V is for VERISIMILITUDE

 is for VERISIMILITUDE



I have said before that I believe Tolkien's  "On Fairy-Stories" (1947) is one of the most (fine, I really think the most) important pieces of theory for the practicing mythopoet.  He gives us the concepts of sub-creation and secondary belief to describe the enchantment of mythic literature (or fairy-stories).  The sub-creation enchants its readers by eliciting their secondary belief (in contrast to willing suspension of disbelief).  The secondary belief of readers in a sub-creation depends on its verisimilitude.  Verisimilitude is what elicits secondary belief and thus enchants.  Without it, fantasy falls flat.  Understanding Tolkien's point about verisimilitude, and then pondering deeply what it might mean for you and your audience, in particular how to sustain and not strain or break it, is worth your time if you haven't done it.  If you don't have a copy of it in something that you already own, get yourself a paper or electronic copy right away.  Read, ponder, repeat.

Far over the Misty Mountains cold...

Many of you have probably been listening to The Hobbit Trailer version of "Far over the Misty Mountains cold."  I like it, but it really drove me back to the Rankin/Bass The Hobbit soundtrack.  Am I the only person who thinks that is the best track from that soundtrack?  Or who actually prefers it to this new version?  I'd like to have the complete Tolkien lyric sung to the tune of the original soundtrack.  Heck, I'd like to get together with a group of guys and sing the whole song!

Christmas Eucatastrophe, Mythopoesis, and Life

I have said it before.  Undoubtedly, I will say it again: Tolkien's On Fairy Stories should be required reading on more than one reading list, but it should be at the top of the list for mythopoets.  If you are not familiar with his theory of eucatastrophe, then I highly recommend getting hold of the lecture in some form and digesting it thoroughly (and for greater reasons that that this blogpost will assume a familiarity with it).  In his epilogue, he included a statement on the faith that underlay all his work.  For in the end, eucatastrope was both the spring of his creativity and his thought, and also the deep hope of his life.

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures,  men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature.  The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces the essence of fairy-stories.  They contain many marvels--peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: "mythical" in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe.  But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation.  The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of the Man's history.  The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation.  This story begins and ends in joy.  It has pre-eminently the "inner consistency of reality."  There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.  For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation.  To reject it leads either to sadness of wrath.

When I consider the general notions of what Christianity is about that are popular currency in the world today, and especially in America with which I am most familiar, whether those notions are entertained by Church people of various stripes or by the people who despise them, I am tempted to conclude some very unflattering things.  But then I remember that, despite my supposedly informed upbringing, I held similar notions.  These notions tend to center on a cluster of Sin, Faith (a rather peculiar notion of what faith is, honestly), the Death of Jesus, and the Bible.  Having been raised with this cluster in a version of its popular configuration, Christianity failed to make sense to me well into my adult life, until during my second graduate degree program in the field of religion, a professor assigned a little book from the fourth century: On the Incarnation of God by Athanasius of Alexandria.

This book revolves around the axiom that God became human so that humans might become divine.  The axiom is rooted in the New Testament and the key to the Nicene Creed.  If, this Christmastide, you find yourself wondering why a Galilean peasant and his fellow Jewish followers so transformed the world with a story that took the Mediterranean world by storm, consuming and displacing other stories and cultuses on an empire-wide and then a global level, I am not aware of a way to be more helpful when it comes to reading material than to recommend Athanasius' On the Incarnation (that, and skipping the chapters that are diatribes against Jewish conversationalists).  It is free in an old and difficult translation, and cheap in a new and easier translation.  Both normatively and descriptively, I would argue that it provides in a compact volume a formulation of what the Christian mythos and ethos are all about.

Wishing you all the blessings of the season,
Theodric

Fairy Tales Dark, Dangerous, and Perhaps Not

I am back home, but I don't have anything in particular to share from my trip to San Francisco, I am sorry to say.  It was good for me professionally and personally, but while there I was not able to do anything touristy to feed the inner mythopoet.  (I was reminded my ongoing interest I had as a boy in Alcatraz and the old U.S. Mint, but I'd have to stew about these places for a while for them to produce anything.)  I will proclaim and reaffirm what I already believed to be true based on my 4th grade memories: If I had to live in California, SF would be my town of choice.  I don't plan on waiting another 30 years to get back there, and when I do, the touring mythopoet (and epicure!) will be unleashed! 

In the absence of any souvenirs to share, I believe I will observe this Tuesday homing with another installment of Tomeful Tuesday.  I've finished Snow White, Blood Red, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (1993).  I owe this hard-working, long active duo for the many anthologies and collections they have done, for thereby introducing me to authors I might have never discovered on my own, and for their patronage of Thomas Canty (see linked image above).  I believe this was the first in their fairy tales collections (of short stories and poems like this one -- there was a series of novels that had an earlier start), and from those I have read so far, this first is not my favorite.  The stories are not only dark, but many move towards the tragic, the nihilistic, and even the sick.  While I enjoy the former, it is difficult to enjoy the latter.  Further, I question whether stories with fairy tale elements actually qualify as a fairy tale proper when they lack the eucatastrophe.  There are some pretty good stories in the collection, however, and three clear stand-outs for me: "The Glass Casket" by Jack Dann, "The Snow Queen" by Patricia A. McKillip, and "Breadcrumbs and Stones" by Lisa Goldstein.  These three I can wholeheartedly recommend to all in this season of fairy tales, if you want to add some reading to your viewing.  (By the way, I wish they had gotten Nick Owchar to write that piece for The Siren's Call.  Are we only seeing pieces out of him once a week, L. A. Times?  What the hell!?)  Until next time, I bid you a good Tuesday, and a tomeful week of happy reading.

Shiny, Shiny Art for Your Commissioning

The Hound by Dave Mallon, 2011

Shiny, yes, but much of it in a spooky vein: perfect for the season!  I've sampled a couple of my favorites here, but please go take a look at Dave Mallon's work on his DA accountant.  This young artist comes with the Obscure seal of approval.  He's taking commissions for your fiction, games, and other needs.

Paths of the Dead by Dave Mallon, 2011

Summary Statement of RPM CH. 7

Chapter 7
TACTICAL MASTERY
Part III:  Chapter in a Nutshell

You identify your mission, set your goal, determine your objectives, get to know the enemy, and plan with your team.  You use every sense and resource to move swiftly from objective to objective in order to attain your goal.  [You adventure as lightly equipped as possible for the mission...]  You are not sidetracked, but you go out of your way to bypass obstacles and enemy strongpoints whenever possible.  You conserve your resources.  When you strike, you do so hard and fast, but with only the amount of force necessary to accomplish your aim... If need be, your team will retire in order to reequip, but you'll be back again... (126)

 Links: Parts I and II.  An example scenario from the chapter is here.

Gygax on Informing Players

Chapter 7
TACTICAL MASTERY (127-137)
Part II

At the beginning of the campaign, the GM supplies the players with information needed to come to the point of active play, from which point on, the players directly engage the GM rather than passively receive information.  Before embarking on the campaign, all the player needs to know is a title, genre, and a brief statement about what the campaign is about.  More information, but only just enough, is given once they set down at the table, but before play proper has become.  Gary reads the players this information so that they can begin acting and planning their execution of the mission.  He breaks such information down into three categories: Background, Current situation, and General information.

Background: The general framework of the scenario.  Who? What? When? Where? Why?
Current situation: Who the players are, why they have become involved, how they arrived, what they have at their disposal, and so forth.
General information: Here is where the clues lie, and this seems to actually be a mix of material that Gary would assume is common knowledge and would simply be given to the characters, and information that they would have to obtain through role-play.  This seems an unfortunate mix to me, and it would be clearer to identity general information with common knowledge and Clues as a separate category that has to be investigated in active play.


Moving Outside the Scenario and Endgame Ignorance
A couple of characteristics of Gygaxian play emerge through is discussion of the categories in terms of his three genre examples.  (See my earlier post detailing one of these, here.)  One is that Gary is always ready to let the players move outside of the scenario (131-133).  One the one hand, this gives them the freedom to arrive at a conclusion to the mission outside of the avenues that have been preconceived.  On the other, it gives players the freedom to get off track and fail at the mission through their own foolishness.

Another characteristic is keeping players in the dark about having arrived at the "goal point" or "goal area."  Building on the example of the fantasy scenario, the party could:

• have found the mastermind behind the disappearance of the dwarf king and not know they had him/her.
• be in the chamber where the dwarf king is hidden, but not seen him due to magical measures.
• have found the dwarf king, but not recognized him for he has been stripped, shaved, and feeble-minded.

This latter point especially intrigues me.  It seems that oftentimes, it is obvious to the players that they have found The Dragon's Lair or The Villain's Secret Chamber or what have you.  The idea that they could be standing there with everything set for the final scene, and then the final scene not happening (then) because they did not realize everything that it was capable of realizing is appealing.  I would be wary of it descending into games of Guess what the GerkMaster is Thinking, but handled with some wisdom, this could be done well.  (I read with a bit of shock that Gary thought "well-designed scenarios... often conceal the fact" and "a master GM always [!] does so," but I will pay more attention to this in the future to see when I, or the writers of adventures, use this element.)

One Vampire Down

Triple Threat Tomeful Tuesday Triumph touted by Theodric the Alliterator!

MINOR SPOILERS BELOW

Yes, forgive me, I got carried away.  This is just a note that the first book of the October read is complete, all 467 pages of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's 1981 novel of her recurring character, Count St. Germain.  The cover art and back blurb lead the reader to believe that the whole thing is set in China during the time of Jenghis (her preferred spelling) Khan's invasions.  Not even half the book is, which came as something of a shock.  St. Germain flees China as it is crushed under the Mongol's boot.  His flight through western China and Tibet takes up a good chunk of the book, and then the final section of the book is set in Northern India, in a small Hindu Raj under the Delhi Sultanate.  If you have not gotten your fill of Thuggee from Gygax's Death in Delhi or from Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, you would not have know it, but Path of the Eclipse has you covered.

In spite of the curve-ball, I enjoyed the book.  Vampire lore probably doesn't have any new twists that can be put on it at this point, though I imagine that back in 1981, Yarbro's attempts to put twists on it still seemed pretty fresh -- not as fresh as it would have before 1973, but still before the endless baroque alternatives we have been presented which at this point made freshness impossible.  Maybe my definition of Horror needs its boundaries re-surveyed, but it is hard for me to think of this as Horror.  I'd call it, Dark Historical Fantasy.  I don't plan on keeping it in my library (which is bursting at the seams), but I don't think I'd mind picking up a further St. Germain novel to read in the future.

Replica of the Kalighat Temple Kali at a Kali Puja Pandal at Behala, Kolkata by Jonoikobangali

Mythopoeia and the Public Domain

I got it into my head that J. R. R. Tolkien's poem, "Mythopoeia," written in 1931 (after one of those BIG conversations that changes the life of intellectuals, in this case, Tollers, Jack, and Hugh Dyson) and dedicated to Lewis, was in the public domain.  I'm not sure how I got that impression, perhaps because it was on Wikipedia at some point?  Anyway, apparently it is not freely available.  And thanks to Sonny Bono, the Walt Disney Co., and various other corporate lackeys in Congress, it will not be in the public domain in the US any time soon.  Now, I'm all for the rights of creators, but at some point, it is reasonable that the creator and the family that she or he provided for have been taken care of, and the culture of which they are a part have a claim on their creation as something that now belongs to a people.  You know, like all those stories that Grimm and Perrault and others published, but then were later available for Walt Disney to adapt in animations that made them tons of money?  So yeah, I'm one of those disgruntled people that thinks that copyright was plenty long already and didn't need a greedy extend that keeps things out of the public domain even longer.  Even if it was simply occasioned by the fact that I was going to republish "Mythopoeia" today until I discovered I was all wrong about its copyright status and that made my life more difficult this Mythopoeic Monday.  Yet another reason to appreciate things like the OGL, Creative Commons, the sharers in the OSR community, and artists like Nina Paley.  I might also mention Paizo's community use policy (found by scrolling down the page, right hand panel).

The problem with grumpiness is that it calls for connections.  Like a connection to the fact that I love the Tolkien volume Tales from the Perilous Realm, illustrated by Alan Lee.  It's an almost perfect collection of fairy stories together with Tolkien's seminal essay "On Fairy-Stories."  Almost perfect, except that it left out the other major work on mythopoeia in Tolkien's corpus: the eponymous poem that is the subject of today's grumpiness!  Ugh!  Another link in the grumpiness chain.  Truly, everything in this life is marked by dukkha.

So you will not be treated to a reproduction of "Mythopoiea" in today's post.  For that matter, any lengthy quotation opens up the tricky question of how much of it I can quote under fair use.  But if you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you seek it out (even though you can't find it in the book I'd love to point you towards buying).  Aside from its literary quality and its historical importance (Lewis' corpus would be utterly different if he had not converted), it is a statement of the nature and value of myths.*  There have been at least two attitudes towards myths other than they are literal statements of historical or natural realities.  One is the view of Plato, that they are dangerous, foundational lies, only justifiable as a necessary evil in the maintenance of a good polis or society, but hence demanding careful and strong social control.  The other is that they are the bearers of deep truths, hidden but of great importance to the cosmos and the individual.  This attitude is at least as old as Plutarch and dominated the thought of ancient Alexandria.  This was the perspective, broadly speaking, to which Tolkien and Dyson belonged and to which they hoped to win their friend, the atheistic Lewis.  Hence its dedication:

"To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though 'breathed through silver'."

I recommend it to your enjoyment, study, and contemplation.  Finally, the anthropology of the poem sees sub-creation, or the building of secondary worlds, as a part of human nature by virtue of humans' being made in the image and likeness of God.  So, did I setting out complaining about the distortion of human good that keeps people as a group from participating in certain pieces of mythic material so that I could arrive at the point that joining in mythopoesis was a participation in the divine nature?  Yeah, let's say I planned that.

* For that matter, it is also full of keys to what Tolkien is up to in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.

S is for Sacrifice II: Tangled

Part II: Sacrifice in Tangled

A French version of the movie poster, because I like it.

A potential problem with the shift in the way we use the word "sacrifice" is that it is now becoming just another word for "trade."  In baseball, a batter sacrifices something that will appear on his record to get another runner home.  He hardly sacrifices himself in any significant way.  That is, his act is only sacred to baseball fanatics in a stretched sense, and there is no immolation of a victim.  Because of the inherent importance of the theme of sacrifice, and the challenges that if faces, including ones from the shift of language usage, I was happy to see the theme taken up by the animated film Tangled.

{Spoiler Alert}

I quite liked Disney's retelling of Rapunzel, but there is one area that I found it unsatisfying.  The film begins with a narrator identifying himself and other characters as he sets the story up, and he mentions that he died.  The viewer immediately begins questioning, "How did he die?  How is he speaking to us?"  This is good story-telling, and it saves the kiddies the shock of dealing with Flynn Rider's death later.  Of course, now you have the problem of how a dead character is narrating the film, but I'm more willing to simply accept that the dead can cinematically address audiences from faerie land than I am the nonsensical resolution that the film offers for Flynn's Easter.

You see, Flynn, the charming rogue, actually comes to care for Rapunzel, for her life and her freedom and happiness, more than for himself.  In the final conflict, he offers himself to violence so that Rapunzel might escape the tower.  Rapunzel herself was a victim to her false mother's quest for continued life and beauty, and Flynn's intervention substituted himself to Mother Gothel's violence so that Rapunzel could finally escape her fate and gain the freedom of self-determination in the outside world and reuniting with her true family.  Flynn should have been allowed to make this sacrifice.  He was robbed and so were we.

My objection is not that Flynn was raised from the dead: I could not make such a claim on this day, nor even as a rambling disciple of Prof. Tolkien.  It is the way in which Flynn is raised.  For Flynn takes up the priesthood not only in his heroic self-intervention, but in the moment of inspiration when he sees that by sacrificing Rapunzel's magical hair, she will be set free.  At the crucial moment, he seizes her hair and cuts it off.  Rapunzel loses her magic, then Flynn looses his life to the witch's rage. 

Eucatastrophe* in fairy-tales leads us to expect the happy reversal at the end.  If that reversal is to be Flynn's resurrection, it cannot come at the price of the inner consistency of reality that allows the fairy-tale to exist in the first place.  Or to switch from Tolkien to Chesterton, Faerie must obey its own Law.  In Tangled, the magic was in the hair and cutting the hair killed it.  The magic that could hold back death has died.  There either has to be some other magic or some way of restoring the magic.  Tangled resorts to the canard of the true love tear bringing back the dead.  If there's magic there, it has got to operate by established Law.  Verisimilitude is broken and so our belief is sacrificed for Disney's bottom line.  Tangled kicks us out of Faerie for the price of a happy ending.

Perhaps this could have been remedied with deeper thought and better story-telling, but the simple answer is to have let Flynn die.  Instead of emphasizing the romance between the two characters, emphasize the moral growth of Flynn from his self-centered, immoral use of his freedom to his appreciation of what it would be like to be robbed of one's freedom.  Emphasize Rapunzel's desire to be free and the negative consequences of her victimhood.  Maybe even introduce the temptation to Flynn of profiting from Rapunzel's hair as something he has to overcome.  Then when Flynn sacrifices the magic hair and himself, we cheer and mourn the hero, but the movie ends with Rapunzel's free life and gratitude to a thief who redeemed himself by saving her from a greater thief.  This would have put Tangled among Disney's darker animated features, but it would have also made for a truer tale.  I think there is a good chance that Tangled's success will get Disney executives to reverse their decision to move away from fairy tales, but hopefully they will learn from their mistake and produce better retellings, rather than simply reaffirm a happy ending at any cost.  If children can deal with a story with death, and have to learn to deal with death in real life, then they can learn about the nobility of sacrifice.  It's not so much that Disney needs to get out of fairy-tales, as it needs to get deeper into them and to get out of their formula.  Not ever fairy-tale has to end in couplehood and not every fairy tale death has to wake from true love's kiss.  Fairy-tales are, in fact, more tangled than Disney has made them out to be.  But however they end, they cannot break the Law without breaking the Enchantment.

*Coined by Tolkien in this work.

~Next~
Part III: Sacrifice in Gaming

J is for Journey

A classic journey story that dominated my young imagination. 20th C Fox, 1959.

The Journey is a powerful motif, everywhere you look.  We conceive of life itself as a journey from our mother's womb to the womb of the earth...and perhaps, for those who believe in a final eucatastrophe, beyond that.  Dante journeys from Earth to Paradise, via Hell and Purgatory.  Bilbo journeys from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and back again.  Frodo journeys from the Shire across Middle Earth to Mount Doom and returns to the Shire, only to discover he must journey out of Middle Earth forever, to the Undying Lands in the West.  The Aeneid tells Aeneas' journey from Troy to Rome.  The Bible tells of humanity's journey from the Garden into exile in the dying lands back into a recreated Garden.  Even in the prosaic literature of America, Huck and Jim journey down the Mississippi River.

As much as we talk now of the hero's journey (there's just no getting away from that Campbell fellow these days), we each strive to be the hero of our own story.  It's an excellent question to ponder when other questions fail.  In the story, where are the characters going?  In a game, where are the player characters going?  And of course in life, where are you going? 

Wherever you find yourselves on your journeys: Bon voyage, my fellow ramblers.  If we learn anything from our furry-footed friends, it's a good idea to make the trip with true friends.  On the other hand, a model poet may not be a bad choice for a guide, either.

"In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost."

*

* Dante Alighieri, Inferno I.1-3.  Illustration by Gustav Doré. Things start looking up once he finds Vergil.

G is for Gandiva and Glamdring

Balinese Statue of Arjuna with Gandiva in hand.  Photograph by Ilussion.

I believe this is one of John Howe's earlier attempts at The Bridge of Khazad-dûm.

Heroes do not get their weapons at Walmart.  Their weapons are not mass-produced in some Chinese factory.  As unique as heroes are, so unique are their weapons.  In mythopoesis, in sub-creating, nothing should be wasted.  The hero's weapon should be a part of world-building, a contributor to characterization, and an element of the plot.  Today's blog is dedicated to famous, named weapons.

We all know that Penelope's suitors do not stack up as men, because none of them can string Odysseus' bow.  And it is this failure that is one of the elements that will allow Odysseus to both reveal himself and slaughter them all.  Elric of Melniboné's evil sword Stormbringer allows him to overcome his genetic weakness and become a great swordsmen, while also dooming his soul and the souls of his loved ones.  Arthur's Excalibur symbolizes his kingship and his otherworldly patronage.  When Gandalf draws Foe-hammer against the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, we remember its discovery in the troll hoard, and the fear it inspires among goblins (orcs), but the real Middle Earth fanatic will tell you this sword of Gondolin was wielded by Turgon, the only elf to be King of Gondolin, in his wars against the orcs.  It is ancient, it is powerful, and it confirms Gandalf's -- or Mithrandir's -- connections with the elves as well as his own nature as an ancient power.  It is notable in this case that it is not given to him, but found as an apparent accident.  Where other writers make a point of handing such weapons over to their heroes in a weighty scene, Gandalf bumbles into Glamdring.  (Try counting up the accidents that make all the difference in The Lord of the Rings sometime.)  And finally, Gandiva: the bow of gods and heroes, against whom no foe can stand, whose release resounds with thunder.  When it slips from Prince Arjuna's hand as he stands across the field from the Dhritarashtran forces in the Bhagavad Gita, we know that the power to make war has slipped from the mighty warrior's hands, until it can be restored to his limbs by a god, just as the bow itself came to him by the hands of a god.

These weapons, have names like important characters do, and they have a history of their own that makes them a feature of their worlds-of-origin.  They compliment the characters they are paired with: interacting with their strengths and weaknesses, fulfilling our desire to wield part of the enchantment of Faerie in our hands through our identification with the character, providing the character with motivations.

Anybody looking forward to Marvel's film version of Thor?  I recently saw that the toys are already out in anticipation of its release.  Guess what I saw at Walmart?  Yeap.  Two different versions of Mjölnir.  I mean, what wouldn't I do if I had Thor's hammer...

F is for Fairy-Stories

"Faerie is a perilous land,
and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the over-bold."

J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892-1973

Tolkien's 1939 Lang lecture, "On Fairy-Stories," is justly popular and was revised for publication (1947) and has been reprinted many times.  In it, Tolkien defends the act of fantasy production and enjoyment against its modern despisers, and explores the nature of fantasy or fairy-stories.  Together with the earlier poem "Mythopoiea," (1931) it should be thoroughly delved, meditated upon, and inwardly digested. I returned to it for this post with profit, and recommend it to both artists and critics of all types, as well as gamers.  But for fantasists or mythopoets, failure or refusal to come to terms with it will result in a portion of dishonesty or poverty, although hopefully not always of the scale and anger of Moorcock's "Epic Pooh."*  Enough of the haters within out ranks; let us turn to the haters outside Faerie.  The professor tries to deal with the disdain that some feel for stories set in the realm of Faerie, but his attempt is more likely to inform the faithful while failing the infidel: ultimately, hate that is not based on reason cannot be answered by reason.  So while those lines of reasoning are insightful, we will set them aside for the main issue: the nature of these stories.

Clearing aside the misconception that fairy-stories have mainly to do with the fae, Tolkien locates the nature of the tales in Faerie, or more technically, in Secondary Worlds created by acts of literary subcreation which are characterized by an "inner consistency of reality" such that they command Secondary Belief.  He has suggestive lists of some of the denizens of Faerie: Elves, fays, dwarves, witches, trolls, giants, dragons, removable hearts, swan robes, magic rings, arbitrary prohibitions, wicked step-mothers, enchanted bears and bulls, cannibals, and taboos on names.  But in addition to these marvels, Faerie includes potentially everything contained in our mundane world, even and especially human beings, when we are enchanted.

"The dragon has the trademark of Faerie written plain upon him.  In whatever world he had his being, it was an Other-world.  Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faerie.  I desired dragons with a profound desire."

Human beings are enchanted by a play upon our most primal, marvelous desires: freedom in space and time, communion with other life forms, recovery of things lost, escape from the ugliness of a servile life and from death, and, above all, the consolation of the happy ending that turns the story, suddenly and gracefully, to piercing joy.  When the construction of an internally verisimilitudinous world in literature draws the reader in by an artful expression that causes her to seek these desires within and whose enchantment is not broken by failures in sustaining her secondary belief, then the Tolkienian vision of a fairy-story has been achieved.

*Signs are reported that my now fellow Texan has moved on somewhat.   May it be so.

C is for Chesterton: A Colossus in Fairyland

The popularity of Professor Tolkien has ensured that his ideas about Faerie, eucatastrophe, subcreation, and the "inner consistency of reality" that should characterize secondary acts of creation are spreading among world builders from novelists to gamers.  This is a development that can't happen with enough speed and intensity, as far as I am concerned.  But there is another theorist of Faerie that I would like to recommend: Gilbert Keith Chesterton.  There are areas were Chesterton may rub hard against many judgments of this age, but that he was a fan of George MacDonald and numbered C. S. Lewis and Tolkien among his fans should be enough to recommend him to our attention.  If he and George Bernard Shaw could put up with one another (they were close personal friends as well as public opponents), then there's something to be said for widening our circle of associations in this age of the tribalism of the like-minded.

Chesterton (1874-1936) was a journalist, critic, novelist, poet, apologist--among other things--whose collected works in the Ignatius Press edition run to 36 volumes.  I am aware of two extended treatments of what Chesterton calls fairyland or elfland in his works, both originally published in 1908 and closely related: the essay "Fairy Tales" in All Things Considered and chapter IV, "The Ethics of Elfland" in Orthodoxy.  I would recommend reading them in this order, to digest the shorter treatment first.  Both works are in the public domain and readily available online.

In Chesterton's eyes, the terrible arbitrariness of the rules of Faerie mirror the apparent arbitrariness of the rules of the real world.  Instead of an utterly random realm of nonsensical, wild freedom, there is an ethical or moral principle at the heart of the nonsense and wildness.  From a Tolkienesque point of view, one might say that this is one of the points that governs the verisimilitude of fey worlds.  We may not understand why we mustn't eat the apple or dip our finger in the pool, but this hole in our understanding is itself important and not childish.  Chesterton seems more suggestive at this point to me than definitive, but what I tease out of him is this: 1. This lack of understanding adds to our sense of mystery and wonder and 2. It increases our sense that we are guests visiting in someone else's realm; that there is a will behind the law.  There is law in faerie, insists Chesterton, and that law is based on the principle that happiness depends on human choice and on not breaking the magical and mystical law that rules the place.

Clearly, this is not the last word on the matter, for Chesterton doesn't seem to have thought as much about the attraction, one might almost say the compulsion, to break the law in those stories; a phenomena that seems much more two-edged that Chesterton suggests.  Struggling with this aspect will, I presume, drive us to thinkers like Tolkien and Jung--and perhaps Augustine, who first gave it a name: felix culpa.  But this is likely because Chesterton was, in the final analysis, more interested in how our world is like Faerie than in understanding Faerie on its own terms--or perhaps in terms of our world.  I recommend him as a stimulant to thought and a tonic to the wit.  Reading him must at the very least improve one's prose.

Link:
A Chesterton page that is not pretty, but seems pretty useful.

DiTerlizzi's Essay on The Lost Sendak Hobbit

L.A. Times, Friday 25 March 2011

In the not-to-be-missed category, be sure to catch Tony DiTerlizzi's essay on Maurice Sendak's adaptation of Tolkien's The Hobbit from Friday's L.A. Times.  No anxiety of influence here, people, just one awesome mythopoet writing about another awesome mythopoet's work on a third, perhaps most awesome of all the mythopoets -- together with a warning to editors everywhere not to screw up awesome things.  Pass the Kleenexes and the laurels and a copy on to friends.  Thanks for this bit of archaeology, Tony!

I hope to have more on the relevance of the L.A. Times to our interests in the near future.