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07-22-2021, 04:34 AM | #1 |
Itinerant Songster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
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I have read an article somewhere (Mythlore magazine, or a book?) in which it was speculated that the Great Kitchen and its Master Cook stood in for the Church and its Priest. I don't think I agree, because many villages and towns in real life, like Wootton Major in this story, have some aspect that is expanded and elaborated.
One town in Michigan is 'Christmas all year.' Another has its Oktoberfest with real trebuchets that throw pumpkins in the bay. And those are just two examples within a few hours' drive from where I live. I think that it's better to view this as a creation for the sake of this story, with plot, characters, theme, and miliue, all of a piece. |
07-23-2021, 02:26 AM | #2 | |
A Voice That Gainsayeth
Join Date: Nov 2006
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This is first obviously meant to be "a cultural influence of Faery" and perhaps a sort of metaphore for "restoring the old and forgotten, the mythology to its right place", but still, can it be more? Can it be, in broad terms, somehow connected to Tolkien's love for the "old-fashioned look" of churches, perhaps even in the forms of liturgy and so on? (Is anybody aware of Tolkien's view of older forms of Roman Catholic mass as opposed to more modern ones? However I am not aware of there being any "modern" or, contrarily, "restoration" movements at least as far as liturgy is concerned around that time yet, that would fall only towards 1960s and the Second Vatican Council, but perhaps someone specifically well-versed in Roman Catholic history would know whether there had been some minor attempts at changes already back when the Smith was written).
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories |
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07-23-2021, 12:51 PM | #3 | |
Dead Serious
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But it's something Tolkien could have picked up on earlier. Though not the same degree as the 1960s, there was a lot of liturgical tinkering in the 1950s that someone who spoke fluent Latin as an active Catholic might have noticed, such as the revised Holy Week rites. It was also a time of architectural change--at least on this side of the ocean, the 1950s was already a time of designing "ugly" rather than "timeless" Churches, and if that was true in a cultural backwater like western Canada, I imagine Catholic churches being erected in the same postwar period in England would have had examples of the same. At the very least, as something very much in Tolkien's world at the time he was writing Smith, changes in ritual--and the lack of necessity in his view for the same--are eminently plausible as the intellectual backdrop of his thinking here, regardless of whether they may be intentional themes or parallels.
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07-23-2021, 03:46 PM | #4 | |
Itinerant Songster
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I still hold with my general approach that the plot, them, and characters, and milieu are all of a piece, and this story, like most of Tolkien's writings, steers clear of overt religion. As you mention, Legate, the gargoyles and such are a cultural element and need not be a religious one. |
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07-23-2021, 09:12 PM | #5 |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
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One of the things I have been contemplating as I reread this, is why Fairie has to be limited to just one human with access at a time.
Why does only Smith have access to Fairie and not anyone else? His family knows of it but never joins him. Despite his friendships with the C.B.S. and the Inklings, did he feel that he alone had access to Fairie, no one else?
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07-24-2021, 06:44 AM | #6 | |
Dead Serious
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Even in the TCBS days (his greatest experience of literary like-mindedness), I think there's enough in the surviving letters to show that each of the lads had a different literary vision/desire. They were each transfixed by the others' and were privileged to been shared with them, but I think there's ample evidence in the letters that although there was a creative welter from their interactions, each of them who created still created alone--i.e. they were made for their friends and because of their friends, but nothing approaches being co-authored. And, of course, that's BEFORE the TCBS gets halved and Tolkien goes into his post-war life (and the bulk of his literary career). As an autobiographical bit, I think entering faerie alone is well-supported.
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I prefer history, true or feigned.
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07-25-2021, 08:28 AM | #7 | ||
Itinerant Songster
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Hence, what is the Star? It has to be more than symbol. It seems to function like a key, but not only. Without the Star, Smith has no right or access to Faerie. It gives Smith entry and some protection. The Star comes from Faerie. How did Smith get it? It was a gift. Smith is bequeathed the privilege, by no right or skill or characteristic of his own. Who is the giver? Both Alf and the Queen of Faerie, as far as can be told. Why make such a gift? Do the King and Queen of Faerie care to gift humanity with a taste of the riches of Faerie? Apparently, and why not? We need beauty, and they seem to know it. But with beauty comes heartache, and so the Star comes with a price. Back to Bethberry's question. I think that some kind of entrace to Faerie is not necessarily singular, one at a time, and not private, but it is a privilege, and the "Star" given to one person may be something other than a star, and that person alone will know it for what it is. I'm speaking more in general as to my experience as a reader and experiencer of Tolkien's gift of a glimpse of Faerie to us all. Our experience feels to be at least at one remove compared to Smith, and maybe more. |
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07-25-2021, 08:36 AM | #8 | |
Dead Serious
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By "private," I meant "not shared." Of course, even that it not strictly accurate: the same star is passed on. But to the person in possession of that gift, the experiences it granted is something received alone. This may produce something that can be shared--Smith brings his own changed self back to Wootton and his family, and Tolkien has, of course, shared his own experience of faerie with his vast readership, but at the point of it being an experience for either Smith or Tolkien, it is experienced alone. Without fully thinking it through, I'm not sure the star IS more than a symbol, but I think as a symbol, it is fairly clear what Tolkien is getting at: experiencing faerie is a gift, not something that people have by right or effort: either they have it or not and gratitude is the best attitude toward it.
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I prefer history, true or feigned.
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07-25-2021, 08:38 AM | #9 | |
A Voice That Gainsayeth
Join Date: Nov 2006
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Thank you both, Form and LMP, for your responses to my queries. (Also for some reason I had been thinking that the Smith was earlier than the 60s, but now that just further makes me think that there indeed may have been some either conscious or unconscious influence on Tolkien and this possible polemic.)
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By that I mean that I am not entirely sure that I side with the "heroes" of this story, at least on the emotional level. On the general level, I of course despise the "materialistic" Noakes and I very much appreciate the message, the value of Faery, the beauty, all that. But the way it is presented, if you take it just as a story, it seems at least to me that both the Smith and Alf are terrible jerks. The Smith spends large part of his life leaving his family and work for travelling somewhere away from them. I mean, no problem with recreation - but I have always wondered, why wouldn't he take his wife or kids with him? Instead, he is all "look, kids! I have visited magical places, isn't it cool!" while the kids have to sit at home and probably live as boring life as the old cook. (And here comes the question - obviously the story makes it clear that the kids didn't have the star, but don't tell me that there wouldn't be a way for the Smith to figure something out during all these years. It would be a completely different thing if they weren't interested at all, but they do not seem to be entirely disinterested. Imagine being able to literally walk for example into Middle-Earth and then just always return home late evening to brag about it to your family.) And as for Alf, he I find him to be quite a manipulative fellow who is terribly full of himself. He does not speak straight and he just installs himself into the village to manipulate human fates. Sure, that is what fairies in traditional mythology *do*. But the story does not show it as in any way problematic, it still presents as if Alf was 100% in the right, the Smith's response to him is very much "yes sir thank you sir I will do as you say sir". For instance Gandalf was similarly manipulative at times, but he had a clear good agenda and he tried to speak openly to the Bagginses once he knew something. Did anyone else perceive these things as problematic or was it just me? EDIT: This is not Werewolf, but I feel that it is notable - in terms of the expected level of activity on the 'Downs - that I have apparently just crossposted with two people!
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories |
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07-25-2021, 10:04 AM | #10 | |||
Banshee of Camelot
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07-26-2021, 04:36 AM | #11 | ||
Itinerant Songster
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But what you have been saying got me to thinking as I began to doze off last night, what if Smith's and Nokes' characters were switched out? What if it had been a Nokes who ate the Star in the cake, and kept the coin instead of giving it to Nell, and then got into all kinds of mischief in Faery? And what if Smith had been Master Cook instead? It would be a different story, and I wonder how much to Tolkien's point? |
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07-25-2021, 11:23 AM | #12 | |
Itinerant Songster
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So Alf is indeed a king; kings tend to have cause to be as full of themselves as their social and political position allows, and then throw in Faerie on top of that. As for Nokes, he is described as qualitatively different from the other villagers. They are guilty of overlooking Alf as the duly appointed next Master Cook. Nokes is guilty of something other: vanity. Thinking more of himself than is his due. And thinking less of Alf than is Alf's right. So I find it interesting Tolkien speaks of the villagers' wrongfulness matter of factly, in a sense of 'these kinds of things happen all the time and people are just like that.' Whereas with Nokes, Tolkien takes time to especially condemn the man's presumptuous vanity. What does Tolkien, I wonder, find particularly despicable about this kind of vanity as compared to the villagers' presumptuous inconsideration? |
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07-25-2021, 11:57 AM | #13 |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
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Posting some general thoughts in reply to everyone posting on the issue of who can enter Fairie.
It is true that Tolkien's thoughts about what a proper fairy story is developed in response to his attempt to write an introduction to MacDonald's "The Golden Key", which Tolkien no longer found as satisfying as he once did. However, that does not mean that Tolkien's "Smith" imitates or follows MacDonald's story or as a story owes specific intertextual details.Other than the woods of course, but they are plentiful in fairy stories anyway. MacDonald's Golden Key involves two protagonists, Tangle and Mossy. Both are "sent" into fairy. Several of MacDonald's other fairy stories also involve several protagonists, Princess Irene and Curdie. And of course one of the original stories of Tolkien's Legendarium involves Beren and Luthien. So there is quite a bit of evidence that fairie in other stories is not limited to a sole protagonist. Sorry, RL calls me away, with just a stunted post. Au revoir.
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