Taum's Aphorisms, parts I to VI

So, after a lapse of several days, I'm about to start posting daily entries from Taum's piece that I've dubbed 'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy', though perhaps ' . . . of Tolkienian Fantasy' might have been nearer the mark.

To recap, here's what I make of the first six entries (which, conveniently, take up the first of the four typescript pages). All comments are simply my interpretations and have no authorial authority (which is why I've been presenting the paragraphs without any commentary or apparatus, to allow Taum's work to stand on its own).



(1) whereas I've come to look at Tolkien's world as teleological (that is, the foredoomed disenchanting of Middle-earth to become our everyday world is the most key thing about it)*, Taum sees it as "aetiological". That is, Tolkien's stories are the kind of myth that answers questions about why the world is the way it is: not just 'why do we have day and night' but 'why do we fear the dark?'. Having two races, Elves & Men, gives Tolkien more variables to work with in presenting his themes.

(2) Middle-earth is neither our familiar "present physical world" nor a 'Mirror for Magistrates' recasting thereof but its own coherent, self-contained (literary) reality. This departs somewhat from Tolkien's own description of M-e as our world's mythical past but chimes with Tolkien's rejection of Looking-Glass worlds as truely fairy-stories.

(3) Like Niggle's walking into the distance without finding it becoming mere surroundings, Middle-earth is a 'Golden Age' that will never be reduced to History. As one of his most memorable phrases puts it, "time never brings the Golden Age any closer". However, his statement that "it percolates through 'history' from time to time" sounds like a whiff of Ch. Wms' Logres. Here his and my approach diverge almost completely, but he nicely anticipates a Tolkienian theme that wd be revealed w. the publication not long afterwards of THE LOST ROAD and, much more strongly a few years later, THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS.

(4) Tolkien's chosen medium was language and myth. Taum asserts: "to participate in [Middle-earth's] mythic powers . . . [through the mediation of words] . . . is to re-establish a harmony with the present world." I think this resonates with the "Recovery" and perhaps also "Consolation" from OFS; on the whole, it's Taum's re-statement of Tolkien's "Secondary World".

(5) waxing a bit poetic, he points out that instead of a mish-mash of borrowings Tolkien's world has its own life, "becoming a new thing, not merely a hyrdize [hybridized?] retelling". Taum's focus on the Near East as a major source for Tolkien's myths departs from the familiar array (OE, ON, Celtic, some Roman), all of which can be summed up under his other heading of "ancient Europe".

(6) He defines History as the observation of events, vs. Myth as the perception of events. History is wholly impartial; Myth wholly responsive. I think this is entirely specious; eloquence overwhelming the argument. But perhaps I'm simply not seeing a subtlety here.

--JDR

And now, back to the real deal:



*cf. my 2004 lecture at the Marquette Blackwelder Conference, "And All The Days Of Her Life Are Forgotten", since published in the Blackwelder memorial volume.