Source: http://michaeltolkien.com/page88.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 17:56:47+00:00

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§1 I have had a lifelong admiration for and interest in my grandfather’s closely interrelated academic and fictional work, so I was delighted to receive an invitation from Lynn Whittaker on behalf of The Tolkien Society to talk about my fantasy fiction and relate it to some reflections on Tolkien work. I suggested I might do so in the context of some of his attitudes to this genre, as indicated in his own fantasies and in his Essay on Fairy Stories, and trace some of the conscious and more or less ‘accidental’ influences from JRRT’s work on my writing. I am all too aware that it is easy to simulate parallels or what critics call sources and analogues; but in the 1990s I became steeped in my grandfather’s work, both for its own sake and because I was committed to several public lectures. And it has probably been natural for some of this to rub off on my own fictional creative output, distinct though it is in so many ways.
§2 I’ll just say a little about my work to start with before I return to it in more detail. I have written two verse fantasy narratives of about 120 pages long, based on tales by a prolific children’s writer from the first half of the 20th century. Florence Bone only wrote two fantasies of enchantment or make-believe: The Other Side of the Rainbow (1910) and The Rose-coloured Wish (1923), and these are now rare books. She was otherwise committed to historic fiction and school stories with a strong moralistic bias. The two fantasies now feel the least dated of her work; and I had long wanted to pay tribute to and revive them. In hindsight I felt I had taken up among several rôles two principal ones. First, like those early translators or imitators of ancient Roman and Greek texts, verse and prose, from the 15th century onwards, I would try to recapture and bring out the spirit of the original rather than turning out a literal rendering. Secondly, perhaps I was working like the anonymous teller of long-told ballads who adds new touches, and develops inherent themes for a particular audience. (As in the sinister Scots ballad, The Twa Corbies toned down and yet subtly recast as The Three Crows) But whatever I was doing, my tales are not dependent on knowing the original and have an organic life of their own, or internal consistency: a notable ‘Tolkien’ requirement for fantasy, and one I will return to.
§3 Tolkien’s Fairy Story essay was originally composed for the Andrew Lang Memorial Lecture, which he delivered at The University of St Andrews in 1938, and then published in 1964 along with the tale Leaf by Niggle, under the title Tree and Leaf. The combination is significant as it suggests how his notions of fantasy were not locked up in the ivory towers of academia but were part of his own creative experience and practice, and he wanted that to be understood.
§4 Strangely, I turned to this essay and re-read it thoroughly when I was in a perplexed state over how to approach the writing of my second story, Rainbow on which I will be focusing. And though I was about to paint on a miniscule canvas compared to Tolkien’s or indeed Niggle’s, I did feel daunted by the task I had set myself.
§5 Florence Bone’s The Other Side of the Rainbow is a charming children’s fantasy and I wanted to retell it in my own style and incorporate my responses to its suggestions; but I hoped to enhance rather than lose its major theme: the quality of being open to wonder. By this I do not mean mere curiosity but whole-hearted response to the living world and beings who live in it. And it so happens that the nurturing and development of WONDER was felt by Tolkien to lie at the heart of what well-written Fairy Stories achieve or aim at.
A little girl the author calls Plain Old-fashioned Jane, is chosen in infancy by benign ‘fairy’ figures to receive the gift of unaffected, open-minded wonder for and sympathy with the natural world, and to travel by unexpectedly roundabout ways to the mythical rainbow garden, bridge and palace as a means of developing and refining her responses. These lofty, ethereal places will provide the ultimate glimpses of perfection. But many of Jane’s strangest and most challenging adventures arise from her willingness to assist Joyless Joe, who at first despises and distrusts all she has come to believe in and care for. Her way forward is sidetracked by a quest to acquire a silver spade, the means for this lad to make a new, exploratory start: she must visit an underground forge, a desert-dwelling giantess, and an under-hill nursery where all plants are cared for. Only then is she free to rise to higher realms of wonder but even here she is tested by her degree of concern for unfortunate figures, and just on the verge of the promised garden, forgetting warnings, finds her progress seriously threatened. After Jane reaches the heavenly palace the tale ends in a kind of romantic apotheosis. She is transformed into the ubiquitous maiden of post-Mallory quest-and-conquest yarns, and rides away with Sir Magic Wonderful. Earlier on this lonely, gallant, quasi-Arthurian knight has entertained her in his moonlit, gothic palace.
§7 Before I come back to Tolkien’s essay and how it prodded me in various directions, and while you have this information in mind may I just explain briefly how I adapted this narrative. With some exceptions I followed Florence Bone’s narrative scheme. Unlike Jane, my central character, Grace, is well into girlhood when she is tested with a choice of gifts. In addition to visiting ‘The-Wood-That-Is-Not-There’ with its enhanced sense of nature’s mysteriously benevolent power, my traveller has to pass through ‘The-Wood-That-Must-Be-There’ where the retrospective contrasts and uninviting atmosphere present an unruly, tooth-and-claw post-Darwinian wilderness. My Rainbow Garden has many more contrasting scenes than in the source tale, and in my version the Rainbow Palace on the summit of the bow bridge is not the setting for the final scene. It is an enthralling place but one for finding perspectives and making choices about the future, whereas little Jane exits from here to dwell happily-ever-after with Sir Magic. In my tale he is Sir Substantial Nebule (or more familiarly Sir Cloudy Lost-Heart) an attractive figure but apparently caught in a time warp. Similar temptations to escape have been apparent at many stages of Grace’s journey.
§9 I include all Florence Bone’s characters: guiding ‘fairy’ figures of authority, birds, animals, plants, insects. But their appearance, disposition, behaviour and speech is often radically changed or developed to suit the purpose and concepts of my story. This also affects the content and style of the more lyrical passages attributed to them by F. Bone.
1.) The crucial matter of FAIRY as a name for a being or a place of enchantment.
2.) How a dream structure or stress on illusion should be avoided.
3.) The mistaken assumption that fairy stories are primarily for children.
4.) The importance of interior consistency in a story, what Tolkien calls ‘subcreation’, or ‘recreated reality’.
5.) The potentially refreshing and renewing capacity of well-written fantasy.
§11 Let’s consider‘FAIRY’ The fairy figures in F.B.’s tale, as in Eleanor Farjeon’s famous Flower Fairy Stories, appear to come from what Tolkien calls in his essay (UH.p12) the ‘long line of flower fairies and fluttering sprites with antennae…’ (derived, he says from the 17th cent poet Drayton’s verse tale Nymphidia) He always disliked them as a child and points out how Andrew Lang comments on tales that contain them:.. ‘they always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses, gardenias and apple blossom…(fairies) who try to be funny and fail or try to preach and succeed!’ Of course, the fairies in F.B’s tale are meant to be for the entertainment of children and are described and made to speak according to certain conventions (And I shall come back to whole issue of the assumed connection of Fairy Stories and children) Her Fairy Wonder and co. are not as absurd as Lang indicates, but they did present me with a challenge! I wanted the equivalent beings in my version to be anything but ‘floaty’ or whimsical and certainly not ‘preachy’, and not so diminutive they could only be found curled up on a flower petal. I needed them to be purposeful beings whose authority derives from their integral part in the natural world they take care of and about which the heroine’s sense of wonder was to be developed. Their foresight and insight must be felt to be based on experience acquired over a longer span of time than can ever be allotted to mortals.
1.) My need for guides and guardians, as I call them, to be figures who are unpredictable in size and in the way they choose to appear, speak and act.
2.) My impulse to celebrate through my heroine’s gift of wonder both the enchantment and the realities of the natural world, of which her guides and guardians are an essential part.
§14 But I should move from theory to practice and give you a flavour of the first encounter between Grace and the guardians who approach her with an initial test of choosing gifts prior to the journey that is proposed to her. Notice that at once it should be clear that the tale is not about the mysterious beings, call them what you will: it is about Grace’s experience.
conservatory lit up with flowering plants.
of purest white like the rose outside her window.
‘We are flower guardians here to offer gifts.
How strange it was to lie there and feel important!
of plants and flowers their garments made her think about.
in your dream. It’s not the sort you have in bed.
that will guide you to The-Wood-That-Is-Not-There.
ebony pipe, he played a slow, soothing melody.
and nearby buttercups turned to golden mist.
that Aunt Miriam said were made up by the artist.
not one sparrow chattering under the eaves.
grew or moved in the haze beyond this leaden sheet.
§16 The dream here merely transports Grace into what Tolkien might call ‘The perilous realm’ or Faërie, just as in Leaf by N. the unlikely railway train takes Niggle to a further stage of enlightenment. The pedlar says the dream is a new kind of seeing, which is in line with a journey that increases a sense of wonder. Notice the ambiguity that G. woke as if she were still asleep. The dream rather than what it generates is the illusion; and she is at once in a world of tangible reality, where she knows what should be there and strangely is not, and senses at once how the river cannot be crossed, while her aunt’s remembered comment on illusory illustration alerts her that there may be more than meets the eye.
§18 When I reread this I found it echoed my instincts, and certainly cohered with the way I had written my other tale, WISH. But it challenged me once again to make this new tale work at various levels that could be read and enjoyed by a young person and yet felt by an adult to say more than meets the eye at first reading. Though I should make it clear while talking about layers of meaning that I never made use of allegorical structures. I don’t think I dislike burdening fantasy with such mechanisms as much as JRRT did, but I still have reservations about their manipulative strategy. Even so, I’d like to illustrate my use of levels of implication from the chapter where Grace meets the young knight, Sir Cloudy Lost-Heart and stays at his aptly named ‘Castle-in-the-Air.’ There have been hints that she is about to move on to more dangerous and threatening phase of her quest than he can ever know in his make-believe world of errantry, though he’s full of wise warnings about how she should stay alert. Meanwhile, his antics, character and moonlit residence are all quite attractive and engaging to a child. In the passage I have chosen, the dialogue and description may appeal to child and adult alike, but there is an undertow of implications about make-believe and artifice that shut out the world of living things. And, to revert to matters I was discussing about Faërie earlier on there’s an ironic query going on: is Faërie a nonsensical place of escape that leads to such poses or is it really a vibrant realm that enriches our appreciation for the everyday places we must always return to?
each other and admire their precious belongings.
a question that seemed greatly to puzzle him at first!
‘Weapons are for attack or to defend oneself.
she told him all about her various adventures.
to and dwelling on her jewel-flecked belt.
He also began to look wistful, even downcast.
with moonshine flames had escaped her busy eyes.
orchards were white with cherry, pear and apple blossom.
and he really seemed to mean what he said.
or, more respectably, Sir Substantial-Nebule.
d’you see?’ Grace didn’t but nodded politely.
‘Still he’s a genial fellow and pays well.
if he was hard to catch like the cloudy knight.
if you ask me!’ So she’d have to wait.
§20 You’ll notice that one side of this dialogue is blunt and colloquial. Neither adults nor children care to be stuck in a rarefied, over-refined atmosphere or for that matter a dark and lowering one.
you learnt and wondered about every kind of colour.
was far more than shades and tones you happened to like.
Mentioning ‘spell’ harks back to what he says earlier: UHpp31-2: ‘…small wonder that spell means both a story told and a formula of power over living men.’) And once it is broken, he says: ‘… you are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside…’ Further on Tolkien suggests that to persuade a reader that a fanciful concept actually works within its own world and has a reason for doing so is a kind of ART that is not easily achieved.
loomed up like a rocky precipice.
across the desert and up at the high sun.
if that was what to call her when asking a favour.
Could she have missed seeing someone like this?
next to her with one or two invisible strides.
How could she be heard from so far below?
Was this mountainous being cousin to Heartsease?
of this living mass of stone, and round her neck.
She must climb and quickly not to waste her trek.
towards a gigantic sea-shell ear.
that everything made sense, however odd it felt.
to ask about, but White Rose was far from finished.
round and round and back to where it started.
the other gleaming with full-moon mystery.
as his bride-to-be in moonlit make-believe.
to make your gift of wonder come alive.
accept much that cannot be explained away.
brings his world alive; but he never does.
without which no colour-bow spans the sky.
or rainbow garden might have enchanted you.
What I have just read brings me to the last aspect I have selected from Tolkien’s essay, which for want of a better phrase I’ll call the potentially refreshing and renewing capacity of well-written fantasy. He maintains that one value of fairy story and other forms of fantasy may be to renew appreciation for and see in a fresh light what has become dulled by over-familiarity, taken for granted, and probably most destructive of open-minded wonder, acquired!
All he’d heard so far was the word ‘key’.
‘What key? You must be seeing things!’ ‘Look!
some lively flowers or insects with brains and eyes.
‘It’s the gate into that wood,’ insisted Grace.
And he looked even more blank. ‘Wood?
Now it was her turn to stare in disbelief.
Might as well ask him his name, she thought.
The few friends I’ve got call me Doncas or Downer.
Grace wondered whether to laugh or feel sorry.
‘Your nicknames make you sound unhappy,’ she said.
strewn with bushes and not the lively green wood.
he didn’t care and seldom wondered about anything.
said Don with a gurgle that might have been laughter.
she said and threw her stone high into the air.
and rolled away until it rested under the gate.
‘This gemstone is worth more than any jeweller’s price.
nonsense to me.’ The boy seemed bored and yawned loudly.
Don laughed though it sounded like painful choking.
He looked at Grace as if she were half his size.
§25 Here, and in terms of what I have just read, I’d like to pick up again what Tolkien says about the manner of fairy stories.
§26 Later in the epilogue to his essay (UHp64) Tolkien suggests strongly the capacity of fantasy fiction to glimpse some truths, which show in themselves how the world’s limits and defects can be overcome. This comes about when a new appreciation of the familiar gives sudden all-inclusive perspectives. I hope to indicate some of this potential at the end of Rainbow when Grace returns to the orchard behind her home. It was from here that she set out in good faith on an indirect trek to the Rainbow realms, apparently with very little to guide her except the amethyst gem stone you heard about in her conversation with Don and which she had chosen as the best of gifts since it stood for the quality of wonder. In the Rainbow Palace she had been told to relinquish it as her journey had made it unnecessary. She was to place it on one of the guardian’s looms for its moods and patterns to be threaded into sunsets and moonrises, so all who saw them would pause for thought. Down to the smallest details in the inclusive secondary world of this tale everything has an integral rôle.
§27 Grace’s movement through the thin veils that divide the ‘here and now’ from the ‘beyond’ has not been an end in itself; it prepares for her reinvigorated return. What she’s seen and heard does not set her apart from daily life but enables her to embrace it more positively. (This is the case, too, with Smith in Tolkien’s SWM. Only the vast shadow he casts (p.24) and noticed by his son, suggests that some deeply inaccessible part of him has been transformed. He remains a family man and an outstanding and discerning craftsman.) Like him Grace has encountered strange transformations, bold colours, unusual kinds of communication but all are recognisable as derived from the living, evolving world as we know it, and physical obstacles and limitations have always been as frustrating and confusing as ever.
the long lane that skirted aunt and uncle’s land.
everything glisten after a passing shower.
preened themselves and flapped their idle wings.
Was it the rain or could she see more clearly?
let wandering geese peck and trample where they would.
and whitening upturned umbrellas of parsley and hemlock.
repeated his warning: my-castle… my-castle!
had passed she hoped to see a hint of rainbow.
to spot a most unusual many-coloured crest.
wispy cloud turn to watery stained-glass?
It’s the closest you’ll come to finding a rainbow flower.
had appeared in folds of airy, shimmering violet.
farewell I wave to you.
where dreams may lead you.
seemed to lead to anxious times and hard choices.
of places she was meant to have left behind.
about ideas, plans or fanciful hopes.
simmered as invitingly as ever.
How glad she was that nothing had changed.
So was she after all just the same Grace?

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