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Originally Posted by Bęthberry
Re: "seeing the world through enchanted eyes" Six of one, half a dozen of the other. If the enchantment causes men to forsake life and limb for an historical social order that is not only wiped away, but hypocritical, self-serving, and brutally abusive to the lower orders while demanding the sacrifice of the lower orders to keep the upper ones in power, then the fantasy offers a false sacrifice. Perhaps it all hinges on whether one bemoans the passing of the old European order? Or is something else involved?
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Not sure what you're referring to there. WW1? If so I think there's a bit of revisionism present in your analysis. It was as necessary to stop German expansionism in 1914 as it was in 1939. The tactics were beyond doubt both useless & inhuman - particularly in the early years, but the war was a necessary evil.
If you weren't referring to WW1 please ignore the above.
As to Moorcock's 'opinions':
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What I found lacking in Tolkien which I had found in, for instance, the Elder Edda, was a sense of tragedy, of reality, of mankind's impermanence...
Tolkien has the right elements of snobbery and escapism to make it a huge success. John Buchan for teenagers. A compendium of disguised bigotry and English high church snobbery. I hate it for exactly those qualities which made it so popular. It's a lullaby. Not sure we need lullabies at the moment. Unless we're all just going to give up, go to sleep and wake up dead. I really do feel contempt for Tolkien and a certain disgust for those adults who voted him writer of the century. ..
It has the same discomfort with cities, the same 'volkishness' you get in proto-Nazi stuff. It scares me a bit, but not that much because times have changed. It would have scared me more if it had been published the year it was conceived.
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No sense of tragedy, of mankind's impemanence? That is the central theme of Tolkien's work! You could perhaps argue (if you wanted to be negative) that he does
that particular theme to death, but to state it is not there can hardly be called 'opinion' - it is just not true. Only someone who had not actually read LotR or who was too thick to understand what he was reading could say that that element was missing.
The comment that he feels 'contempt & disgust' for those who voted for Tolkien as author of the century is hardly 'reasoned argument' or even 'opinion' - it is a nasty, petty insult.
Finally, its 'proto-Nazi'. Again, this is a man who either knows nothing about 'Nazism' or is just hurling an insult in order to be nasty.