A Poet for the Kingdom: The Sacramental Stories of J. R. R. Tolkien
Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny. — Pope John Paul II
In his Letter to Artists issued in 1999, Pope John Paul II stated that the duty of art is to be "a kind of bridge to religious experience." Being a poet and a playwright himself, the Holy Father further states: "Every genuine inspiration . . . contains some tremor of that 'breath' with which the Creator Spirit suffused the work of creation from the very beginning. Overseeing the mysterious laws governing the universe, the divine breath . . . reaches out to human genius and stirs its creative power." When artists use this creative power, they are truly "in the image of God," accomplishing their works through a kind of "sub-creation." Using the material of their own humanity and the sensible material around them (words or wood, paint or sound) they show that creative stewardship over the universe with which God entrusted humanity. Like the famous touch of Michelangelo's Adam with the Finger of God, the spark of creativity is communicated, and God breathes into His world anew.
Artists must bridge the gap between worlds. Pope John Paul II made this appeal in his letter: "The Church has need especially of those who can do this on the literary and figurative level, using the endless possibilities of images and their symbolic force." The work of writers, painters and poets must serve as a link to the Mystery that transcends and yet is immanent within all of life. "Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption."
The Pope's call for creative souls to help in the building of a Civilization of Love is more urgent than ever as we march into a new millennium, still wearing the shackles of the "culture of death," as he has aptly named our contemporary society. In fashioning a new Culture of Life, there is a need for artists who can exude that fragrance of eternity in their work; that scent which lifts the mind and heart to transcendent realities.
Through his epic works, The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien stands out as one of the chief architects in the reconstruction and rebuilding of the Civilization of Love. In our culture, which has all but lost its sense of the sacred, Tolkien's stories are a medicine for souls, poisoned by a false and Godless view of reality. This purely secular perspective of life has stripped the world and its creatures of their spiritual and transcendent qualities. The seamless garment of Christian culture that once united the sacred and the secular has been torn in two. Tolkien, under the mantle of story, has woven those ageless themes of creation, fall, redemption, and grace together again; golden threads that make a new garment for us who have been left shivering in the cold materialism of a post-modern age.
In Tolkien's own words, it is "as if an ever darkening sky over our present world had been suddenly pierced, the clouds rolled back, and an almost forgotten sunlight had poured down again." Tolkien's mythology helps in the rebuilding of a Catholic culture because it is a story of good and evil, a tale of struggle that echoes the "still, sad music of humanity;" of fallen races and their pain and yearning for an ultimate peace and redemption. Within the pages of his epic legendarium (which, as he states, is "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work"), we find a sacramental story that can edify and enlighten. It inspires the Pilgrim Church on its path toward the Kingdom of God. And for the countless readers who may be unaware of these deeper currents in Tolkien's stories, they serve as a subliminal form of evangelization, or in Tolkien's own words, "a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world."
"But why," C. S. Lewis asks, in his review of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, "why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never-land of your own?" He continues: "Because one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality."
This statement of C. S. Lewis is all the more stunning when compared to his earlier belief that myths were "lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver." His long friendship with Tolkien not only turned him into a believer in the power of myth and story to convey truth, but a believer in Christ as well. "Tolkien's own encounter with the depths of Christian mysticism and his understanding of the truths of orthodox theology enabled him to unravel the philosophy of myth that inspired not only the 'magic' of his books but also the conversion of his friend C. S. Lewis to Christianity."
C. S. Lewis further unpacks the secret of myth-making as a vehicle "that can open the heart's backdoor when the front door is locked."
The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by 'the veil of familiarity.' . . . If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book (The Lord of the Rings) applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly. I do not think he could have done it in any other way.
Tolkien believed myth or story could convey the profound truths that have been lost or forgotten amid the noise and haste of our post-modern times. They are "a more powerful weapon for cultural renewal than is modern rationalist science and technology. Myth can emphasize the beauty of God's creation as well as the sacramental nature of life." Tolkien's work is revitalizing precisely because our time has become de-sacramentalized. Russell Kirk, novelist and political philosopher, says our day is "sick nigh unto death of utilitarianism and literalness," and is crying out "for myth and parable." These two words for Tolkien were synonymous. As he assumed the task of "sub-creator" in a loving imitation of the ultimate Creator, so he would craft his myths, or parables, in imitation of the Prince of Parables: "All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables. He spoke to them only in parables, to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: 'I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.'"
In the Beginning was the Word
Tolkien delighted in words as if they were precious jewels. His entire life, in a sense, was dedicated to them. As a child, Tolkien attended King Edward's School in Birmingham, England, where he excelled in classical and modern languages. In 1911, he went to Exeter College in Oxford, where he studied Classics, Old English, Germanic languages, Finnish and Welsh. Tolkien's first job was a lexicographer on the New English Dictionary where he helped draft the Oxford English Dictionary. He had a passion for philology and even began to create his own languages at a very early age. He became an Oxford University philologist, an expert on the historical forms of language, and was a principal collaborator in the translation and revision of the First Edition of the Jerusalem Bible.
Tolkien believed that the closer we came to the origin of words, the closer we came to the Word Himself, the Source of All that is. In truth, all of his creativity flowed, not first from the idea of an imagined world or creature, but from words. It was a word, actually a sentence, that first inspired his mythology:
Ëalä Eärendel engla beorhtast ofer
middengeard monnum sended."
"Hail Earendel, Brightest of Angels,
sent to men upon this Middle-Earth."
This line from a medieval poem by Cynewulf called "Crist" was like the strike of a match in the mind of the young Tolkien, at the time just a teenager. It filled the deep well of his imagination with light. "Rapturous words," he later admitted, "from which ultimately sprang the whole of my mythology." Myth, then, would be the medium for Tolkien's masterpiece. It was the perfect disguise for getting truth into minds and hearts. It was a dream of Tolkien's that his mythology would one day serve as a mythology for England. He hoped it would foster that remembrance in people of beginnings as well as of their final end, that transcendent communion with the Divine Word from Whom all words flow.
The Music that Made the World
Using myth to take us back to a true cosmology, or world view, born and nourished by his own Catholic faith, Tolkien began where all good stories do: at the beginning. The Silmarillion, his life's unfinished labor, begins with the creation story of Middle-Earth. This is the world which is actually a part of our own world. Here, however, the events recounted take place in a distant past. Like the book of Genesis, there is One who breathes life into all things. He creates angelic spirits, the Ainur, who are given the power to "sub-create" as they themselves have been created. In one of the most moving passages in all of Tolkien's writing, we listen as the Ainur sing the design of the world:
In the beginning Eru, the One, who in the Elvish tongue is named Ilúvatar, made the Ainur of his thought; and they made a great Music before him. In this Music the World was begun; for Ilúvatar made visible the song of the Ainur, and they beheld it as a light in the darkness. And many among them became enamoured of its beauty, and of its history which they saw beginning and unfolding as in a vision.
Stratford Caldecott, founder and co-director of the Center for Faith & Culture in Oxford, supposes the central importance Tolkien gives to song and music may have been suggested to him by the passage in the Book of Job: "Where were you . . . when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38:4-7) in the Authorized Version, or "when the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody" in the Douay-Rheims Bible. (C. S. Lewis later uses the same technique, when he has Aslan the Lion "singing" Narnia into existence in the Magician's Nephew). Eru Ilúvatar, the One God, uses the music of the Ainur to shape Middle-Earth according to His theme; its mountains and fertile valleys, trees and flowers, seas and rivers. And for each attribute of creation, one of these angelic spirits will serve as a kind of steward or guardian. All of this is done in harmony with the mind of God, the Master Conductor in the symphony that is the material universe.
Within each created thing in Middle Earth, there exists a Secret Fire that gives matter its substance. "Therefore Ilúvatar gave to their vision Being, and set it amid the Void, and the Secret Fire was sent to burn at the heart of the World; and it was called Eä." Here we see Tolkien cloaking in myth the central love of philosophers and thinkers down through the centuries, from Aquinas to Karol Wojtyla: the metaphysical mystery of being. Our modern age has taken the "meta" out of metaphysical, just as death takes the soul from the body. For humanity, it is in our being where the very imago dei, or image of God, resides. Reverence for this reality is the very building block of the true cosmology.
Tolkien's reverence for our own created world radiates throughout his descriptions of Middle-Earth, from the creation of new species of flowers, to the detailed descriptions of trees and rivers, mountains and hills. His created world is given as much attention as anything else, teaching us that even the green earth beneath our feet "is a mighty matter of legend." It should not be trod upon lightly. Indeed in the manner of the saints, Tolkien shows us that all of creation is like a love letter from our Beloved God. Every rock and tree shines with that Secret Fire; indeed "the world is charged with the grandeur of God."
This respect for the natural world and the vibrant pulse of music beneath it all is Tolkien's backdrop for Middle-Earth. This is a challenge to the modern scientific mind if it sees only matter, staggering facts and figures, and "chaos theory." The universe would then seem so incalculable that it must therefore be irrational. Yet in the face of such blinding and abundant brilliance, Tolkien's (and the Church's) response is rather one of wonder and awe. The universe is not, therefore, a problem to be solved or a dark monster to fear. It is a mystery to be reverenced and a Great Dance in which we can abandon ourselves. We are to be as a child, who, in the seemingly endless immensity of her own backyard, reverences every leaf and flower and rejoices in it.
Down into Darkness
Once the innate goodness of creation and of being has been established in Middle-Earth, Tolkien turns to acknowledge its corruption. In his mind, this must be named. It is another missing element in the modern world view that his writing helps to restore: the objective reality of evil. If we are in a battle "against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil," as we are, then it is only sane to acknowledge it.
Disharmony is brought into the Music of the Ainur from the very beginning. Like Lucifer, a powerful angel named Melkor rises in arrogance to defy the will of the Creator. He creates a different song that is harsh and blaring, and it sends discord throughout the once beautiful melody of creation. This disharmony is the beginning and root of evil. Its shockwave ruptures the very fabric and geography of Middle-Earth.
The Ainur, however, have descended into the world, becoming Valar: gods or guardians reminiscent of the Greek gods. The Valar come to "play the parts they have chosen within it, contending from the outset against the chaos introduced by the dark Angel." The music becomes a tragic song. What the Ainur build up, Melkor tears down. In a passage from The Silmarillion that is only too familiar to those who work for good in the face of ever present destruction, we see the Valar fight tirelessly for the triumph of the original Music: "they built lands and Melkor destroyed them; valleys they delved and Melkor raised them up; mountains they carved and Melkor threw them down; seas they hollowed and Melkor spilled them." Like Lucifer, Melkor is created good, but he is discontent with the good he has been given. He craves power and will not serve.
From splendour he fell through arrogance to contempt for all things save himself, a spirit wasteful and pitiless. Understanding he turned to subtlety in perverting to his own will all that he would use, until he became a liar without shame. He began with the desire of Light, but when he could not possess it for himself alone, he descended through fire and wrath into a great burning, down into Darkness.
In a fit of rage and jealousy, Melkor and Ungoliant, a fallen spirit in the form of a massive spider, destroy the Two Trees, one Silver and one Gold, that brought light to the Land of the Valar (a kind of Eden) in the beginning of time.
Tolkien introduces Sauron soon after describing the rebellion of Melkor. Sauron is the Dark Lord of The Lord of the Rings. He is known as the greatest of Melkor's servants. In the discord and darkness of Melkor, Sauron and other foul creatures, we see the reality of evil, a force that works constantly to destroy the original harmony that Eru Ilúvatar intended. All of these ghosts of evil were once good in Tolkien's world, as he harmonizes his mythology with Catholic theology. Balrogs are fallen angels, Orcs are Elves who have been twisted and tortured. Trolls were once Ents, those lofty woodland creatures who are the shepherds of trees (and perhaps one of Tolkien's most imaginative creations). But in the end, we see that evil can only mar, it cannot make. And it cannot last forever. The final victory of Eru Ilúvatar is certain, "for even the work of the Fallen will somehow prove 'a part of the whole and tributary to its glory.' In Tolkien's perspective, history is a 'long defeat,' but it ends in a great healing, when 'the themes of Ilúvatar shall be played aright.'"
William Donaghy is a member of the Secretariat for Evangelization of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
© St. Austin Review
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