commands or induces

[Chrysophylax Dives]

The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference of degree in Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) ‘the inner consistency of reality’,[31] is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art...
[31]That is: which commands or induces Secondary Belief.
OFS §§65-6

The quotation is supplied by @Troelsfo on another thread, where he has accepted my challenge to explain the intended meaning of the phrase 'the inner consistency of reality.' Troelsfo draws attention to the footnote, which establishes that whatever is the quality of 'inner consistency of reality' it may be understood from the side of Secondary Belief, which this quality commands or induces. Stepping out of our debate, I wished to highlight how significant are each of Tolkien's words in this essay, and how easily in our reading we may step over vast chasms of meaning.

As a frame on the essay, it is worth holding in mind that it was composed in two parts: as a lecture, delivered March 1939, which material was then reworked - with the entire section 'Fantasy' inserted anew - in summer 1943. These dates (courtesy: Flieger & Anderson) correlate with those of Christopher Tolkien in Return of the Shadow and Treason of Isengard to show that the man who delivered the 1939 lecture had penned the adventures with Tom Bombadil pretty much as we know them but had not advanced beyond Rivendell, while the man who wrote up the essay in summer 1943 had at the close of 1942 brought the story to the breaking of the staff of Saruman - through Moria, Lorien, Fangorn, and Rohan and Isengard.

Consider the words of the footnote in the context of the story just penned: the Lady of the Golden Wood induces belief but would never command it! Wormtongue cannot command belief, but induces it. The voice of Saruman is an enchantment.

Between commanding belief and inducing belief is all the difference between the storyteller and the White Wizard, on the one hand, and Sauron on the other.

[Boromir88]

Once again you have my head churning @Chrysophylax Dives.

Between commanding belief and inducing belief is all the difference between the storyteller and the White Wizard, on the one hand, and Sauron on the other.

The difference between "command" and "induce" is a fine line, but it appears important to Tolkien, and a line that at least his characters should not cross. I'm too unfamiliar with Tolkien the "Storyteller" to delve into how he composed his stories, but perhaps it will be helpful to know on the subject of "commanding" and "inducing," I'm reminded of Gandalf's confrontation with the Balrog in Moria:

"I do not know," answered Gandalf. "But I found myself suddenly faced by something that I have not met before. I could think of nothing to do but to try and put a shutting-spell on the door. I know many; but to do things of that kind rightly requires time, and even then the door can be broken by strength." (The Fellowship of the Ring: The Bridge of Khazad-dum)

The way Gandalf describes using "magic" (for lack of a better term) here is interesting. He can "try" to put a shutting-spell on the door, but to do it "rightly requires time." Or to put it in the terms of "Seconary Belief," Gandalf is attempting to induce the door into being shut, by putting a "shutting-spell" on it. However, this does not work:

"What it was I cannot guess, but I have never felt such a challenge. The counter-spell was terrible. It nearly broke me. For an instant the door left my control and began to open! I had to speak of word of Command. That proved too great a strain. The door burst in pieces."

Gandalf had induced the door shut, but the Balrog countered and Gandalf lost control of the door. In haste he had to speak a "word of Command." However, as Gandalf describes the door pretty much exploded, because the word to "Command" the door shut was too great a strain for it. This takes us back to Bag End, where Gandalf tells Frodo he can't "make him" destroy the Ring. Or rather that he could, but would not cross that line:

Gandalf laughed grimly. "You see? Already you too, Frodo, cannot easily let it go, nor will to damage it. And I could not "make" you - except by force, which would break your mind." (The Fellowship of the Ring: The Shadow of the Past)

Now I shall head to bed thinking about Frodo's mind exploding into pieces like the door of Moria, if Gandalf had decided to cross that line and "Command" Frodo to destroy the Ring. Cheers!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

"What it was I cannot guess, but I have never felt such a challenge. The counter-spell was terrible. It nearly broke me. For an instant the door left my control and began to open! I had to speak of word of Command. That proved too great a strain. The door burst in pieces."

You honed in on the line that these days holds me above all others. A word of Command! What does that mean? (This must be the power of Bombadil.) What is this two-step magic and what the nature of the opposing spells? The doors of Moria are not to be taken lightly; there is a riddle on the western door and this Chamber of Records has two doors. And note this: the Doors of Durin redraw the frame of The Hobbit: the door that is marked (Bag-end) and the door that is hidden (Lonely Mountain) made into one door that is first unhidden (Gandalf's magic here is rather passed over with hand movements) and then studded with queer marks and signs.

The door that breaks prefigures (or is that the opposite) the bridge that breaks; all spelling out more of the latent meanings on which the wizard first stumbles, on the dwarf door on which Celebrimbor drew the signs. (The door that breaks is not in the movie! I looked for it, but the Tomb has only one door - in my heart I believe that this captures a fundamental way that Jackson does not get his material.)

And, in my opinion, you precisely place your finger on the point by drawing attention to the door of Moria and the mind of Frodo Baggins (and ours!) This is at the heart of things, it seems to me.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: The way you are breaking open with command belief and inducing belief, somewhere it sounds very familiar, both points of view. But on the other hand I could never put an exact term to those different views. Slowly I am beginning to see what lore is, and in a sense coming to understand a bit, how intelligent Prof. Tolkien really was, it is kind of mindblowing I guess. Your green quote is even appliable in our time, as the perception on imagination hasn't changed that much, as far I am aware off. But then my educational years were between 1980 and 1992 for the end of highschool, and had English language and literature as a subject. The bigger details on what all has been written or published I have no knowledge off. But the differences between Gandalf and Saruman are evident in the book. Is there perhaps a possibility to read this entire essay, where you have this green quote from? Or where I might find it and can access it myself? I am curious about the rest.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, yes Prof. Tolkien was remarkably intelligent. Looking back, I think i was disappointed when i went to university because i was expecting to find some teachers like him, but there were none to be had!

The green text is from the essay On Fairy-stories. You can read it online here: https://coolcalvary.files.wordpress.com ... ories1.pdf. From my own experience, though, it takes many readings to comprehend what is going on in the essay. I came to a careful reading of the essay through my research into the HoMe volumes dealing with the early drafts of LOTR, which reveal that this essay is part of the composition - it contains the inner core of the new vision that bursts into the story in Moria and Lorien and gives us also Orthanc and the Seeing Stone (Tolkien wrote up the essay immediately after Wormtongue hurled the Stone of Orthanc into the story, but he worked the essay up from a lecture that he delivered in 1939, before arriving at the Doors of Durin.)

But that inner core is so very hard to discern. Tolkien almost goes out of his way to hide his meaning; or perhaps it is because he is talking so directly that we find it so very hard to see what he is saying?

Quite early, Tolkien says that his subject, 'Fairy', cannot be defined, yet may be perceived. This is just such an odd idea. I think almost all readers simply step over it with eyes closed - because what else can you do? But here is an important signpost for an essay composed by a man whose first job was working on the Oxford English Dictionary: the essay on fairy stories is a sort of appendix to the OED directing attention to a realm of being that is (somehow) nameless yet visible.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Thanks I downloaded it. It is an extensive essay to read and will take a considerable time. An intellectual feat for sure. Do you like my comments later on about it, when I am done reading? I will consider as well your thoughts you just gave.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, feel free to raise any comment or question as you read. As @Romeran said on another thread, it is a very dense essay; and it is often hard to see the connections; but just about every part of it is significant.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Thanks! At the start of the essay (published 1947) it begins with a sort of historical oversight upon flower faires, with an adding Tolkien disliked the kind as child. Those tiny fairies got something innocent and childish, shunning the real world out. Recon how hard life really was in the 19th century and the industralisation, and this was a reaction to it. A sort of innocent dreamworld. That is where Disney's Tinkerbell movies/stories come in today. The essay doesn't feel that dense to me, but maybe it is later on? It is bit of pre-war(?) way of speaking, but not that so unfamiliar to me. There is use of words that have gone out of fashion these days. The written text is what the basis was for a lecture, and Tolkien used a shortened version at St. Andrews in 1938. This essay is the much longer version of it. What I like about these academic essays, there is a thorough historical explanation to it, with examples enlightened. You don't find that often in essays nowadays. And it is makes that literary value of it high.

Flying fairies are easier to access than the strong elves of old from our own mythology. These 'old' elves and dwarves are intertwined with our reality, the world we daily experience. We have not to believe they are out there somewhere. No, they are actually out there. (Example) We got a concept here around: "Historically, the witte wieven are thought to be wise female herbalists and medicine healers who took care of people's physical and mental ailments. It was said they had the talent for prophecy and looking into the future. They had a high status in the communities, and so when they died ceremonies were held at their grave sites to honour them. According to mythology, their spirits remained on earth, and they became living spirits (or elven beings) that either helped or hindered people who encountered them. They tended to reside in the burial sites or other sacred places. It was thought that mist on a gravehill was the spirit of the wise woman appearing, and people would bring them offerings and ask for help.While many scholars[who?] believe Witte Wieven originated as above from honoring graves of wise women, others think the mythology of witte wieven come from part of the Germanic belief in disen, land wights, and/or alven (Dutch for "elf") for several reasons: The practice of bringing offerings and asking for help from their graves is very similar to honoring disen, land wights and alfen in Germanic paganism. In addition, in some localities the mythological witte wieven were described directly as "Alfen" or "Alven". (Wikipedia) In Dordrecht where I live and among all the South-Hollandic Islands, this myth is still be told to children and when the mists came back, these myths are in a sense real. The mists have something mystical, and that feel is even stronger at dawn or dusk.They present danger of going lost if you walk and when you drive a car, you can end up in a ditch, because you can't see the turn before it's too late, as example.

From page six on it is mostly 'telling' and therefore 'read through'. To page eight it is all introducing the subject, clearing out what sorts of fairystories there are and which genres do border to it, complete with examples I most have heard off and read myself in the past. Origins give an answer to the second question asked in the very beginning. The essay is a rather full delicious cake, you only have to read it, and in cake sense, eat it.

"But that point of interest and such comparisons as these bring us to the brink of the second question: What are the origins of “fairy-stories”? That must, of course, mean: the origin (or origins) of the fairy elements. To ask what is the origin of stories (however qualified) is to ask what is the origin of language and of the mind." - I feel to some ears this professor must have been a delight to listen to. What is the origin of language and of the mind.... Tolkien is rather verbose in the way he speaks, which might explain the density you are referring to. He uses sometimes an unrelated term in a subject, but a paragraph further he gets into details how that unrelated term relates. He is pretty funny with his reference to the Pot, what is clearly a metaphor for how fairy-tales came together across history. I am familiar with the principle of the Cauldron (of Time), as he speak about it. Aye aye, Tolkien talks in a very direct way by being verbose, which is a writing style I really love, because it saves me the trouble to search for what I don't get or understand. Today in science essays it is common to be 'good to the point and leave all unnecessities out'. This (Tolkien's) is what I would say, classical discussing matters. It has a personal touch. The classical way is to present the problem, and step by step answering it in details and at the end an conclusion.

The element of the essay lays to my feeling in this paragraph on page 15 with highlighted what is the core is: "But when we have done all that research—collection and comparison of the tales of many lands—can do; when we have explained many of the elements commonly found embedded in fairy-stories (such as step-mothers, enchanted bears and bulls, cannibal witches, taboos on names, and the like) as relics of ancient customs once practised in daily life, or of beliefs once held as beliefs and not as “fancies”— there remains still a point too often forgotten: that is the effect produced now by these old things in the stories as they are." And that is where your conclusion comes in: "Quite early, Tolkien says that his subject, 'Fairy', cannot be defined, yet may be perceived." There is no way really of knowing that, because these old things in the stories are older than we could read and write in the earliest times. Hence the effect is so illusive in origins. And then Tolkien continues further: "For one thing they are now old, and antiquity has an appeal in itself...." Conclusive: "If we pause, not merely to note that such old elements have been preserved, but to think how they have been preserved, we must conclude, I think, that it has happened, often if not always, precisely because of this literary effect."

I have read the other pages to nr 35. The children chapter is a discussion on what children themselves desire to read and what grownups find suitable for them to read on fairy-tales. He places himself in the middle of it, telling what his desires are: "I wanted to know. Belief depended on the way in which stories were presented to me, by older people, or by the authors, or on the inherent tone and quality of the tale. But at no time can I remember that the enjoyment of a story was dependent on belief that such things could happen, or had happened, in “real life.” Fairy-stories were plainly not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability. If they awakened desire, satisfying it while often whetting it unbearably, they succeeded. It is not necessary to be more explicit here, for I hope to say something later about this desire, a complex of many ingredients, some universal, some particular to modern men (including modern children), or even to certain kinds of men. I had no desire to have either dreams or adventures like Alice, and the amount of them merely amused me. I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and, above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable. I never imagined that the dragon was of the same order as the horse. And that was not solely because I saw horses daily, but never even the footprint of a worm. The dragon had the trade-mark Of Faerie written plain upon him. In whatever world he had his being it was an Other-world. Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faërie. I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril. The dweller in the quiet and fertile plains may hear of the tormented hills and the unharvested sea and long for them in his heart. For the heart is hard though the body be soft." He closes down with this: "If adults are to read fairy-stories as a natural branch of literature—neither playing at being children, nor pretending to be choosing for children, nor being boys who would not grow up—what are the values and functions of this kind? That is, I think, the last and most important question. I have already hinted at some of my answers. First of all: if written with art, the prime value of fairy-stories will simply be that value which, as literature, they share with other literary forms."

The whole of the essay stand placed against turbulent events (1937 - 1947), a time in which the perceptive on fairies tales changed during the worldwar, and new emerging views right after it. Deep before the war Romantisation was considered as something good for children, after the war here was frowned upon. The essay is in sense a critical word on the new emerging thoughts after 1945, and what should be told to children from young age. What kind of nature was suitable for them? And in some places Tolkien is pretty sarcastic, which is not surprising he was a middle-aged man of early fifty years old in 1947, and thus had established ideas. In the epilogue he finishes off: "This ”joy” which I have selected as the mark of the true fairy-story (or romance), or as the seal upon it, merits more consideration. Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist)." Children of parents who love Romantisation, turn out often in the same sense. "Drayton's Nymphidia is one ancestor of that long line of flower-fairies and fluttering sprites with antennae that I so disliked as a child, and which my children in their turn detested." And this I have seen reflecting back in my grandparents, my parents and even myself and my sister. How, that is a story on itself. It took me five hours to read this, reflect on it, with a few breaks and a dinner.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, it makes me very happy to read your first report on OFS. Now you have read the essay a first time, here are a few pointers that i have worked out over the years.

1. The first section implicitly follows a conventional Oxford approach to definition, whereby one begins by looking at all the things that are called X, rejecting some as not really X, and thereby arrive at a theory or definition of what X is. In other words, there is more of a method at work here than one first suspects - and the method concerns words and their meanings or definitions - and yet the conclusion is that, while fairy stories can be defined as stories that touch on Fairy, 'Fairy' itself cannot be defined.

2. Observe how, after stating that 'Fairy' cannot be defined, Tolkien offers the suggestion that it may be 'translated' as 'Magic', but then, much later, in the section 'Fantasy' he retracts this translation, offers instead 'Enchantment' and declares that Magic is what evil magicians do. This strange 're-translation' is i think at the heart of things, and has a clear parallel in the LOTR when Sam says he wants to see 'real elvish magic' and Galadriel explains the difference between her art and the deceits of the Enemy.

3. But think on this: Lorien endures in History because Galadriel wields one of the Three, which though untouched by Sauron are - by way of the story of Celebrimbor and his 'friend' who taught him much lore - as near as elvish art can get to Magic. Ultimately, I suggest, OFS shows us that Sam's expression was correct - Lothlorien is at its roots 'elvish magic' and when Frodo offers Galadriel the Ring, Galadriel herself must acknowledge this. But this is a big reading perhaps better drawn out in full elsewhere.

4. The section 'Origins' is the (usually overlooked) key to the essay and to Tolkien's 'philosophy' in general. Tolkien says that when we engage in 'fantasy' by joining words to make new ideas we already have an enchanter's power, on one plane. Scholarly readers of the essay prefer to ignore this, but it seems to me that Tolkien is saying that language is magical and that, as speakers of language, we mortals have ourselves 'magic' power. In a nutshell, magic is found among us in our use (and abuse) of language - or to spell it out in full in light of the double translation of 'Fairy': with our magic we may discover the Divine face within us by sub-creative fantasy = telling fairy stories; or with our magic we may dominate, oppress, delude, cheat, and spin webs of fake news and propaganda.

5. The section 'Children' is concerned with a few things. Firstly, Tolkien is struggling against a late 19th-century academic reading of History in which humanity has advanced from 'primitive' or 'savage' to enlightened western mind. Such presuppositions prompted the late Victorians to read fairy stories as the stories from 'the childhood of mankind'. Tolkien thinks this is nonsense: he thinks that people always tell fairy stories, though our stories today are certainly different from those of our distant ancestors. But at the same time in this section, Tolkien is grappling with the introduction of the Necromancer into the center of the sequel to The Hobbit, which he recognizes means that he is writing a fairy story that is not quite suitable for children.

6. There is a modern scholarly edition of the essay (edited by Flieger and Anderson) that presents not only the 1947 essay but also the earlier drafts, allowing us to see the change from the 1939 lecture in Scotland to the essay penned in summer 1943. What comparison reveals is that the whole section 'Fantasy' is new. This section is generally considered to hold the theoretical core of the essay, which suggests that these ideas were clarified in Tolkien's mind as he penned the story from Moria to Isengard. As with Sam and Galadriel, so more generally the essay and the story are intimately bound together.

7. Having reached the end of the section 'Fantasy' most readers are exhausted but it is actually in the last discussion of the use of fairy stories that the essay opens up and provides a key to the story of LOTR. For example: the account of Theoden's bewitchment by the words of Wormtongue, of Gandalf's calling on the king to take courage so he can offer counsel, of the king's subsequent encounters with hobbits and ents - the stuff of the fairy stories of Rohan, which spur his recovery such that Theoden can see through the enchantment of the voice of Saruman. Here we have the blending of the old northern theory of courage with Tolkien's idea of magic and enchantment, such that the value of fairy stories is properly placed in the correct order of recovery from necromancy: courage - counsel - fairy story: recovery. This in my opinion is the deepest theme of LOTR, and may be found not just in Rohan but throughout the story, at least as it concerns mortals.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Thanks for your pointers and to allow me reading them. On the latter section I haven't referred to yet, because it was quite late yesterday and I didn't the time to give reviewing thought. Tolkien speaks of arrested strangeness, I have to dig in my memory what that is about. Meddling with the Primary World is what I have done heavily on my own creation Dependent, and which consists by now fourteen different stories all related to each other, weak or strong, and it sits largely in the 23rd century. But there is also a depth into the antiquity and as close to the fourth millennium. All because I was just heavily curious by 2009/10 what our future could look like. There is also a thing as arrested suspense. You either love it or hate it. Tolkien says also: "To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode." I recognised this more in feeling than in actual knowledge. The reference on the green sun, reminds to my attempt of Omedon, a dying starsystem. But if this is a narrative tale, I can't tell. My technical knowledge on language is not that great.

Your approach on the essay is least to say different from my approach. You have discovered entrances of a kind I am not yet recognising. But I do see how you are approaching with the reference between Sam's remark and Galadriel's reaction in point 2. A branch as Drama I can't really connect though I know it, as I have no personal interest in Drama itself as an art, especially Dark Drama, where death is a primary theme. I have a too optimistic nature for that. On point 3, I allowed Legolas to tell his own narrative from the Lasgalen realm, that has no magic ring or even a girdle as laid around Doriath. They only have their natural power (magic for humans), and only their ingenuity allows them to survive, but comes at a price they have to train for warfare constantly (as the humans do), and sacrifice time to their real love of song and poetry. Legolas, for his story to tell I needed an unpolluted point of view, able to access what he sees, or so I found out for myself. Enchantment: "Uncorrupted, it does not seek delusion nor bewitchment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves." (page 26)

Under Recovery Tolkien makes a reference: "I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ourselves." That returns in Gandalf's vision in the books. "Though fairy-stories are of course by no means the only medium of Escape, they are today one of the most obvious and (to some) outrageous forms of “escapist” literature; and it is thus reasonable to attach to a consideration of them some considerations of this term “escape” in criticism generally." Withouth any doubt! I don't quote more, but Tolkien is in this chapter deliciously outspoken. Hmm in the idea of Consolation, my optimistic nature always search for that, a story that ends with a positive note. It is satisfying. With my elves I am a fugitive spirit lol.

On point 6, I am myself not that particular interested in the 'graphic' changes Tolkien made to all of his works. It is a natural and unavoidable, these alterations. Time progresses, ideas change under the weight of events. I am a fan with a bit deeper interest, not a scholar. The last version is usually what a person feels most content with, and uses it for end publication. On point 7, you have a more advanced level to bring threads together, where I (probably never) will see them. I don't regret the last. I am content with my ability to have a moderate sense about it. I will say that your point 7 is in essence right, but I am not able to verify it.

On a total other subject you made reference to, your disappointment when you went to university and was expecting to find some teachers like Tolkien, but there were none to be found. I don't know when you went to Uni. But I left in 1992 highschool for the social academy, and later the Uni for social administration (differentation politics). I have seen this transitioning of teachers, elaborating for the class over ninety minutes nonstop, and the new teacher as a guide to learn, but not telling anymore. The last sort was a pain to me, searching for my own information was not really my suit in a professional sense. But yes I had teachers with careers of over forty years and from them I learned in historical and geographical perspective the most. It was a generation still educated in what is now 'the old style'. The student consumed ninety/hundredtwenty minutes lectures, and had by the end ten pages or more of notes written down. They lectured on what was not in the books. If you're used to it, it is not exhausting. Somewhere I got that stuff all still. The only thing you had was a painful hand and a pencil that needed regular be replaced. Academically dissecting essays like Fairy-Tales, I have done by the hundreds. Old style teachers are nowadays nomore. It is what I feel is a loss in this era.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, perhaps i was at university a few years later than you (i was born in 1968). my disappointment with what i found prompted me to do a PhD on late 19th-century English thought, which i found more interesting than what was offered a century later. i was looking at a young 'moral scientist' (as they were then called), named Alfred Marshall, who later became a famous economist. one thing that i found was that in the early 1870s, when still a young man, Marshall dedicated two or three years to intensive study of history - reading everything that was then recently published. By transcribing all his notes from this reading i came to understand the importance of the discovery of prehistory to our understanding of who and what we are. In fact, it was by tracing the subsequent development of ideas of European prehistory that I arrived back at my childhood author, Tolkien and his seemingly unique vision of the tribes of the ancient North. Gradually I came to see that Tolkien the storyteller had much more to say about life and reality.

To engage with just a couple of your points. On the 'drama': it is to me a sign of the poverty of understanding of Tolkien that people who claim to know his thought well argue about the merits of the 'movies' without making recourse to this discussion of drama in OFS. Tolkien is trying to say something about thought (mind pictures) and language (sounds or letters that embody meaning); what he says about drama applies no less to movies: the direct communication of meaning by image is an art best left to the elves, and when attempted by mortals either falls flat or falls into magic. (I'm not saying this is correct, only that Tolkien's essay provides a framework for thinking about movies in relation to books, but i have never once seen anyone attempt to use it.)

On point 6. I quite understand your reply. I'm not here attempting to persuade you that the two step composition of OFS is interesting, merely indicating why I am caught up on it, which in a nutshell is because the same two step composition is evident in the making of LOTR. Put crudely, the 1939 lecture on fairy stories might be correlated with The Hobbit and the adventures of four hobbits in the realm of Tom Bombadil; while the essay OFS composed in 1943 correlates with what happens in LOTR from Moria on. It is not as if there are two utterly different stories, nor are lecture and essay utterly unconnected. Clearly, the story after Moria was drawn out (in some way) from the story with Tom Bombadil; and clearly the essay was drawn out of the lecture. But there is, as it were, a missing step: something magical appears in both essay and story, something that seems like it was not there and yet, i am certain, is drawn out of what was there.

Not sure that last makes sense, but it was what i was drawing with the stone in the study that appears in March 1939 in my short story about the curious affair of Peregrin Boffin.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Then you're by seven years older than me, because I was born in 1975. It can be off course that you went to Uni much later, because you had a break and worked in between? It is a thing my mother did between 18 and 26 years old, and returned to school in 1968 to become an elementary school teacher in 1970. A moral scientist? The concept is probably old to me, but the reference new. My student years were largely bombarded with themes as abortion, euthanasia, drug liberalisation and equal marriage rights for more combinations than only man en wife in which Holland up walked front in Europe in the 1990's.

Ah then you know a lot about late 19th century thought. I never had any chance on doing my endpapers, for the social academy or the university, simply my mother was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2003. Six months later I was a newbie on the Plaza. The road you found the link to prehistory, I figured out myself. Which is rooted in the Scandinavian names I have, the Dutch got trouble to speak out and causes regularly a situation they don't believe I am native Dutch. That is how I came up on the Ingvaeones of Cornelius Tacitus (c. AD 56 – c. 120) and Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 – 79). And also inspired to buy the book of Dick Harrison, I referred to in another thread.

1. "...it is to me a sign of the poverty of understanding of Tolkien that people who claim to know his thought well argue about the merits of the 'movies' without making recourse to this discussion of drama in OFS." True, I have seen this passing by more than once. Drama in the sense of art in a movie makes it literary, and accessible to usually a small group of appreciating people, which I never found myself among. Drama in the sense of commerciality is largely accessible to anyone. Tolkien's Valinorean Eldar, the Minyár particular, never underwent the 'pollution' of Melkor's influence and therefore the purest beings in essence of anything that consciously walks, swims or flies around. This requires a pure state of mind as an impression comes in and is stored unfiltered in the mind, in a way of speaking. Subjective judgment is left out. There are humans in the world who have this feature, but are found often with a (light) mental disability. Jackson's movies I see more as another (widescale) fanfic expression of this fantasy genre and equal to what we here cobble together.

2. Point 6: Noted. It doesn't have to make sense to other people, as long it does to you and argue why this is. I read your story and commented in the thread. I have yet to write mine.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, and i will take a guess that your story will be about the Minyár? I look forward to reading it. I know you read my story about Peregrin Boffin because you left a nice comment on it! Here is a little bit of background on that story to tie together a couple of points in our conversation.

Already in the story that Tolkien composed in 1938, when the hobbits reach Bree they meet a wild ranger in the Prancing Pony - but he was a hobbit who wore shoes. In 1939 Tolkien considered making this hobbit a descendant of Elendil but eventually decided that he was indeed a hobbit, named Peregrin Boffin, who was Bilbo's other favorite nephew but, inspired by Bilbo's stories, had run off into the blue and disappeared from the Shire. But when he started writing again in late summer 1940 Tolkien finally had the story that we know before him, and the Ranger at Bree became a man, the heir of Elendil - and so the story of Numenor became a foundation of the new hobbit story (and Peregrin Boffin vanished!).

But at first this Ranger was not called Aragron. When the Company first arrived at Lorien his name was 'Ingold son of Ingrim', with Ingold subsequently crossed out and replaced by 'Elfstone'. Tolkien notes on his manuscript that the 'Ing'-element stands for the 'West'. Here, I think, is one of many places where we glimpse Tolkien's vision of the story of Numenor as the original origin myth of the ancient northern tribes. If you look carefully, from the earliest Silmarillion stories on there are within the stories various Ings and Ingwes or characters who can stand for them in their actions - primarily crossing the shoreless western sea.

By the way, on 'moral scientist': in 1848 at Cambridge University in England it was possible to take only two subjects: Classics and Mathematics. The modernization of the university began with the establishment of two new faculties: the natural sciences and the moral sciences. The moral sciences were comprised of various disciplines that, over the next few decades, became independent faculties: philosophy, psychology, political economy, law and history. Because these disciplines were still lumped together the resulting scholarship was in many ways more interesting than today, when there is vigorous specialization in the academy and it is common for an expert in one field to be quite ignorant in a related field. Tolkien stands at the cusp of the change: today he is claimed by the philologists and also the medievalists, but really, while he was indeed an expert in these fields, he is one of the last whose mind was not constrained and confined by disciplinary borders.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: I have written parts about the Minyár and they are online >>here<<. Under Aþâraphelûn Dušamanûðân (Arda Marred) which is about the last battle in Beleriand. I am in the actual first stage of working that out, but took a little break. It is not the tale I am working on at the moment, for the short tale thread. Your little tale gave actually inspiration for it in the first three sentences: "March 8, 1939. A house in north Oxford. Occupied, but the man who lives here is abroad – he has gone north to deliver a lecture." But I'll see if I post, I don't know.

Nice explanation on your entry there. At some points it is little difficult where real life meets fantasy. It is nice blurring of it. Thanks!

From two disciplines the choices of uni education branched out over the twentieth century, and is henceforth become far more specialised, adapted to the modern day. Back in the day other skills were needed, which were directed more active fieldwork and digging in old physical archives. Now we have the internet. And in twenty years the computer is more than a simple tool for text processing. Also the computer takes an important role in for example soil investigation via radar research. At your home you can't do no longer without a computer and a printer/scanner. Even a simple plummer goes today with an Ipad on the road for a digital signature and no longer a sheet for a physical signature, when the job is done. Fifty years ago was reading and writing enough. Now you need basic computerskills instead. Classics and Mathematics were basically anywhere in Europe the most offered disciplines in the 19th century. All of the independent faculties today didn't exist because the fields, they cover, were still poorly explored and even not discovered themselves. A faculty can't exist without a related field behind it. I know that today skills as photoshopping a picture and building a website are basic skills you need for work, and are expected you are able to do. Or at least it is educated in schools. My four year old niece knows how to operate an Ipad, something I find something almost impossible for a four year old.