COMPASS & LOTR comparison

[davem]

Found this interview with Pullman interesting : http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1439673.

Certainly calls into question Pullman's 'militant athiesm' - he states he's perfectly happy for the interviewer to see 'Dust' in the novel as the divine - but more interesting is where talks about 'mutual interdependence' of humans & Dust, - its a mysterious force encompassing human thought, imagination, kindness, love, intellectual curiosity, & that our duty is to introduce more Dust into the world - that without Dust we will dwindle away, & without us Dust will dwindle away.

The reason I found it interesting is that it is almost exactly what Tolkien says about Faery in the Smith Essay:

It is plainly shown that Faery is a vast world in its own right, that does not depend for its existence upon Men, and which is not primarily nor indeed principally concerned with Men. The relationship must therefore be one of love: the Elven Folk, the chief and ruling inhabitants of Faery, have an ultimate kinship with Men and have a permanent love for them in general. Though they are not bound by any moral obligation to assist Men, and do not need their help (except in human affairs), they do from time to time try to assist them. avert evil from them and have relations with them, especially through certain men and women whom they find suitable. They, the Elvenfolk, are thus 'beneficent' with regard to Men, and are not wholly alien, though many things and creatures in Faery itself are alien to Men and even actively hostile. Their good will is seen mainly in attempting to keep or restore relationships betWeen the two worlds, since the Elves (and still some Men) realize that this love of Faery is essential to the full and proper human development. The love of Faery is the love of love: a relationship towards all things. animate and inanimate, which includes love and respect, and removes or modifies e spirit of possession and domination. Without it even plain 'Utility' will in fact become less useful; or will turn to ruthlessness and lead only to mere power, ultimately destructive. The Apprentice relation in the tale is thus interesting. Men in a large part of their activities are or should be in an apprentice status as regards the Elven folk. In an attempt to rescue Wootton from its decline, the Elves reverse the situation, and the King of faery himself Cmes and serves as an apprentice in the village...

But Faery is not religious. It is fairly evident that it is not Heaven or Paradise. Certainly its inhabitants, Elves, are not angels or emlssares of God (direct). The tale does not deal with religion itself. The Elves are not busy with a plan to reawake religious devotion in Wootton. The Cooking allegory would not be suitable to any such import. Faery represents at its weakest a breaking out (at least in mind) from the iron ring of the familiar, stilI more from the adamantine ring of belief that it is known, possessed, controlled, and so (ultimately) all that is worth being considered - a constant awareness of a world beyond these rings. More strongly it represents love: that is, a love and respect for all things, 'inanimate' and 'animate', an unposessing love of them as 'other'. This 'love' will produce both ruth and delight. Things seen in its light will be respected, and they will also appear delightful, beautiful, wonderful - even glorious.

[Lalwendë]

Pullman isn't a 'militant atheist' - it's a ridiculous thing to attach to the man, nor is he at the helm of some sinister recruitment campaign to secularism. His books simply (complexly?) put an alternative view that the path to wonder and joy can also be found outside of religion. And it can. Don't we all get exactly that from reading Tolkien, having a walk in the woods or watching kids smile?

One of the 'points' to Lyra is that she is an ''Eve" figure, one of the symbols of the Bible which Pullman finds most interesting as it is Eve who discovers Learning and Knowledge and yet she is thrown out of Paradise for having a mind. Lyra defies Authority in seeking to find out what this Dust business is all about and she too acts like Eve - but in Pullman's case, he has written about what would happen if this 'Eve' did not get punished. And what happens? Some quite beautiful things, actually

In HDM what happens to people who have had their daemons forcibly severed? They become hollow, and in the case of children, they even die - they clearly need the daemon, it being representative of something within us, either soul or imagination, whichever you like. This is done in an attempt to stop Dust settling on them as they begin to become young adults. The Dust is seen as 'bad', as 'sin', but it turns out not to be like that at all - we don't get told what it is exactly, but we have a good idea that it's something essential to human life, something which separates conscious (self-conscious?) beings from animals. It's also fading from the Universe/s.

Lyra, in defying Authority, and in being brave and learning things, discovers all of this and learns how Story is one of the few things we have - that when we die what is left but our Story.

All of this is incredibly similar to Tolkien's way of thinking, that to attempt to trap and control the imagination and to suppress it is a terrible thing. Lyra discovers the limitless possibilities of other worlds, learns not to tell lies and be true to her own Story and most of all to see Learning as important. This is also what Tolkien tells us, that liars and cheats do not win out, that we must learn for ourselves what is right and wrong (who's there out in the wilds telling Frodo and Sam what to do? Nobody, they must decide for themselves), and to be brave.

I think it's a sad thing if people refuse to read this wonderful book by Pullman purely because a man tells them not to. Terribly sad...

I suppose one of the problems is one it shares with Lord of the Rings - it's hard to tell "what it's about" and people feel they must fix a 'meaning' on it all. After all, in this cost conscious modern society every large effort made must have some kind of 'pay-off', mustn't it? And that's probably why lengthy shaggy dog stories like Tristram Shandy aren't popular these days - all our reading must have some kind of 'purpose' - pur-lease.... Well, meanings are there to be found if you so wish, but it is just a good story, just like the equally daunting Lord of the Rings.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem from Tolkien's Smith essay

It is plainly shown that Faery is a vast world in its own right, that does not depend for its existence upon Men, and which is not primarily nor indeed principally concerned with Men. The relationship must therefore be one of love: the Elven Folk, the chief and ruling inhabitants of Faery, have an ultimate kinship with Men and have a permanent love for them in general. Though they are not bound by any moral obligation to assist Men, and do not need their help (except in human affairs), they do from time to time try to assist them. avert evil from them and have relations with them, especially through certain men and women whom they find suitable. They, the Elvenfolk, are thus 'beneficent' with regard to Men, and are not wholly alien, though many things and creatures in Faery itself are alien to Men and even actively hostile. Their good will is seen mainly in attempting to keep or restore relationships betWeen the two worlds, since the Elves (and still some Men) realize that this love of Faery is essential to the full and proper human development. The love of Faery is the love of love: a relationship towards all things. animate and inanimate, which includes love and respect, and removes or modifies e spirit of possession and domination. Without it even plain 'Utility' will in fact become less useful; or will turn to ruthlessness and lead only to mere power, ultimately destructive. The Apprentice relation in the tale is thus interesting. Men in a large part of their activities are or should be in an apprentice status as regards the Elven folk. In an attempt to rescue Wootton from its decline, the Elves reverse the situation, and the King of faery himself Cmes and serves as an apprentice in the village...

But Faery is not religious. It is fairly evident that it is not Heaven or Paradise. Certainly its inhabitants, Elves, are not angels or emlssares of God (direct). The tale does not deal with religion itself. The Elves are not busy with a plan to reawake religious devotion in Wootton. The Cooking allegory would not be suitable to any such import. Faery represents at its weakest a breaking out (at least in mind) from the iron ring of the familiar, stilI more from the adamantine ring of belief that it is known, possessed, controlled, and so (ultimately) all that is worth being considered - a constant awareness of a world beyond these rings. More strongly it represents love: that is, a love and respect for all things, 'inanimate' and 'animate', an unposessing love of them as 'other'. This 'love' will produce both ruth and delight. Things seen in its light will be respected, and they will also appear delightful, beautiful, wonderful - even glorious.

This is going to stray a wee bit off toipc, but that quotation from Tolkien's Smith essay is too fascinating to let my thoughts stray off--won't be so vein as to say I want to catch the Dust before it scatters.

The idea that Fairie is Love and that the elves are part of that love is intriguing, but does this attribute really adequately explain or suit the elves as we know them in The Silm? I hardly think it does, with their stiff necked arrogance and honour and oath-dependency.

What I think the Smith essay shows most clearly though is how Tolkien's ideas underwent change, development. I would use the word progress but I know how much the man himself distrusted that word. Tolkien was working through ideas, trying to find a core theme in all his work beyond some of the culturally-determined qualities which mark their debt to the northern warrior epic and mythology in general and that is what I think Pullman is also doing. Pullman is moving away/beyond the authoritarian model of human society/culture and that includes authoritarian ideas of divinity as imposed domination and punishment for deviance and forceful control. They might come to the topic from initially different perspectives--Augustinian versus Miltonic--but both are attempting to capture in a gloriously entertaining and compelling story hopeful possibilities for humanity, life, and the universe.

Really, I think it's kind of sad to wish ill of Pullman and Compass on some preconceived notion of hierarchy that one has to be better than the other, that Tolkien alone got things right where others fail, that somehow Tolkien's star will shine the brighter if the Pullman movies fail to be as successful as the LotR movies.

[davem]

In the Essay Tolkien also states:

Faery might be said indeed to represent Imagination (without definition because taking in all the definitions of this word): aesthetic: exploratory and receptive; and artistic; inventive, dynamic, (sub)creative. This compound - of awareness of a limitless world outside our domestic parish; a love (in ruth and admiration) for the things in it; and a desire for wonder, marvels, both perceived and conceived - this 'Faery' is as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life: sunlight as distinguished from the soil, say, though it in fact permeates and modifies even that.

&

But in this tale Forest and Tree remain dominant symbols. They occur in three of the four 'remembered' and recorded experiences of the Smith — before his leave-taking of the Queen. They do not occur in the first, because it is at that point that he discovers that Faery is 'limitless' and is mainly involved in vast regions and events that do not concern Men and are impenetrable by them. ..

It is probable that the world of Faery could not exist* without our world, and is affected by the events in it — the reverse being also true. The 'health' of both is affected by state of the other. Men have not the power to assist the Elvenfolk in the ordering and defence of their realm; but the Elves have the power (subject to finding co-operation from within) to assist in the protection of our world, especially in the attempt to re-direct Men when their development tends to the defacing or destruction of their world. The Elves may thus have also an enlightened self-interest in human affairs. ..

The last paragraph in particular seems to echo Pullman's statements on Dust & the interdependence of it & us. Yet what's odd is that Pullman is quite happy for his interviewer to see Dust as Divine, but Tolkien is at pains to stress the difference between Faery & Paradise:

But Faery is not religious. It is fairly evident that it is not Heaven or Paradise. Certainly its inhabitants, Elves, are not angels or emlssares of God (direct). The tale does not deal with religion itself. The Elves are not busy with a plan to reawake religious devotion in Wootton. The Cooking allegory would not be suitable to any such import. Faery represents at its weakest a breaking out (at least in mind) from the iron ring of the familiar, stilI more from the adamantine ring of belief that it is known, possessed, controlled, and so (ultimately) all that is worth being considered - a constant awareness of a world beyond these rings. More strongly it represents love: that is, a love and respect for all things, 'inanimate' and 'animate', an unposessing love of them as 'other'. This 'love' will produce both ruth and delight. Things seen in its light will be respected, and they will also appear delightful, beautiful, wonderful - even glorious.

SoWM, according to Tolkien, 'does not deal with religion itself' - but the concern of HDM is religion. One could argue (from the perspective of the interviewer) that Dust is truly 'God', the 'Divine', & that the Magisterium has created & supported a false belief & so encouraging the creation of Dust is a 'Holy' work, but for Tolkien, while Faery & our world are dependent on each other (but note, he also states clearly that Faery is not dependent on Men), Heaven/Paradise exists as a True third state above the two.

Another difference is that Pullman refers to Dust as a metaphor or visual image, whereas for Tolkien Faery is a place, in which living creatures live, move & have their being. Yet it seems that the concern of both writers is communicating the idea of some kind of immanent 'reality' which exists alongside/within the material universe, that the two are mutually dependent & cannot exist one without the other - & what's really interesting is that both use terms like love & imagination to describe this other 'reality'.

[Lalwendë]

Tell you what tickles me with all this faith-driven comparison of Tolkien and Pullman and the business of whether it's anyone else's business to tell us what's good for us...that Lord of the Rings is religion-free and yet His Dark Materials takes religion on board as a theme! And even compare what you can find of earthly religion in Tolkien's work (which it takes a serious fan to do) to what's in Pullman's work; Eru is really quite an unpleasant and negative character - nowhere even close to my idea of God, whereas the 'God' in Pullman's work is a sad figure, beaten by what people have done to him, and he is treated kindly in the end.

Originally Posted by Bb

The idea that Fairie is Love and that the elves are part of that love is intriguing, but does this attribute really adequately explain or suit the elves as we know them in The Silm? I hardly think it does, with their stiff necked arrogance and honour and oath-dependency.

Though I often think the Elves of the Silm are Elves as they ought not to be - fallen, jealous, angry, snobbish, violent, proud etc...etc...

Faery might be said indeed to represent Imagination (without definition because taking in all the definitions of this word): aesthetic: exploratory and receptive; and artistic; inventive, dynamic, (sub)creative. This compound - of awareness of a limitless world outside our domestic parish; a love (in ruth and admiration) for the things in it; and a desire for wonder, marvels, both perceived and conceived - this 'Faery' is as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life: sunlight as distinguished from the soil, say, though it in fact permeates and modifies even that.

Ties in almost perfectly with the idea of Dust and Daemons...can the words Love and Imagination be interchangeable here? Tolkien's idea of a world without Imagination conjours up the same thing portrayed by the Severed Child who has lost contact with his Daemon. And if you think about it, what could possibly be more sad than a child who has lost his ability to Dream?

There's a very close link between Gollum, wandering the wild in search of his Precious and the frightened boy huddled in the shed without his Daemon.

Originally Posted by Bb

Really, I think it's kind of sad to wish ill of Pullman and Compass on some preconceived notion of hierarchy that one has to be better than the other, that Tolkien alone got things right where others fail, that somehow Tolkien's star will shine the brighter if the Pullman movies fail to be as successful as the LotR movies.

I agree. Tolkien has in some ways 'failed' to move me, not in any way with Lord of the Rings etc, but in what he showed us of Eru in the Silm, well, this god he created leaves me utterly cold. Eru is fascinating in a Jovian kind of way, but he also disgusts me more than a little bit; I simply cannot reconcile the idea of an often petty, bad-tempered and disinterested god (he actually reminds me of Henry VIII quite often ) with anything good - indeed, does Tolkien think Eru is "all that", I suspect not... But what I saw of the possibilities of the Universe/s in His Dark Materials was not a little mind-blowing...it moves me the way some of the concepts of Doctor Who do.

[davem]

I find it difficult to comment in any real depth about Pullman's 'vision' - its years since I read HDM. I enjoyed the first volume & liked the next two less & less & by the end I just didn't care because I just felt Pullman had stopped telling me a story & was just ranting at me. I also wonder how geniune he is being in his comments - Tolkien was not averse to taking up 'meanings' into his work suggested by readers which had clearly not occured to him before. One can't help thinking that LotR became a whole lot more 'Christian' in his mind after it was written than it was during the process... I don't know how much of what Pullman is claiming to be in the book was put in there deliberately.

In many ways I find Tolkien's creation more interesting than Pullmans because I dislike Eru (what there is of him in the story). One pities the inhabitants of M-e more than those of Pullman's multiverse because Eru is not removable: one is stuck with him & has to make the best of it - of his cruelty, his petulance, his stand-offish smugness & his obsession with his composition & his callous disregard of those who have to live in the world his foot-stamping response to Melkor's variations on his themes brings into being. Of course, one can start waffling on about 'inscrutability' & divine mystery & the like, but in reality the inhabitants of M-e have a generally poor time of it & Eru does very little, if anything, to alleviate their suffering.

Yet as I say, this makes for a greater tragedy in its way - Eru can't be overthrown & Men, Elves & Hobbits have to find a way to live with him. Pullman's 'God' is a fake & can be overthrown & one can be liberated to find one's own way & meaning - even if one chooses the loopy option of trying to build a castle in the air (or 'building the 'Republic of Heaven' as Pullman has it, & which comes to the same thing, meaning precisely nothing).

The weakness of HDM for me is that he makes the 'Magisterium' so OTT in its totalitarian hatred & desire for dominance that we end up in Python territory

NOBODY expects the Magisterium! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.

No complexity, & so no real tragedy. Also no real sense of exultation when the pantomime villains get their come-uppance.

[Aiwendil]

Lalwende wrote:

Tolkien has in some ways 'failed' to move me, not in any way with Lord of the Rings etc, but in what he showed us of Eru in the Silm, well, this god he created leaves me utterly cold. Eru is fascinating in a Jovian kind of way, but he also disgusts me more than a little bit; I simply cannot reconcile the idea of an often petty, bad-tempered and disinterested god (he actually reminds me of Henry VIII quite often ) with anything good

I'm afraid I'm having a hard time seeing things from this point of view. Your description, it seems to me, might be applied to the God of the Old Testament (and to Pullman's Authority before he became feeble), but it doesn't seem to fit Eru. Eru and Yahweh, as literary characters in their respective stories, are portrayed quite differently. Eru does no smiting, lays down no jealous commandments against idols, does not select a 'chosen people' whose foes are disfavoured. Eru actually does very little after creating Ea. He gives life to the Dwarves (surely the act of loving god), he advises Manwe from time to time, and then he destroys Numenor. Now certainly that last act could be seen as vengeful, and called into question (it is of course on par with the Judeo-Christian God's deluge). I believe there was a thread on that a while back. But it's a single incident (not even in the 'Silmarillion proper'), and hardly seems to merit your sweeping characterization.

Insofar as the charge is 'cold and disinterested' (which is altogether a different thing from petty and bad-tempered), I will agree with you. But this is 'problem of evil' territory. Anyone who posits an omnipotent God is going to have to make him or her either petty and malicious or cold and distant, as it is certainly a fact that bad things happen to good people. If you are going to take Pullman's Dust as his true, loving and merciful, God (which I think is inevitable) then doesn't the charge of 'cold and distant' apply to it as well? Though I suppose the Dust is different, as it is explicitly (and emphatically) not omnipotent.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Lalwende wrote:


I'm afraid I'm having a hard time seeing things from this point of view. Your description, it seems to me, might be applied to the God of the Old Testament (and to Pullman's Authority before he became feeble), but it doesn't seem to fit Eru. Eru and Yahweh, as literary characters in their respective stories, are portrayed quite differently. Eru does no smiting, lays down now jealous commandments against idols, does not select a 'chosen people' whose foes are disfavoured. Eru actually does very little after creating Ea. He gives life to the Dwarves (surely the act of loving god), he advises Manwe from time to time, and then he destroys Numenor. Now certainly that last act could be seen as vengeful, and called into question (it is of course on par with the Judeo-Christian God's deluge). I believe there was a thread on that a while back. But it's a single incident (not even in the 'Silmarillion proper'), and hardly seems to merit your sweeping characterization.

Insofar as the charge is 'cold and disinterested' (which is altogether a different thing from petty and bad-tempered), I will agree with you. But this is 'problem of evil' territory. Anyone who posits an omnipotent God is going to have to make him or her either petty and malicious or cold and distant, as it is certainly a fact that bad things happen to good people. If you are going to take Pullman's Dust as his true, loving and merciful, God (which I think is inevitable) then doesn't the charge of 'cold and distant' apply to it as well? Though I suppose the Dust is different, as it is explicitly (and emphatically) not omnipotent.

You've answered my issue in that second paragraph right away!

It's Eru's very omnipotence which causes the issue. He creates everything, including Melkor, free will and the whole caboodle - therefore Eru must logically also create the potential for evil if nothing can exist without his having created it.

Even laying this aside he also has the power not to call the world into being after Melkor has interjected his themes. But he still does it. He also destroys Numenor as has been discussed many a time. He leaves dealing with Melkor to his servants, does nothing himself. He creates two races which simply cannot live alongside each other without coming into conflict because their very natures are incompatible.

And I actually don't think Tolkien had any problem with this Omnipotent thing himself - it would certainly make sense coming from the mind of a man who had to reconcile devout belief in the Catholic God with being in the very heart of the unimaginable (because it is unimaginable to any of us) slaughter of the trenches. This may or may not have been his particular view of his own God that he painted in Eru - but we don't know that for sure, we can only guess.

Whatever, I've never much liked Eru. He's a very negative figure and doesn't inspire me...but then did Tolkien intend him to do that? I think not - we have ordinary people like Frodo and Sam for that purpose.

Originally Posted by davem

The weakness of HDM for me is that he makes the 'Magisterium' so OTT in its totalitarian hatred & desire for dominance that we end up in Python territory

That's why people in our society getting so worked up about HDM having caused them 'offence' puzzle me. The Magisterium is a literary creation, at worst an analogy of things in our own world, and so drawn colourfully. We know that in the main, religions in our own world, setting aside those extremists of all creeds who use them as big sticks to beat people with, are not so extreme, so if someone is upset about their own religion being examined in the form of this one particular analogy, does that mean it is indeed one of the extreme ones?

Pullman himself has no issue with belief where it does not hurt people, and that's fair enough, surely that's what anyone should believe? His beef is with abusive and restrictive religions - he shows what they have done to God in his books. Interestingly, revealingly, the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks every school child should read His Dark Materials.

And remember, Pullman did not write a tragic story in the way Tolkien did. In Tolkien's world, there is only the Long Defeat and one day, maybe, an end to the world. In Pullman's Universe/s, Lyra comes to save the day/s!