Quote:
Originally Posted by skip spence
I never understood that "takes away the mystery" nonsense either. Yes, modern science has explained many things that used to be clouded in myth and superstition, and we now know infinitely much more about ourselves and the world around it that we used to just a few hundred years ago. Then people believed in elves and dragons and trolls, which made for good bed time stories, but now we know there is in fact no "magic", there are no fairies dancing on misty meadows a midsummer's night, and when the thunder rolls, Thor isn't riding his great chariot in the sky. We know this, unless we do like the Ostrich and bury our heads in the sand (not that Ostriches actually do that either, that's another alluring but quite ridiculous myth). No, take the myths for what they are, but don't shy away from the truth.
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Well, I can see all the points of what you are saying, and what
Nogrod is saying, but still I kind of side more with
Greenie. There IS some sort of magic or spell that is easily broken if you start to dig into the things like what is the sunlight actually made of, or stuff like that. And I'm far from calling it "nonsense". For emphasising the point, let me use a different angle of view - one which I noticed because of my "profession" as a theologian. It's again the same because it goes along the very same line with scientific knowledge of the world. I don't recall who was the one who said it, it was one of the German poets and nature philosophers of the 18th or 19th century, but he was complaining about one particular thing about Christianity, and that was, that it "disenchanted the nature". Which is something that I sort of agree with, even though I personally stand "on the other side of the barricade" and approve of what it means for the life of humans. That is, Christianity (or already Judaism, for that matter) of course did a tremendous deal of things and leap in humans' understanding of the world by denying the divinity of all the processes which in fact are nothing but effects of the creation, i.e. there is nothing divine in the sun, there is nothing divine in the moon, they are just some stellar objects which give light and that's it. Of course this is a positive thing for human's understanding to the world and it dealt with many superstitions in really strong way. However, I have to agree with the abovementioned guy whose name I cannot recall, that it kind of robs one of something. I just think there are moments when one could leave his knowledge, and that's just what fantasy is for, and that's what, I believe, the Professor meant with the "trips to Faërie". Of course on the basis of the daily, real life I am not going to worship the moon or make sacrifices in order to make the sun shine stronger, but there is nothing wrong in making a story where the sun talks or the moon has its own mind. I think here is just the role of knowledge in this matter - first, the man needs to understand the truth about the world he lives in, and after he does, then there is nothing wrong with entering the realm of myths again, but with the kind of "background knowledge" that this is but a "play".
And it is once again the same whether the question is whether there are faeries dancing in the moonlight in the forest or what one could see from the horizon of a black hole. It should just be acknowledged that at moments when it's a matter of aesthetic choice, one could see it from different points of view. Somebody just does not want to admire the beauty of the complexity of photones or whatever it is, but just sunlight as he sees it with naked eye. Somebody just may want to forget that Elves don't exist but wants to imagine that just behind the trees in front of him, there is one hiding there. Isn't this, after all, what we are all sort of prone to doing here? Even if just when reading LotR, if nothing else? I really even cannot say aloud, or write, that "there was no Gondolin, ever", because it's just not true! And that's just the point and also what others have said before here: When we are discussing Tolkien, sometimes we just don't want to hear "Tom Bombadil is Tolkien himself", because there is NO Tolkien in Middle-Earth, there is just Tom Bombadil, who is a real walking and living figure; just like the sunlight is just sunlight for our eyes - no matter how hard you try - and not any set of photones or whatever it might be.