The Nazis & a Mytholgy for England

[Child of the 7th Age]

Davem ,

Another long reply! Sorry....

I agree with much of what you say. Tolkien told us he had intended to create a "mythology for England" and he certainly drew on the example of Elias Lönnrat and Finland. Garth provided the 'missing piece' in the puzzle by showing us how Tolkien "inherited" the TCBS mantle of using writing to prompt a "moral regeneration".

About two years ago (perhaps before you came?), we had a wide-ranging but disjointed discussion of the English elements reflected in Tolkien's Middle-earth (Victorian, medieval and otherwise) and the issue of whether the author was attempting to create a "mythology for England". The discussion was spread out over several threads and by pm, and addressed a range of topics: class relations, the characterization of Bilbo, the nature of the Shire and its relation to faerie, as well as how the "myth of England" underlay the Legendarium via place names, narrators, etc. I defended the idea that the desire to create such a myth for England was central to Tolkien right from the beginning and took several hard knocks from others who regarded the motivation as more linguistic, or who thought I was pressing too hard.

Before I read Shippey and Garth, even before the Letters and Silm were published, I could sense some of this as I read Hobbit and LotR (although I had no idea about moral regeneration or TCBS.). Strangely enough, this undertone sent me chasing back into medieval history and lit, and I have since learned that I was not the only one to do this. In that sense, I think Shippey is absolutely right about Tolkien:

He did not think he was entirely making it up. He was 'reconstructing', he was harmonizing contradictions in his source-texts, sometimes he was supplying entirely new concepts (like hobbits) but he was also reaching back to an imaginative world which he believed had once really existed, at least in a collective imagination: and for this he had a very great deal of admittedly scattered evidence.

The part I find harder to answer is this.... Did Tolkien ever actually give up this belief in reconstructing what was already there--in effect the recapturing of a myth for England? Is Sea Bell or even Leaf by Niggle an admission of failure in that regard? Did he simply settle for inventing an independent fantasy world that had no real basis in reality? And how do we understand his later attempt to incorporate "theological and scientific thinking" into the Legendarium itself?

You are absolutely right to ask what impact the Nazi abuse of the Nordic myths had on his own thinking and writing, especially in relation to what Garth has shown. I haven't heard this issue seriously discussed before and it is worth a lot of thought. But I don't think we have enough evidence to come up with an answer.

Like Aiwendil, I am cautious. I don't think Tolkien ever totally gave up the "dream" of myth creation, even if the Nazi experience might have made him more cautious about the possible end results. To me, myth still lies at the heart of the Silm. I would take the author's flip assertion in the Milton Waldman letter of 1951-- the point where he mocks his myth creation with the exclamation "Absurd"-- as more indicative of the kind of humility that marked the man rather than an actual repudiation of myth creation itself.

I also think you have to be very careful about the chronology of all this in building any case. For example, you cite Shippey's study (don't think I saw this -- where is it?) in which he shows how English characters are psychically linked to the past vis a vis the Lost Road and The Notion Club papers as an instance of Tolkien trying to link things to an actual past. The Lost Road does come from the pre-Nazi era, but The Notion Club papers weren't done till 1945, which is after the Nazi regime had been exposed. Why would he do this if the Nazi example had caused him to shy away from myth building as too "dangerous" and capable of abuse. You also mention the first and second forewards of LotR (the contrast) as evidence of a shift, but both of these came some time after the war itself.

As to what's unpublished - well, we don't have his diaries, & the only letters Christopher Tolkien has allowed to be published are the ones that relate directly to Middle earth. Lets speculate on a 'nightmare scenario' some letters from the early thirties, where, before the horrors of Nazism have appeared, or at least been made known - Tolkien sees Germany arising from the depression, inspired by the nordic myths & fired by the noble northern spirit, & makes some positive comments. Of course, as soon as the truth about Nazism comes out he rejects it all immediately, but if such letters, or diary passages, existed, one could understand CRT not wanting them to appear

This would be a sobering thing and lend support to your views. However, we have so very little from the 1920s and 1930s that we can only speculate.

That draft letter to Carole Batten-Phelps from 1971 has always struck me--the one where the prominent visitor asked: "Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?" Then Tolkien responded, "No, I don't suppose so any longer." This can be interpreted so many ways. It can be tied in with the theological tones that underlie the later Legendarium, but it can also be seen as a validation of the point that Shippey raised: that an imaginative realm of myth existed, which Tolkien felt he was tapping into. Somehow, I don't think that myth disappeared, even if it changed in form and content. The Nazi experience undoubtedly disheartened him, and I think you are right in stating that it should be looked at more seriously. Yet it was not, to my mind, at least not without more evidence, the dominant factor that you've suggested.

Thanks for this thread. It has gotten me thinking.

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Fordim -

Sorry! I am so long-winded that we cross posted. I think your last paragraph has much to say.