Was Middle Earth Created or Discovered?

[Jessica Jade]

No real time to respond right now, seeing that it's past 4 am, but here's an email from an online friend of mine about the topic. Interesting food for thought.

"it might be easier to view tolkien in two seperate entities. his mind
and his creative being. his mind is something that has developed since
birth. perhaps he first saw a picture of a dragon when he was three years
old and filed it away in his mind. then later in high school, perhaps he
developed a keen fascination for languages, particularly the constructional
and grammatic aspects of it. then maybe later he fell in love with someone
with beautifully dark hair and sharp ears.

then as he grew and became inspired to write, his creative mind drew upon
his past experiences (his mind) and translated them into the what we now
know as middle earth. that dark haired girl he fell in love with became
arwen. his fascination for languages translated in the elvish tongue, etc.
it could be argued that his creation of a fictitous world came from memories
of his own world.

there's a distinction between creation and experience. i believe one cannot
exist without the other. in order to create (ie. something like
middle-earth) you need to be able to have experienced the same
transcendental qualities sometime in your life. how can you write about
something if you don't know about it or acknowledge it's existence?

so yeah...middle earth was discovered because it already existed in
tolkien's mind. it was simply his strong creative being that allowed it to
take form."

thanks everyone, for posting! Your comments are greatly appreciated [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]