Escapism

[littlemanpoet]

Tolkien's words from On Faerie Stories:

Recovery...is a re-gaining - regaining of a clear view. I do not say "seeing things as they are (or were) meant to see them" - as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity - from possessiveness.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main fucntions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do no accept the tone of scorn or pity with which "Escape" is now so often used...Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? [my italics:] The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it...

And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death...The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.

But the "consolation" of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it...I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce sempremely well, is not essentially "escapist,"...it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

That, my friends, is the best it has ever been said imho. Just typing down that last sentence made my throat tighten all over again. Every time, every time. And as long as that is so, I will keep on reading Tolkien.

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: littlemanpoet ]