'Pre-baptised'

[Lalwendë]

It's not enough these days to just find something beautiful. It all has to have a purpose. It's so utilitarian and depressing.

That's the problem which makes so many people hate Tolkien and fail to appreciate what he created. They feel that what they must read must mean something, that their spare time was not wasted in merely enjoying an adventure. And that's what sticks in my throat about Lewis. His work has fallen prey to the modern need for utilitarianism as it has to have this 'higher purpose'. Ugh. I knew there was something iffy and stilted about his work when I was trying to read it and then I found out what it was and it was like a revelation - of the kind he would not have expected. Steeped in fairy tales as a child, I was well aware of what 'magic' looked and smelled like and it smelled a bit 'off' in Narnia.

But Neil Gaiman says it better:

Originally Posted by Neil Gaiman

For good or ill the religious allegory, such as it was, went entirely over my head, and it was not until I was about twelve that I found myself realising that there were Certain Parallels. Most people get it at the Stone Table; I got it when it suddenly occurred to me that the story of the events that occurred to Saint Paul on the road to Damascus was the dragoning of Eustace Scrubb all over again. I was personally offended: I felt that an author, whom I had trusted, had had a hidden agenda. I had nothing against religion, or religion in fiction -- I had bought (in the school bookshop) and loved The Screwtape Letters, and was already dedicated to G.K. Chesterton. My upset was, I think, that it made less of Narnia for me, it made it less interesting a thing, less interesting a place.

What Tolkien produced was a work of Art, comparable to Ulysses. It's a complex interplay of plot and structure and words, like one huge poem. It mystifies us modern folk who are used to purpose and meaning and definition and all those kinds of restrictive things. We can't just sit back and enjoy the trip. So we have to find some meaning to define it all by, when there isn't one. Even Tolkien himself struggled to assign some kind of 'meaning' to his texts (often I think, influenced by people like Lewis) but from all his contradictory statements its clear that there wasn't one beyond wanting to discover 'what really happened'. It's a story. That's it.

That's the essential joy of Tolkien. You open this book and enter this other world immediately. It doesn't exist to teach you anything, it is just there. Like Tom Bombadil, it just 'is'. That makes you feel as though when we close the book, that world goes on without us, regardless of us, in spite of us. It's real because it's not made for us, it's going to exist without us.

All you need to love Tolkien is an open mind, one that's open to magic and Art and adventure. One that doesn't expect any revelations or lessons. That's what a 'still undarkened heart' is.