Showing posts with label Myth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Myth. Show all posts
Saturday, October 1, 2011
2:48 AM
Dum praeliarétur Míchael Archángelus cum dracóne, audíta est vox dicéntium: Salus Deo nostro. Allelúia.
There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone...for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened, they came to deeper understanding, increased in unison and harmony.
And it came to pass that Ilúvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed...
Then Ilúvatar said to them: 'Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts, and devices, if he will. But I will sit and heaken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song...'
Now the Children of Ilúvatar are Elves and Men...And amid all the splendours of the World, its vast halls and spaces...Ilúvatar chose a place for their habitation in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable stars. And this habitation might seem a little thing to those who consider only the majesty of the Ainur, and not their terrible sharpness...But when the Ainur had beheld this habitation in a vision and had seen the Children of Ilúvatar arise therin, then many of the most mighty among them bent all their thought and their desire towards that place...And of these Melkor was the chief, even as he was in the beginning the greatest of the Ainur...And he feigned...that he desired to go thither and order all things for the good of the Children of Ilúvatar...But he desired rather to subdue to his will both Elves and Men..to be a master over other wills.
But Manwë was the brother of Melkor in the mind of Ilúvatar, and he was the chief instrument of the second theme that Ilúvatar had raised up against the discord of Melkor...And Manwë said unto Melkor: 'This kingdom thou shalt not take for thine own, wrongfully, for many others have laboured here no less than thou.'
Then Ilúvatar said to them: 'Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts, and devices, if he will. But I will sit and heaken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song...'
Now the Children of Ilúvatar are Elves and Men...And amid all the splendours of the World, its vast halls and spaces...Ilúvatar chose a place for their habitation in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable stars. And this habitation might seem a little thing to those who consider only the majesty of the Ainur, and not their terrible sharpness...But when the Ainur had beheld this habitation in a vision and had seen the Children of Ilúvatar arise therin, then many of the most mighty among them bent all their thought and their desire towards that place...And of these Melkor was the chief, even as he was in the beginning the greatest of the Ainur...And he feigned...that he desired to go thither and order all things for the good of the Children of Ilúvatar...But he desired rather to subdue to his will both Elves and Men..to be a master over other wills.
But Manwë was the brother of Melkor in the mind of Ilúvatar, and he was the chief instrument of the second theme that Ilúvatar had raised up against the discord of Melkor...And Manwë said unto Melkor: 'This kingdom thou shalt not take for thine own, wrongfully, for many others have laboured here no less than thou.'
J.R.R. Tolkien, Silmarillon: Ainulindalë
Was Tolkien--whilst uttering the truth of a creed that is several millennia old--correct about the interest that non-material beings take in the affairs of man?
Seventeen years ago, after waking from a dream with eyes moistened in feverish distress, I could not go back to sleep. I thought of waking up someone to talk to, but my sisters sleeping peacefully in the other beds beside me would not have understood my troubles. I thought of Momma and Daddy, but I was the only child in my family that had never returned to my parents' bed after physically outgrowing it. What a strange thing it would be to go back to them at ten years of age. So I lay, clutching the quilt and looking up through the cracks of the blinds covering the window by my bed. The moon was peering down at me, looking very much like a reaper's sickle.
Seventeen years ago, after waking from a dream with eyes moistened in feverish distress, I could not go back to sleep. I thought of waking up someone to talk to, but my sisters sleeping peacefully in the other beds beside me would not have understood my troubles. I thought of Momma and Daddy, but I was the only child in my family that had never returned to my parents' bed after physically outgrowing it. What a strange thing it would be to go back to them at ten years of age. So I lay, clutching the quilt and looking up through the cracks of the blinds covering the window by my bed. The moon was peering down at me, looking very much like a reaper's sickle.
I began pondering whether the Grim Reaper was holy or evil. Though I perceived his duty as morbid, was he not merely a servant? When Scrooge had pleaded with the frightening spectre of Christmas Future, he had said: 'Good Spirit, your nature intercedes for me and pities me...'
Does it? I asked the moon. I thought of the dream again. Earlier that day I had been watching a science programme, likely merely to enjoy the beautiful images of space they afforded. However, I had listened to the staid, learned men on the show as well, and their talk of black holes had made its mark. This final stage of a star's life impressed upon me so vividly, that that night I dreamt I had been floated within and without the cosmos, hand in hand with some being (at first, I thought my guardian angel), that took me to the event horizon of a dead star that was slowly swallowing up the universe into its compressed nothingness.
I had tried to look away, but the guide clamped its hand about my jaw and forced me to stare as everything spindled comically into the black hole. To see such once majestic things as stars and planets stretched to resemble a wet, flopping noodle made the image more repugnant. The creature with me, who had grown morally ambiguous, did not speak. I did not know if it enjoyed the display or not. There was no voice at all, but if the emotions pressing upon me from the void had been vocalized, they would have run thus:
...never more to wake on stony bed,
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.
In the black wind the stars shall die...
'Ah, no!' I at last said tearfully, and turned away. I felt myself in bed again, real tears in my eyes and with the consciousness that I had spoken aloud.
As I lay fretting, staring at the indigo of space through the pale blinds and the black lace of tree branches, I thought of the factual scientists so indifferently propounding on these scenarios. They were wrong. Whatever was wise or erudite about the sages speaking on such matters, they had no right to be calm in the face of the destruction of things that were. In spite of their ambitions, they ought to have known they could never reduce existence to the amoral system of rules that had no greater interest in men than in the barbs of a sparrow's wing.
Let the empirical scientists be content with their theories reigning 'for the most part', for they shall never obtain the dominion of 'always.' That is a leap of intuition, yes, but one that most of the world have made. The reason is simple: there can be no evil actions without an actor, and the presence of so much evil in the world--moral and physical--demands the existence of agents, for only creatures with volition are not bound absolutely by laws. Hence, there will never be a science of their deeds. Any attempt at such a discipline would itself be superstition.
Now superstition in the literal sense is never wrong. It is but 'standing over a thing in awe and amazement.' Even if the premise of scientism--that all can be reduced to an inanimate, empirical cause--were correct, the mind of man will likely never achieve that exalted state of knowledge. Dana Scully may say, 'Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it,' but that is a statement of faith, not reason, and even if it is true, it is not true simply. The sage and the peasant both do many things in a certain only because those methods have worked in the past. There need not be any rational synthesis to justify their procedures. They stand in awe of the forces of the created world and often find themselves more likely to rely on precedent than pure logic.
And David consulted the Lord: Shall I go up against the Philistines, and wilt thou deliver them into my hands? He answered: Go not up against them, but fetch a compass behind them, and thou shalt come upon them over against the pear trees. And when thou shalt hear the sound of one going in the tops of the pear trees, then shalt thou join battle ( II Samuel V:23-24)
The above is but one of many instances where a spiritual agent acts upon the material order, in this case, after God's own design. It is almost maddening if one concedes that angels are (based upon the teachings of the Church Fathers) the direct operators of the universe. That must be why men most directly exposed to the physical elements--e.g., sailors and farmers--are often so superstitious. Long acquaintance with mysterious cause and devastating effect has served to humble them rather than puff them up. Their empirical experience has also occasionally shown them that things may behave not merely unpredictably, but even contrary to natural laws.
...never more to wake on stony bed,
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.
In the black wind the stars shall die...
'Ah, no!' I at last said tearfully, and turned away. I felt myself in bed again, real tears in my eyes and with the consciousness that I had spoken aloud.
As I lay fretting, staring at the indigo of space through the pale blinds and the black lace of tree branches, I thought of the factual scientists so indifferently propounding on these scenarios. They were wrong. Whatever was wise or erudite about the sages speaking on such matters, they had no right to be calm in the face of the destruction of things that were. In spite of their ambitions, they ought to have known they could never reduce existence to the amoral system of rules that had no greater interest in men than in the barbs of a sparrow's wing.
Let the empirical scientists be content with their theories reigning 'for the most part', for they shall never obtain the dominion of 'always.' That is a leap of intuition, yes, but one that most of the world have made. The reason is simple: there can be no evil actions without an actor, and the presence of so much evil in the world--moral and physical--demands the existence of agents, for only creatures with volition are not bound absolutely by laws. Hence, there will never be a science of their deeds. Any attempt at such a discipline would itself be superstition.
Now superstition in the literal sense is never wrong. It is but 'standing over a thing in awe and amazement.' Even if the premise of scientism--that all can be reduced to an inanimate, empirical cause--were correct, the mind of man will likely never achieve that exalted state of knowledge. Dana Scully may say, 'Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it,' but that is a statement of faith, not reason, and even if it is true, it is not true simply. The sage and the peasant both do many things in a certain only because those methods have worked in the past. There need not be any rational synthesis to justify their procedures. They stand in awe of the forces of the created world and often find themselves more likely to rely on precedent than pure logic.
And David consulted the Lord: Shall I go up against the Philistines, and wilt thou deliver them into my hands? He answered: Go not up against them, but fetch a compass behind them, and thou shalt come upon them over against the pear trees. And when thou shalt hear the sound of one going in the tops of the pear trees, then shalt thou join battle ( II Samuel V:23-24)
The above is but one of many instances where a spiritual agent acts upon the material order, in this case, after God's own design. It is almost maddening if one concedes that angels are (based upon the teachings of the Church Fathers) the direct operators of the universe. That must be why men most directly exposed to the physical elements--e.g., sailors and farmers--are often so superstitious. Long acquaintance with mysterious cause and devastating effect has served to humble them rather than puff them up. Their empirical experience has also occasionally shown them that things may behave not merely unpredictably, but even contrary to natural laws.
Here the learned may shake their heads. Why is men so anthropocentric? Why would beings of such incredible understanding and power be so engrossed with the affairs of one world? With the actions of fragile, fallibe creatures that eat, sweat, and defecate? It seems beneath their dignity, as if they were like those bored Greek gods that could not even let the Achaeans, Argives, and Danaans have a footrace on the plains of Ilium without interfering.
However, the learned who espouse such a view seem not to have noticed they are asking a question regarding motive. They ignore the fact that motives belong only to individuals and they may be enmeshed with all sorts of forces outside the realm of logic: 'The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.'
Have we, as children of men, not stood on peaked mountain balds, inhaling the rarefied air around us until we were giddy with its thinness? Or have we not gazed with heartbreak on radiant sunsets illuminating slender lunar crescents? Have we not occasionally wandered from the common path of the forest into a mossy glen embued with a fae mist? Whatever form the natural raptures we have known took, we have had them. And what did we want in those places of such transcendent splendour? Did we not want the wind, the peaks, the sun, the colours, or even the moss to speak to us? To feel some return of our love from the beloved object? What would have delighted us more than if a nymph or god were to arise from the essence of these things and offer us some acknowledgement? Aye, as beautiful as inanimate things are, sentient things shall always be best.
Angels know that even better than we do, and are less likely to prefer a mountain to man for its bulk than man is himself:
...And this habitation might seem a little thing to those who consider only the majesty of the Ainur, and not their terrible sharpness...
Or as Chesterton put it: 'One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.' The will of the stupidest, shallowest human being is more interesting than the wheel of the universe.
It should not surprise us then how the Church has taught us to approach the Prince of the Heavenly Host, as our tender guardian, rather than a demanding sergeant frowning on our material limitations. In the Old Rite, his name comes third in the Public Confession. At the end of Mass, his prayer immediately follows Our Lady's. His dominion holds over clement hospitals as well as militant hosts. Why?
Angels, we must remember, are individuated according to function. What is their function? Their intellectual grasp of God, whether it is employed to praise or to blaspheme. When the mighty seraphim, the Bearer of Light, set himself up as equal to God, the first being to denounce this outrageous pride was the one defined by his humility and awe. He was the seraphim who rose up and, naming himself, thundered:
That is his thought; that is his being. It is only reasonable that this eternal person takes the greatest interest in how his battle against Satan plays out in temporal affairs, and being so humble, will not scorn the war on any scale. He shall certainly not remain inactive where his nemesis is prowling.
It should not surprise us then how the Church has taught us to approach the Prince of the Heavenly Host, as our tender guardian, rather than a demanding sergeant frowning on our material limitations. In the Old Rite, his name comes third in the Public Confession. At the end of Mass, his prayer immediately follows Our Lady's. His dominion holds over clement hospitals as well as militant hosts. Why?
Angels, we must remember, are individuated according to function. What is their function? Their intellectual grasp of God, whether it is employed to praise or to blaspheme. When the mighty seraphim, the Bearer of Light, set himself up as equal to God, the first being to denounce this outrageous pride was the one defined by his humility and awe. He was the seraphim who rose up and, naming himself, thundered:
'Mi ke El?'
Who is like God?
Sáncte Míchael Archángele, defénde nos in proélio, cóntra nequítiam et insídias diáboli ésto prćsídium. Ímperet ílli Déus, súpplices deprecámur: tuque, prínceps milítić cɶléstis, Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos, qui ad perditiónem animárum pervagántur in múndo, divína virtúte, in inférnum detrúde.
Ámen
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Friday, January 15, 2010
For we have not by following cleverly devised myths, made known to you the power, and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; but we were eyewitnesses of His greatness. For He received from God the Father, honour and glory: this voice coming down to Him from the excellent glory: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him. And this voice we heard brought from heaven, when we were with Him in the holy mount. And we have the more firm prophetical word: whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Understanding this first, that no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation. (II Peter I: 16-20)
‘Is that story true?’ many a round, cherry little mouth has asked me. Whether it was a younger sister I strolled with hand in hand through a gold-hued field of tall grass, a few young boys crouched around the mossy bank of a pond, little cousins reclining on a couch in the sitting room, or a small child sitting next to me on the bus, I would always arch my eyebrow at this query after one of my winding yarns. ‘Of course it’s true!’ To hesitate with children is to die. No being on Earth is quicker to sense hypocrisy or tentative reasoning than a child of man. Nothing but the best feigned indignation against one’s veracity being suspected and the most audacious assertion that one’s tales are in fact annals of history would hush a child’s suspicions. Even so, I would still see them screw their mouths up in a pout and glance over their shoulders with a scrutinizing, ‘I wonder…’
Is this wrong? I can imagine a few Scholastic eyebrows rising as I call to mind St. Thomas Aquinas’s position on ‘jocose lies.’ I have to confess (and I know I’m not the only one) that I have often involuntarily justified some of the masculine disdain for feminine reasoning. Nearly always, I jump ahead with my intuition when I come into contact with a problem. My reason has to struggle to catch up with it, often with a great deal of clumsy tripping that always makes me game for anyone’s wit in conversation. Fibbing to children for the sake of their own amusement is one such instance where I refused to admit it was wrong, even with no logic to justify my position. The rationalization came later, and with the assistance of more articulate persons than myself.
First, there is a dichotomy in fantastic stories. It is difficult to see where children draw it, but it is evidenced in their reactions on seeing 'the man behind the curtain.’ I have witnessed bitter tears drawn from children who prematurely learned that Santa Claus died circa 483 A.D. in Italy—probably not having ever owned any reindeer and the only visit he ever made to a chimney being to drop a few pouches of coins down the smoke-stack. I have hardly ever seen this reaction when a littlie learned that Easter bunnies don’t lay eggs or that the tooth-fairy doesn’t exist. Perhaps others may observe that the reverse sentiment is true in their experience, but that is not to the purpose. The fact remains that in the same children of the same ages very diverse reactions are elicited.
The contrast between horrified bewilderment and stoic resignation is severe, and it does not always have anything to do with the superiority of the tale or the lovability of its characters. Some children even latch onto a story knowing from the beginning that it is a dream and love it still with a fiery intensity. Tolkien—ever the apologist of infant savvy—took issue with the author (or collector) Andrew Lang’s argument that fairytales:
…represent the young age of man true to his early loves, and have his unblunted edge of belief, a fresh appetite for marvels. ‘Is it true?’ is the great question children ask. (Fairy Books, Introduction)
With the merciless acumen a Tolkien reader has come to expect from the man that had the audacity to confess disappointment in Shakespeare, the Don tears this innocuous statement apart:
It seems fairly clear that Lang was using belief in its ordinary sense: belief that a thing exists or can happen in the real (primary) world. If so, then I fear that Lang’s words, stripped of sentiment, can only imply that the teller of marvellous tales to children, must, or may, or at any rate does trade on their credulity…What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful ‘sub- creator’. He makes a Secondary World…Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world…The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken…You are then out in the Primary World again. (On Fairy-Stories: Children)
Then it isn’t really lying after all? Children know immediately what a myth is in their hearts, and they understand that what the author relates inside his own world is proper to that world? Looking to experience to test the hypothesis, it initially seems absolutely true. When little girls are told that mermaids have dark hair the colour of seaweed, they don’t often wrinkle up their noses as they would on seeing someone with green hair. It is a mermaid, and it’s perfectly fittng for them to have green hair.
On telling my little second cousin a story about a monster that had to devour people alive after his teeth had been broken, she gasped in horror, asked many questions, but later reversed to her former play without unperturbed. She even presented her own emotionally animated version of the story to her parents, as if at the age of three she knew that it was only a story and one that she could make her own. So there is no Man in the Moon, no Easter Bunny, no wicked faërie that steal newborns, and no werewolves living beneath the mossy pile of old uprooted railway tracks in the glen, and the best part is that children never really believed there were. Certainly, they acted as if they did, but that was only in the sphere of Pretend. After all, children with make-believe friends are hardly mentally ill.
However, what of the children who do weep on hearing the truth about Santa Claus? Nineteen years ago, I barely escaped a spanking for informing my little sisters of the location of his relics, they were so upset. And what of the moments where, even after telling little ones that wicked, watery Burda doesn’t exist, they still look about fearfully every time they walk past that muddy corner of the pond?
My cousin Jennifer and I remember the time we ate weeds that greatly resembled one of Rapunzel’s salads in an illustrated volume of fairytales (for we had concluded with five and four-year old logic that her diet must have effected such exquisite hair growth). Thanks to the tattling of a neighbour’s boy, we spent the whole afternoon guzzling pints of milk with my mother on the phone with Poison Control. Even if these bizarre instances are only found with abnormal children, i.e. the ‘exceptions that prove the rule’ (such a hateful saying), the children’s abnormality must be accounted for in itself. Do 5% of fairystories actually exert spells so forceful they force their way into the ‘Primary World’? Or is it a defect specific in the child and as abnormal as it would be in an adult?
Lucy Maud Montgomery—the beloved author of children’s books—had a less rigorous opinion on the child's mind than Tolkien. Every single work she ever produced was in effect a study of aesthetic philosophy, and all her books held to the argument that living a life in union with the Beautiful was only truly possible by remaining childlike.
As John Banim observed: ‘there is a world of difference between “childlike” and “childish.”’ So much in fact, that they represent two poles of man’s spirit at that stage. The latter is to be shrugged off more readily than an insect’s grotty, old exoskeleton and the former is to be clung to with unwavering tenacity.
Now in Maud’s novels, the children are more likely to wish tales from fancy to reality, and to never let go of the fantastic. Hence the young Davy’s interrogation in the third volume of the Anne of Green Gables series:
‘…Say, what is echo, Anne; I want to know.’
‘Echo is a beautiful nymph, Davy, living far away in the woods, and laughing at the world from among the hills.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘Her hair and eyes are dark, but her neck and arms are white as snow. No mortal can ever see how fair she is. She is fleeter than a deer, and that mocking voice of hers is all that we can know of her. You can hear her calling at night; you can hear her laughing under the stars. But you can never see her. She flies afar if you follow her, and laughs at you always just over the next hill.’
‘Is that all true, Anne? Or is it a whopper?’ demanded Davy staring. (Anne of the Island: Chapter XXII; Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables)
Though Anne threw her hands up in despair that Davy couldn’t distinguish between a lie and a fairytale, she was likely forgetting an instance in her own childhood where she walked through a perfectly harmless wood nearly paralyzed with the fright inspired by her conjectures concerning the place. She had come out of that experience resolved to ‘ “be contented with everyday life.” ’
Lucy Maud Montgomery herself was very harsh on her characters who persisted on holding onto dreams and fancies instead of embracing the reality before them. Anne was almost severely punished for not seeing in chummy Gilbert the other half of her soul. Pat of Silver Bush bore the full brunt of idolizing her magical home. Emily of New Moon alone seemed to understand the true part that the faerie world plays in that of the concrete (though she had many faults of her own). She observed, as did Maud, that:
It has always seemed to me, ever since early childhood, that, amid all the commonplaces of life, I was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never draw it quite aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it, and I caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond—only a glimpse, but those glimpses have always made life worthwhile. (The Alpine Path)
I remember a suspiciously Platonist priest, who used to call peculiarly beautiful places (mountain balds, mossy begs, rocky caverns, verdant glens, etc.) ‘thin places’--the space between our deceptively accessible, concrete realm and an other world being markedly slight at such points. It was not that these fair, little spots were perfected by the addition of faërie influence, but that they were already more hauntingly lovely than we could understand. They referred to another excellence even beyond themselves.
In Maud’s exquisite, childlike vision of the world, we see that there is a need for all the things we love and haunt us in lore to be at least a reflection of a reality beyond this mortal veil. G. K. Chesterton often observed that our very disappointment with the non-existence of ‘turnip ghosts’ was proof that there must be, somewhere, real ghosts. The very absurdity of the fantastic is due to its aping the realistic. Even shielding one’s eyes from biographical information about Tolkien, it is blatantly obvious that his Secondary World is modelled event for event, tenet for tenet, on what is—for millions—the true story of the Primary World.
Even as one acknowledges that the Seven Days obviously represented ages and not seven twenty-four hour periods, or that Job’s tale was entirely allegory, the gist remains that the events of Revelation must be true. Aristotle said that poetry was a reproduction of real life, altered slightly to ‘instruct and entertain.’ Poetry then must have some basis in real life. If the endless procession of morality tales and fables is to take any effect on the listener, the related incidents, though unnecessary to cool reason, must have happened in some way, somewhere.
If man is expected to live his life not first for himself, but for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, then there had better not only be these three things, but Someone else who could set the example. Humble Peter, the childlike Apostle, whose enthusiasm always outran his prudence, understood this yearning very well. He addressed it directly in his second letter.
Fae Truth by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.
‘Is that story true?’ many a round, cherry little mouth has asked me. Whether it was a younger sister I strolled with hand in hand through a gold-hued field of tall grass, a few young boys crouched around the mossy bank of a pond, little cousins reclining on a couch in the sitting room, or a small child sitting next to me on the bus, I would always arch my eyebrow at this query after one of my winding yarns. ‘Of course it’s true!’ To hesitate with children is to die. No being on Earth is quicker to sense hypocrisy or tentative reasoning than a child of man. Nothing but the best feigned indignation against one’s veracity being suspected and the most audacious assertion that one’s tales are in fact annals of history would hush a child’s suspicions. Even so, I would still see them screw their mouths up in a pout and glance over their shoulders with a scrutinizing, ‘I wonder…’
Is this wrong? I can imagine a few Scholastic eyebrows rising as I call to mind St. Thomas Aquinas’s position on ‘jocose lies.’ I have to confess (and I know I’m not the only one) that I have often involuntarily justified some of the masculine disdain for feminine reasoning. Nearly always, I jump ahead with my intuition when I come into contact with a problem. My reason has to struggle to catch up with it, often with a great deal of clumsy tripping that always makes me game for anyone’s wit in conversation. Fibbing to children for the sake of their own amusement is one such instance where I refused to admit it was wrong, even with no logic to justify my position. The rationalization came later, and with the assistance of more articulate persons than myself.
First, there is a dichotomy in fantastic stories. It is difficult to see where children draw it, but it is evidenced in their reactions on seeing 'the man behind the curtain.’ I have witnessed bitter tears drawn from children who prematurely learned that Santa Claus died circa 483 A.D. in Italy—probably not having ever owned any reindeer and the only visit he ever made to a chimney being to drop a few pouches of coins down the smoke-stack. I have hardly ever seen this reaction when a littlie learned that Easter bunnies don’t lay eggs or that the tooth-fairy doesn’t exist. Perhaps others may observe that the reverse sentiment is true in their experience, but that is not to the purpose. The fact remains that in the same children of the same ages very diverse reactions are elicited.
The contrast between horrified bewilderment and stoic resignation is severe, and it does not always have anything to do with the superiority of the tale or the lovability of its characters. Some children even latch onto a story knowing from the beginning that it is a dream and love it still with a fiery intensity. Tolkien—ever the apologist of infant savvy—took issue with the author (or collector) Andrew Lang’s argument that fairytales:
…represent the young age of man true to his early loves, and have his unblunted edge of belief, a fresh appetite for marvels. ‘Is it true?’ is the great question children ask. (Fairy Books, Introduction)
With the merciless acumen a Tolkien reader has come to expect from the man that had the audacity to confess disappointment in Shakespeare, the Don tears this innocuous statement apart:
It seems fairly clear that Lang was using belief in its ordinary sense: belief that a thing exists or can happen in the real (primary) world. If so, then I fear that Lang’s words, stripped of sentiment, can only imply that the teller of marvellous tales to children, must, or may, or at any rate does trade on their credulity…What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful ‘sub- creator’. He makes a Secondary World…Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world…The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken…You are then out in the Primary World again. (On Fairy-Stories: Children)
Then it isn’t really lying after all? Children know immediately what a myth is in their hearts, and they understand that what the author relates inside his own world is proper to that world? Looking to experience to test the hypothesis, it initially seems absolutely true. When little girls are told that mermaids have dark hair the colour of seaweed, they don’t often wrinkle up their noses as they would on seeing someone with green hair. It is a mermaid, and it’s perfectly fittng for them to have green hair.
On telling my little second cousin a story about a monster that had to devour people alive after his teeth had been broken, she gasped in horror, asked many questions, but later reversed to her former play without unperturbed. She even presented her own emotionally animated version of the story to her parents, as if at the age of three she knew that it was only a story and one that she could make her own. So there is no Man in the Moon, no Easter Bunny, no wicked faërie that steal newborns, and no werewolves living beneath the mossy pile of old uprooted railway tracks in the glen, and the best part is that children never really believed there were. Certainly, they acted as if they did, but that was only in the sphere of Pretend. After all, children with make-believe friends are hardly mentally ill.
However, what of the children who do weep on hearing the truth about Santa Claus? Nineteen years ago, I barely escaped a spanking for informing my little sisters of the location of his relics, they were so upset. And what of the moments where, even after telling little ones that wicked, watery Burda doesn’t exist, they still look about fearfully every time they walk past that muddy corner of the pond?
My cousin Jennifer and I remember the time we ate weeds that greatly resembled one of Rapunzel’s salads in an illustrated volume of fairytales (for we had concluded with five and four-year old logic that her diet must have effected such exquisite hair growth). Thanks to the tattling of a neighbour’s boy, we spent the whole afternoon guzzling pints of milk with my mother on the phone with Poison Control. Even if these bizarre instances are only found with abnormal children, i.e. the ‘exceptions that prove the rule’ (such a hateful saying), the children’s abnormality must be accounted for in itself. Do 5% of fairystories actually exert spells so forceful they force their way into the ‘Primary World’? Or is it a defect specific in the child and as abnormal as it would be in an adult?
Lucy Maud Montgomery—the beloved author of children’s books—had a less rigorous opinion on the child's mind than Tolkien. Every single work she ever produced was in effect a study of aesthetic philosophy, and all her books held to the argument that living a life in union with the Beautiful was only truly possible by remaining childlike.
As John Banim observed: ‘there is a world of difference between “childlike” and “childish.”’ So much in fact, that they represent two poles of man’s spirit at that stage. The latter is to be shrugged off more readily than an insect’s grotty, old exoskeleton and the former is to be clung to with unwavering tenacity.
Now in Maud’s novels, the children are more likely to wish tales from fancy to reality, and to never let go of the fantastic. Hence the young Davy’s interrogation in the third volume of the Anne of Green Gables series:
‘…Say, what is echo, Anne; I want to know.’
‘Echo is a beautiful nymph, Davy, living far away in the woods, and laughing at the world from among the hills.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘Her hair and eyes are dark, but her neck and arms are white as snow. No mortal can ever see how fair she is. She is fleeter than a deer, and that mocking voice of hers is all that we can know of her. You can hear her calling at night; you can hear her laughing under the stars. But you can never see her. She flies afar if you follow her, and laughs at you always just over the next hill.’
‘Is that all true, Anne? Or is it a whopper?’ demanded Davy staring. (Anne of the Island: Chapter XXII; Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables)
Though Anne threw her hands up in despair that Davy couldn’t distinguish between a lie and a fairytale, she was likely forgetting an instance in her own childhood where she walked through a perfectly harmless wood nearly paralyzed with the fright inspired by her conjectures concerning the place. She had come out of that experience resolved to ‘ “be contented with everyday life.” ’
Lucy Maud Montgomery herself was very harsh on her characters who persisted on holding onto dreams and fancies instead of embracing the reality before them. Anne was almost severely punished for not seeing in chummy Gilbert the other half of her soul. Pat of Silver Bush bore the full brunt of idolizing her magical home. Emily of New Moon alone seemed to understand the true part that the faerie world plays in that of the concrete (though she had many faults of her own). She observed, as did Maud, that:
It has always seemed to me, ever since early childhood, that, amid all the commonplaces of life, I was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never draw it quite aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it, and I caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond—only a glimpse, but those glimpses have always made life worthwhile. (The Alpine Path)
I remember a suspiciously Platonist priest, who used to call peculiarly beautiful places (mountain balds, mossy begs, rocky caverns, verdant glens, etc.) ‘thin places’--the space between our deceptively accessible, concrete realm and an other world being markedly slight at such points. It was not that these fair, little spots were perfected by the addition of faërie influence, but that they were already more hauntingly lovely than we could understand. They referred to another excellence even beyond themselves.
In Maud’s exquisite, childlike vision of the world, we see that there is a need for all the things we love and haunt us in lore to be at least a reflection of a reality beyond this mortal veil. G. K. Chesterton often observed that our very disappointment with the non-existence of ‘turnip ghosts’ was proof that there must be, somewhere, real ghosts. The very absurdity of the fantastic is due to its aping the realistic. Even shielding one’s eyes from biographical information about Tolkien, it is blatantly obvious that his Secondary World is modelled event for event, tenet for tenet, on what is—for millions—the true story of the Primary World.
Even as one acknowledges that the Seven Days obviously represented ages and not seven twenty-four hour periods, or that Job’s tale was entirely allegory, the gist remains that the events of Revelation must be true. Aristotle said that poetry was a reproduction of real life, altered slightly to ‘instruct and entertain.’ Poetry then must have some basis in real life. If the endless procession of morality tales and fables is to take any effect on the listener, the related incidents, though unnecessary to cool reason, must have happened in some way, somewhere.
If man is expected to live his life not first for himself, but for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, then there had better not only be these three things, but Someone else who could set the example. Humble Peter, the childlike Apostle, whose enthusiasm always outran his prudence, understood this yearning very well. He addressed it directly in his second letter.
Fae Truth by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.
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About Me
- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.