Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age
When I read biographical accounts of Tolkien, I also see this dichotomy in the author’s personal life. (My apologies to Bęthberry as I can't resist.) Tolkien apparently fought back against moodiness and depression much of his life. He was constantly struggling back to hope. This could also explain why he appended the Athrabeth to the Legendarium. He felt the need to resolve the vexing question of pagan hopeless and Christian hope near the end of his own life and, in the end, came down at least publicly on the side of hope and his own religious faith.
|
Please,
Child, there's no need to apologise, as I always enjoy your historical observations. I don't by any means wish to deny the possibility of historical study. My interest is simply to suggest that a biographical/psychological motivation is not the only reason why LotR might harbour this kind of dual vision. Writers can be inspired as much by what they read as by their own lives; what I think is interesting is that one of Tolkien's favourite poems demonstrates a quality which we find--or which some find--in his work.
There are writers whose work is constantly reduced to their lives, everything explained by recourse to their personal lives and self-expression. This tack really does a disservice to the works which the authors produced and so I am leery of always going solely to the life to explain something in the work. There could well be an artistic or storytelling purpose for the text which the biographical methods misses.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Child
All of this leads us back to the question of the world's end, something others also talked about on this thread. In Christianity, goodness remains even if it lies beyond the walls of the world and we can not reach it in our human state. In paganism, there is no ultimate goodness that survives after the end (and perhaps not in our modern theories either where everything ends with a bang or poof).
|
This reminds me of a saying in philosophy: "When the ends keep receding, the means must justify themselves." Is there a moral basis for behaviour which does not depend upon an end-time scenario? Is this admittedly very modern morality explored in LotR?