[littlemanpoet]

davem:I did read somewhere that its possible to translate 'God created man in His own image as 'God created man in His own imagination'.

Perhaps it means both, and this is another example of a distinction for which we want the unity back!

Tolkien's works help to move us back into a state of harmony with 'God', helping to heal that sense of seperation we feel, of being 'out of synch' with 'something' which for most of us these days is unnameable....

Yet we all try and try ... think of all the "-ism"s which really are just new myths, poor step sisters that they are.

I'm reminded of something Bob Stewart said in an interview, about the way we talk about the 'ignorant past'. He made the point that we are currently living in what our decendants will refer to as their 'ignorant past'.

"Chronological snobbery" (term coined by C.S. Lewis - or was it his tutor?) is an illness of the modern mind. Before the Renaissance, "our forebears" were honored. Now they're just part of the ignorant past.

Perhaps 'Faerie' is that 'harmony' which we feel should be the way of things but isn't.

Yes. I would use the word 'unity' in the place of 'harmony'.

God 'dreams 'JRR Tolkien' who 'dreams' Frodo who 'dreams' of White shores under a swift Sunrise...

Quite poetic, davem!

I don't know why fractal images have just sprung to mind...

I had to do a google to figure out what you were talking about.

Sophia:If literature (particularly pre-scientific-revolution literature... perhaps the term I want is "mythic") deals in unities then science deals in dividing things up.

A scholar of Hebrew once told me that, in Hebrew, the word for 'kill' is the same as for 'cut', which reminds me of what I have heard scientists bemoan: "We have to kill/stop/halt/break something in order to learn what we need to about it." Analysis is the practice of making distinctions: it's at the core of the scientific method. Yet the greatest scientific thinkers, such as Einstein, used and trusted their imaginations just as much as their mathematics. Wasn't it Einstein who said that fairy tales were of vital importance to the shaping of his intellect?

While it's not necessarily difficult to imagine water being H2O and then later to feel like water is the same thing it always was, it's a little more difficult with people.

Especially true for me. I remember when I accepted the theory of evolution, I began to regard children as akin to monkeys, and less valuable thereby. Then I remembered (or was reminded) that children are made in the image of God, and I began to watch children with open wonder again. It's only a "for instance", but it shows, to me, at least, that what we believe and think has everything to do with our moral choices.

Once you get to dividing complex things up, sometimes it's tough to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Hence the loss of unity contributing to a more internal character development: the outside world of actions is some kind of separate piece.

This got me to thinking how internal character development is creating a whole new world. Each story of this kind is its own fairy tale. The world being created, which is the interior life of the character, is no more subject to the laws of the primary world than are the secondary worlds of fantasy - sometimes less so. Maybe this is parthly why interior character devleopment is not at home in fairy tales, being redundant - a tertiary world in a secondary.

Lyta Underhill:[fractal images] are simply fractional dimensions, a cutting in half of dimensions between which can be iterated into infinity and create smaller versions of the same designs in equal complexity.

This definition of yours, Lyta, didn't sink in until I saw a couple examples. It's quite a visual medium. I do see the relation, but a different connection occurs to me: transposition.

Lalwendë:I think that there is not such a great contrast with 'modern' fiction, it is that instead of seeing the internalised thoughts of one protagonist, we see the psychological motivation of many characters, but expressed instead through representation of their thoughts in action and speech.

Precisely. From a writer's point of view, this is a difference of paradigmatic proportions, since interior characterization is very much in vogue, while the purely exterior (such as Tolkien with a few rare and pivotal exceptions) is considered to be "poor characterization".

[Gollum] is a raw character, brutal and immoral yet somehow fragile too.

I don't find the fragility surprising. I think it's a natural outgrowth of the immorality.

I do question how much of the effects can be down to the innate qualities of both Gollum and Frodo

I don't think it is the innate qualities at all. It was choices made, and grace: "there but for the grace of God go I." This is in keeping with fairy tale and myth! Although the element of grace is new with Tolkien, at least in fairy tale.

It was as though the paths suddenly split but came back in upon themselves.

This is the movement of grace unlooked for: eucatastrophe.

davem:subcreation is an attempt to 'earth' the divine

To make it concrete. Quite. Again, I am reminded of C.S. Lewis's transposition, which is "the indwelling of the higher in the lower." It means that God, holding the universe in God's mind, enters it and in so doing, enriches it, changes it. I'm not sure what, if anything, this has to do with Tolkien's LotR, but I was reminded of it.

If it is symbolised by Light and it was then 'broken' then this would show how so many differing peoples could come about with differing views and languages.

Reminds me of Tolkien's poem which contains these lines:

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined,
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Bold face mine. The unities, again.