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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6356326" data-attributes="member: 59082">OK, I'm going to give this another shot! Whenever I lose a long post I always see it as an opportunity to try to be more succinct...we'll see how well I do (after-the-fact EDIT: not so well...).    I agree with you although don't think it is a fair comparison. Dark Sun was created as an RPG setting for gaming, whereas Middle-earth and the Hyborian Age were created as the setting for stories, and more importantly alongside the stories as they were written. In other words, Dark Sun is more of a sandbox that you get to play in, so the parts can be a bit less aesthetically entwined, whereas Middle-earth is more of a living story world. As you say later on, the world is the stories told within it, whereas a game world is a setting in which some stories exist, but primarily to serve stories-to-be-told.    I hear you and agree. He is clear, though, that he is not foisting any specific meaning upon the reader, but—as he said in Letters—just trying to write a good story that the reader can see their own meaning to, if they want to.  I like Ursula Le Guin's differentiation of allegory and symbolism whereby the former is an equation of “A = B” while a symbol (A) could mean any number of things (B, C, D, etc) and its meaning is a co-creation of the author (or symbol) and the reader, whereas you either get the allegory or not.  But I think the key here is that Tolkien wasn't, at least for the most part, intentionally creating symbolic forms. Certainly his work is rich in symbolism, but he wasn't—for the most part and as far as I know—saying, “I want a character to symbolize Jesus, and another to symbolize Hitler,” etc. Certainly all of that informed his work, but he tried to draw from the wellspring of mythic imagination and allow that to issue forth in whatever way seemed vital and real within the language of the story-world itself.    I see this, but again, my sense is that he wasn't thinking “I'm going to work with these motifs” as much as he was tapping into a rich domain of imagination and myth, and from that motifs and symbolic forms arose - or rather, more accurately, from that Middle-earth was born, which we can read symbolically or as cultural motifs on a kind of analytical, meta-level. In other words, he led with a process of imagination, not intellection. Consciously working with motifs and even some degree of allegory might have been a part of his process, but I'm fairly certain it was secondary. It is a cart-and-horse thing.    Again, I agree. But to what degree did he work on that level, of “deploying” cultural motifs? I think that was quite secondary to his process.    I'm not a Tolkien scholar but I have read his Letters and the Humphrey Carpenter biography (many years ago), and I'm fairly certain that these influences were largely not intentional (which, again, is more intellection than imagination).    It is clear that the events of Nazi Germany and the World Wars had an influence on the writing of The Lord of the Rings – how could they not? Just as how could any semi-aware writer today not be impacted by terrorism, the energy and environmental crisis, corporate hegemony, etc? But again, there is a difference between being influenced by one's cultural milieu and consciously crafting story around real events. My sense is that, for the most part, the motifs and allegory in Tolkien's work was more a matter of influence seeping through than conscious intention. The plant is, after all, a product of the soil it is grown from.   I was perhaps referring to a different, if related, element of Coleridge's work – his taxonomy of the imagination. Here's a quote from Biographia Literaria:    At the risk of sounding like an elitist, I would say that most fantasy is derived from fancy – that is, it deals with “fixities and definites.” It is similar to the idea in RPGs of “re-skinning.” A lot of fantasy is just that – re-skinning old ideas in new forms, which is the process of Coleridge's fancy.  Primary imagination is more of a mystical perception and participation with the world, which is less relevant to our discussion – and perhaps more controversial. But what Coleridge calls “secondary imagination” is very relevant to the topic at hand, and what I refer to when speaking of imagination, or deep imagination, mythic imagination, deep myth, etc.    Where I see Tolkien and Howard more similar than, say, Howard and Dark Sun, is that both Tolkien and Howard engaged secondary imagination in a rather strong way – the worlds they created were richly atmospheric and alive; they felt both familiar but quite different. Very few authors, in my opinion, are really able to capture the same kind of depth and atmosphere – some that come to mind being Le Guin, Patricia McKillip, and perhaps Steven Erikson.  But most authors create fantasy worlds that feel more fanciful, more the product of intellection than imagination, more like our own world with fantasy trappings and re-skinning. There is nothing wrong with this, and some of it can still be quite excellent from a story or literary standpoint. But in terms of sub-creation, the art of sub-creation, there is often a quality of the “set” being paper-thin. To me it comes down to the degree to which the world truly comes alive, feels real – for certainly that is a quality of the secondary imagination, as Coleridge put it (“essentially vital”). Take Brandon Sanderson, for instance, who is a skilled craftsman of fantasy worlds and fiction. I can admire his work, yet rarely get the sense of "deep imagination" - which is almost a mystical tingling, a nouminous quality of mystery and wondering and otherworldliness which is impossible to truly describe, but one knows when one feels it. Sanderson's work feels...normal, of his world. But going back to your example of the colliery worker (which I had to look up what “colliery” meant), I would personally say that any experience of the noumenal, or of the world at all, is always “distorted” or colored by our own subjectivity; this is a key component to postmodernism, an era of thinking after Schopenhauer lived. Unless we're talking about Zen satori, in which the world is (allegedly) perceived as it truly is, we always see the world as we are, not as it is (to quote Anais Nin). The colliery worker could have authentic experience of God (or whatever), but interpret it into language and imagery derived from his own cultural and familial “database.” The key, I feel, is being aware of one's own subjectivity, one's “distortion” or “coloring.” When we aren't aware of it we conflate our own subjective interpretation with “what is,” and this begets fundamentalism of whatever kind (I would argue that we are all fundamentalists to some degree, if only of our own subjective viewpoint!).  But this also gives us  the joy of individuality, of artistic expression. Tolkien's plumbling of  the imagination yields different results, a different vision, than Le  Guin's - or my own, or yours.  Out of curiosity, what do you disagree with? Is it the quasi-mystical implications? Or something else?    Notice my bold emphasis. What do you mean by “in fact?” Are you talking about the structure of the narrative? It seems you are saying something more, because you use the phrase “an attempt to” - meaning, you are saying that Tolkien is “in fact...attempting to.”  To me this smacks too much of an objectivist view on his work, whether your own self-referential viewpoint or towards some other outside, “objective” standard or perspective.    That said, I don't disagree with your perspective – I just think that you are, again, emphasizing an aspect of Tolkien's work that, for him I think, was quite secondary. What was primary for him was plumbing the depths of imagination and the source of European mythos and bringing into being a living, breathing world of story and language.      I think that is an external reading, one from a kind of literary criticism point of view -and not one that Tolkien focused on. I think he focused on the living vitality and trueness within the sub-creation, not the meta-level of motif that you are focusing on. In other words, I don't think he ever, or rarely, asked: “Does Galadriel fit with the cultural motif of the fairy queen in a naturalistic setting?” But he may have asked, so to speak, “What would Galadriel really have done and said? How would she act?” Or even more accurately, he would have let Galadriel act and speak as she wished, not as he wanted her to. In other words, he discovered the mythic, imaginal being or form of “Galadriel” and let her roam freely within his linguistic-imaginal field, but never, ever, sought to tame her and make her obey “external consistency of cultural motifs.”    Yes, very well said. I like your emphasis on the stories rather than the “things” or elements. I'd like to see more RPG worlds focused on the stories of the world rather than the objects within it.    I can't possibly respond to every quote, although it is interesting that I can interpret those same quotes in a very different light, one that supports my “imagination first” perspective on Tolkien. For instance, the quote on Elves – that they “are not primarily concerned with us, nor we with them. Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet. . . .” To me this points to the living, even autonomous quality of Middle-earth, that Elves obey their own laws – not those of Tolkien's intellection or our modern cultural motifs. We may see cultural motifs in Elves, and Tolkien's work, but it is secondary and “after the fact” of the story-world itself.  Or these: “[T]he magic . . . must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away.”... “[T]he fairy story . . . cannot tolerate any frame or machinery suggesting that the whole story in which ["marvels"] occur is a figment or illusion.”    All of this points to the idea of Middle-earth being “real.” Or as Le Guin put it, “Fantasy isn't factual but it is true.” If Tolkien had started and worked from intellection and cultural motifs, it would have been “a figment or illusion” - it would have been fancy. But what he did was connect with deeper imagination and (co-)create mythic forms through which the deep imagination could shine with brilliance and life. Or: “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker. . . .” He couldn't have made a more Coleridgian statement if he tried!      I completely agree. Perhaps we mean something different by “internal consistency.” Or rather, I would say that even “internal consistency” implies too much intellection, rather than the envisioning and expression that is the secondary imagination.     I think here we are coming much closer, the semantic gap narrowing...I might pick a nit and replace “permanent” with “archetypal,” for the former has a solidity and fixity to it, while archeypal is more symbolic, flowing and dynamic.    Certainly! If I were to try to sum up what I am trying to get at, it is that the approach that Tolkien takes—which is aligned with Coleridge's view of imagination—is envisioning, discovering, diving into a deep imaginative well that is perhaps synonymous with Jung's collective unconscious, a world of eternal and archetypal forms that are unmanifested until we breathe them into life and story. Middle-earth is so vital and beloved because he dives into, emerges and writes from this “deep imagination,” rather than fancifully re-arranging and structuring “fixities and definites,” whether we're talking hackneyed fantasy tropes or cultural motifs.  Are you familiar with Carl Jung's Active Imagination? The idea is that you enter a space of consciousness where you can “talk to” some deeper part of your self (whether a guiding spirit or simply your own subconscious mind, the ontological interpretation isn't important). While in the process of Active Imagination, you just let the words and ideas flow out – kind of like stream of consciousness writing. You don't stop and say, “what does that mean? What is the motif or trope at work here?” Later on, you might do that – you might interpret and find meaning in the imagination. But the point is, the process of imagination itself is not deliberate in the same way that intellection is; or rather, if it is deliberate, it is from a deeper source of will. It isn't only passive, but it is more receptive – opening to and expressing that which comes from some deeper place which, when viewed from the perspective of the conscious mind, seems Other, even if, in reality, it is merely the implicit, unmanifest aspect of ourselves.OK, done. For now!</blockquote>

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