[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by davem

If our encounter with the secondary world feeds back into our experience of the primary, & that new experience of the primary affects out later experience of the secondary, does that increasingly enhance & deepen our experience of both? Or does it at the same time make the primary world more 'enchanting' (woods in the primary world seeming 'overshadowed' by Lorien, so that almost we expect to see Elves wandering under those once familiar trees but also make the Golden Wood less 'enchanting' by being too similar now to our experience of primary world woodland, so that we can't shake the memory of that pile of trash someone dumped under the trees?

I'm sure this says far more about me than it does about broken enchantment (which is afterall a very subjective thing). I do have a reverence for trees, clouds, woods, ancient ruins, and open seas, that I might not have if I had never read Tolkien. On the other hand, what I tend to feel about the primary world is an emptiness, a lack of vitality, of enchantment. As wondrous and beautiful the "real world" is, I can't help feeling like something's missing, something that can only be grasped by the imagination. And it's not just the human stain of trash, suburbia, crime, what have you. It runs deeper than that. Arda is flawed by the designs of Morgoth. That is, the Secondary world Tolkien subcreated partakes of so much Real Life to do the degree that it is as flawed as the primary world. The world of the Fourth Age has lost much of the lustre. Light has been splintered. The Elves are leaving and enchantment is waning. I feel that both in Middle-earth and in our world, where the Elves are long gone and bereavement is the order of the day.

Yet, if this world was once Middle earth, perhaps our reading will make us wish to do what we can to heal the natural world?

Alas, we are fighting the long defeat, every bit as much as Galadriel and the Elves in the late Third Age. Arda must be remade. The Myth must be literally, primarily transformed. That's my belief, anyway.

So, its not (in my opinion) about finding out 'how' Shelob or Galadriel came to be created, & what raw materials were used in their construction. They both stand or fall by what they are & the role they play in the story, & our experience of them.

I agree. Thus, I think the disenchantment runs deeper. Light continues to splinter. The end of the Third Age was a time when those who lived then grieved the loss of so much that had thrived in the First Age. And now we are that far removed again from the Third Age, and have lost still more. It is as if the remants of Eden fade further with each passing year. And maybe it's just me wrestling with getting older.