Mythic Unities in The Lord of the Rings - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Lalwendë · 11-07-2006, 02:19 AM

It does indeed injure the fabric of the universe/s, in fact all this cutting goes even further and puts life and human consciousness itself in peril. I find it interesting that he basically says that lies are not just wrong but in the end affect us after death. Mind you, he is not just the anti-religion polemicist that he's been painted to be. After another close reading of the text and then branching off into some of his supplementary writings and works he was inspired by, I find I regret blasting him for his work! I still think he's wrong about Tolkien (but that's a long story...)...An awful lot of misinformation has spread about HDM (which he has not always sought to correct, no doubt he thinks he needs the publicity!). He is not blasting the Catholic church but an imagined extreme form of Calvinism, and he is not an atheist, though I understand how it would take some effort for a Christian reader to get over what he says - the Archbishop of Canterbury lauds the books by the way.

Anyway, again here we have another writer (no doubt influenced heavily by Blake) who deals in 'mythic unities' - much of HDM deals with the nature of the relationship between body and soul, and with Pullman we have another writer who sees the importance of this and tries to clutch at that mysterious 'something'.

littlemanpoet · 11-11-2006, 02:10 PM

Somehow, subcreation seems to be an important piece of this whole thing. Writing or speaking story creates a new woven fabric of meaning and imagined (imaged?) reality, and one can be successful in such a subcreation, or not. Which links this thread to the one on "the wrong kind of details".

There are writers who just don't get it, but we read their hack anyway, and come away feeling unsatisfied. Why? Because they don't cause wonder, and they don't succeed in effecting a recovered view of reality. What is this recovered view? It is to more closely (certainly not completely!) have revealed to our perception the livingness of creation; which means mythic unities instead of seeing things piecemeal.

One way of keeping this kind of thing in mind is to look at the tree out your back window. Maybe it still has leaves. I just looked out the window at a tree in my neighbor's yard, just as a strong breeze was blowing through. It hit me, watching those leaves dance, that a tree is always interacting with its environment (a rather cold and scientific way of putting it, I admit); that is, leaves never just are. They are sprouting, moving, growing, changing in color, dying, falling, mouldering. Real life is always busy recreating. It's a work of art that never stops being made. I'm failing for words. Maybe you understand what I'm trying to describe in this cumbersome way.

11-07-2006, 02:19 AM	#1
Lalwendë A Mere Boggart Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: under the bed Posts: 4,737	It does indeed injure the fabric of the universe/s, in fact all this cutting goes even further and puts life and human consciousness itself in peril. I find it interesting that he basically says that lies are not just wrong but in the end affect us after death. Mind you, he is not just the anti-religion polemicist that he's been painted to be. After another close reading of the text and then branching off into some of his supplementary writings and works he was inspired by, I find I regret blasting him for his work! I still think he's wrong about Tolkien (but that's a long story...)...An awful lot of misinformation has spread about HDM (which he has not always sought to correct, no doubt he thinks he needs the publicity!). He is not blasting the Catholic church but an imagined extreme form of Calvinism, and he is not an atheist, though I understand how it would take some effort for a Christian reader to get over what he says - the Archbishop of Canterbury lauds the books by the way. Anyway, again here we have another writer (no doubt influenced heavily by Blake) who deals in 'mythic unities' - much of HDM deals with the nature of the relationship between body and soul, and with Pullman we have another writer who sees the importance of this and tries to clutch at that mysterious 'something'. __________________ Gordon's alive!

11-11-2006, 02:10 PM	#2
littlemanpoet Itinerant Songster Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: The Edge of Faerie Posts: 7,066	Somehow, subcreation seems to be an important piece of this whole thing. Writing or speaking story creates a new woven fabric of meaning and imagined (imaged?) reality, and one can be successful in such a subcreation, or not. Which links this thread to the one on "the wrong kind of details". There are writers who just don't get it, but we read their hack anyway, and come away feeling unsatisfied. Why? Because they don't cause wonder, and they don't succeed in effecting a recovered view of reality. What is this recovered view? It is to more closely (certainly not completely!) have revealed to our perception the livingness of creation; which means mythic unities instead of seeing things piecemeal. One way of keeping this kind of thing in mind is to look at the tree out your back window. Maybe it still has leaves. I just looked out the window at a tree in my neighbor's yard, just as a strong breeze was blowing through. It hit me, watching those leaves dance, that a tree is always interacting with its environment (a rather cold and scientific way of putting it, I admit); that is, leaves never just are. They are sprouting, moving, growing, changing in color, dying, falling, mouldering. Real life is always busy recreating. It's a work of art that never stops being made. I'm failing for words. Maybe you understand what I'm trying to describe in this cumbersome way.