...fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.
On Fairy-stories ⁋ 10, p. 32 (Flieger & Anderson edition)
Reading these words over and over across the years, I have come to conclude that Tolkien did not regard the world as disenchanted, as we often hear it called. To him everything but us was naturally a part of Faërie. We must be enchanted in order to be "contained" in that "realm or state." So, does this mean that we mortals are normally unenchanted, not normally a part of Faërie as everything else in this world is? Or we were once enchanted, but have since become disenchanted by the Fall and expulsion from Paradise, or more mundanely by materialism and positivism and the industrial revolution?
‘But what then shall we think of the union [of fëa and hröa] in Man: of an Indweller [i.e., fëa], who is but a guest here in Arda and not here at home, with a House [i.e., hröa] that is built of the matter of Arda and must therefore (one would suppose) here remain?
(Morgoth's Ring p. 317)
Every other living creature lives and dies with this world, as does every other piece of creation, because this world is "the realm or state in which [they] have their being." In this world, which is coterminous with Faërie, we mortal humans are no more than guests. Faërie is not our home. Or at least it is not the home of our fëa.
As the birch tree in Faërie says to Smith in Smith of Wootton Major: "You do not belong here. Go away and never return!" (Smith, extended edition, p. 30).
Or the presence of men in a mortal life is perhaps not their natural state (and not meant to be permanent) and therefore Mortal life here is Faërie.
ReplyDeleteI like D. Scott's comment above. I have begun to think of Faerie as simply the world that endures after we, individually and as a species, pass away - it is immortal, as are Elves, who therefore are of it in a way that we are not. But I have also begun to think that we need to appreciate how the dynamism, that is, mechanics of temporal change, that Tolkien sets up in his fiction, suggests points to both gradations and also a sort of indeterminacy, which is at the heart of Tolkien's vision.
ReplyDelete"And they remembered from whence the ruin came, and the cutting off of Men from their just portion of the straight path..." (Fall of Númenor)
This suggests to me that, however much we do not by our nature belong in the world, and whatever the price we still pay for the Fall from Eden, it remains our birthright to live in a more enchanted state than we actually do. The Fall of Númenor brought to an end any human ability to gaze upon the shores of Valinor; but this is not quite the same kind of Fall as the original one. We may still recapture a glimpse of that lost light of Fairy, which is why we tell and listen to fairy-stories.
Tentative thoughts...
:)