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Kamarck, Edward (ed.) / Arts in society: confrontation between art and technology
(1969)
Kilby, Clyde S.
[Editorial comment: the lost myth], pp. [unnumbered]-163
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Page 161
look at their past, a past that is congenitally rooted and in which consciousness and conscience are coeval. Then can one fail to breathe deeply of the glory and mystery of nature in the story? Just to mention Lothlorien is to evoke beatitude. Nature there and elsewhere is "inhabited." This is especially true of trees. The talking trees called Ents become characters in their own right. Frodo put his hand on one of the great mallorn trees in Lothlorien and suddenly realized that he had never before understood "the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself." The mystery of seeds and of growth are represented by Galadriel's gift of a mallorn seed and the soft gray dust that caused all other trees quickly to repossess the Shire after Frodo and Sam's return. Lewis points out that reading about enchanted trees gives real trees an enchanted quality. It is so in this story. The fragrant grass filled with star-shaped yellow eleanor and the pale niphredil in timeless Lothlorien works its own magic, as does Aragorn's discovery in the darkness, by its sweet and pungent odor, of the herb athelas for the healing of Frodo's wound from the Ringwraiths. This herb, we are told, had been brought to Middle-earth from Numenor. Its existence was known to very few people, a suggestion perhaps that the essential contact with the perduring good earth is now mostly lost to men. The great horse Shadowfax bears almost a talking relation with Aragorn, and in many other ways the substantial existence of nature in its own right is manifest in the Rings. And again, how thoroughly the principle of coinherence is exemplified in Tolkien's story. One of the elves in Lothlorien remarks that "in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides those who still oppose him." The fellowship of the Ring consists of a wizard, an elf, a dwarf, four hobbits and two men, each with his own peculiarities and strengths yet all moving together in the accomplishment of a single good purpose. It is a case, I think, suggesting the truth of Lewis's remark that democracy is not a process of making people equal but enabling clearly unequal people to live amicably together. One of the finest touches, I think, occurs upon the demand that Gimli the dwarf be blindfolded as he walks through Lothlorien. When Gimli refuses and an impasse seems upon them, Aragorn suggests that all be blindfolded and it is done. All suffer for one, and later when the blindfolds are removed they are repaid by a great burst of glory. Williams's coinherence and exchange are illustrated. At a time when ancient customs of courtesy and ceremony are about as obsolete as dinosaurs, one of the most appealing elements of the Rings is the practice of such customs. We recall the order of the gatherings at Rivendell and Minas Tirith as well as the epochal custom of gift-giving as exemplified in Galadriel's gifts to the fellowship. Gift-giving where the gift contains the giver, as in Galadriel's case, is still one of the significances of our lives, though shoddiness of sentiment and commercialism have trepanned the larger portion of it. The courtesy of King Aragorn to his lowly friends Frodo and Sam in seating them beside him on his throne becomes more than a simple incident in the story. There is also in the Rings a courtesy of sex that, though often noted by its absence today, nevertheless still echoes resonantly at some deep level of our being. Aragorn waited a fantastically long time for Arwen Evenstar, but then their marriage bore all the more meaning and depth for it. Both Sam and Gimli found in Galadriel not simply a beautiful woman but a deeply impelling symbol of courtesy and dignity. Lastly we can say that the Rings appears to be one of the genuinely imaginative works of mankind. Its 1200 pages, including over a hundred pages of footnotes which are themselves imaginatively integral, is less an example of imagination than it simply is imagination. Paul Ricoeur says that by means of imagination man recognizes his real existence and exercises a metaphysical prophecy of things possible to him. Imagination, said Einstein, is "more 161 1 i
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