[davem]

H-I

I think so much of Tolkien's capacity for creating the sense of 'enchantment' in his readers comes down to this - we don't feel he is 'revealing' new things to us so much as 'reminding' us of things we have forgotten. So rather than being amazed by our encounter with a completely unknown 'new' world, we feel at once 'at home' in Middle Earth. What this has to do with 'canonicity', I'm not quite sure, but certainly there is a sense of 'rightness' in much of Tolkien's world, & the sense Helen has described as regards some 'fanfic', that it is 'wrong', & breaks the spell Tolkien has cast may be down to this.

Of course, we are then back to the idea of some kind of 'pre-existing' 'Other world', which we all 'once' knew. But then, how close are we to saying that some other 'explorer' may get things right about that world, which Tolkien may have got 'wrong'?

Its this sense of 'familiarity' we feel about Middle Earth that is difficult to explain. Can we go so far as to say that we are 'remembering' something, some 'real' (in 'inner' or 'outer' terms. This would be ridiculous, if not insane, yet the feeling is there. Why do so many of us feel 'at home' in Middle Earth, even before we've got far into a first reading? Is it because Tolkien has used so many elements from folklore & fairtales? But how many of us are all that familiar with the sources Tolkien used? Not that many, I'd guess. In my case it was only after discovering Middle Earth that I sought out the sources Tolkien used, & I didn't feel 'at home' in the worlds of the Mabinogion or the Eddas or the kalevala. They reminded me of Middle Earth, where I really did feel 'at home'. It was almost as if Middle Earth was the real place & the myths & legends were corrupt, half remembered versions of it, rather than it being an amalgam of them. Of course, that could simply be because I discovered Middle Earth first - but I can't help feeling that it was something more.

Going back to the painting I mentioned - why a shop on the edge of the Hills of Fairyland? We'd expect a castle, or even a cottage, but a shop? Yet, on some level, we know a shop is 'right', that it should be a shop. We are filled with curiosity about what is sold there, & who frequents the place. Logically we know a shop is the last place that should be standing at the place where this world meets the otherworld. Yet, where else would we get the particular kind of supplies we will need for our journey 'over the hills & far away'? A shop, with all the associations of 'commercialism' would seem too mundane & out of place, yet to see the picture is to 'know' it belongs right where it is. We can almost 'remember' having visited the place, because we can almost (but not quite) remember what is in there.

So much of Tolkien's writings inspire this sense, of almost, but not quite remembering. Tolkien wrote of fairy stories satisfying his desire for magic, while whetting that desire immeasurably. Its that feeling that 'still round the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate' that I think most of us have felt now & then, that just round the next corner we may find what we've been looking for all along, for those sudden pangs we all feel when something or someone almost 'breaks our lifelong dream' & we nearly 'wake up' & remember who we are & what we're really doing, that we find in Tolkien's work. He almost 'wakes us up', but not quite, & we quickly, like Frodo, 'fall asleep again', & only remember that we nearly woke up. Which is odd in writer of 'fantasy'. Can it really be that we wander in Middle Earth in search of the 'real' world? That the 'escape' we seek there is really the escape from our 'dream'? That we don't go to Middle Earth to escape 'reality', but to find it? And is this what SMP is really talking about when he casts down the 'Jungian Gauntlet'?