as well as Neoplatonic sources I have mentioned. Tolkien would have studied Blake, as a schoolboy at least. The division of creation into a series of stages like those in The Silmarillion is commonplace in Christian Neoplatonism. In the following passage, for example, Hugh of St Victor echoes St Augustine (On Genesis). For the angelic nature first existed in the 8 Often correlated with Isaiah 43:7: everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

10 76 The Journal of Inklings Studies divine Idea as a plan, and then afterwards it began to subsist in itself through creation. The other creatures, however, first existed in the Idea of God; next, they were made in the knowledge of the angels; and finally they began to subsist in themselves. When, therefore, Genesis says, God said: Let it be, this refers to the divine Mind. When it says, And it was so, this refers to the angelic intellect. And when it says, And God made, it refers to the actuality of things. 9 So for Hugh, all things exist first in God, then the Angels, then themselves. This corresponds to the Music of the Ainur, in which the creation is known in God, then mapped out in the Angelic symphony, then brought about in reality by the Word of God. The corporeal world embodies a Vision, the Vision embodies a Music, and the Music is the harmony of the Ainur who are the offspring of divine thought. But the subtlety with which Tolkien describes the different stages of divine creation, the way God orchestrates everything, allowing the greatest possible freedom to the Angels as they develop their own themes and harmonies in the Music, and then the descent of the Angels into the word they have helped to make, is unrivalled in Romantic or religious literature. There is, of course, a second biblical account of creation. I am not referring to the second chapter of Genesis, but to the Prologue of the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. Here John builds a more Trinitarian account of creation. Genesis speaks of the spirit of God, but it is unclear whether this is a separate divine Person from or within the God referred to in the first sentence. John, on the other hand, speaks of the Word (Greek: Logos) who is with God yet also is God, and this is clearly intended as a reference to the divine nature of Christ, the Son of God. 9 Jerome Taylor (trans.), The Didascalicon of Hugh of St Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts (Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 156.

11 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 77 As I have mentioned, Tolkien s account cannot be explicitly Trinitarian, for it is supposed to pre-date the Christian and even the Judaic revelation. And yet we know that, according to the Roman Catholic Catechism, The Word of God and his Breath are at the origin of the being and life of every creature (CCC, 703). Tolkien would not have wanted to omit entirely any hint of such an essential part of the Christian revelation as the Trinity. I have already suggested one possible echo of that teaching in the series of musical Themes. Another is in the three stages of creation themselves (music, light, and being). Perhaps we may also see a subtle reference to the Trinity in the passage where Eru creates the world by speaking that is, by uttering the word that makes it exist. Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things Be! And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall Be; and those of you that will may go down into it. We are told by St John of the Cross that God only ever utters a single Word in his eternity, and that Word is the Logos, the Son of the Father. He writes, The Father spoke one Word, which was his Son, and this Word he always speaks in eternal silence, and in silence must it be heard by the soul. 10 In the word Eä! we can perhaps read this one Word, the Logos, since it is in the procession of the Son that the creation of the world is eternally founded, and its existence ensured. As for the third divine Person, the Flame Imperishable or Secret Fire is described in the same account as a living heart of flame that is, it is alive, it lives. And earlier we are told that Melkor had sought the Flame, which he wanted to find and control, but he could not, for it is with Ilúvatar. In Tolkien s mind the Flame Imperishable, the Secret Fire, which is alive, and with God, yet sent by him, is to be identified with the Holy Spirit. 10 The Collected Works, p. 675 ( Maxims and Counsels ). See also Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 65, citing The Ascent of Mount Carmel, to be found in the same Collected Works, p. 473.

12 78 The Journal of Inklings Studies Tolkien s Ecological Vision We have seen how the cosmos expresses the wisdom of God in the form of a great harmony, a music of the spheres in which every single creature has its part to play. In the Ainulindalë the elements of the world follow this pattern, as though the music still lived on inside them. The Elvish account tells us, for example, that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this earth; and many of the children of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen. This is the deepest foundation of Tolkien s ecological vision of creation. Ecology is based on the interconnection of all living things, a connectedness both with each other and with their environment. In its extreme form (sometimes called deep ecology ) the whole ecosystem of planet Earth is adaptable, resilient, perhaps even alive. In Tolkien, this living harmony is confirmed by the act of creation, based on a single word pronounced by God. With such a beginning, the world cannot but exemplify the most profound unity or unison. What then comes to pass is based on an improvisation in which the Ainur, seeking to express the beauty they remember in the Mind of Ilúvatar, respond to each other and to him, producing together a single complex work of music. Naturally Tolkien also has a well-thought-out explanation of evil, which I have anticipated by quoting Gerard Manley Hopkins. The beauty of the first angelic composition was marred by the discords of Melkor, in his attempt to wrest control of the music away from Ilúvatar. But as God explains to him, no one can alter the music without becoming his instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which [Melkor] himself hath not imagined. Even in the simplest cases, such as the volcanic fires and bitter cold which Melkor uses to destroy the gentle paradise of the Ainur, landscapes of ice, and snowflakes, and mountain ranges are produced, encompassing

13 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 79 beauties that Ulmo and Aulë had not conceived. Similarly, it turns out, in the moral realm. The plans of Melkor to tempt and corrupt both Elves and Men do lead to great tragedy and suffering, but they also bring about deeds of tremendous virtue and heroism, and stories of immense beauty that would not otherwise have existed. There is a big question looming here. The Ainulindalë is a mythological tale. Ecology is a science. What is the connection between them? How can a made-up mythology shed light on science? The easy answer is that Tolkien s mythic or poetic account can inspire each successive generation of readers better to appreciate the natural world the actual world we see around us, a world that Tolkien describes in great detail and invests with life and meaning. In other words, as Tolkien says in the story itself, there is an enchantment in words that helps us look at the world as if for the first time, and to appreciate it with a profound love. I remember exploring forests and mountains and little English villages with an excitement that came from a sense of recognition. This was the landscape, these were the hills and valleys, which Tolkien must have had in mind as he wrote. This was what he was calling us to defend from the dark forces of industry and commerce. The harder answer is that mythological writing is not mere fantasy but a better and more efficient way of expressing certain truths than more prosaic, less poetic, more supposedly realistic types of writing. Not only are stories made up of images and elements drawn from the real world which is how we can recognize real landscapes, plants, and animals in Middle-earth but the story describes ways of behaviour, ways of thinking and being in the world, that apply to our own. We live in a world that seems to lack Elves or Dragons, but we can nevertheless learn moral wisdom from the heroes of the story. For example, Aragorn and Faramir have a strength that they place at the service of others, and when they come to power they act as stewards or protectors not only of their smaller and weaker subjects, but of the very landscape or,

14 80 The Journal of Inklings Studies as we would call it, the ecosystem of Middle-earth, respecting both nature (forests, grasslands, rivers) and the human traditions so closely entwined with her (Ghân-buri-Ghân with the Forest of Drúadan, the Hobbits with the Shire). There is another point to make here. Made in the image of the Creator, Man cannot but create, and thus attempt to continue the Creator s work. Imagination is the garden or landscape of the soul, and the Creator s command to tend and cultivate the land applied just as much to this interior world as it did to Eden. We thrive on order, but not the mechanical order of a machine. The order we need is a harmony of many elements, many voices, many wills working together, just as the voices and instruments of the Ainur worked together in the beginning before the light. In many ways, the hero of The Lord of the Rings is Sam Gamgee, a gardener rewarded with earth from Lothlórien, and this says something about the importance of Tolkien s ecological vision for the work as a whole. Bear in mind also the relationship between ecology and light. Light is the energy that powers the entire ecosystem, that makes things grow and live. Before light is created, there may have been potential, but nothing could grow or come to fruition. Once the light was present, the seeds or logoi of creation were able to flourish. Tolkien s ecological vision has light at its centre, so that the myth may be read (as Verlyn Flieger reads it) as a tale of primordial light and its tribulations light at first glorious, then fragmented and consumed by evil, then reborn and defended. The magic gems that are fashioned to capture the light of heaven the Silmarils, the Arkenstone, Galadriel s phial, Arwen s white pendant represent the possibility of life and freedom, and of creativity itself, even of the creative energy the author puts into the very work we are reading.

15 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 81 The Writer s Calling As a young man, just leaving school, Tolkien spoke of his small group of schoolfriends, the Tea Club and Barrovian Society or TCBS, as having been granted some spark of fire certainly as a body if not singly that was destined to kindle a new light, or, what is the same thing, rekindle an old light in the world. This light is bound up with the appreciation of beauty, of poetry, of art. It is the radiance of truth and of being. The friends believed they were called to awaken this light through the writing of poetry and epic stories. Thus Tolkien had a very high view of the writer s vocation, and especially that of the fantasy writer. By creating an entire world, populated by believable creatures and ruled by internally consistent laws, the writer is responding to the divine calling, Be fruitful and multiply. He also had a high view of poetry, which he believed was the purest form of language, and the one in which human consciousness is most keenly developed and expressed. The realization of his vocation as a writer, and one might say as a warrior in this cosmic war for the recovery of civilization and human consciousness coincided with the opening of the First World War in A summer walking-holiday among the natural beauties of Cornwall in August was followed in September by the inspiration for a poem about Earendel the Evening Star that proved to be the seed from which the entire mythology would spring. The poem was inspired by two lines of Anglo-Saxon poetry based on the O Antiphons for Advent specifically the antiphon for 21 December: O Dayspring, splendor of the eternal light and sun of justice: Come and shine on those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death. The beauty of the word for Dayspring in Anglo-Saxon stirred Tolkien s love of ancient languages and worlds, becoming in his own epic Eärendil, the messenger from both Elves and Men who appealed to the gods for help against the Dark Lord in Middle-earth. It was in December of that same year that the school-friends met for

16 82 The Journal of Inklings Studies what they called the Council of London, where Tolkien first fully committed himself to his vocation as a writer. I apologize if I am making too much of this, but the convergence of these events in the life of Tolkien with the declaration of the War in which the modern industrial world was to find its most violent expression, bringing to an end as some have claimed an entire historical period, does strike me as significant. Tolkien believed that a poet, like the boy-king David, could take on and potentially defeat the Goliath of modernity by awakening our consciousness of beauty and goodness and truth the three of which, he saw, were convergent. This was in any case the hope in which he wrote, and his works did, I believe, awaken millions of readers to a sense of natural beauty and the beauty of human virtue. They did not stop the advance of modernity. Nevertheless, we can learn from them something about the vocation of the artist. We learn, first, that the artist is fired by a sense of the importance of his own work. (Tolkien writes of the TCBS that it is to be A great instrument in God s hands a mover, a doer, even an achiever of great things, a beginner at the very least of large things.) He has been given a mission, and it is bound up with the meaning of his life. He must at least start to fulfil it. In Leaf by Niggle, Tolkien suggested that such beginnings might be completed in the afterlife if circumstances prevented us doing so in this one. The artist Niggle is prevented from completing a painting by his need to show kindness to an irritating neighbour. In death, he discovers the painting he had only just begun not only completed but brought to life: a single painted leaf transformed into a living forest of trees, indeed an entire landscape. God s gifts are superabundant, and all we have to do is be receptive to him. But receptivity is not the same as passivity. The artist is called, and he responds. He attempts, and no doubt he fails. It is his moral life, his virtue, his love, that transforms this attempt and failure into receptivity. In Niggle s case it is his acts of charity that make him a collaborator with God in the creation of beauty.

17 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 83 The opening pages of The Silmarillion also portray Tolkien s view of art, since here we see the collaboration between God and the angels, or Ainur, in the creation of the world. No creature, even an angel, can create from nothing. The narrative is careful to show that God first proposes themes to the Ainur for them to develop and embellish. Creation is a collaboration from the very beginning. This is precisely what frustrates Melkor, and brings about his downfall. He wants to create ex nihilo, and this leads him when he is unable to do so to destroy what does exist in order to clear the slate, as it were, for his own productions. We see an echo of this in the lives of human artists, especially in our individualist era, many of whom are impatient with everything that already exists, and what other artists have done, and are seeking novelty and originality for its own sake. Tolkien s message seems to be that true art can only come about on the basis of humility and patience, including receptivity towards the natural world and tradition. 11 The figure of the artist is portrayed several times in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo the Hobbit is one such figure, writing his Red Book of collected tales and remembered adventures by the fireside in Rivendell (itself the idealized dream of an Oxford college). The book and the task are passed on first to Frodo, then to Sam, and finally to Tolkien himself. Another significant image of the artist is found in the Elvish king Fëanor, the greatest master of poesis in all of Tolkien s tales. It is he who fashions gems more beautiful than those found in the earth, and above all the Silmarils in which is held the light that existed before the Sun and Moon, with which the destiny of Middle-earth is entwined. As such he may be taken to be another image of Tolkien himself. Tolkien wrote most directly about his conception of art, 11 An interesting sidelight is cast on this theme by the creation of the Dwarves. The god Aulë is tempted to create living, intelligent creatures similar to Elves and Men. However the manikins he produces lack freedom of will. When God intervenes, Aulë repents of his sin (unlike Melkor), and Eru responds by granting freedom and life to the Dwarves, requiring only that they sleep in the earth until his own creatures have been brought to life.

18 84 The Journal of Inklings Studies imagination, and fantasy in his famous lecture On Fairy-Stories. If the mental power of image-making is Imagination, the achievement of an expression which gives the inner consistency of reality, is Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. A human artist is always a sub-creator because he is under or subordinate to the One who creates from nothing. Fantasy is a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent. But the most interesting point he makes in this lecture concerns what he calls recovery, escape, or the joyous turn eucatastrophe. In a story, a hero faces trials and passes through darkness, but at a crucial moment brings about an unexpected reversal, which leads to the happy ending. It is the essence of the fairy-story to deliver this experience, and as a Christian Tolkien believes that it corresponds to the deepest truth about the primary world in which we live. The world of the reader may be fallen and dark, but into it God has sent his only Son. Condemned to death, and buried in the earth, God s Son brings about the ultimate transformative reversal, the greatest possible eucatastrophe. The fairy-story or myth is merely an echo or shadow of the truth of history. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has preeminently the inner consistency of reality. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. But in God s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the happy ending. The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now

19 Stratford Caldecott, A New Light: Tolkien s Philosophy of Creation in The Silmarillion 85 perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. Tolkien constructed his tale in such a way that the history of Middleearth would point towards the eucatastrophe of the Resurrection, without ever actually portraying it. What he does portray is the Fall (or a series of falls in the case of the Elves), and the spiritual nobility of those prepared to fight against evil without knowing the final outcome, and without any expectation of an ultimate Recovery. Tolkien s understanding of creativity is expressed both in his Lecture and in his own fantasy writing. The light he wants the artist to bring into the world is a far-off gleam of the Gospel, in which we see the fullness of the light that created and redeemed the world.

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