The superversive Mr Simon

Below please find a comment by Tom Simon on an issue being discussed recently in this space. I add it here both to show that he can say in a paragraph what it takes my rather more mundane mind ten pages  to say, and to urge any who have not read his essays to do themselves a favor starting with my favorites, here and here and here.

Today, as it happens, I was rereading the inimitable G.K.C.’s Tremendous Trifles; and there I found, and paused to ponder, this neat turn of phrase which seems apposite to the matter at hand:

Folklore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is — what will ahealthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is — what will a madman do with a dull world?

I would submit that the magic of fairy tales is the magic of a w ild and marvellous universe; and the magic of the occult is the magic of a sick and  screaming soul — the art of the Elves and the deceits of the Enemy, as Galadriel called them respectively. I would submit that if we keep them clearly distinguished, and reserve our admiration for the former and our condemnation chiefly for the latter, we shall have done our duty as Christians not to aid the Enemy. Moreover, we shall do two positive goods: the good of what Chesterton  called Mooreeffoc and Tolkien called ‘Recovery’, of waking the imagination to the marvels that are in real things, and recalling the divine gift of astonishment; and the good of discernment, of teaching our readers the vitaldifference between the joyous appreciation of wonders and the dry, salt lust to possess and control them. Neither of these goods will they be likely to obtain from any other source.