This intriguing question was asked of me by a correspondent who was puzzled by the following letter by C. S. Lewis to his friend, Arthur Greeves (emphasis added)
“Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the woods – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them.
“We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.”
–C. S. Lewis in a letter to Arthur Greeves, 22 June 1930
My correspondent asked: Is he mad who takes such assertions as serious and relevant?
My initial response:
I know and love this letter of Lewis! In fact, I have a feeling that I’ve quoted it in one of my own books at some stage, perhaps in C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church. I didn’t make the connection when you made your query.
I don’t think that Lewis (or by inference Tolkien) is saying that nymphs and dryads really existed but that pagans saw a supernatural (spiritual) presence in the natural world and in the familiar landscape that had been their home and that of their ancestors for generations. I grapple with some of these questions, though tangentially, in a book review I wrote a few years ago, which is published in my new book, Beauteous Truth: Faith, Reason, Literature and Culture (St. Augustine’s Press).
My correspondent was not content with the brevity of my reply: “ I guess I grapple with What is it Joseph grapples with?”
My response:
Forgive brevity. I have a book deadline suspended like the sword of Damocles above me!
Might I suggest you consider purchasing my forthcoming book, Beauteous Truth: Faith, Reason, Literature and Culture (St. Augustine’s Press), in which you will find a much more comprehensive engagement with these issues? At root, orthodox faith and authentic reason are inseparable. Irrational faith is heresy and the distorted reason of the anthropocentric so-called Enlightenment is ultimately irrational. Also, as a cautionary aside, and as Ronald Knox quipped, mysticism begins in mist and ends in schism! Mysticism is only trustworthy when it is rooted in orthodoxy.
NB: My “cautionary aside” was designed to deter my interlocutor from believing in the possibility that dryads and nymphs might exist in reality.
My correspondent was not satisfied and demanded a straightforward answer:
I merely meant to ask what you made of Lewis’s statements. All I’ve gotten from you thus far is that that statement doesn’t mean all that I take it to mean (or that if it does I am wicked not to blow it off?). So I reiterate, What (if anything) do you make of Lewis’s statements?
My final response:
I don’t believe that Tolkien or Lewis believes or is saying that they believe that pagans actually saw dryads and nymphs. They are saying that pagans believed that they saw dryads and nymphs because of the spiritual connectedness of non-technological agrarian culture to nature. It is possible to deduce from other things that Tolkien and Lewis wrote that they were open to the possibility that God, prior to the Revelation of Himself in Christ, sent the pagans pictures in the form of the Muse inspiring creative story-telling and mythmaking, i.e. that God revealed Himself to the pagans in their mythology. Using this line of reasoning, it is not beyond the pale of possibility that these pictures might have included apparitions of spiritual beings, which the pagans called dryads and nymphs.
What I find difficult to believe is that there are people . . . oh, never mind, there is no way to say that charitably.
You simply have to read the rest of the sentence to glean the meaning: ” they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the woods – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside.”
Because persons living in localized agrarian societies enjoyed an intimate connection to the land on which they lived, and because man is a spiritual animal, their connection to the land itself was, in a sense, spiritual. Since a nymph or a dryad is conceived of merely as a visible expression of a spiritual existence embodied in the landscape, one could say that, in a sense, such creatures were not wholly fictitious in that age.
Of course, Tolkien is talking about existence at the level of tradition and poetry, not necessarily at the level of metaphysics and Aristotelianism. He is not, for instance, saying that the land left some sort of mark upon the souls of men, or that God created spiritual beings identifiable as dryads, or that the connection between man and the earth exists in the same metaphysical manner as the connection between spouses. But culture, relationships, and tradition are real things too, even if they are not creatures.
The final idea that Mr. Pierce mentions is also possible, as is the idea that at least some manifestations of pagan deities or pagan fortune-telling were the actions of demons desirous of being worshiped.
Titus, Your explanation is eloquent and encapsulates the truth more succinctly than my own responses. Thank you!
In another letter to Arthur Greaves Lewis wrotes:
“The story of Christ is simply a true myth. One must be content to accept it in the same way, remember that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s i.e. i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there.”
What a very interesting and entertaining post!
This whole discussion reminded me very much of Peter Kreeft’s excellent “Philosophy of Tolkien” book. Two parts specifically. One was related to whether or not elves (or the long lived people) actually existed or not, to which Kreeft said he did not know if there was, but cultures all over the world have believed in things like them. It was always possible he said, and it filled in some kind of…human need was it? Immortality? A spiritual ideal? I can’t remember, but I just remember reading that and having a big smile on my face! I love Tolkien’s elves, so sue me. 🙂
The other thing I was reminded of, was when Kreeft talked about the creation story of Arda, and the Valar’s part in it. He mentioned that the idea of angelic beings playing a role in creation or maintaining it was not something lost on the Church, and that it was an idea sometimes thrown around in medieval (or ancient was it?) world, as it helped answer some of the riddles of the problem of evil (specifically non-human evils, or demonic evils, but evil found in nature, or natural disasters, etc. i.e. if angelic beings like the Valar for example had a part to play in the creation, then a Morgoth or rebellious or unfaithful angelic being certainly could be to blame for the way certain things are in the natural world). That was the gist of what he said, but I do apologize, he said it so much better than I did, and quicker too! I just remember it was the first time I had read anything like that, and I have to admit I was blown away by it! As a Tolkien lover, the idea was really, really appealing! 🙂 Even Lewis’ cosmos had the Eldil!
But who knows these things…still fun to talk about though!
In a semi-related and semi-unrelated track, there are two things I’d like to say/ask, both related to Tolkien, either through his work or through the genre he popularized:
1)Having seen The Hobbit film twice now, and going to see it a third time this weekend I just wanted to mention something I never really noticed before until recently. The Elves in the films…don’t they look, um, well, how should I put this? Gay. Oh I don’t mean Legolas or Elrond or Arwen or whatever main elf there was, I mean the extras. I never really noticed before, but after watching the Hobbit film and the LOTR trilogy again, the backround elves looked positively gay. They do, there is just no way around it. They look like effeminate men playing dress up. That and combined with the fact that in the recent Hobbit film Elves were portrayed as vegans makes me add yet another thing to my list of PJ adaptation grievances. I’m sorry but Tolkien’s elves were a kind of idealized men, not gay vegans! Oh I’m sure, seeing as how they were just extras, it was not an intentional thing on Jackson’s part, but it reminds me that moderns really have a hard time picturing elegant or graceful men. That and the fact that it helped inspire internet fan fic that would have Tolkien ripping hairs out of his head. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across some tale of a queer elf love affair in Middle-Earth. Whether it be Glorfindel’s secret love affair with Erestor or….ugh I have to stop there. I wish the Tolkien Estate could go after trash like that, but as long as no one sells anything, fan fic is a-ok by the law.
My points made, am I the only one who noticed the, er, oddness of the elf extras in the films? Is it just me, or do the elf extras in the films look wrong for Tolkien’s world?
2) Speaking of myth and fantasy and Tolkien: Earlier this month (the 8th to be exact) the highly anticipated final installment of the Wheel of Time series came out, A Memory of Light. I bring it up for several reasons. One is that it was a good fantasy series, one of the best I’ve read (under Tolkien of course, no one ever comes close to master), and it was a good series in the sense of goodness, not full of the petulant nihilism that warps most epic fantasy series today. There really was real good and real evil in that sub-created world, even if some of the characters were caught inbetween. This was there for a reason, and that brings me to the third reason why I mention it. The author, the late Robert Jordan was a Christian. While sadly not a Catholic, he was a religious man, a believing Christian, in his own words, a High Church Episcopalian, one who recieved communion more than once a week. And when asked in an interview what the most influential book he ever read was, he answered the Holy Bible, which changed his life forever. From what I know of him he reminded me of an old southern gentlemen like kind of guy.
While I don’t think he followed Tolkien’s method for writing fantasy, he certainly took Tolkien for his inspiration in writing the Wheel of Time series, but the series was not lame Tolkien rip (as so many others are), there was alot of love poured into his world, and it’s known to be one of the more intricate and complex fantasy worlds out there. While there are themes from eastern mythology in it (like the Wheel of Time), the underlying battle of good against evil was obviously coming from his Christian faith. I don’t know if I’d call the series Christian fantasy in the same way I’d call Tolkien or Lewis’ work, but perhaps more in the vein of Harry Potter or the Chronicles of Prydain, in the sense of a fantasy series that was influenced in part by the author’s Christian faith. I’d recommend the series for a good read, one well worth your time (if you’ve got the time that is, it’s quite a looong series!).
Speaking of good fantasy reads that relate to Tolkien, someone has just started releasing a fantasy series that was created using Tolkien’s method (“On Fairy Stories”), not just ripping off his creation! A true rarity. The author, Tom Simon, besides being a Catholic, does great critical essays on Tolkien, his method, and the work that would come after his wake. He essays are really worth one’s time. The first book of the series is available through amazon, the first of a planned eight. It’s supposed to be quite good, and again it was one of the rare fantasy series out there created using Tolkien’s method, not the Tolkien rip most other fantasy is.
http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Earth-Maker-ebook/dp/B00AR5I0FK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358587610&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Eye+of+the+MAker+simon
You can find his essays here:
http://bondwine.com/