And Eru Smiled

[davem]

But its this question of 'how we are meant to see them that intrigues me - are we 'meant' to see mountains as big rocks, or are we 'meant' to see them as physical symbols of spiritual things? Mountains may be 'meant to be the stuff of legends' but materially thay aren't that at all. If they are to be seen as the stuff of legends then there have to be legends about them. Legends are human inventions, stories we tell ourselves & each otherabout mountains. It is our stories about them that enable us to see them as something other than big rocks.

When we tell those stories we are giving to (or discerning) a meaning in them, but that meaning comes from our stories not from the mountains themselves.

The 'Way of Affirmation' or 'Beatrician Experience' posited by Charles Williams is something I've given a lot of thought to over the years. It's interesting to me that Tolkien is known to have said that when it came to literature, he and Williams "had nothing to say to each other". Which suggests to me that Tolkien didn't have a very high opinion of the Way of Affirmation. Nevertheless, it could be argued that LotR is itself a Way of Affirmation. Anyway.

I think Tolkien's relationship with Williams was more complicated than that. Certainly Tolkien valued Williams as a friend, & as Carpenter has pointed out, Tolkien was to some degree affected by jealousy of Lewis close friendship with the man. A lot has been written about the Tolkien Lewis friendship but very little about Tolkien's relationship with Williams. There is work to be done on that.

[littlemanpoet]

That you keep talking, davem, about mountains as "just material objects" points to how our language has developed into all the abstract distinctions that split off the abstract from substance. Not that this is bad, but it has come at a price.

What Barfield was saying, and what Tolkien built into the aesthetic experience that is LotR, is that we are meant to see mountains neither as big rocks, nor as symbols of spiritual things; rather, we are meant to see mountains as a unity. Think of Caradhras. No mountain has as much personality as Caradhras; but to say that Tolkien was using personification, severely understates the case. He was communicating that particular mountain to be perceived by (most) readers the way a pre-modern would perceive it, before all the abstract distinctions pulled away from the mountain all those things premoderns understood it to contain.

"Our stories" about mountains are quite a different thing than what individuals tell themselves. "Our stories" speaks to a communal experience that a culture, or part of a culture shares. There's a richness in that compared to the relative bankruptcy (pun not intended but I'll leave it there) of individualistic reinterpretations.

As to Tolkien and Williams, the Letters speak to the fact that they had a great frienship and quite enjoyed each other during Inklings meetings. Still, their creative imaginations ran along decidedly different paths. If not for Lewis, there never would have been a Tolkien/Williams friendship.

[davem]

But Caradhras is not a primary world mountain. LotR is a legend - a story told us by a storyteller, which affects the way we see mountains in the primary world. So, it is legends - either traditional ones or modern ones like LotR - that enable us to see Mountains as more than big rocks. Without human minds to create & tell stories about mountains they would be simply big rocks. Only humans create/experience these stories. Only when those 'pre-moderns' made their stories did mountains become 'magical'. Before there were stories about mountains there were just big rocks. Caradhras is a 'story' about a mountain, not a mountain. Secondary worlds are collections of stories about things, not the things themselves. Mountains are big rocks in the primary world, only in the secondary world (the world of the human imagination) do they become 'Mountains', Mountains, Gandalf!'

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by davem

Before there were stories about mountains there [sic] were just big rocks.

How do you know that? You weren't there. What myth are you espousing in holding forth about something you never experienced? In other words, what story are you presuming was true?

I said nothing about "magical". The word is entirely too limiting. Tolkien used his Elves to communicate this.

'For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean'

says Galadriel to Sam, in The Mirror of Galadriel. Consider, all she does is pour whater from a pitcher into a basin. What's magical about that? It is Elvish, because she's an Elf who has lived for perhaps more than ten thousand years, but that is saying much more than "magical".

Mountains are big rocks in the primary world.

Again, how do you know this? It's akin to saying that stars are just hot balls of exploding gas. That's not what a mountain is, it's just what it's made of, to borrow a very good phrase from C.S. Lewis. Be careful about dragging in the (rather bankrupt) myth of mere materialism.

[davem]

I'm sure before there were stories about mountains there was 'awe' felt in their presence, or 'participation mystique', or whatever, but as soon as the aweful thing became a 'Mountain' there was a story about it, to account for its existence, to define it.

Edit: No, the two things, the identification of the 'Aweful thing' as a mountain & the story would have been simultaneous events. A story is an account of 'Aweful things', an attempt to make sense of them, to understand them, to see them as they are.

[Formendacil]

I fail to see how any "enchantment" cast by a book (where it is 'seen' through our reading) is any different than the "enchantment" cast by real life (where it is 'seen' through our physical eyes.

With regards to the frame of mind, it is necessary for both book enchantment and real world enchantment.

Indeed, what I was endeavouring to say, is that real and book enchantment are one and the same.

When Bilbo says that he wants to see "mountains again", I never once got the feeling that he would find the Rockies or the Alps to be any less "mountains" than the Misty or the Blue.

Perhaps the problem is that Davem's "real world" enchantment regarding mountains is broken by realising that they are "just rocks" in the same way that LMP's "book" enchantment is broken by realising that Gandalf's speech is "just narrative".

If one goes about looking for enchantment, one will find a great deal more than if one goes about looking for cracks in the enchantment.

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I'm (more than) troubled by the subjectivity that seems to take over every discussion I observe on the BarrowDowns lately ...

This is inevitable, surely. What troubles me more is that every Book discussion these days seems to end up focussing on the same issues ...