Leaf by Niggle

[Sophia the Thunder Mistress]

What good timing Alak, for digging up this thread, I was plotting to start one on Leaf by Niggle myself. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

What I was going to say revolves somewhat around what Amarie of the Vanyar said:

'Leaf by Niggle' is one of my favourite Tolkien stories; of course it is an allegory, the tree beeing his work on the Middle Earth, each tale and character growing like the branches of Noggle's tree, and each of them being explained by Tolkien in such a detail as each of the leaves that Niggle paints ...

Leaf by Niggle is obviously an allegory- Niggle's journey representing death and so forth, but how much of himself is represented in Niggle's work?

The comparison between his histories and Niggle's tree seems blaring to me, but I've never seen it discussed anywhere. I wonder if he thought of it as he portrayed Niggle's great painting; as pieced together scraps of things, looking overall slightly warped and off kilter, though in details meticulously lovely.

I wonder what the final bit signifies then? The destruction of the entire tree and the preservation of just one leaf- LoTR? Has most of Tolkien's 'tree' been underappreciated? Or did he mean to say that the work was truly better in snapshots than as a whole (honestly I find it much better as a whole...)?

As a sidenote, why, davem, do you say that about the allegorical content of Leaf by Niggle? Personal distaste for allegory? I wonder, because I see a lot of fellow Tolkien fans (whom I know in real life) throw out Leaf by Niggle because it is allegorical, placing it as a secondary work because of Tolkien's avowed dislike of allegory. I don't think it's "allegorical-ness" lessens its value at all, and there are other instances of Tolkien using allegory (Monsters and Critics). [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Just wondering, I haven't gotten my hands on Smith of Wooton Major yet, but very few things touch me as deeply as Leaf by Niggle...

A few thoughts for the general consumption.

Sophia