[davem]

I suppose we can only speculate on whether Tolkien would have ended up in the place he did - the philosophy of 'subcreation', as the creation of a secondary world existing solely in the mind, which, if it has any relevance to the primary world, is due to the way an individual reader 'applies' what they read - even if Nazism had not raised its ugly head. All we can say, after reading the words of the TCBS in Garth's 'Tolkien & the Great War', is that he began wanting to produce a mythology which would lead to a moral regeneration of his nation, & he ended his life, ostensibly, wanting nothing of the sort. In the 40 years or so between beginning BoLT & the writing of the 2nd foreword to LotR his outlook & philosophy changed totally. Perhaps no event in the primary world affected his outlook, & the change was purely a result of his own psychological & spiritual growth & the growth of his understanding of myth.

Yet, even this would have to be explained, because clearly in his early life - into his '20's - his concern was focussed on the 'practical' value of myth to effect change on individuals, & he also seems to have believed that that change could be in some way 'directed' - giving England a mythology of its own would re-establish its moral values, its sense of identity, & its sense of purpose. So we'd still have to explain when & why he rejected, or at least moved away from, that belief.

(EDIT: some quotes from members of the TCBS given in Garth's book: (this is lifted from my post on the Canonicity thread)

(On to the TCBS from Tolkien & the Great War)

(p14)Tolkien once compared the TCBS to the pre-Raphaelites, probably in response to the Brotherhood's preoccupation with restoring Medieval values in Art.

(p56) Tolkien maintained that the society was 'a great idea which has never become quite articulate'. Its two poles, the moral & the aesthetic, could be complemantary if kept in balance...While the Great Twin Brethren (Tolkien & Wiseman) had discussed the fundamentals of existence, neither of them had done so with Gilson or Smith. As a result, Tolkien declared, the potential these four 'amazing' individuals contained in combination remained unbroached.'

(p105) Gilson proposed that feminism would help by banishing the view that 'woman was just an apparatus for man's pleasure'

Smith declared that, through Art, the four would have to leave the world better than they had found it. Their role would be ' to drive from life, letters, the satge & society that dabbling in & hankering after the unpleasant sides & incidents in life & nature which have captured the larger & worser tastes in Oxford, London & the world ... To re-establish sanity, cleanliness, & the love of real & true beauty in everyone's breast.

Gilson told Tolkien that, sitting in Routh Road... 'I suddenly saw the TCBS in a blaze of Light as a great Moral reformer ...Engalnd purified of its loathsome moral disease by the TCBS spirit. It is an enormous task & we shall not see it accomplished in our lifetime.

(p 122) Rob Gilson: I like to say & to hear it said & to feel boldly that the glory of beauty & order & joyful contentment in the universe is the presence of God....GB Smith was closely attentive to Tolkien's vision & in some measure shared it....Smith saw no demarcation between holiness & Faerie.

(p136) TCBSianism had come to mean fortitude & courage & alliance. ...But the TCBS had absorbed patriotic duty into its constitution not simply because its members were all patriots. the war mattered because it was being fought 'so England's self draw breath'; so that the inspirations of 'the real days' of peace might survive'...

Gilson: 'I have faith that the TCBS may for itself - never for the world - than God for this war some day.

Tolkien already believed that the terrros to come might serve him in the visionary work of his life - if he survived.

(p174) Tolkien: 'Regarding, presumably, those same 'idle chatterers', the journalists& their readers whom Smith execrated, he wrote that 'No filter of true sentiment, no ray of feeling for beauty, women, history or their country shall reach them again.'

(p180) Smith (after Rob Gilson's death in battle) 'The group was spiritual in character, 'an influence on the state of being', & as such it transcended mortality; it was 'as permanently inseperable as Thor & his hammer'. the influence, he said, was, 'a tradition, which forty years from now will still be as strong to us (if we are alive, & if we are not) as it is today.

(Tolkien) 'the TCBS may have been all we dreamt - & its work in the end be done by three or two or one survivor ... To this I now pin my hopes..'

(p253) Smith had wanted them to leave the world a better place than when they found it, to 're-establish sanity, cleanliness, & the love of real & true beauty' through art embodying TCBSian principles.

(p308) 'The 24 year old Tolkien had believed just as strongly in the dream shared by the TCBS, & felt that they 'had been granted some spark of fire ... that was destined to kindle a new light, or, what is the same thing, rekindle an old light in the world

(p309) But The Lord of the Rings, the masterpiece that was published a decade & a half later, stands as the fruition of the TCBSian dream, a light drawn from ancient sources to illumnate a darkening world'.

So right from the start of the Lost Tales, Tolkien is attempting to cast the TCBSian philosophy into artistic form. It culminates in the publication of LotR - at least during his lifetime. So, its not, or was never intended to be, simply a story. Its not an allegory in the strict sense, but the Legendarium could be seen as a mythologisation of TCBSianism vs the 'world'.

If there is an underlying 'truth' it is perhaps the 'truth' that the TCBS believed in - & so we're back to the question of what 'truth' Tolkien is revealing to us in his works - some kind of 'absolute', archetypal TRUTH, or simply what he felt to be true about the world, & we have to ask ourselves how close the two are.

Wherever we come down, its clear that whatever he was doing, he was attempting to do more than simply 'entertain' readers, because the TCBS was born in the hearts & minds of idealistic young men in peacetime & blasted apart on the Somme. Tolkien's mythology came into being during the horrors of mechanised warfare. But we enter it (or most of us do) as the TCBS would have originally, & it represents for us, as it would have for them, before the war, as a place of escape, of beauty, excitement, sadness, so we simply cannot read it as Tolkien would have read it himself when he came back to it to comment on its meaning for him. For us, it will have no 'meaning' beyond itself, & wahtever meaning we find in it for ourselves & our lives in this world, they will not, cannot, be the same as they were for Tolkien, so, our interpretations of it are as valid as his.

Which is not to say that he didn't intend us to find TCBSian values in it, & to find them more attractive than what was on offer in the 'primary world'. So, I'd say the book certainly contains deliberate 'meaning', that there is an intention on Tolkien's part that we should find in it waht he wants us to find, & also that he wants us to agree with him - but we never really could, because we're our own people, living our own lives, with our own experiences which we take to Middle Earth with us, & bring back out transformed.

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Also I wonder how much more really there is of use rather than curiousity to emerge from letters and diaries ..... love him or loathe him CRT IS a scholar and I doubt that he would suppress much that was relevant to the opus, however loyal and loving a son he also is ..... but then although they are fascinating, I can't help think there is something deeply unpleasant about
reading letters intended for one recipient and even more a diary intended for no-one (not everyone does write them with an eye to posterity )

Ok, I see this. Then again - was Tolkien an important literary artist, or simply a clever, inventive, storyteller? Is he worth trying to understand as a man? Should Carpenter's (& Garth's) biography have been written. Should the Sil, UT & HoME have been published - Tolkien clearly wouldn't have published them as they are , because none of them are actually finished.

And this thread? Should we be even discussing this subject? Well, Tolkien published the Fairy Stories essay, which is a discussion on the nature & value of myth, legend & fairystory, which sets out his own 'philosophical' stance on the subject. Are we to simply accept what he says there, without asking what he means, & how he came to his position on the subject? If his stories become in a sense public property when they're published, then don't his views & beliefs also become public property when he 'publishes' them? Perhaps if the rest of his letters & his diaries were published we would be able to end this kind of speculation.