‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Mark 12:30 wrote:

I also stated that in my opinion those who claim to "have" or to have "mastered" the Truth haven't been pursuing it long enough to realize how big it is. So how do you extrapolate from that that I aim to impose my view-- Sauron-like, "own personal vision of truth (through his ego)?"

And Child threatened:

Ahem! That's the second time, you've hinted at a certain kinship I may have with the Nazgûl. As I read your posts, I feel a strong compulsion to go down to the Shire and dig up an RPG where I can fly around and instill terror in folk's heart!

To save myself from misunderstanding (not to mention Child’s wrath!) allow me to clarify my point somewhat (although I was very careful there to say that I don’t think anyone here is a Nazgûl – balrogs, maybe, but never Nazgûl! (hmmm. . .but would they be winged balrogs, or unwinged. . . )

It just seems to me that the instant we begin to locate the text’s meaning or value anywhere near its association with or embodying forth of Truth (no matter how we use that term, and Child, I agree with you this is very dangerous territory – perilous even) then we run the risk of putting ourselves into the role of the Nazgûl insofar as we render ourselves willingly passive before the text. No matter how much we might say that we can apprehend that Truth as our own and make it belong to ourselves as individuals, we still are saying that the ‘point’ of reading is to lay ourselves down on the tracks of the reading experience and let the Truth roar over us like a freight train.

This is why I want to locate the ‘truth’ of the text within the process that it begins between the readers of it. This way, the truths that we develop within the truth-full relation or manner of speaking that we construct in response to the text is one in which we can maintain an active and willed freedom. The Nazgûl are the Nazgûl because they have lost the ability to ask any question other than “What does Sauron want of us?” They are utterly passive before the Truth that they have accepted (or been forced to accept, or whatever). The Fellowship remains free because they locate the truth of their quest explicitly NOT in relation to what Eru wants (there is no divine injunction to destroy the Ring) but because of the relationships that they have with and toward each other, and the other peoples of Middle-Earth. They are free in their Quest because they are free to turn aside from it at any time, but do not. The choices they make are, and must always be, over and over and over again, active re-affirmations of their commitment to the truths that impel them on their journey and bind them together. The instant we forget this and announce that the meaning of the journey is bound in any way to some singular and static Truth at the end. . .well, we cease to engage in the active pursuit of reaffirmation between and amongst our community, and subjugate ourselves to what we imagine that Truth to be.

[mark12_30]

...we render ourselves willingly passive before the text. No matter how much we might say that we can apprehend that Truth as our own and make it belong to ourselves as individuals, we still are saying that the ‘point’ of reading is to lay ourselves down on the tracks of the reading experience and let the Truth roar over us like a freight train.

Does this really sound like Tolkien's definition of eucatastrophe to you, Fordim?

If I expected to be "freight-trained" by his story, or if I had been, I wouldn't have gone back to it over and over again. And I don't see Tolkien's description of "Joy, wonder, and far-off glimpse of evangelium" as a freight train. Nor do I see eucatastrophe as the reader being passive before the text; rather, the reader has an open, receptive heart as he reads the text with his mind engaged.

I do not think that Tolkien was thinking of being "freight-trained" by the Truth. I certainly don't interpret it that way. If phrases like "sudden and miraculous grace" bring images of a freight train to mind then then I suspect it will take a long, difficult time for this discussion to come to any sort of conclusion.

[HerenIstarion]

Truth/Joy:

Atrabeth Finrod ah Andreth

Actually the Elves believed that the 'lightening of the heart' or the 'stirring of joy' (to which they often refer), which may accompany the hearing of a proposition or an argument, is not an indication of its falsity but of the recognition by the fea that it is on the path of truth.)

SpM Majority/Minority re:

many cases (although not all), I do not doubt that the murderer is acting in accordance with his or her personal values. Happily such individuals are in the minority since murder (as a general proposition) is regarded by the overwhelming majority of people as detrimental to society and therefore "wrong". Equally happily, I find myself in the majority on that one.

Do you imply that truth lies in numbers, than? If yes, pray tell me then, why exactly standards of the majority (even though it be overwhelming) should be preferred and overrule the standards of the minority? I believe that, whatever arguments may be presented, in the end you will end up with merely 'because good is good' maxim.

[davem]

Well, I’m stuck. It seems that whatever term I use to refer to some underlying ‘state’ of ‘reality I’ll be asked to reduce it to a set of facts & figures. If I use ‘Truth’, however much I repeat that I’m not talking about some set of rules & regulations, I just get asked what rules & regulations I mean, & told that rules & regulations are BAD. If I use the term Joy, it is immediately dismissed as meaningless, or conflated with pleasure. If I use the term God or Heaven I get accused of trying to convert people. I’d use the word Magic, but I suspect it would be interpreted to mean ‘conjuring’ & I’d be asked to explain the ‘trick’. ‘Light’ seems to be acceptable – yet this light must have a source.

Sorry, but I can’t reduce what I’m referring to to something which fits within a narrow definition, & can be argued about from a psychological perspective, or a deconstructionist one. If all anyone gets from reading Tolkien’s works is something that can be reduced to that level, then I will go all the way out on this limb & say they’re missing the ‘truth’ of the story.

When Eckhart tells us that to see a flower as it has its being in God would be a greater thing than the whole world – you either accept that or you don’t. I believe Eckhart, & all the other mystics, of all the different spiritual traditions saw something more than the rest of us. I also believe that when I read Tolkien’s stories I get a glimpse of what they’re talking about, & that at the moments of eucatastrophe I glimpse that state even more strongly, & that it points me to something more – but, sorry, no hard evidence, no statistical proof. I haven’t been wired up in a lab & the information fed into a computer available to download.

It seems to me that some posters here are coming at things from the perspective that any statement about Tolkien’s works or intentions is only valid if it corresponds with some theory about the world which they hold to reflect reality.

So, I can’t prove Truth, Joy, Love, (Spiritual) Light, Magic, enchantment, eucatastrophe, God or Heaven exist. Sorry.

But what has all this to do with Tolkien? He wrote about Truth (but we have to dismiss that, because there’s no such thing, & even if there were it would be BAD). He wrote about Joy, & said it was the purpose of Fairy stories to expose us to it, but that has nothing to do with anything. He wrote about Love, but that’s just a subjective emotional state, & all we can do is argue about the particular chemicals which cause it. He wrote about Magic, but that’s all primitive trickery. He wrote about God but lets not go there, or we could end up encouraging another Inquisition. We can’t allow these things in (or anyone, including the author, who tries to bring them in), unless they’re accompanied by a THEORY, officially stamped ‘APPROVED’. I can’t reduce to ‘facts & figures’ something which was written with the express intention of helping us break free from such things, so I can’t really argue this subject anymore. I can’t argue from the perspective of the facts & figures of this world, because that, for me, is what Tolkien was trying to liberate us from, in his own small way.

I said, a long while back in this thread, that a Tonne of Facts isn’t worth a gramme of Enchantment (or Truth, or Joy, or ‘God’ or ‘Light’ or whatever other term you want to choose). I still think that’s true, & I simply don’t find psychology or literary theory ‘enchanting’, I don’t find either of them in Tolkien’s works, & don’t think they’re at all relevant or helpful or informative, when it comes to understanding what his works mean to us, or why we respond to them as we do.

' A fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the Walls of the World, poignant as grief'....In such stories when the sudden 'turn' comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, & heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, & lets a gleam come through.'

Sorry, that's all I've got. I agree with it, I think its 'True'. I think its Joyous.

[HerenIstarion]

Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor,
for the Realm of Sauron is ended for ever,
and the Dark Tower is thrown down.

Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard,
for your watch hath not been in vain,
and the Black Gate is broken,
and your King hath passed through,
and he is victorious.

Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West,
for your King shall come again,
and he shall dwell among you
all the days of your life.

And the Tree that was withered shall be renewed,
and he shall plant it in the high places,
and the City shall be blessed.

Sing all ye people!

[Child of the 7th Age]

Davem

This will be hurried as I am due at work, but I think you are selling yourself short.

In the first place, would it be such a terrible thing if we politely agreed that there were some points we could agree on, and others that we could not? This thread has reached a total of eight pages. With all those reflections and differing opinions, it's scarcely surprising that it would be difficult to reach a consensus.

Secondly, if we look at the thread as a whole, I think that there is more middle ground here than you are seeing right now. This began as a discussion of the right of the reader to grapple with the text on his own and to come up with interpretations that Tolkien had not personally discussed. It was a celebration of the individual and his or her right to bring his own personal background and experience into the literary mix. In essence, we were doing exactly what Tolkien recommends in his preface: not being locked into an allegorical meaning etched in stone, but having the freedom of applicability, looking at the story through the prism of our unique backgrounds and experiences and applying those ideas. We had individual quibbles about the place of the Letters in this process, or how to respond when confronted with interpretations that seemed contrary to what Tolkien himself said (a lá Stormfront) but for the most part we could at least define a middle ground.

Now we come to the difficult part. The thread drastically switched gears. Instead of celebrating the individual, we began searching instead for those common things that readers see in LotR and Tolkien's writings. In a sense it was like grafting a rose onto a pear tree. This had not been Fordim's initial question or intent.

Still, for the most part, we could agree that there was an element of enchantment or faerie that Tolkien drew upon, and that the majority of readers could sense that in their reading. The problem came when we tried to pin that down and put a name on it.

My personal objection to "Truth" (with a capital T) is not that it doesn't exist in the world as a whole. And I would certainly agree that Tolkien was attempting to reflect truth in LotR, and that it stands at the core of much of what he wrote. Even Aiwendil said he could accept that statement if truth was defined in its broadest sense. My objection to using "Truth" was a practical one. The minute you begin to define that term closely, you leave some people in the room and some people outside of it. This is particular true if you define truth in such a manner to touch upon the existence of God. One person's particular definition of Truth may not be the same as another's.

Tolkien was exceedingly careful not to define things in an explicit manner in LotR. He did not do what Lewis did. He uses the pregnant passive in LotR to give us vague hints of a greater force at work, but he does not spell out any of this in detail, at least not in this particular piece of writing. He tells us in the Letters that he did this intentionally. I also think it was intentional that he did not refer to "Truth" openly in the story itself.

Why did he do this? Helen has already pointed out that he did use the term "Truth" in Mythopoiea and On Faerie Stories. Perhaps because in this particular tale he didn't want to lock himself into the same problem we are having here? The minute you start defining Truth in a precise way, people's defensive walls go up as they begin to consider what side of the fence they are on, whether they fit into that particular defintion of truth or not. Tolkien did want to point out the shortcomings in our dreary old world, and to suggest that there could and should be more to life than that. The last thing he wanted to do was to get people's hackles up, so that they would build a wall and lose sight of what the author was saying.

And I am afraid that's what may be happening here. I sense an underlying exasperation in some of these posts that goes beyond a mere intellectual exchange. So my objection to 'Truth' as a term is merely a practical one. Helen may be right that I am throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But I see people becoming defensive about their particular definition of Truth and how that fits into their personal life and beliefs. I don't think that's what we're aiming for. It would be preferable to find terminology that doesn't raise this problem.

Whether we like it or not, Truth does imply a set standard. That is why I feel more comfortable with the terms "Joy" or "Light" which don't seem to carry quite the same meaning.

Fordim does have a point. If you look at "Truth" from a totally different vantage, you could argue that LotR is about rejecting anyone who comes telling you the "Truth", who claims to know the certainties of life better than you do, who in effect supplants Eru's music with his own ideas and schemes.

And I would say that Sauron does do this. Aiwendil , it's interesting that you mentioned Myths Transformed, because my own view of Sauron and Truth stem directly from that. Unlike Morgoth who was merely a nihilist (or at least had become one by the end of the First Age), Sauron did have a clear vision of "order and planning and organization". It has become the great Truth in his life, supplanting the music and plan that Eru put forward. Saruman had a similar vision. That vision of "order as Truth" is also one that we see in a certain modern political ideologies.

Can we not at least agree on a broad statement like this? That most readers see a core of 'enchantment' or 'faerie' which Tolkien depicts or draws upon in his writing. That this may go by different names -- truth, Truth, Joy, or Light-- and that we each differ somewhat in how we define or regard this concept, since we bring our own experiences and backgrounds into the process of definition. But can we not also agree that this core reflects the crucial values and themes that Tolkien delineates in his story: concepts of goodness, self sacrifice, love, and hope?

Would that ledge be broad enough to hold most of the readers here, but defined enough to have a least some meaning? If something like that still doesn't work, we may have to politely agree to disagree, which has certainly happened many times before.

Sorry if this is incoherent. I am racing off to work.

Sharon

[bilbo_baggins]

I do believe that this Thread has transcended anything Tolkien-related. How far will it go? How long will the faithful posters reply to each other before their collective creativity dies?

I do believe that question is unanswerable as the repliers on this thread have no intention of stopping. I'm reminded of some sort of endurance race for some strange reason:

"Yes, people, they're coming around the bend with davem and Heren-Istarion in the lead, followed closely by Child, Aiwendil, Mark12_30, and many more! Just look at them go! Will they ever stop? They're not slowing down, not a bit; no giving up in this race, folks! No one could even think of letting it slow down a bit, even if that means everyone would think more clearly and be able to reply to all the latest posts! How exciting this is!"

The argument of Truth (absolute or individual) is a spiritual one and a little socio-political. Do you really believe that any resolution can be acheived? Highly unlikely. Do you really believe that one will conform to your viewpoint? Unlikely in the extreme. Do you believe that we can actually reach some conclusions to this argument? Perhaps.

I hope I don't sound irritated or frustrated with the turn of events. I actually quite enjoy them.

I hope this sort of sums up the current flow.

[davem]

Sharon

I still think you're understanding Truth as implying a set of dogmatic 'Laws', dictated by force, on others who are made to believe them- whether they agree with them or not. I was using it in the sense of what is true about 'reality', or 'the ground of Being'. So, in this sense, the statement 'killing is wrong' is not part of that Truth, neither is 'Water is wet', or 2+2=4.

'Truth' is the origin of those & similar ideas, or call it 'God' or Light or Joy, in the sense in which Tolkien used it in Fairy Stories. It is the 'Source' from which all 'True' things arise, & the source of the 'Joy' which we glimpse at the moment of Eucatastrophe. And whatever others may say, it is 'real' to the extent that any profoundly moving experience is 'real'. No 'theory', literary or pyschological can account for it, or reduce it to its own terms.

And now, at the risk of being accused of 'crossing a line' in my 'psychoanalysis' of other posters once more, I can only say in response to Bethberry's:

"I don't think I have this experience you claim for all of us. What I feel when I finish reading Tolkien is little different than feelings of departures from other extremely well imagined worlds of fiction. It is narrative cessation--a post-reading desire comedown--not a sense that this world somehow fails. "

And Aiwendil's:

"This is more or less my experience as well. I am naturally always just a bit unhappy that the book is over, but no more so than when I read any good book (or when I listen to a good symphony, or watch a good movie, etc.). "

I'm surprised. Nothing more than with any other fictional world? Just another escape into a Never-Never Land? Maybe I am unusual, then. Middle Earth changed me. I'll never be the same person again. I suppose I may be in the wrong, perhaps overvaluing the stories & the writer, & in not subscribing to the 'right' theories, in pyschology, or literature, but if I am wrong I'm glad, because I like the fact that Middle Earth is a window on Truth & Joy to me, And that when I put down the book my feelings are closer to grief at the loss of something beloved than to 'narrative cessation'. From her previous posts, I 'd kind of assumed that it was so for Bethberry too. I don't know if its down to whether you experience that Truth or Joy, whether its that that determines whether its just another escapist fantasy to you or much more than that.

Again, I may be wrong in believing in the existence of Truth & Joy, but if that's the reason I experience Tolkien's stories in the way I do, & am affected by them in the way I am, then I'll choose being wrong.