#sub-creation

And so we come again, as so many discussions of fantasy inevitably do, to J. R. R. Tolkien. As a writer of fantasy, Tolkien hardly needs an introduction. Even before the success of the film adaptations of his work transformed him into a household name, he had won first the hearts of children with The Hobbit in 1937 and, some twenty years later, the hearts and minds of adult readers with The Lord of the Rings. But, like Coleridge and MacDonald before him, Tolkien thought deeply about his craft as a writer and creator, and it is largely by virtue of this thought that his art has achieved such timeless success. His 1939 lecture “On Fairy-Stories,” subsequently published as an essay in the 1964 book Tree and Leaf, is, as the editors of the recent authoritative edition of the essay put it, “Tolkien’s defining study of and the centre-point in his thinking about the genre [of fantasy], as well as being the theoretical basis for his fiction” (Flinger and Anderson 9). In this seminal work, he addresses all the points about the imagination raised by Coleridge and, following MacDonald, defends their application in the literary arts. We have already explored the other facets of Tolkien’s theory of fantasy as it contributes to the fantastic sublime, but I have saved his thoughts on the imagination for last, because I feel they serve as a linchpin for the fantastic sublime as a whole.

At first glance it would appear that Tolkien dispenses altogether with Coleridge’s whole tripartite scheme of primary imagination, secondary imagination, and fancy. Indeed, he takes issue with the desynonymization of imagination and fancy, though he does not single out Coleridge directly. A philologist of the highest order and sometime editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, Tolkien may be displaying false modesty when he ventures that, “[r]idiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate” (OFS 59). Having deconstructed Coleridge’s framework, Tolkien then counters with his own, which is, by his own admission, just as arbitrary as Coleridge’s imagination/fancy divide.

The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. . . The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) the inner consistency of reality, is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression. . . I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose. (OFS 59-60)

But the advantage to this approach as both a theoretical model and a critical framework is that it separates out and clearly labels the writer’s mind (Imagination), the creative process itself (Art), and the finished product (Sub-creation). Fantasy is the end result.

Although Tolkien’s theory dispenses with Coleridge’s distinction between imagination and fancy, however, it preserves and even strengthens Coleridge’s assertions regarding the qualitative similarities between primary and secondary imagination. This isn’t immediately obvious, though the term “Sub-creation” gives us a telling hint. But to fully understand Tolkien’s debt to Coleridge, we must travel back to 1931, eight years before Tolkien delivered his lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” In that year, following a latenight conversation with his friend C. S. Lewis in which he defended the truths of Pagan myth even in a Christian world, he crystalized his thoughts into a poem called “Mythopoeia.” He quotes several lines from the poem in his lecture, and they are worth quoting here as well, for they cut to the heart of the similarity between primary and secondary imagination:

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right. (Mythopoeia 61-8)

The metaphor of light that Tolkien employs here and elsewhere for the imaginative process is more vivid than Coleridge’s original distinction, but it nonetheless conveys exactly the same sense. In fact, the verbs Coleridge uses to describe the process of the secondary imagination—dissolves, diffuses, dissipates—suggest he was thinking along the same metaphorical lines. But Tolkien, usually so careful to avoid overt religious reference, here actually makes the religious and spiritual implications of the imagination more explicit than Coleridge’s “infinite I AM.” While, as we saw, George MacDonald is uncomfortable with ascribing to man the power of creation, Tolkien actually revels in man’s creative power. As in Coleridge, man’s creative power differs from that of God only in degree, hence the word “sub-creator.”

Tolkien’s vision of man as sub-creator leads him to openly challenge Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief. Like MacDonald, he argues that a secondary world, or sub-creation, must be governed by a certain consistency if it is to hold an audience’s attention. To him, “this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed” (OFS 52). The true aim of fantasy, for Tolkien, is to draw the audience into a state of “Secondary Belief” similar to the sustained participative imagination argued for by MacDonald. The real change from Coleridge, and even MacDonald, here is that it places the burden of proof, so to speak, on the artist rather than the audience. When confronted with a good work of fantasy, the audience should not have to voluntarily suspend disbelief. Rather, “the story-maker proves a successful 'subcreator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside” (OFS 52). I can’t help but think that Coleridge would have admired the symmetry of this idea of primary and secondary belief with his own idea of primary and secondary imagination, and would have conceded the point to Tolkien. And it is here that the fantastic sublime comes into full flower.

Tolkien’s language here reflects many of the writings on the sublime, from Longinus all the way up to present critics like Robert Doran. There is a certain inexorable, inevitable, magnetic pull that surrounds works of the sublime like a gravitational field. The sublime grabs hold of readers and doesn’t let them go. It turns their gaze upward and pushes their minds and spirits to see and experience things they could not have otherwise imagined. And at the same time, it makes audiences see themselves from those same heights, see their own mortality and frailty, and want to climb higher, be greater, do better. But while traditional conceptions of the sublime see this process as occurring in flashes, as lightning during a tumultuous storm, Tolkien insists we can have more than that. In his view, we can actually live in a world, if only for a little while, where the sublime is made manifest, where it is as real as rain.

And like Coleridge and MacDonald before him, he insists that these sublime worlds are not merely the playgrounds of children, but the kingdoms of all readers, of any age. He is in agreement with Coleridge about the educational value of fairy-stories. While tepidly approving of fairy tales written specifically for children, he urges that “it may be better for them to read some things, especially fairy-stories, that are beyond their measure rather than short of it. Their books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it.” But Tolkien is adamant that fantasy or fairy stories (he uses the terms more or less interchangeably) should be read by everyone. “If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults,” he says, for “they will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can.” (OFS 58).

- Of Spiders and Light by Reno E. Lauro in The Mirror Crack'd

Hi! I love your blog!

20) What do you think Tolkien’s message is about possession and wanting to possess?

It’s hard for me to hear Tolkien’s message over my own. I grew up in, and am still part of, a Christian tradition (Mennonite) that has as two of its guiding principles pacifism and a rejection of worldly wealth and power. (No oaths is another one, as a bonus.) It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven and Inasmuch as you did it unto one of the least of these, you did it unto me and many, many other Bible verses against clinging to wealth and material posessions have been part of my worldview since before I was aware I had a worldview. I became a homeowner for the first time this year and feel profoundly conflicted over it for this reason. Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor isn’t as deeply unsettling a statement if you can keep all your physical possessions below a total value of a few thousand dollars; it’s far more troubling when they suddenly hit six figures.

Which is the broad groundwork for why any defences of the Kinslayings send me ‘round the bend, in the same way that American proponents of Stand-Your-Ground Laws who think killing another human being over your car stereo is a perfectly normal and justified action do; in the same way that rich people who think their low taxes matter more than another person having the necessities of life do. You don’t attack people for things. You don’t kill people for things. People are more important than things. That the Silmarils are art and not wealth is a distinction that pales in the face of that basic principle. Fëanor spending his younger years avidly exploring Valinor with his wife and kids is sympathetic; Fëanor not wanting to spend all his life being babysat by the Valar is synpathetic; Fëanor swearing to murder anyone who touches his stuff is not.

Elves are attached to things, especially beautiful things, but not so often in that way. They’re attached to beautiful things and beautuful places in the sense that they want them to exist, they don’t want them to be lost, they don’t want what they love to pass away, and that kind of fear of loss is sympathetic, far more so to me than the attitude of this is mine, this is singly and exclusively mine, and I don’t want other people even seeing it because it’s mine.

Tolkien’s attitudes towards material possessions aren’t the same as mine; they’re probably healthier. To understand what he’s saying about possession in The Silmarillion, we have to go to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien has no opposition to material wealth - his Baggins prptagonists are both very comfirtably well-off. Living comfortably, with lots of good things to eat, is positively celebrated. The trick is have things and still hold loosely to them. And hobbits are good at that, as Tolkien shows us in a lot of little ways. They give presents to other people on their birthdays, and a lot of them are mathoms - ‘things they had no immediate use for but were unwilling to throw away.’ Given that they include old swords and there’s a museum for them, other cultures might call them heirlooms - but not hobbits. Tolkien’s comdemnation of Smaug is the comparison to “when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have never before used or wanted.” The problem us not having things - it’s having more than you can enjoy, or possessiveness without enjoyment. It’s about valuing the having of a thing in and above itself. This is one of the warning signs with Fëanor and the Silmarils: He began to love the Silmarils with a greedy love, and grudged the sight of them to all save his father and his seven sons…they were guarded close, locked within the deep chambers of his hoard in Tirion.

But all this has just been about owning things, and the story of the Silmarils about more than that; it is, I think, also about sub-creation and what it means. The fundamental message of the Ainulindalë is that creation is a collaborative effort: everything we make is part of a larger tapestry, everything we sub-create is a use of our God-given talents, so that nothing is solely the achievement of one person. Fëanor stops recalling this: he seldom remembered now that the light within them was not his own. That’s not an attempt to diminish his achievement: he made something wondrous and beautiful. It’s meant to acknowledge what sub-creation means - that we are all part of a great effort, not of us working alone and able to say ‘I alone did this; no one else contributed.’ And those two attitudes of exclusivity that Fëanor develops around the Silmarils, as his art and his possession, lay the foundation that produces his Oath after they are stolen, that causes so much damage.

So, broadly I suppose I would say: Tolkien is saying that the things we make and have are good when we use them to give each other happiness, to produce beauty, comfort, enjoyment that is shared by a community; not clung to tightly and exclusively. It’s the gemstones scattered by the Noldor on the beaches of Valinor. They can turn us towards evil when they are loved pridefully, selfishly, and exclusively. And, though I didn’t discuss this above, they can turn us towards folly when we can’t let go of them for what’s more important: that’s Turgon staying in Gondolin, ignoring the message of Love not too well the works of thy hands and the devices of thy heart. That comes into The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well - the importance of the fact that hobbits can and do (reluctantly) give up their everyday home comforts of six meals a day and comfortable hobbit-holes and warm beds when they need to; those comforts aren’t bad, Tolkien outright celebrates them, but they’re only good insofar as we are willing and able to give them up when we need to. (Aragorn’s line when Pippin drops his Lorien-broach to help them follow the orc-trail, He who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters, is also on this theme.)

[Note: Here I’m just “exploring” some thoughts/attitudes I’ve had regarding fanfics. In no way am I trying to convince anyone nor am I targeting fic writers—if anything, maybe you guys can change my mind.]

I had no idea of the diffusion of fan fiction until I began spending more time on Tumblr, but I remember feeling a certain “uneasiness” toward the whole idea from the start. One day I finally decided to examine that strange gut reaction. It wasn’t clear to me at first, but said reaction had to do with the whole Tolkien idea of “sub-creation.” 

We create because we were created and we emulate our Creator. However, creation is pretty much “other” or “given” (forgive me, as I may be using some terms carelessly). Just because we imagine something to be, or wish something to be a certain way, does not mean that said things are true or will come to be the way we want them. We can, of course, modify ourselves and our world to a degree, but a large part of reality (creation) lies outside our control. 

Now take, let’s say, The Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis is the creator of that work/world. He “owns” it, in a fashion. Here’s where sub-creation comes into play. I can’t introduce or modify “characters” and events to my liking in our world; why or how can I introduce any change to Lewis’ world with any kind of certainty, indeed, with any kind of author-ity? If nothing I write about happening in Narnia really happens in Narnia (since I don’t have authority over it, I’m not its creator), why write it at all? 

Of course, the events narrated by Lewis didn’t really happen, either. But it’s his creation. Everything we know about Narnia is there because he brought it into being. It’s a world I can contemplate, it’s given and outside of me. It’s not under my control. So why bother introducing events that are not part of the world’s reality?

(This discussion can take me down an entirely different rabbit-hole: Why I don’t like most comic-book storylines. If characters just die and come back, and entire continuities get ditched, then nothing that happened/happens matter. Sure it was fun in the moment, but now nothing happened. Nothing is. I think that Chesterton said somewhere that for something to matter it must be lasting. But that’s for another day.)