Should we think of ME as a real place?

[Farael]

While posting on the thread about dragon-fire, I formulated something that had been in my mind for a while and it is the seeming contradiction and blurred division of reality and fantasy in Tolkien's work.

Tolkien stated that he meant to create a mithology for England. He meant his stories to be (at least in principle) like the folk stories of other lands. This meant, of course, that these stories should be plausible and real-like, as they he wanted them to be like the history of times before history.

However, it is clear at the same time that Tolkien was not writing a semi-historical document, a compilation of folk stories fixed to look like they belonged to English history, but rather he was writing fantasy.

Seemingly, we have two contradicting approaches here. On one hand Tolkien meant to write something that was real-like and on the other, he was effectively writing about a world other than our own, even if he claimed this world to be a very ancient and forgotten Real World.

How can we bring both ideas together, without getting a headache? That is the main question I'm trying to answer here, and I'd welcome your opinion.

My best attempt at it, is to recognize Middle Earth as its own alternate world. It may be ancient Planet Earth, but the truth of the matter is that there were many things (and beings) that are nowhere to be found in modern Earth.

We are all aware of the different peoples of middle earth, from Elf to Hobbit and from Orc to Goblin. We are also aware of the seemingly magical objects that the inhabitants of Middle Earth claimed were not magic at all, but merely craft.

I think there lays the most important point. For the people of middle earth (furthermore, not for all peoples, but only for those who knew how to possibly make such things happen) it was not magic at all. Much like the tricks of an entertainer at a party seems like magic to most, but to the few who may know the trick it is simply that.

But at the same time, the laws of existance itself in Middle Earth are unlike that of modern Earth. I can tell you with a degree of confidence near-absolute, that it is impossible to pass on your own vital energy into a piece of jewlery, no matter how talented a jeweler you may be. Not to mention that sunlight comes, to the best of our knowledge, from the natural equivalent of a nuclear armagedon by H-bombs which happens fortunately far enough from us that we get to bask in the glow of it rather than be anihilated. In Middle Earth, sunlight comes from a celestial barge that carries the fruit of a tree from whence all light originally came.

So, I believe that the answer of this contradiction, after all this writing, is simple. There is no magic in Middle Earth. However, ME is magical to those of us confined to live in the world we call Planet Earth.

What do you think? can everything in Middle Earth be explained with parallels to the Real World? Is Middle Earth completely magical, and the peoples of Middle Earth just failed to call it "magic" because they thought it natural?

Or perhaps most improtantly. What is "real" and what is "magic" in Middle Earth?