The Sound of Silence

I had a lot of driving time this weekend, which meant I finally got to catch up on the ever-excellent Amon Sul podcast. In the most recent full episode, Father Andrew Stephen Damick brought in guest co-host and violinist Rebecca Rovny, who happens to be a personal friend of mine (and even gives us a little shout-out during the episode). They had a long and fruitful discussion around the role of music in Tolkien's subcreation. I regretted listening to it in the car, since there were several "aha!" moments--especially some amazing moments of intuition from Rebecca--where I wanted to write something down.

What follows is a brief meditation on another musical moment in the Legendarium, which I think says some very powerful things about song, magic, enchantment, and the hiddenness of God in Middle-earth.

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Finrod's skills as a minstrel were touched on a couple of times in this episode, but here I would like to call particular attention to his battle of song with Sauron. This is one of the most powerful passages in the published Silmarillion, although the poetry itself is from the much older Lays of Beleriand (which are to the Silmarillion as the Silmarillion is to The Lord of the Rings):

On an evening of autumn Felagund and Beren set out from Nargothrond with their ten companions; and they journeyed beside Narog to his source in the Falls of Ivrin. Beneath the Shadowy Mountains they came upon a company of Orcs, and slew them all in their camp by night; and they took their gear and their weapons. By the arts of Felagund their own forms and faces were changed into the likeness of Orcs; and thus disguised they came far upon their northward road, and ventured into the western pass, between Ered Wethrin and the highlands of Taur-nu-Fuin. But Sauron in his tower was ware of them, and doubt took him; for they went in haste, and stayed not to report their deeds, as was commanded to all the servants of Morgoth that passed that way. Therefore he sent to waylay them, and bring them before him.

Thus befell the contest of Sauron and Felagund which is renowned. For Felagund strove with Sauron in songs of power, ad the power of the King was very great; but Sauron had the mastery, as is told in the Lay of Leithian:

He chanted a song of wizardry,
Of piercing, opening, of treachery,
Revealing, uncovering, betraying.
Then sudden Felagund there swaying,
Sang in a song of staying,
Resisting, battling against power,
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,
And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;
Of changing and shifting shape,
Of snares eluded, broken traps,
The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
Backwards and forwards swayed their song.
Reeling foundering, as ever more strong
The chanting swelled, Felagund fought,
And all the magic and might he brought
Of Elvenesse into his words.
Softly in the gloom they heard the birds
Singing afar in Nargothrond,
The sighting of the Sea beyond,
Beyond the western world, on sand,
On sand of pearls on Elvenland.
Then in the doom gathered; darkness growing
In Valinor, the red blood flowing
Beside the Sea, where the Noldor slew
The Foamriders, and stealing drew
Their white ships with their white sails
From lamplit havens. The wind wails,
The wolf howls. The ravens flee.
The ice mutters in the mouths of the Sea.
The captives sad in Angband mourn.
Thunder rumbles, the fires burn-
And Finrod fell before the throne.

Other authors have already drawn out the similarities between this and certain passages in the Kalevala,  but I've always felt not enough attention has been paid to the songs themselves as they're described (making this a sort of meta-song; we aren't given the words of Felagund or Sauron's songs, only a song about their songs), and what it tells us about the part magic and song play in Middle-earth.

The contest begins with abstract concepts set in opposition to each other, opposing themes if you will (here of course the Ainulindale should never be far from our minds). Sauron's themes betray his motives: he suspects the heroes (who are disguised as orcs, thanks to Felagund's earlier use of song-magic) to be other than what they appear. Therefore, he tries to pierce their guise first by "piercing, opening" -- that is, trying to simply pierce through or lift the veil over the truth -- and then by "treachery." The next line, "Revealing, uncovering, betraying" is an example of apposition, using different words for the same idea. The implication seems to be that if Sauron cannot pierce their disguise by brute magical force, he will attempt to induce one of the company to betray the rest (a tactic which has already worked for Sauron earlier in this story).

Felagund's own themes are called forth as a direct response to this two-pronged assault:

Then sudden Felagund there swaying,
Sang in a song of staying,
Resisting, battling against power,
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,
And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;
Of changing and shifting shape,
Of snares eluded, broken traps,
The prison opening, the chain that snaps.

These opening volleys somewhat invert the internal narrative many of us have of good and evil: we are most likely to associate what is evil with what is secret, hidden, tucked away from public view (hence the whole idea of the "conspiracy theory"). We tend to believe that if what is evil were to be exposed to the light of day (if, to take a recent example, if "locker-room talk" were aired in the public forum) that it would wither away to nothing, shown up once and for all for the fraud that it is. Eschatologically speaking (in the Silmarillion, and in Christianity), this is true. Sooner or later, as Tolkien confessed daily, venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos.

But in the "long defeat" of history, in life under the sun, our experience of goodness--and of God--is very different. YHWH declares that "with a secret hand the Lord wages war upon Amalek to all generations." (Exodus 17:16, LXX). That secrecy, that hiddenness, is the very signature of the finger of God upon the whole story of history. The Christmas story itself is "wrought in the silence of God." The work of God is secret and hidden in the world, evident only to the eyes of faith. The "long defeat" is really what C.S. Lewis described as a Resistance Movement against the current management of this world, until the day that "the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God, and of his Christ." Tolkien intuitively grasped this role of secrecy and smallness, something which I believe is one of the main reasons his narratives remain so compelling.

The contest then moves from the abstract to the concrete. Here, we should notice that this is the same pattern already established in the Ainulindale: moving from abstract "themes" to their incarnation within reality and time (which is the whole work of history). The concrete themes which Felagund invokes are visions of Elvenesse: birds singing in Nargothrond (still a hidden and secret place at this point in the story); the sighting of the Sea beyond the Western World (does this mean the sea beyond Beleriand, or the sea beyond Aman?); lustrous pearls strewn on the beaches of Alqualonde.

Why does Felagund evoke these images to evade Sauron's chanting? Nargothrond is an obviously secret, obviously hidden place. The fact that there are birds singing there seems to indicate that there are some places and moments of beauty which still remain hidden from the Dark Lord's gaze, upon which Felagund calls for strength. The sight of the "Sea beyond,/beyond the Western world" is -- whether it speaks of the Great Sea or something beyond Valinor itself--a vision of transcendence denied forever to Sauron (though of course to Felagund as well). Finally, the pearl-strewn sands of the Bay of Eldamar and Alqualonde bring home the idea of longing for a haven (a haven is both a hidden place of refuge, like Nargothrond, as well as a place where ships can put in for shelter from the sea). Pearls themselves are a kind of beauty formed in a secret, enclosed place.

But of course, the invocation of Eldamar is fatal for Felagund. Sauron knows the history of the Noldor all too well, and the pearl-strewn strands of the havens of Alqualonde once foamed with the blood of the Teleri in the Kinslaying. That is the chink in Felagund's armor, exactly the moment of treachery and betrayal Sauron has been looking for. Incisively, surgically, he pries it open, dismantling Felagund's defenses and following the narrative to its inevitable historical conclusion: all secret and hidden places exposed to the Dark Lord's gaze. The wolf howls. The raven flees. Secrecy is replaced by bondage: muttering ice (which freezes in place, but which probably also is meant to evoke evil memories of the crossing of the Helcaraxe); captives in chains. Finrod falls before the throne. In defeat? In bondage? It seems so.

Here we cannot forget that the name of this story is the Lay of Lethian, with Lethian meaning "the release from bondage." The chains will snap. If only Finrod could have seen--could have sung--a little farther.

This Elvish Craft: Language Invention as Recovery

Another old essay, to go with the one I posted earlier this month, about Tolkien's language invention. I pose an unlikely similarity between Tolkien and Russian zaumists.

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1. Renaming the Lily

In her book In the Land of Invented Languages, Arika Okrent characterizes language inventors as “misguided souls” led through “hard work, high hopes, and full-blown delusions” to attempt to improve on natural language for philosophical, altruistic, and political motives. Only briefly, in her final chapters, does Orkent acknowledge another important reason someone might create a language, when she mentions Tolkien and others who create languages out of a sense of pleasure. (Okrent 2010)

Yet despite the short shrift Okrent gives this motivation in her book, it is evident that Tolkien considered pleasure—specifically the pleasure of finding fitness between sound and meaning—to be the driving force behind the language creation process. In his 1931 lecture A Secret Vice, Tolkien describes the way this impulse drove his own early language invention: “Certainly it is in the contemplation of the relation between sound and notion which is a main source of pleasure.” Going farther, Tolkien suggests that pleasure is a major component of the development of even natural languages: “The communication factor has been very powerful in directing the development of language; but the more individual and personal factor—pleasure in articulate sound, and in the symbolic use of it...must not be forgotten for a moment.” (MC 208)

Left there, Tolkien’s argument would be quite safe and unassuming; pleasure is a subjective experience, and there would be very little to be said for or against his secret vice beyond “he enjoys it.” This seems to be the conclusion Okrent draws about Tolkien’s language invention. But Tolkien progresses the theme of pleasure beyond mere aesthetic pleasure itself and into the realm of enchantment:

And with the phonetic pleasure we have blended the more elusive delight of establishing novel relations between symbol and significance, and in contemplating them... as soon as you have fixed even a vague general sense for your words, many of the less subtle but most moving and permanently important of the strokes of poetry are open to you. For you are the heir of the ages. You have not to grope after the dazzling brilliance of invention of the free adjective, to which all human language has not fully attained. You may say green sun or dead life and set the imagination leaping.
Language has both strengthened imagination and been freed by it. Who shall say whether the free adjective has created images bizarre and beautiful, or the adjective been freed by strange and beautiful pictures in the mind? (Monsters and the Critics 218-19)

For Tolkien, language invention is not just a means to pleasure, it is a way to set both mind and word free from the “habitual” and “associated notions” to which even poetry is subject; notions which words pick up naturally through constant use and the layering of meaning over time. Modern poetry is so full of “significant language” that to speak of green is not to speak of green itself, but to speak of green’s poetic associations with growth, spring, youth, innocence, and inexperience. To escape this detritus of meaning and recover the lost harmony between the signifier and the thing signified, Tolkien presents us with two possible solutions: the first is to study the poetry of the ancients, the second to cast off habitual and associated notions through language invention of our own. (MC 218-19)

Tolkien was not the only, or even the first language inventor to engage this concept. In his 1912 Declaration of the Word as Such Russian avant garde poet Alexei Kruchenykh states:

WORDS DIE, THE WORLD IS ETERNALLY YOUNG. The artist has seen the world in a new way and, like Adam, proceeds to give things his own names. The lily is beautiful, but the word “lily” [liliya] has been soiled and “raped”. Therefore, I call the lily, “euy” – the original purity is reestablished.” (Lawton 1988) 

Zaum—the “transrational” language which Kruchenykh introduces in his Declaration and its related manifestos—is more of an artistic effort than a functional language, but it has this in common with Tolkien’s own invented languages. Both men saw a need to recapture something important which had been lost in the relationship between the signifier and the signified.

But to say “the green sun” is different from renaming the lily. A lily is a real, concrete thing, which really exists in the real world. Although I can perhaps admire the freshness of the lily more if I call it by a fresh name, I have taken for myself only the role of the namer—a new Adam—not that of the creator. When Tolkien “set the imagination leaping” with a “green sun,” he takes upon himself the role of sub-creator and enters into Fantasy.

2. Green Suns

Tolkien returned to the theme of “green suns” again in his seminal essay “On Fairy Stories,” this time in the context of creating Fantasy: “Anyone...can say the green sun.... But.... To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will...certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft.” (MC 140)

These words, which Flieger has described as Tolkien’s “creative manifesto,” (Flieger 2012) echo Tolkien’s ideas in A Secret Vice. Just as language invention is a way to say what cannot be said with ordinary language, Fantasy is a means of seeing—and helping others see—what does not exist in the real world. To do such a thing is a “a kind of elvish craft,” an imitation of the enchantment Tolkien attributes to his own elves. (MC 122, 143) After going to great lengths to describe the nature of Fantasy and sub-creation, Tolkien lists three uses of Fantasy. Of these three, it is the first—“Recovery”—which resembles most strongly his sentiments about language invention.

Tolkien defines Recovery as “regaining a clear view” of things which we have taken for granted through familiarity. “We need, in any case, to clean our windows.... from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness.” (MC 146). Just as the “significant language” of modern poetry obscured the fitness of sound and sense, so too the possessiveness which comes with familiarity obscures our ability to see the world clearly. Fantasy is a means of recovering that clear view.

This regaining of freshness is clearly related to the “strange and beautiful pictures in the mind” which drove Tolkien’s language invention, as demonstrated by the recurring leitmotif of the “green sun.” But Tolkien’s exploration of this relationship was not limited to essays. Within his fiction, he invests the elves with both an impulse for language invention and a need for Recovery. This should come as no surprise to us. Fantasy, after all, is an imitation of elvish craft. (MC 143)

3. The Elves as Language Inventors

Tolkien emphasizes the elves’ love for language invention from the earliest days of the mythology (BLT:I 155) to its twilight years. Writing the Dangweth Pengoloð in the early 1950’s, Tolkien sought to answer the question “How/Why did Elvish language change?” Pengolod—an elven philologist and author in the Dangweth’s narrative frame—answers this question in a way which sheds important light not only on why Elvish languages change, but on Tolkien’s thoughts about language change in general:

Weak indeed may be the memories of Men, but I say to you, Ælfwine, that even were your memory of your own being as clear as that of the wisest of the Eldar... your speech would change.... For Men change both their old words for new...and this change comes above all from the very changefullness of Eä; or if you will, from the nature of speech, which is fully living only when it is born, but when the union of the thought and the sound is fallen into old custom, and the two are no longer perceived apart, then already the word is dying and joyless...and the thought eager for some new-patterned raiment of sound. (PME 397)

According to Pengolod, the motivation for creating new words is the same for both races: when the union of sound and sense falls into “old custom,” the word and sound are no longer perceived as separate things. The word becomes “dying and joyless,” and a new sound is needed. The primary difference between human and elven language change lies in the latter’s skill. The elves consciously change whole sound patterns instead of individual words, in a manner reminiscent of how Christopher Tolkien described his father’s language invention process. (LR 378-9) Thus the “tongues of the Quendi change in a manner like to the changes of mortal tongues” albeit more artfully and deliberately. (PME 398, 400)

4. Conclusion

In A Secret Vice, Tolkien identifies the desire for a fresh relationship between sound and sense as the primary motive for the development of both real and invented languages. In On Fairy Stories, he further develops this idea as “Recovery” and names it as the first of the three benefits of fantasy literature. But Tolkien goes beyond theory, portraying his elves as artful language inventors across the fictional and textual history of the legendarium, their language invention motivated by a desire for Recovery. Both within and outside of his fiction, Tolkien’s works are a proof case for the value of glossopoeia as a means of Recovery—both for those who study Tolkien’s invented languages, and for those who make their own.

The World of Silver Leaves: The Relationship Between Myth and Language in Tolkien, Star Trek, and Game of Thrones

This is a piece I wrote in 2016 while taking a class for my MA on Language Invention through Tolkien from Signum U. The class was great fun, and it allowed me to engage with Tolkien the Language Creator, a side to his creative genius which I think is largely misunderstood by the proliferation of books on "how to speak Elvish" and so forth.

My impetus for putting it here, as a blog post, has to do with a comment I recently came across on one of the many Tolkien message boards out there on the World Wide Web. The comment argued, in part, that the real genius of Tolkien's language creation was that it was "window dressing" and "didn't get in the way of the story."

Well, that's half-right. Tolkien's language creation doesn't "get in the way of the story." But in this case, half-right is all-wrong. I offer this short essay primarily as a rebuttal to this point of view.

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1. Flieger’s Bumper-sticker

“…language cannot be forgotten. Mythology is language and language is mythology.” J.R.R. Tolkien penned these words in a 1939 draft of the lecture which would eventually be published as the essay “On Fairy Stories.” Noted Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger has emphasized the importance of these words to our understanding of Tolkien as a sub-creator:

If I ever put a bumper sticker on my car, it’s going to say that. No modifiers, no explanations, just seven words that convey Tolkien’s bedrock belief about words and what they do… the whole text of “On Fairy-stories” is an extended gloss on that statement. (Flieger 242) 

It is perhaps appropriate, then, that these seven words are about as cryptic as the notoriously weighty essay they represent. To understand what Tolkien means by them, we must understand the context in which they are framed. After this statement of his “bedrock belief,’ he elaborates:

The mind, the tongue, and the tale are coeval. The human mind was endowed with powers of "abstraction", of not only seeing green grass and discriminating it from other things, or of finding it good to look upon, but of seeing that it was green - as well as grass and hence of inventing a words green... In fact many of these enchantments that are from a fairy tale are closely related in the mind to the very linguistic power that could invent all of those and set them free. When we can take green from grass and paint the sky or man's face with it, or blue from heaven and red from blood we have already an enchanter's power: the world of silver leaves and that fleece of gold and the blue moon appear. Such fantasy is a new form, in which man is become a creator or sub-creator. (TOFS 181)

“Coeval” is the key word in this paragraph: man’s ability to make words is inseparable from his power to tell stories. Thus, Tolkien believed, they began at the same time and in the same way, and to know the history of one is to experience the other. By extension, sub-creation—which Tolkien sees as having as its goal the “inner consistency of reality” (TOFS 59)—must reflect this. “On Fairy-stories” thus suggests a test by which invented languages—whether Tolkien’s or those popularized by successful multi-media franchises—may be evaluated.

2. An Illusion of Historicity

As a philologist, Tolkien was deeply familiar with the ways languages changed and evolved over time. His languages were thus “deduced scientifically from a common origin” in order to give them a character of “cohesion” and “consistency of linguistic style and an illusion of historicity.” Rather than creating a snapshot of a language at a single point in time, he worked out the philological processes by which that language would have, were it living, changed from its ancestor tongue. Tolkien’s process, according to his son Christopher, was to devise new words “from within the historical structure, proceeding from the ‘bases’ or primitive stems, adding suffix or prefix or forming compounds…following it through the regular changes of form that it would thus have undergone…” (LR 242)

But historical sound shifts would not, in and of themselves, satisfy the criteria laid out by Tolkien in “On Fairy-stories.” Language cannot stand alone any more than mythology. [1] To meet his test, changes in language must be coeval with events in the story. They must exist at the same time, and each must exist for the purpose of the other.

In the long and complicated internal and external histories of Tolkien’s Eldarin languages,  we find that their phonological development is always accompanies events in the mythology. Tolkien revised these events as often as he did the languages, and the result is a rich sampling of case studies in the relationship between language and mythology. For the purposes of this essay, two examples will suffice: the first from the earlier days of Tolkien’s mythopoeic endeavors, the second from their twilight years.

3. The Deep Sundering of Their Speech

In the years 1914-16, Tolkien worked on “Qenya,” the first of his Eldarin [2] tongues. In 1917, he began work on Gnomish, an Eldarin tongue related to Qenya. In addition to a lexicon of Gnomish words, he developed an outline of how Qenya and Gnomish had both descended from a common proto-Eldarin language. The sounds of Gnomish were “harder” by comparison, with a shift towards stops or plosives at the ends of words, and other consonants mutating following a pattern found in the Celtic languages. Thus Qenya “Manwe” became “Manweg” in Gnomish, and Qenya “Makar” became Gnomish “Magron.” (Weiner and Marshall 82, 92)

These consonantal mutations gave Gnomish a very different soundscape from Qenya, one which parallels the development of the Gnomish people in Tolkien’s fiction. For at the same time he was developing the historical links between Qenya and Gnomish, he was also making a myth about how they had become estranged:

‘Aye’, said Rumil, ‘for there is that tongue to which the Noldoli cling yet…and as I hold ‘twas but the long wandering of the Noldoli about the Earth and the black ages of their thraldom while their kin dwelt yet in Valinor that caused the deep sundering of their speech. Akin nonetheless be assuredly Gnome speech and Elfin of the Eldar, as my lore-masters teach me. (BLT 43)

From the beginning, Gnomish was the language of exiles. This aspect of the language, as well as its basic differences from the other main branch of the Eldarin tongues, would remain intact as Tolkien changed the name of the language from Gnomish to Noldorin in 1920, and continued its development up until the writing of The Lord of the Rings. But by the 1950’s, Noldorin had become Sindarin, and the reason for its differences from Quenya had changed. Now, the cause was the long separation of the Sindar, the Grey Elves, who did not complete their journey to Aman [3], and their speech became the lingua franca of the elves of Middle-earth for political reasons [4]. But through every change--whether through sorrow and exile, the will of an Elven-king, or the pride of the greatest craftsman to ever live [5] -- the development of Tolkien’s languages went hand-in-hand with the development of his mythology. There is no sense of either the languages or the stories existing as mere window-dressing for the other. They are truly coeval. The history of the development of Tolkien’s mythology is as much a history of words and sounds as it is of characters and events.

Weiner and Marhsall, writing in “Tolkien’s Invented Languages”, sum it up this way:

‘If there are two purposes for invented language - communication and art - Tolkien is (so far) the master of the art-form…Reading Tolkien’s major works is like looking at a painting in which a beautiful garden actually exists, having been planted the artist before the picture was painted. Tolkien created a self-consistent and technically convincing group of languages…Though they appear in their narrative context as perfectly contrived atmospheric devices, it is their pre-existence that ensures their success. (Weiner and Marshall 107-108)

Tolkien’s success as both author and language inventor set a precedent for imaginative fiction. With the rise of the commercial success of such multi-media franchises as Star Trek and Game of Thrones, invented languages are currently enjoying something of a heyday in the cultural mainstream. But the relationships of Klingon and Dothraki to their respective fictional worlds differs widely from Tolkien’s Eldarin tongues.

4. The Final Frontier

Klingon was created when linguist Marc Okrand was hired to create dialogue for an alien race in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). In creating Klingon, Okrand had to work to incorporate a few lines of dialogue created by actor James Doohan for the original Star Trek film. “The plan, at this point, was not to create a ‘full’ language, but only what was necessary for the film—that is, just enough vocabulary and grammar for the lines marked as being in Klingon.” (Okrand et. al. 112-115) Although Okrand would go on to develop a sizeable vocabulary and grammar for Klingon, its early stages were not grown along historical principles, but rather to fill the needs of the franchise. (Okrand et. al. 124)

Of the languages associated with the Game of Thrones franchise, Dothraki, the language of a martial nomadic horse culture first introduced in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, is probably the best-known. In the books, Dothraki consists of a mere handful of words invented by Martin to have a specifically “harsh” or “alien” sound-sense. When the production of the Game of Thrones HBO series began, producers wanted a more fully-developed language so that Dothraki dialogue could be filmed. Mirroring the genesis of Klingon, linguist David Peterson was hired to create a more-fully developed Dothraki grammar and vocabulary. (Peterson 89)

Although there are many other commercially created art-langs [6], Klingon and Dothraki are probably the most widely known. Both are used both used as aids to verisimilitude and viewer immersion, and both have active communities of fans who interact with their creators. In these respects they are highly successful as artistic languages. But Klingon and Dothraki began as sub-creative afterthoughts, added on as narrative garnish for the benefit of an audience which had come increasingly to expect invented languages as a necessary piece of world-building. They are “perfectly contrived atmospheric devices,” but they do not have the deep relationship with their worlds which Tolkien’s languages have by nature of being coeval with his mythology.

Not everyone need take Tolkien’s approach; not everyone will be capable of doing so. It requires a great investment of time to organically interweave complex stories and languages,  and perhaps such an approach is not well-suited to the deadlines of blockbuster movies and hit HBO series. But its merits are evident in the rich linguistic landscape of Middle-earth, where mind, the tongue, and the tale are coeval.

5. The Speech of the Stars

 As I set out to write this essay, I spent the three months working on developing an invented language, “Treian,” to accompany a set of myths I was working on for an interconnected mythology of my own. This mythology already has several other invented languages, however I had never attempted the creation of a historical grammar for one of the languages beyond outline. This I now attempted to create, with the major sound shifts corresponding with major crisis in the mythology.

For example, the collapse of the ablauting vowel series “a e o” into a single vowel “a” accompanied the “fall” of certain stars of the Western sky (sentient and ensoulled beings in this universe) as a mixed reward and punishment for their standing aloof from a cosmic rebellion (paralleling one of the medieval theories about the origin of the Elves—that they were angels who tried to remain neutral during Lucifer’s rebellion). Also accompanying this fall were a number of consonantal changes, generally representing the simplification of aspirated and non-aspirated consonants into either non-aspirated consonants or parallel fricatives. An additional set of rules acted on the liquid semi-vowels, changing r > u and l > [r u] under certain conditions. Thus:

Proto-Treian *ohur > Treian ahur “ice”
PT. *emh > Tr. amh “water”
PT. *phehel > Tr. fāl “to shine”
PT. *pheheln > Tr. fāla “bright
PT. *kʰohanh > Tr. kānh “to dig, to delve”
PT. *kʰerl > Tr. kaur “country, land”

This project led to the composition of a somewhat lengthy historical grammar (now well over 20 typed pages) and a vocabulary of about 250 words derived from a smaller list of proto roots, to say nothing of about 60 typed pages of the associated myths.

Although this project has become far too involved to summarize in an essay of this length, I have come to have an understanding of just how much effort and patience is required for Tolkienian language invention. I have also found it to be an immensely satisfying experience, one which I will continue beyond this class. It has been eminently worthwhile for its own sake, and does not need the promise of publication or the eagerness of fans to bring joy to a patient and willing sub-creator. This aspect of joy is, I think, a key element which must be experienced to be known, but which cannot be overlooked if we are to properly understand Tolkien’s language invention.

[1] “As one suggestion, I might fling out the view that for perfect construction of an art-language it is found necessary to construct at least in outline a mythology concomitant…because the making of language and mythology are related functions (coeval and congenital, not related as disease to health, or as by-product to main manufacture)…” (MC 210-211)

[2] For the purposes of this essay, “Eldarin” is used to refer to whole family of Tolkien’s Elvish languages at their various stages of conception.

[3] But note that Tolkien did not necessarily consider time itself to be sufficient reason for Elvish language change. In the early 1950’s, Tolkien dealt with this question at length in The Dangweth Pengoloð. See The Peoples of Middle Earth 397.

[4] King Thingol of Doriath bans the use of the tongue of the Noldor (Quenya) among his subjects in Beleriand after he learns of the death of his kin in the Kinslaying of Alqualonde. “And it came to pass even as Thingol had spoken; for the Sindar heard his word, and thereafter throughout Beleriand they refused the tongue of the Noldor, and shunned those that spoke it aloud; but the Exiles took the Sindarin tongue in all their daily uses, and the High Speech of the West was spoken only by the lords of the Noldor among themselves. Yet that speech lived ever as a language of lore, wherever any of that people dwelt.” (TS 129)

[5] “The Shibboleth of Feanor” is a fascinating example of Tolkien’s powers of retcon. To address an apparent inconsistency in sound changes, he makes it part of the political strife within the Noldor caused by the polarizing personality of Feanor before the Noldor went into exile. See The Peoples of Middle Earth 331.  

[6] Peterson’s “High Valyrian” (also created for Game of Thrones) and “Irathient” (created for the SyFy show Defiance) to name just two.

Currently reading: The Stripping of the Altars

Current audio book: The Return of the King

Currently translating: The Dream of the Rood

A Gallimaufry for St John the Baptist

Today, on both the Eastern and Western liturgical calendars, is the feast of The Beheading of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John. This is something of an odd "feast" (I use quotes here because it is in fact a strict fasting day in the Eastern Rite) in a number of respects, especially for those of us who are not native to a more medieval liturgical context. But given the importance of St John the Baptist to medieval Christianity, and given his especial important to Tolkien, I thought I might delve into the barrow of the past and produce a few treasures for consideration in honor of this remarkable man, the "greatest born among women" to quote one authority.

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The Beheading of St John the Baptist, by Caravaggio

The Beheading is actually one of three feasts concerned particularly with the head of the Baptist: the other two (February 24 and May 25) commemorate the first and second, and third finding of the head, which according to tradition has been lost and recovered a number of times. Sorting through the various stories of the findings might be an enjoyable exercise for another blog post, but for now I only point this out to demonstrate that the figure of St John the Baptist loomed much larger in medieval Christianity than we often appreciate. In addition to the commemorations already mentioned, his nativity ("Johnmas" -- June 24), conception (September 23), and "synaxis" (primary feast day -- January 7th, the day after Epiphany or Theophany) are all commemorated on the calendar of the Eastern Rite. This is, of course, in addition to those events in the life of the Savior--the Theophany, the Visitation--which prominently featured St John. To top it all off, every Tuesday is dedicated to his memory.

To the medieval mind, the placement of these feasts and fasts were not arbitrary, nor merely the extraneous accretions of the centuries. As the medieval man or woman generally believed in a universe which was ordered by love, like an intricate dance (even if that order could be fully realized only beyond the circle of the moon), so too their experience of time reflected this belief. The intricate relationship between fixed and movable feasts alone would be the study of many lifetimes.

The feasts of the Baptist furnish some simple examples the kind of significance with which the whole year was imbued: his whole gestational period, from his conception to his nativity, is nine months and a day--one day longer than Christ's as the Virgin Mary's is one day less than Christ's, because only Christ was perfect man, you see. Then, too, his nativity comes around the time of the Summer Solstice, precisely that point where the sun will begin to turn and wane, and the days grow shorter as winter hastens on towards Christmas; for St John himself says "he must increase, but I must decrease."

Maybe these are the kinds of details which seem a little trite when they are removed from context and baldly stated in a blog post. Taken together, though, experienced within the whole world in which they belong, they are part of a beautiful dance which reveals a deep relationship between the story of redemption and the natural world. Today we are inclined to look at any correlation between the spiritual life and the natural cycle (for instance, the proximity of Christmas to the winter solstice) as either purely coincidental, or a suspicious vestige of some older pagan rite. Against both of these objections, the medieval person might ask "but when else could it have happened?"

In her much more articulate treatment of the subject, Eleanor Parker writes:

It strikes me (once again) that however much many people today, in their ignorance of all but the broadest stereotypes about the Middle Ages, stigmatise the medieval church as worldly, rigid, and oppressive, it was in some ways immeasurably more humane and creative than its modern successors. It was happy to see human life as fully part of the natural world, shaped by the cycles of the sun and moon and the seasons; it was able to articulate a belief that material considerations, convenience, and economic productivity are not the highest goods, and not the only standards by which life should be lived. When confronted by calendar clashes with the potential to be a little awkward or inconvenient, the medieval church could have the imagination not to simply suppress them or tidy them away, but to find meaning in them - meaning which springs from deep knowledge of the images and poetry of scripture, the liturgy, and popular devotion.

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Eastern Orthodox icon of St John the Baptist. The Baptist is often shown with wings in Eastern iconography, indicating his angelic ministry.

For my money, the hymnography surrounding this feast is some of the most "metal" in the history of liturgical composition. Although the history of this feast goes all the way back to the Fourth Century, the earliest I've been able to positively date the following hymns is back to the Seventh Century. Either way, they're solidly medieval and so well within the purview of this blog.

The basic setting of the celebration is outlined in the following verses, sung at Vespers in the Eastern Rite:

During the celebration of shameless Herod’s birthday,
the terms of the oath to the wanton dancer were fulfilled,
for the Baptist’s head was cut off and carried like food on a platter
in the presence of those reclining at the loathsome banquet.
Truly they feasted on wickedness and murder.
But let us bless the Forerunner as is his due,
and honor him as the greatest born of women!

We're already a long way from Hillsong. Subsequent stanzas are poetic elaboration on the story. Like much festal hymnography, the chief interest seems to be in elaborating what is set down in sacred Scripture and church tradition, examining the story from the perspective of the various characters involved. In that way, such hymns take their cues from the many Psalms and canticles within Scripture itself, and serve as a sort of poetic sermon which invites us to imaginatively engage in the story of salvation. The following verses are sung, alternating chanted verses from the Psalms:

The dance of the devil’s disciple
was rewarded with thy head, O Forerunner.
Oh, banquet of blood!
Would that thou hadst never sworn, deceitful Herod!
Better that thou lie than shed righteous blood!
But let us bless the Baptist as is his due,
and honor him as the greatest born of women!

In demonic love and fiery passion, O Herod,
thou didst condemn him who reproved thine adultery.
For the sake of an oath to a dancing girl,
thou didst deliver his holy head to that Jezebel.
Woe to thee! How hast thou dared such murder?
Why was the wanton dancer not consumed by fire?
But let us bless the Baptist as is his due,
and honor him as the greatest born of women!

 Again Herodias raves with raging lust.
Oh, dance of deceit and feast of murder!
The Baptist is beheaded, and Herod is troubled.
Through the prayers of Thy Forerunner, O Lord, grant peace to our souls!

 During the celebration of shameless Herod’s birthday,
the terms of the oath to the wanton dancer were fulfilled,
for the Baptist’s head was cut off and carried like food on a platter
in the presence of those reclining at the loathsome banquet.
Truly they feasted on wickedness and murder.
But let us bless the Forerunner as is his due,
and honor him as the greatest born of women!

I really love the juxtaposition of the banqueting imagery to the image of St John's head on a platter. This dark, grotesque side of the concept of feasting helps account for the fact that this is the only "feast" of the Church which (to my knowledge) calls for strict fasting. 

Eastern Orthodox icon of the beheading of St John the Baptist (c. 1600). Imagine walking into a church and seeing this in the center of the nave!

Then these stichera, which come after the Old Testament readings for the feast (which are themselves quite instructive):

What shall we call thee, O Prophet?
Angel, apostle, martyr?
Angel, for thou hast spent thy life like those who have no body.
Apostle, for thou hast taught the nations,
and martyr, for thy head has been cut off for the sake of Christ.
Pray to Him then that our souls may be granted great mercy!

Let us celebrate the memorial of the beheading of the Forerunner;
at that time thou didst gush forth blood upon the platter,
and now thou pourest forth healing to the ends of the earth!

Today the mother of murder,
acting with more wickedness than has ever been seen,
has roused to evil her utterly wanton daughter
against the divinely-chosen and greatest of all the Prophets.
For while hateful Herod was celebrating his ungodly birthday,
she contrived according to the oath he had given her for her dancing,
to beg for the precious head of the herald of God
that gushed forth miracles.
And he, in his madness, fulfilled his promise
and gave it to her as reward for her brazen dancing.
But the initiate of the coming of Christ
ceased not after death to rebuke them for their repulsive union,
but reproved them loudly, saying:
“It does not become thee to commit adultery with the wife of thy brother Philip.”
Oh, birthday, killer of prophets!
Oh, banquet full of blood!
Let us, arrayed in white, piously celebrate the Beheading of the Forerunner,
and rejoice on this day as on a great feast!
And let us ask the Forerunner to beseech the Trinity for us,
that we be delivered from dishonorable passions, and that our souls be saved!

The reference to Herodius here as the "mother of murder" seems a fitting contrast to St Elizabeth, the mother of the Baptist, who has already been referenced in scripture readings earlier in the service. 

The hymnody is extensive, but one more example will suffice draw out the theological importance of this feast:

Come, O people,
let us praise the Prophet and Martyr and Baptist of the Savior!
For being an angel in the flesh, he thoroughly reproved Herod
by condemning his act of unlawful adultery;
and through the impious dance, he endured the cutting off of his precious head,
that he might proclaim to those in hell
the good news of the Resurrection from the dead;
and he earnestly intercedes with the Lord, that our souls may be saved.

This verse alludes to a common patristic understanding of the ministry of St John the Baptist: that, just as he had been the Lord's forerunner on earth, going before him to "prepare the way," so too he was the foreunner in Hades, going ahead of his kinsman to announce the defeat of Death and the triumph of the Son of God and Son of Mary. Once again, John is about six months ahead of his cousin (give or take, depending on the date of Easter and the usual mixup with the Julian/Gregorian calendars). Thus, martyrdom--an ever-present reality within the Church's memory--becomes a means of understanding, and even announcing, the final consummation of all of our hopes and fears, as Christ descends to our lowest place and brings us out in triumph.

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12th c. Anglo-Saxon illumination depicting the Harrowing of Hell. Note St John the Baptist is the first to come out of Hell's mouth to greet his kinsman.

This idea of the Baptist as the herald and forerunner of Christ into Hades is one of the major themes of the body of Anglo-Saxon poetry around the "Harrowing of Hell." In this context, John the Baptist is Earendel, the "morning star" (i.e., the star which presages the coming of the dawn). The following couplet from Christ I, justly famous for inspiring J.R.R. Tolkien's own mythopoeic imagination, is one I often find myself whispering when I see Venus shining high over the elms:

Eálá Earendel engla beorhtastOfer middangeard monnum sended.

Hail, Earendel! Of angels brightest
Over Middle-earth to mankind sent.

Tolkien himself seems to have had a special devotion to the Baptist--hardly surprising all things considered. He once tried to share this side of himself with his close friend C.S. Lewis. Lewis (who, while not exactly an Evangelical, was still at the end of the day a Protestant) shot him down--probably with a bluff, boisterous comment which he did not intend to wound his more sensitive friend. But it did. Humphrey Carpenter records Tolkien's recollection of this painful moment in his biography, quoting from a letter which has otherwise never made it into any official publication:

“We stumped along the cloisters, and I followed feeling like a shabby little Catholic caught by the eye of an ‘Evangelical clergyman of good family’ taking holy water at the door of a church. A door had slammed. Never now should I be able to say in his presence:

Bot Chrystes mersy and Mary and Jon,Thise arn the grounde of alle my blysse (The Pearl)

. . . and suppose that I was sharing anything of my vision of a great rood-screen through which one could see the Holy of Holies.”

More about this "great rood-screen" when we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Currently reading: The Stripping of the Altars

Current audio book: The Return of the King

Currently translating: The Dream of the Rood

Hail Elbereth

I wanted to push back on a popular misconception concerning prayer in Tolkien's legendarium. It is often said that the "Window in the West" passage is the only example of a prayer, or at least of something approximating to it, in The Lord of the Rings. This seems to me to not be the case. I would agree that it is one of the only examples of men praying (unless Hobbits count), but the book is absolutely full of prayers, one in particular. The longest version of it goes like this:

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!
O Queen beyond the Western Seas!
O Light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!
Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!
Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath!
Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee
In a far land beyond the Sea.
O stars that in the Sunless Year
With shining hand by her were sawn,
In windy fields now bright and clear
We see your silver blossom blown!
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.

Then of course there is the hymn of the elves of Rivendell:

A Elbereth Gilthoniel, 
silivren penna míriel
o menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-díriel
o galadhremmin ennorath, 
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, sí nef aearon!

In translation (Tolkien's own) this runs:

"O! Elbereth who lit the stars, from glittering crystal slanting falls with light like jewels from heaven on high the glory of the starry host. To lands remote I have looked afar, and now to thee, Fanuilos, bright spirit clothed in ever-white, I here will sing beyond the Sea, beyond the wide and sundering Sea."

I could cite more examples (such as Galadriel's amazing song, which does some very interesting things with the dual pronoun). In all, I counted 10 instances of where her name was invoked as a kind of prayer:

• 7 in The Fellowship of the Ring
• 1 in The Two Towers
• 2 (or arguably, 3) in The Return of the King

What is so interesting about these uses is that they begin to taper off after Lothlorien, as invocations of Varda/Elbereth are replaced by invocations of Galadriel, who the Three Hunters thank in their hearts for the gift of Lembas, and to whom Sam wishfully prays for light and water in Mordor--after which they find both. In fact, whenever the words "the Lady" are used without any other name in The Two Towers and The Return of the King, they always refer to Galadriel.

Mythmoot VI After-Action Report

Just a quick note this time to say that I returned from Mythmoot VI last week, so blogging will be resuming shortly. This was my second Mythmoot, and my most "active" one from a participation standpoint. I took part in a number of panels:

• A Thesis Theater panel along with a fellow philology grad and one other Signum graduate (also brilliant!). 
• A Wilderness of Dragons panel, along with some (but alas, not all--you were missed, Simon, Jeremy, and Oliver) of my fellow authors for this essay collection. 
• A "Tolkien and Gaming" panel, with Dr Corey Olsen, Trish Lambert, Jacob Rogers (one of the designers of Cubicle 7's The One Ring RPG, of which I am a superfan).
• And, of course, my own graduation. I walked an aisle, received "congratulations" from Dr Olsen (pic below) and read some of the Hervararkviða in Old Norse and in my own translation.

Other highlights included meeting one of my favorite living Inklings scholars, Diana Glyer, and hearing a wonderful talk she gave on creative collaboration; seeing a presentation from a DoD illustrator (who works at Langley, VA) on illustrating the Fall of Gondolin, hearing the inimitable Kevin Hensler talk about Semitic Chaos Dragons, and, of course, dancing.

But the best parts of Mythmoot were, as always, the long conversations around the firepit after the lights went out. Staying up long past respectable hours talking about the Holy Grail--that's why I go to these things.

Not the least of the joys of last weekend was stopping by St Nicholas Cathedral in DC for liturgy and coffee hour before I headed to the airport. My thanks to the wonderful folks at St Nicholas for their hospitality. At the end of a fun but exhausting weekend of travel and running around, it was good to stand still in church and know exactly where I was.

On the Wilderness of Dragons panel with the great Tom Hillman.

Like any good Anglo-Saxon, I chose to receive my 'congratulations' in Latin.

Hanging out with Lesley and Sara at the masquerade ball Saturday night. These two brilliant ladies put up with me through three semesters of Philology.

St Nicholas Cathedral, Washington DC. An icon of Paradise.

IV. Beauty and the Kingdom of Heaven

In my previous post, I concluded by setting myself this question to answer:

"The second difference is an artistic question of how--if Christ is the icon of the Father, and therefore the only reliable means by which we can know and commune with the God who is Beauty--all of the other arts (particularly those which are non-liturgical or not specifically religious) can be arranged so as to be transfigured by the Light of Tabor."

In the many weeks which have transpired since writing that post, I have had time to contemplate the salutary phrase "the artistic question of how..." For it is exactly a question of art--"the art remaining with the artist." Here I am not so much interested in the question of art as a "thing" ("but is it art?!") as I am in ars as craft, such as "the art of cheesemaking" or "the art of storytelling" or "the art of Iconography." I am enough of a traditionalist to insist that while cheesemaking, storytelling, and iconography each have their own distinct associated skills and techniques (the combination of which defines the "art" of the thing), yet too they each have a capacity to which they can (according to their kind) be integrated into a world which is not merely fallen, but which has been redeemed.

The best pattern for understanding the arts is that of the hierarchy. All the arts contain a hierarchy within themselves, relate to each other in terms of a hierarchy, and produce artifacts which move the human person towards a specific place in a hierarchy. We may think of a hierarchy in terms of a mountain--as St Gregory of Nyssa understands the progression of the human person toward God in The Life of Moses. We may also think of it in terms of a king's court, or of the Ptolemaic model of the universe (concerning which, more later)--Dante uses all of these models in The Divine Comedy.

Some of us may find the notion of hierarchy repulsive, for any number of reasons which point to any number of disorders in the human condition. Some of us have been wronged by evil hierarchies, some others of us have spent so much time staring at inverted hierarchies that they have begun to look normal to us--thus the Inferno is always the most popular book of The Divine Comedy with any audience, with interest waning as Dante purges more and more of his sin and comes closer and closer to God. I have never believed the fault lay with Dante's genius.

Still others of us have been formed by habits of thought, culture, and education to explicitly reject traditional hierarchies, having become oblivious to those present within our own society which we accept without question. Once, beginning a long-running study on the books of the "Kingdoms" (1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles) I asked a room full of evangelical adults what sort of government or society best mirrored or imaged Heaven (these are the sorts of unfair, troublesome questions which young and arrogant teachers like to use to break the ice). The answer, given nearly unanimously and without hesitation, was "democracy" (though one clever person suggested a "representative republic" instead). This, despite the fact that Christ has very little to say about "the Democracy of Heaven." Like most Evangelicals, they considered themselves "people of the book," but they had always been taught that the American model of government was the most inherently biblical and therefore the most like Heaven.

I am of course neither interested in nor qualified to set out any kind of political theory. The fact that congregationalists equate democracy with the Divine order is not really a comment which requires much consideration, nor am I keen on the idea of elevating any of our current political leaders to the status of absolute monarch. Much more important to the Fathers of the Church--and in my view, much more immediate to us--is the fact that each of us contains, as human persons, a microcosm--a whole cosmos in miniature--within ourselves. This microcosm, because it images the Divine, is inherently hierarchical. Learning to perceive beauty requires the restoration of this hierarchy to its proper order (which is the goal of asceticism).

There is of course the danger that you have already tuned me out due to the repeated use in this post of words such as "hierarchy" and "tradition," all of which we have been taught to think of as stale, dead, and irreparably corrupt. Over the course of the next four posts, I will attempt to show how when we engage with and participate in these things we find them living and breathing, dynamic and attractive. For true hierarchies are not static things--rather, they are processions, or parades: as stately as a coronation; as ecstatic as David dancing before the Ark; as festal as any triumphus through the streets of the Eternal City.

We will consider four works of art: two visual, one poetic, and one literary. The artistic hierarchies I intend to examine are, in order:

1. The Multi-Dimensional Iconography of the Orthodox temple
2. Rogier van der Weyden’s Seven Sacraments
3. The Divine Comedy
4. The Silmarillion

Currently reading: The Person in the Orthodox Tradition, Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

Current audio book: Bread, Water, Wine, and Oil: An Orthodox Experience of God, Meletios Weber

II. Can the Singer Enter the Tale? Tolkien and the Sacraments, Part 3

In this series of posts, I am trying to articulate what might be called a "language of beauty."

In the first post in the series, I shared a rather autobiographical prologue of my early awakenings to beauty in the world and in the Word.

In the second post in the series, I laid some groundwork in the form of a thesis: The classical Christian approach to art, poetics, and wonder must be understood in light of the Incarnation. The great Christian artists have possessed something I have called the "sacramental imagination" that was born out of the basic confidence that the world (created or sub-created) could be a real means of communion with God. In other words, if there is a Christian "language" of beauty, the sacraments are its grammar.

In the previous two posts, I began an examination of how this "sacramental imagination" works itself out in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Today's post concludes those reflections.

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I would argue, the thing that held all of this together for Tolkien was the Blessed Sacrament itself: the Holy Eucharist. Writing once to one of his sons, who was undergoing a crisis of faith, he said,

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth…” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p.53)

Elsewhere, speaking of a dark period in his life and of his own failings as a father, he wrote,

“But I fell in love with the Blessed Sacrament from the beginning – and by the mercy of God never have fallen out again: but alas! I indeed did not live up to it…Out of wickedness and sloth I almost ceased to practice my religion – especially at Leeds, and at 22 Northmoor Road. Not for me the Hound of Heaven, but the never-ceasing silent appeal of Tabernacle, and the sense of starving hunger. I regret those days bitterly (and suffer for them with such patience as I can be given); most of all because I failed as a father. Now I pray for you all, unceasingly, that the Healer (the Hælend as the Saviour was usually called in Old English) shall heal my defects, and that none of you shall ever cease to cry Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.” (Ibid. no. 250).

Between this, and the Reformed-Puritanical-Protestant approach to worship, there lies a fundamental epistemological difference. As a devout Roman Catholic (and particularly a pre-Vatican II Catholic), Tolkien did not go to Church to meet God merely in a sermon, but in a sacrament--not with his head only, but with his whole being. The Eucharist, like every Sacrament (and perhaps especially as the Sacrament of Sacraments), is the Recovery of the ordinary to its proper place. In it, the materials of bread and wine are caught up into the true myth of the God-Man who gave himself for all and on behalf of all. And even though the elements be changed, yet we are never quite able to look at "ordinary" bread and wine the same way again.

Flannery O’Connor, another Catholic author who wrote numerous times on her deep love for the Eucharist (and who attended Mass daily), said once that anyone who expects a writer to preach does not believe in the sacredness of the writer’s calling. The Evangelical really does expect the writer to preach just as he expects the preacher to preach. But for Tolkien, creation and sub-creation require not just a mind, but an Incarnate mind. To really experience truth we must live it, we must meet it in the flesh.

So Tolkien didn’t make sermons. He made myths. In doing so he worked out his absolute confidence in the Incarnation, of humanity caught up into the Godhead, and he had the virtue to Hope that by doing so he might restore his own humanity—and ours—to its priestly role by partaking in the sacramental act of sub-creation.

That is what he means by the closing lines of On Fairy Stories,

So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.

Currently reading: For the Life of the World, Fr Alexander Schmemann
Current audio book: The Brothers Karamazov
Currently translating: The Aeneid, Virgil

II. Can the Singer Enter the Tale? Tolkien and the Sacraments, Part 2

In this series of posts, I am trying to articulate what might be called a "language of beauty."

In the first post in the series, I shared a rather autobiographical prologue of my early awakenings to beauty in the world and in the Word.

In the second post in the series, I laid some groundwork in the form of a thesis: The classical Christian approach to art, poetics, and wonder must be understood in light of the Incarnation. The great Christian artists have possessed something I have called the "sacramental imagination" that was born out of the basic confidence that the world (created or sub-created) could be a real means of communion with God. In other words, if there is a Christian "language" of beauty, the sacraments are its grammar.

In the previous post, I began an examination of how this "sacramental imagination" works itself out in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Today's post continues those reflections.

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III. THE LONG DEFEAT

No discussion of Incarnational theology in Tolkien’s works would be complete without a discussion of suffering. For the Christian, there is no Incarnation without suffering. When St Athanasius the Great writes his landmark work on Christian theology, probably the most important extra-Biblical Christian text which has ever been written, he calls it On the Incarnation. But what does St Athanasius mean by “Incarnation?” He calls it that which is “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks,” the same phrase which Paul uses to describe Christ crucified in the first Epistle to the Corinthians.

We usually think of the Incarnation as the act which took place in the womb of Mary (and quite rightly, as I have pointed out in a previous post), but whenever Athanasius talks about it he always means the cross. When he asks “why did God become man?” what he always means is “why did God have to become a man and suffer?” And the only way for us is to follow Christ’s example, to suffer and die to this world, to bear witness with our blood, to participate in the living sacrifice which Christ offered up once and for all to the Father. For the Christian, the distance between earth and heaven is measured by the Cross.

Tolkien knew this very well—in fact, I think he knew it better than a lot of his critics acknowledged. Critics at the time as well as subsequent fantasy authors (people like Michael Moorcock) have criticized The Lord of the Rings for being morally simplistic, a kind of happily-ever-after fantasy in which everything comes out all right in the end. One wonders which copy of The Lord of the Rings they were reading.

If Tolkien develops a theology of sub-creation, we must not think he is blind to the potential abuses of the artistic gifts. One could argue that the whole history of his legendarium is a working-out of what happens when the sub-creative urge is malformed or disordered: when it mutates into the desire to possess and control. Melkor “the strong,” mightiest among the Valar, becomes Morgoth “the dark enemy of the world” ultimately because he wants to create in isolation instead of community, because he wants to control what he makes rather than give it over to the Children of Illuvatar who will inherit it. Later, the seeds of sin in Feanor’s heart—and the whole long and sad history of the Noldor as it plays out in The Silmarillion—are sown when he crafts the Silmarils, and desires to possess rather than to share them.

The impulse to create alone instead of in community is a marring of the image of God: for God does not create alone. The Holy Trinity is persons in communion, not an individual, a lonely genius, producing works for his own pleasure. One might say in Tolkien’s economy, as in Dante’s, all the individualists are in hell (or in this case, Angband).

The ultimate icon of corrupted art is, of course, the One Ring, which is the supreme work of art in The Lord of the Rings, and also the weapon of ultimate control. It’s telling, I think, in an age where the highest good is to “be all you can be,” that rejecting the One Ring always means rejecting your full potential. Gandalf, Frodo, even Sam could all be much more than they are—more effective, more efficient, more dreadful, more lordly, more deadly—if they would just use the Ring.

We see this most vividly in Galadriel’s test. In my opinion, it’s one of the most powerful scenes in literature. Galadriel can take the Ring which Frodo has offered. If she does, she’ll be a Queen—not just of Lothlorien, but of all Middle-earth. But if she rejects it—and this is what we can sometimes forget—she won’t merely stay where she’s at. Right now she’s Galadriel, Lady of Lothlorien, wielder of one of the three Elven rings, the greatest of the elves who yet remain in Middle-earth. She’s the daughter and sister and grandmother of kings and queens, perhaps the greatest and fairest of the Children of Illuvatar in the world since the time of Luthien. And if she lets the One Ring out of Lothlorien, she loses all of that. She has to go away into the West, where she will be “only Galadriel.” When you think about all of the good things she might still do for Middle-earth, the waste seems almost criminal, and I think that is one of the reasons that the elves’ leaving Middle-earth at the end of The Lord of the Rings feels so tragic.

There’s a line that’s easy to miss that I think says everything we need to understand about Tolkien’s attitude towards suffering. It’s in Galadriel’s description of Celeborn and the three ages that they have spent together in Middle-earth. She says that “together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” Tolkien lived through two World Wars, through the collapse of modernism, to the death of every close friend he had in the trenches of France during WWI. Tolkien lived as a Roman Catholic in an age when Christendom was coming apart at the seams. He was no defeatist, but at the same time he knew that to live in this world—to be Incarnate in it—is to suffer and to die. His whole work is shot through with that tension. What the Christian story has done—the myth become history, the ultimate Eucatastrophe—is given all of our suffering a purpose. Here is what he says in the epilogue of On Fairy Stories:

The Gospels contain a fairystory, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation… 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 perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.

The good news of the Gospel is this: everything that we are as humans made in the Image of God now has a purpose, not just to vaguely “impact the culture for Christ,” but to actually assist in the salvation of the universe. I want to recall once again our working definition of Recovery: An Incarnate Mind, working with the materials of Primary Reality, creates a work of Fantasy, by which Primary reality is restored to is proper place. And I think now we are prepared, or nearly prepared, to see how Tolkien believes this concept has its ultimate fulfillment in Christ.

IV. THE SINGER ENTERS THE TALE

Something which is clear in the very first iteration of the Silmarillion material is the idea that things have gone wrong, and that some sort of intervention is needed if they are ever to be set right again. This idea plays out in the “themes” of Illuvatar, the second music he makes and which the Ainur [the angelic powers and demiurges who sub-create within the themes of Illuvatar/God, though The Flame Imperishable (the Logos) which gives real substance to creation resides only with Illuvatar] do not understand.

The core idea, expressed and developed in a variety of ways throughout Tolkien’s lifetime, is that the Children of Illuvatar (men and elves), and not the Ainur, will be the means by which the hurts of Arda are finally healed. In the earliest versions of the Legendarium, this included a Ragnarok-like battle at the end of time in which Turin Turambar would (with a little help) be the one to strike the final blow against Morgoth, taking vengeance for all the hurts of men and elves. Tolkien eventually scrapped that idea, but the role of the Children of Illuvatar—and particularly that of Mankind—remains in Tolkien’s eschatological vision. As stated in The Silmarillion,

Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy. But Melkor has cast his shadow upon it, and confounded it with darkness, and brought forth evil out of good, and fear out of hope. Yet of old the Valar declared to the Elves in Valinor that Men shall join in the Second Music of the Ainur; whereas Ilúvatar has not revealed what he purposes for the Elves after the World's end…

This is pretty vague, and it hits upon one of the main “problems” for any Christian who digs deep into Tolkien’s Legendarium. You and I and Tolkien know that death, at any rate human death, is an aberration. It is a wound inflicted by sin upon the world. It is only in Christ’s trampling down of death by death that it becomes something more than us. How then can Tolkien say that death is a gift? I think that answer, at least in part, is that Tolkien isn’t really saying that. The elves (who are the authors of the Quenta Silmarillion within Tolkien’s narrative frame) are saying that. One might see how, to the elves, death might come to be viewed as a gift.

When Tolkien’s elves die, they don’t really die. They go to the Halls of Mandos, in the Undying Land, from whence after a time they are given new bodies and reincarnated in the world. The lives of the elves are bound up with the life of Arda (the world), and when it comes to an end—and they know it is going to come to an end—they don’t know what will happen to them. From that point of view, the nature of man to “seek beyond the world,” and to not be bound within its circles after their death, might truly be viewed as a gift.

But if you aren’t entirely satisfied with that answer, you aren’t alone. Almost nobody in Tolkien’s fiction ever is. One of the most remarkable examples of this is in a short story memorably called the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. Athrabeth means “debate,” and The Athrabeth is a debate between Finrod Felagund, an elven-king (who features prominently in The Silmarillion) and Andreth, a mortal woman who is counted among the Wise of her people. It’s a deeply beautiful, sad, and hopeful story, and it is typical of the sort of metaphysical and theological bent that Tolkien’s writing took towards the end of his life. I can’t summarize it all here, but it begins with Andreth’s bitterness over her love for Finrod’s brother Aegenor, whom she loves, and with whom she cannot be because he is immortal and she is not, and he is soon to die in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (which he has foreseen).

As far as Andreth is concerned, the Shadow of Morgoth and the fear of death are one and the same. The Wise among men do not believe that men were made to die, she explains, the elves have heard wrong. She believes they were made to be always undying as the elves are, but that something has gone wrong and death has been imposed upon them. It was this Shadow in the East that the Three Houses of Men were fleeing when they first came to Beleriand (the westernmost lands of Middle-earth, where most of the action of The Silmarillion is set). The clear implication is that the Wise have retained a cultural memory of Eden.

[It may bear explaining at this point that Tolkien always envisioned his Legendarium as a sort of pre-historical mythology for Northern Europe, so it’s always meant to be set in the “real world.”]

The debate goes back and forth. Finrod assumes death is a normal part of human existence. Andreth believes it’s an aberration of nature. Elves are intended for Arda (the physical world); now that it is marred, they wear out faster than they should. Humans are intended for life beyond Arda in some kind of eternal state. Untainted “death” (leaving the circles of the world) would be a good end, says Finrod. Death has been imposed upon humans as a punishment, says Andreth, and is therefore not good. Are our bodies part of the problem, wonders Finrod? No says Andreth, the body is intended for its dweller, it is a part of the dweller, and not to be despised. If that’s the case, why do bodies (human or elvish) wear out? Finrod ultimately suggests that perhaps the purpose of humanity, before their fall, was to uplift the whole world beyond its time-bound existence and so fulfill its eschatological purpose. That’s the context for the remarkable exchange that follows:

‘Alas, lord!’ she said. ‘What then is to be done now? For we speak as these things are, or as if they will assuredly be. But Men have been diminished and their power is taken away. We look for no Arda Remade: darkness lies before us, into which we stare in vain. If by our aid your everlasting mansions were to be prepared, they will not be builded now.’
‘Have ye then no hope?’ said Finrod.
‘What is hope?’ she said. ‘An expectation of good, which though uncertain has some foundation in what is known? Then we have none.’
‘That is one thing that Men call “hope,’ said Finrod. ‘Amdir we call it, “looking up.” But there is another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is “trust”. It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of his own, not by any Enemy…”

In this, Finrod could be anticipating St Athanasius. Andreth is not convinced, though she admits that there are those among men of the “Old Hope” who believe that not “the might of Men, or of any of the peoples of Arda” will be their salvation. But rather,

‘They say,’ answered Andreth: ‘they say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end. This they say also, or they feign, is a rumour that has come down through the years uncounted, even from the days of our undoing.’
…
‘…the saying of Hope passes my understanding. How could Eru enter into the thing that He has made, and than which He is beyond measure greater? Can the singer enter into his tale or the designer into his picture?’

I will leave the end of the story for you to go and read. It is a story of sorrow and healing, and here I have only told a small part. In the Athrabeth, then, Tolkien tries to wrestle with what is, what was, what might have been, and ultimately with what will be again through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Matter is not evil, it was made to be brought up into the divine, not to be obliterated. Through the Incarnation, man is restored to his place as the priest of creation, offering up in thanksgiving what God has made. In the Divine economy of Tolkien’s Legendarium, even the elves are waiting on Christ.

Let’s return to our working definition of Recovery one last time: An Incarnate Mind, working with the materials of Primary Reality, creates a work of Fantasy, by which Primary reality is restored to is proper place. Tolkien saw our role in creation as exactly this, but in order to accomplish it, the Mind of God had to become Incarnate, working with the materials of material reality, and make myth become fact, so that all creation could be restored to its proper place in the Divine Order.

This, I would argue, is the theology which underwrites all of Tolkien’s mythopoeia. It is the premise for all of his own subcreative acts, and it is the idea he is constantly working out through the Valar, the Elves, and the men of his mythology. It is the basis of the Hope for which he struggled through the senseless destruction of the West and the collapse of modernism in the first half of the twentieth century, and it is the basis of the Hope which gave meaning to the languages and poems, the hobbits and elves, the wars and woes of Middle-earth.

The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.

Tolkien worked. He suffered. He died. But he thought he could see that all of these things had a purpose which was not just “useful.” It was salvific.

In my next post, I will look at some of Tolkien's more explicit statements about his own sacramental theology, and offer a few concluding thoughts before moving on to my next case study.

Currently reading: For the Life of the World, Fr Alexander Schmemann

Current audio book: The Brothers Karamazov

Currently translating: The Aeneid, Virgil

II. Can the Singer Enter the Tale? Tolkien and the Sacraments, Part 1

In this series of posts, I am working towards trying to articulate what might be called a "language of beauty." In the previous post I laid out a core thesis which might be expressed as follows: The classical Christian approach to art, poetics, and wonder must be understood in light of the Incarnation. The great Christian artists have possessed something I have called the "sacramental imagination" that was born out of the basic confidence that the world (created or sub-created) could be a real means of communion with God. In other words, if there is a Christian "language" of beauty, the sacraments are its grammar.

Over the course of the next few posts I want to explore how this works itself out in art--both in the liturgical arts, but also in poetry and storytelling. The next two or three posts will be dedicated to examining the sacramental imagination in the works of the 20th century Christian sub-creator par excellence, J.R.R. Tolkien.

The following thoughts on Tolkien were first developed in a talk I gave at the Eighth Day Institute in October of 2018. This is the first time they have appeared in Print, digital or otherwise.

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I want to begin with a quote from Tolkien’s famous (and famously difficult) essay On Fairy Stories. This essay is usually the first stop along the way for any Tolkien fan who wants to read beyond the Finarfins and Fingolfins and Finrods and Finduilas’s of The Silmarillion and tries to understand just how Tolkien’s art succeeded so supremely where the vast majority of his many imitators have failed. It’s one of the three primary attempts Tolkien makes to work out his philosophy and theology of “sub-creation,” the idea that as humans made in the Image of God, who is first a Creator, to make things—and most of all to make stories—is not just our God-given prerogative, it is our God-given right. This essay is not about On Fairy Stories per se, but since I’ll be referencing the essay a few times it might help to give a very high-level overview.

The essay is divided into three basic parts: The first part tries to answer what a “fairy story” is and why people have made them for longer than we have recorded history. This is the hardest part of the essay, mainly because in it Tolkien makes many oblique references to a variety of mythographical theories which were then in circulation. These references can be difficult to track.

The second part of the essay tries to argue for why making fairy-stories is both necessary and “useful.” Tolkien identifies three main things which fairy-stories can accomplish better than other kinds of stories: Escape, Recovery, and Consolation. By Escape, Tolkien means the escape of the prisoner from his cell, not the escape of the deserter from the front lines. Real Escape allows us to confront evil in the world rather than be imprisoned by it. By Recovery, Tolkien means “regaining a clear view” of reality, something we’ll come back to more in a moment. By Consolation, Tolkien has in mind the all-important idea of Eucatastrophe, the sudden breaking-in of Grace or Joy into an otherwise hopeless situation, which culminates in the “happy ending.”

The third part of the essay is neglected in every academic presentation I have ever heard given on On Fairy Stories. It’s the Epilogue, in which Tolkien explicitly ties these ideas to the Christian experience of “True Myth” through the Incarnation and the Resurrection, by which means the human vocation of storytelling is given not just a “Christened,” but a salvific role. That’s where I’d like to end this series of reflections. But to get there we’ll have to go the only way we could possibly go with Tolkien: the long way.

I. RECOVERY AND THE INCARNATE MIND

The quote with which I want to begin is usually cited as, “the mind, the tongue, and the tale are coeval” has been popularized within Tolkien studies by Verlyn Flieger’s “bumper-sticker” formulation found in an earlier draft of the essay: “mythology is language, language is mythology.” What both quotes mean to say is simply this: literature and language cannot, should not be divorced. If we don’t understand the words people use to make stories, we won’t be able to come to an understanding of the stories themselves even if we study them in translation. That’s an audacious claim (though one I agree with) but it isn’t what I want to focus on. Instead, I’d like to point out that the quotation is usually misquoted. In fact, in context it reads like this:

The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval. The human mind, endowed with the powers of generalization and abstraction, sees not only green-grass, discriminating it from other things (and finding it fair to look upon), but sees that it is green as well as being grass. But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent.

According to Tolkien, stories aren’t created apart from language. But they’re also not created apart from matter. According to Tolkien, the “incarnate” mind is the mind that produces language and story. It is only a mind incarnate in matter which can see green-grass for being green as well as being grass, only a mind bound to a world which has the faculty to imagine other worlds. It is difficult to avoid hearing in this echoes of the Gospel of St John: Christ the Word, Christ the Logos—by whom all things are made and upheld—became incarnate to dwell among us. God, who exists always and forever outside of time, actively participates in His own creation.

The Incarnation underwrites all of Tolkien’s sub-creative activities. Tolkien’s thesis about sub-creation is best summed up in a single line from Mythopoeia, a poem which states clearly in verse what is sometimes buried in Tolkien’s prose: “We still make by the law in which we’re made.” In other words, we are incarnate minds made in the image of a Mind who became incarnate. We are sub-creators made in the image of a Creator. God can make something out of nothing, and as His image-bearers we rightly make something out of something. Our sub-creation must use the tools of reality: green grass, cold iron, bread and wine.

In fact, Tolkien would argue, doing so is the only way to reclaim and redeem reality. In the second half of On Fairy Stories, he suggests that there are three things which imaginative literature accomplishes: Escape, Recovery, and Consolation. By Escape, Tolkien means not the escape of the deserter from the front lines, but rather that of the prisoner from his cell. By Consolation, Tolkien means the absolutely crucial idea of Eucatastrophe, the sudden breaking in of grace, the happy ending. These two ideas, and especially the latter, are so important that I think Recovery is often overlooked. Here’s what Tolkien says about it:

Recovery… is a re-gaining… of a clear view… I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ourselves… Fantasy is made out of the Primary World, but a good craftsman loves his material, and has a knowledge and feeling for clay, stone and wood which only the art of making can give. By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory… It was in fairy stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.

Like any child I climbed trees; in my teens I occasionally worked at a horse camp during the summers; but I did not really see trees until I met Treebeard. I did not really see horses until I met Fledge the Flying Horse, and Bree the Talking Horse, and Jewel the Unicorn. It was the bread and wine at Coriakin’s table that was my first glimpse of the truth of the Christian sacrament. That is what Fantasy does for us. That is what sub-creation does for us, as both writers and readers. It takes the familiar things which we think we know, we think we possesses, and so we have “written off,” and it sets them free.

We could formulate Tolkien’s idea of Recovery this way: An Incarnate Mind, working with the materials of Primary Reality, creates a work of Fantasy, by which Primary reality is restored to is proper place. Tolkien’s classic example of this is the idea of the “Green Sun,” an image he returns to again and again throughout his essays. The basic idea is this: if you could imagine a world with a green sun, and then work out all of the possible implications of a sun where the world is green, you’d have recovered something about the sun and something about greenness which you would have otherwise taken for granted.

Perhaps we can think of other examples from our own experience and reading: It’s Aslan, awakening the trees to dance. It’s the song of the elves when they first wandered in the starlight of the primeval world, teaching the trees and rocks and pools and valleys to speak and to sing.

II. THE LANGUAGE OF CHANGE

Following the elves is always a good strategy when you are trying to understand Tolkien, and particularly when you are trying to grasp his philosophy of sub-creation. For although he is often meandering and obtuse as an essayist, he is a master myth-maker, and nowhere is he more at home than when he tells stories about the sub-creators of Middle-earth. There are the Valar, of course, and there are the sub-creative activities of humans in his mythology (which we shall come to in a moment), but it’s in the activities of the elves, the Incarnate Minds to whom the greatest artistic gifts have been given of all the children of Eru, that we see his ideas most clearly.

One of the real problems for Tolkien—which would probably not have occurred to a less detail-oriented person—was Elvish linguistic development. Human linguistic change happens for lots of reasons—we hear things imperfectly, we remember things imperfectly, we repeat things imperfectly. Over time these changes lead, by small developments to their own idiolects, then dialects, then languages, then language families. Tracing these developments by regular and irregular sound shifts—particularly within the Germanic and to a lesser extent the Celtic language of families—was part Tolkien’s day-job as a Germanic Philologist. And Tolkien enjoyed using that same skillset to create not merely dialogue for a few TV episodes, but entire families of languages for which he could demonstrate the “family-tree” of regular sound shifts which resulted in a single proto-language becoming the Quenya and Sindarin (or Noldorin) languages which we readers encounter in The Lord of the Rings.

[He was actually much more interested in this sort of development than he ever was in publishing a dictionary of conversational Elvish, which is why you can’t really pull together dialogue in Elvish for a film without mashing up vocabulary and grammar from several different stages of his linguistic development. But I digress.]

The problem with all of this is that Tolkien established that elves don’t have the same reasons for language change that humans do. For one thing, Elves have perfect recall, or at least something approximating to it in human terms. When Legolas stops midway through the Lay of Nimrodel, he is lying, or at least not telling the whole truth when he says he does not remember the rest (actually, Elves don’t even experience time the same way we do, but that’s another essay). Why then does Elvish language change? The answer seems to be that the Elves need to change their words the same reason you and I need to make new words and languages and stories: to recover enchantment.

Tolkien explores this idea in the Dangweth Pengoloð, a short story he wrote in the early 1950s. In it, Pengolod—an elven philologist and author in the Dangweth's narrative frame—answers this question in a way which sheds important light not only on why Elvish languages change, but on Tolkien’s thoughts about language change in general:

Weak indeed may be the memories of Men, but I say to you, Ælfwine, that even were your memory of your own being as clear as that of the wisest of the Eldar... your speech would change.... For Men change both their old words for new...and this change comes above all from the very changefullness of Eä; or if you will, from the nature of speech, which is fully living only when it is born, but when the union of the thought and the sound is fallen into old custom, and the two are no longer perceived apart, then already the word is dying and joyless...and the thought eager for some new-patterned raiment of sound. (PME 397)

According to Pengolod, the motivation for creating new words is the same for both races: when the union of sound and sense falls into “old custom,” the word and sound are no longer perceived as separate things. The word becomes “dying and joyless,” and a new sound is needed. The primary difference between human and elven language change lies in the latter’s skill. The elves consciously change whole sound patterns instead of individual words, in a manner reminiscent of how Christopher Tolkien described his father’s language invention process. (LR 378-9)

So the “tongues of the Quendi [the elves] change in a manner like to the changes of mortal tongues” albeit more artfully and deliberately. (PME 398, 400) This is in fact an echo of an idea Tolkien developed much earlier in his Secret Vice lecture and essay, which is the clearest he ever states his philosophy of language development. It is the first appearance of the “green sun” motif we mentioned earlier. In this essay, Tolkien develops what one scholar has called his “linguistic heresies,” two of which are: that human language change is often deliberate, not accidental, and that we do it for a specific reason (even if that reason is not always known to us):

And with the phonetic pleasure we have blended the more elusive delight of establishing novel relations between symbol and significance, and in contemplating them... as soon as you have fixed even a vague general sense for your words, many of the less subtle but most moving and permanently important of the strokes of poetry are open to you. For you are the heir of the ages. You have not to grope after the dazzling brilliance of invention of the free adjective, to which all human language has not fully attained. You may say green sun or dead life and set the imagination leaping. 

Language has both strengthened imagination and been freed by it. Who shall say whether the free adjective has created images bizarre and beautiful, or the adjective been freed by strange and beautiful pictures in the mind? (Monsters and the Critics 218-19)

Earlier, we defined Tolkien’s idea of Recovery as An Incarnate Mind, working with the materials of Primary Reality, creates a work of Fantasy, by which Primary reality is restored to is proper place. I would argue that if Tolkien’s philosophy of language invention is the purest development of this idea, his actual glossopoeic activities are among its most successful applications. I can still remember as a young boy, thrilling at the sound of the name “Gondolin” and the teasing references to the Elven wars of old, long before I knew that Gondolin was a “real” place (go on, tell me it isn’t!) with a history which predated The Hobbit not just in the fiction, but in the real world. Tolkien’s kings and wars and swords and lineages and names and languages “baptized” my imagination in a way that has always made me love the real world—with its histories and kings and wars and lineages and names and languages—much more than I would have otherwise. And the cosmic struggle, the frequent losses, the heartache and pain which evil causes in Middle-earth has helped me to understand the sin which is at the root of all of our pain and suffering in this World Under the Sun.

In my next post, I'll continue my examination of how Tolkien's sacramental imagination works itself out, this time specifically in his treatment within the legendarium of the problem of pain.

Currently reading: For the Life of the World, Fr Alexander Schmemann

Current audio book: The Brothers Karamazov

Currently translating: The Aeneid, Virgil