Smith of Wootton Major in Middle Earth?

[mark12_30]

Maybe.

Smith of Wootton Major seems to me to be one of Tolkien's more dreamlike works; not that it is meant to all signify "And he woke up and lo it was just a dream"-- but Tolkien put a lot of stock in dreams, and wrote about them within his works as well as wrote the works because of the dreams he himself had (Alkallabeth.)

To me the dreamlike quality of Smith is akin to the dreamlike quality of Frodo's Dreme in Adventures of Tom Bombadil, or (in a less serious vein) the dreamlike quality of 'The Man In The Moon Came Down Too Soon'. They are tales about wanderers feeling very much out of their element, very much vulnerable, and actually in some danger (the danger varies from piece to piece.) But Smith's vision (did he really 'see' them? Was it a dream, a vision, or outside of time, or ...) ... Smith's vision of the "Eleven men" (sic) reminds me of Frodo's Dreme and of The Man In The Moon much more than it reminds me of the Sil, for example.

From the LOTR and the Sil and Tolkien's later works, Valinor is no dream; it has soil, trees, shores, sand, feasts. Reading about it feels very real and solid and tangible. But Smith's Faery is not; it is shifting, ethereal, dreamlike. So is the land that Frodo nightmares his way through. And The Man In The Moon's sojourn among men is humorously nightmarish too.

How would I compare Smith's Faerie to Valinor-- Not to the 'real thing'. I would compare it to Frodo's dreams of Valinor (in Tom Bombadil's house, and other of his dreams) , and perhaps to some of his foreshadowings of Valiinor (in Lorien, or in Rivendell); those times when he was enchanted or in a dreamlike state.

And yet (going back to the "eleven men"-- somehow it strikes me that Tolkien would have found that fascinating, and this discussion of the eleven elven mannish men very enjoyable) -- in dreams, if what we dream is true, it is both foggy and distilled, indistinct and purified. Life is too often mundane, so that we forget to touch, or even seek, the truth; but in dreams, we may perchance find it even when we are too distracted to seek it while we are awake. Frodo's dreams are like this. And Smith's venture into Faerie is like that; he leaves the mundane and searches for what is pure and true, even if he can't really bring *it* home with him back to the mundane; still *he* comes back changed.

And so, Novalis: Life is no dream (it is mundane, and we all too rarely touch the truth); but life ought to become less mundane and the truth shine through it more (eucatastrophe, revelation...) and perhaps someday it will.

There's a whole 'nother side of my thoughts: regarding the tower, the sea, and Tolkien's own dream of the drowning of Numenor, and how that all relates to the way he treats dreams, and how dreams so often include the sea; there it is.

[littlemanpoet]

I'm moved by your post, mark12_30. Not only do you point out a valuable distinction, but you effectively evoke that to which you assign greater value.

So why is it that The Silmarillion seems so ..... like looking through a spyglass at something real but remote ..... while Smith seems, like you said, as if I'm looking inside my own dreams? Same author; different technique? I suppose so, but I doubt that technique is at the heart of it.

Does The Sil convey truth with the same power that Smith does? I don't think so. I've rarely been moved by The Sil (cannot include Valaquenta, etc. - Tolkien didn't); but I am moved deeply every time I re-read Smith.

Oh, and thanks for moving this thread onto something really worth thinking about.

[davem]

Don't know if either of you have read Flieger's A Question of Time, but in that work she devotes a great deal of time examining Tolkien's use of dreams in his stories. They seem to be of two kinds: there are 'symbolic' dreams - like Sam's in the 'Crossroads' chapter we've recently been discussing, & then there are dreams in which the dreamer enters another 'deeper' kind of reality - like Frodo's dream in the House of Bombadil, or Merry's dream in the Barrow. The first kind are 'subjective', what Jung would call 'little' dreams, the others are 'objective', 'big' dreams.

Tolkien's use of dreams in his 'time travel' stories, Lost Road & Notion Club Papers (where his ideas on the nature of dream probably find their fullest expression) is especially interesting, as the characters enter into the minds of people from the past in their dreams.

From this poin tof view, it doesn't really matter whether Smith 'dreamed' his adventures in Faerie, as Faerie would be another reality, & the means by which he enters - Fay Star or 'dream'- are less important than what happens once he gets there. There's an interesting discussion in Notion Club Papers on 'scientifiction' (ie 'sci-fi') & the methods used to get characters to other planets. One of the characters claims he finds spaceships unconvincing as a means to get to another world, & prefers dream (if I remember it right). He also suggests (& it is perhaps suggestive in more ways than one) that one way of getting a character to another world is 'incarnation' - ie, they could be born into that world.

Like LMP I've always been more moved by Smith than by the Sil. In some ways Smith affects me more deeply than even LotR. There is a sense with Smith that I've only just missed that world, that things were like that not so very long ago. With LotR, The Sill & The Hobbit there's a sense "Of old, (unhappy?), far-off things,. And battles long ago;. - not the perfect quote for what I mean, but I hope you pick up on what I'm getting at. Middle earth has long since passed away, & so there is that sense of

like looking through a spyglass at something real but remote

But with Smith its almost as if the world of that story has only very recently passed away, that if only I'd been born a few years earlier I would have lived there myself. That makes it more poignant for me - I feel like I just missed that 'train'....

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

Same author; different technique? I suppose so, but I doubt that technique is at the heart of it.

It could have something to do with it. I've been thinking how different the worlds of Smith and LotR etc are. To get to Middle Earth or Valinor all we have to do is pick up the books and we are there straight away, there is in fact a Straight Path for us. But to get to Smith's Faery we have to first travel through his world. And that in itself is a world unlike our own where bakers make fabulous cakes for the luckiest of the children at the party. Smith's Faery is harder to get to and harder to hold on to because it is one step removed from us.

That's like our dreams, too. To get to them we have to step into sleep, another world away from our conscious thoughts. Sometimes this is a good thing when we have bad dreams, but it can leave us feeling like we can't quite touch something wonderful when we have vivid dreams of places we have never been to or see people we will never talk to or meet.

[littlemanpoet]

Don't know if either of you have read Flieger's A Question of Time, but in that work she devotes a great deal of time examining Tolkien's use of dreams in his stories. They seem to be of two kinds: there are 'symbolic' dreams - like Sam's in the 'Crossroads' chapter we've recently been discussing, & then there are dreams in which the dreamer enters another 'deeper' kind of reality - like Frodo's dream in the House of Bombadil, or Merry's dream in the Barrow. The first kind are 'subjective', what Jung would call 'little' dreams, the others are 'objective', 'big' dreams.

You may be interested, davem, that this thread has been experimenting with precisely the objective, big dreams. An example would be posts # 689 & 690. Really, they are just idle attempts, but you may find them mildly worth the distraction.

Lalwendë, you are pointing, I think, to the technique that I call "transitional fantasy"; i.e., starting in our world and moving to Faerie. Except that you're saying that the "our world" Tolkien describes is already at one remove. The remove, which I think is late medieval European life, is nevertheless somehow "home". You say that stepping into dream is a world away from our conscious thoughts. I submit to you that our conscious thoughts are not true "home". When we move into sleep, we are more in touch with our real selves than when wakeful; that's how it feels to me when reading Smith; thus, when we move with Smith into Faerie, it feels just, barely just, out of reach. As if, could I just find a star somehow, some way, I could get there.

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

So why is it that The Silmarillion seems so ..... like looking through a spyglass at something real but remote ..... while Smith seems, like you said, as if I'm looking inside my own dreams? Same author; different technique? I suppose so, but I doubt that technique is at the heart of it.

In your own words I'd guess that the Sil has too much "elven anthropology" and not enough mystery.

Does The Sil convey truth with the same power that Smith does? I don't think so. I've rarely been moved by The Sil (cannot include Valaquenta, etc. - Tolkien didn't); but I am moved deeply every time I re-read Smith.

The word "trespassing" comes to mind. (Remember the salmon swimming into the hot spring at the bottom of the lake? The narrator was out of his element, and you loved it, as I fondly recall.) Smith is essentially trespassing; Frodo is frequently trespassing; by contrast the Sil narrator has every right to be there. So where's the mystery that creates thirst in the soul? I suspect that what moves you is your desire for transcendance-- and that hunger is best whetted by mystery.

Perhaps the Sil creates regret, longing for the good old days, rather than the longing to pierce and percieve a mystery.

Oh, and thanks for moving this thread onto something really worth thinking about.

I'm honored.

Originally Posted by Lalwende

That's like our dreams, too. To get to them we have to step into sleep, another world away from our conscious thoughts. Sometimes this is a good thing when we have bad dreams, but it can leave us feeling like we can't quite touch something wonderful when we have vivid dreams of places we have never been to or see people we will never talk to or meet.

There's the longing.

Originally Posted by davem

But with Smith its almost as if the world of that story has only very recently passed away, that if only I'd been born a few years earlier I would have lived there myself. That makes it more poignant for me - I feel like I just missed that 'train'....

There it is again.

[Aiwendil]

Littlemanpoet wrote:

Does The Sil convey truth with the same power that Smith does? I don't think so. I've rarely been moved by The Sil (cannot include Valaquenta, etc. - Tolkien didn't); but I am moved deeply every time I re-read Smith.

Davem wrote:

Like LMP I've always been more moved by Smith than by the Sil.

Mark12_30 wrote:

I'd guess that the Sil has too much "elven anthropology" and not enough mystery.

I find this very interesting. My reaction is quite different; I have always found the Silmarillion to be much more powerful and more moving than Smith. I wonder why it is that we have such different reactions to the two works.

It seems to me that the fundamental difference between Smith and the Silmarillion is that the former is a work about fantasy while the latter is fantasy. This is partly because of the difference between the "transitional fantasy" of Smith and the "immersive fantasy" of the Silmarillion; but it is deeper than that. Smith seems almost to be a literary treatise presented in the form of a story. We touched on this in the Canonicity thread; the word I used there was "meta-fantasy". In my view, Smith sketches out the requirements for a succesful work of fantasy story-telling, but it does not, in itself, fulfill those requirements. That isn't to say that I don't like it, or that I think it's unsuccesful - rather, that whatever it is, it isn't really a faerie story in the sense that Tolkien's other works are.

The Silmarillion, on the other hand, is a kind of total faerie story. The immersion here is more complete than that in a work like LotR; for in the Silmarillion the story is the world. The story begins when the world begins, and the faerie setting is built up not merely in aid of the story, but as the story.

I am curious regarding other people's opinions of Smith vs. the Silmarillion. In particular, I wonder whether the divide between those who find Smith more moving and those who prefer the Silmarillion might roughly coincide with the divide between those who are interested in authorial intention and those who fall into the "reader's freedom" or "textual supremacy" camps. For it seems to me that in Smith the voice of the author is more clearly revealed; there is a stronger authorial presence. In the Silmarillion, the art and the artist seem to be more fully concealed.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

I am curious regarding other people's opinions of Smith vs. the Silmarillion. In particular, I wonder whether the divide between those who find Smith more moving and those who prefer the Silmarillion might roughly coincide with the divide between those who are interested in authorial intention and those who fall into the "reader's freedom" or "textual supremacy" camps. For it seems to me that in Smith the voice of the author is more clearly revealed; there is a stronger authorial presence. In the Silmarillion, the art and the artist seem to be more fully concealed.

Oh, now this is a challenge I cannot resist. Must go off and reread Smith and cogitate. *waves with gauntlet gently held*

[davem]

Don't know if anyone else is aware of this, but Verlyn Flieger has a new book coming out on Smith in September time. Not much info at the moment - this on her website:http://www.mythus.com/smith.html

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

It seems to me that the fundamental difference between Smith and the Silmarillion is that the former is a work about fantasy while the latter is fantasy.

There are two matters you raise to show why the Sil is more powerful to you than SWOM: transitional versus immersive fantasy (where did these terms originate?), and whether SWOM is more a treatise or more a story.

It is known that SOWM was begun by Tolkien as an illustration of a point he was making in an abortive preface to a republication of George MacDonald's The Golden Key. It is also known that SOWM had a life of its own and transcended its original purpose.

In the interest of saved time for those (such as myself) who have not read the Canonicity thread, could you (or someone) provide a link to the points you reference, if you don't mind, in regard to meta-fantasy and the requirements of fantasy?