“The polarities of light and dark that generate the elements of Tolkien’s fictive world and motivate its action are created and conveyed through the power of the word.” (10)
“Behind the word is always that which it represents, but above it flickers an evanescent, changing meaning that carries within it the ability to heighten and ultimately transcend the limit of a given definition.” (10)
Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (2002; Revised Edition)
Taking a break from Villette this Autumn, I have ventured back into Tolkien’s worlding and his understanding of words. Being a philologist, which informed both his literary as well as his academic praxis, words and their contexts, meanings and worldings, were his life’s work. I have been re-reading Verlyn Fleger’s Splintered Light[i], having finished the Qualls book on the secular pilgrims in 19th century English Literature[ii]—and am instantly relating to JRRT as something of a kindred spirit, like Wordsworth—as I may have said last summer. And to my surprise, I am also finding in him a complement to Martin Heidegger who, as a philosopher and phenomenologist, also dug deep into the roots and meanings of words, and whose works I read with passionate interest back in the 1980’s.
One of the many things I gleaned from Heidegger, when I was reading him back then was that there is a depth, behind and underneath, the words that we commonly use. To uncover these older meanings was for Heidegger a way of deepening our understanding of the world(s) in which we live. His explorations of philosophical words and their ‘original,’ i.e., ‘archaic’ (αρχη) – meanings initiated me into my own philosophical quest for meanings that were potentially hidden within the common, ordinary words we use, not only for philosophy but for everyday converse with others.
Tolkien, I am realizing, is for me a ‘British counterpart to Heidegger.’ He, too, was delving into the deep meaning of words; not philosophically but philologically—his explorations having philosophical import as well as existential and spiritual resonances. Tolkien’s fictional and mythic exploration of the nature of humankind and the world(s) in which we dwell, his antinomies of Light and Dark which drive his stories and bring his world to have manifest ethical import, his awareness of our Fallenness and his Hope in “glimpses of final victory” – are all set in words; enacted through words and understood via the words he carefully selected to describe and delineate his lived-in-world (what he called “The Primary World”) and then the worlds he created (what he called “Secondary Worlds.”). This applies to place names and the names of characters, as well as aspects of their behavior and the traditions that arose through the course of the Three Ages of Middle Earth. I would venture to say that Tolkien’s life was spent immersed-in words and wording, exploring the hermeneutical bedrock of meaning.
How wonderful, I always think, to have an English professor doing what in many ways Heidegger was doing for me in German! Tolkien directs me back through the history of English to Anglo-Saxon, as one deep-source, whereas Heidegger took me on a journey back through the Germanic languages and into ancient Greek.
One of the things Fleger is exploring in the first chapter of Splintered Light, is JRRT’s fascination with words, his philological and historical reconstruction of words as used in literature beginning with a single word – Sigelwara – and then, in the next couple chapters, in Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales. He uses just as much care in the words used to describe places, characters and other phenomena in his own mythic, fictional world of Middle Earth. With a careful interpretive hand, he draws out for the reader what can be discovered of the languages he created, which give heft and clarity to his Secondary World, using a ‘philological praxis’ complementary to the one used to understand words in the Primary Universe, applying his understanding of the development of actual languages to trace out a ‘history’ for his created languages.
Tolkien sees clearly what should seem obvious, though we are often oblivious to the fact; that words are what texts are ‘made of’ and that to understand a text we have to understand the words and their history and early meanings. Fleger says:
"For Tolkien, understanding and appreciation of any text depended on a proper understanding of the words, their literal meaning and their historical development.” (5)
What could be more simply stated? This functions as a primary hermeneutical maxim for me; a kind of ‘fact’ – so obvious once you think about it (like a big ‘duh?’) – that I have valued and been grappling with for decades. I first came to understand this ‘maxim’ – which should be obvious, but isn’t; being obscured by our often unthoughtful ordinary use of words – through my reading of Heidegger, in particular his Being and Time (1927), his Introduction to Metaphysics (1953) and then a later collection of essays called Poetry, Language Thought (1971) among several other engaging texts, following his exploration of the evolution of the German and Greek words he was attempting to search to their rootstock.
Expanding the ‘maxim,’ Fleger says of Tolkien’s understanding of words, broadening the insight and principle to apply beyond the realm of the individual hermeneut, that:
“Words are important as the expression of any speaker or writer, but they are just as important as manifestations of the outlook of an entire culture, or of an age. We do not truly understand a text until we understand the words not only as they are currently used but as they were used in the time in which they were composed. Only with this understanding is it possible to touch the mind of the author and of his first audience, to bridge the temporal distance (whether short or long) between that time and the present.” (5)
This speaks to the gist and heft of historical and biographical criticism in our actual world(s). Yet it also points beyond the ‘mere praxis’ of a literary method to an understanding that we are always immersed in a matrix of words; our worlding(s) arising out of our use of words and our adoption of them to describe, explain and comprehend our lives in the context of the worlds in which we live.
Oft, this acceptance of words and the worldings to which they give rise is unconscious and uncritical. The words we use, before we come to that state of self-awareness wherein we begin to reflect on what we have come to believe and experience, are largely preset by the culture in which we grow and come to maturity. But once we become aware of the evanescence flickering around words; through which we may begin to notice them in a way not just as ‘common place-holders’—we may find ourselves empowered to enter into an experience of their potential depth. Then, beginning to think critically about words—accepting some words, rejecting others, putting some words to different uses—we begin to communicate with others as well as understand more fully the world into which we find ourselves ‘thrown,’ in Heidegger’s potent term.
Like Tolkien and Heidegger – each of whom have been mentors in my life-journey – I try to choose words as well as I am able, despite not being a trained philologist. As most writers will certainly agree, when creating a text, the choice of words is one of the most important challenges. Sometimes, the words simply come to you, and you only discover later just how appropriate the ‘choice’ was; though you didn’t consciously make it. Other times, a word in one sentence or another will become a problem, sometimes for hours, days or even longer, until a more appropriate word presents itself or is found in the seeking. This is a common experience, I believe, among writers. In this quest for the ‘right’ – most revealing, most deep-delving, most expressive – words, I so appreciate people like Heidegger and now Tolkien, who have done a good deal of deep delving, and given me – and other writers – a wellspring of possibilities! They have opened certain key words for me, and also inspired me in my own attempts to seek-out and discover older meanings of words that I want and have used; that are meaningful to me.
Referencing JRRT’s essay on “Chaucer as Philologist: The Reeve’s
Tale” and the two-part article “Sigelwara Land,” Fleger says something
which also resonates with own praxis, and I’ll conclude with this; she said:
“Research into early forms and uses of words, the search after obscure meaning and the revealing of lost nuances – scientific study in the truest sense of the term – led him through science into art and through art into an almost spiritual realm wherein the word was the conveyor of primal truth, the magic vehicle not just of communication but of communion.” (8)
This
movement – Science to Art to Spirituality – is one I have
experienced myself over the last thirty years, after turning from religion to
science to re-ground my being-in-becoming in Earth & Cosmos. And for me, the “spiritual realm” is certainly
one linked to participation in imaginative story, myth and poetry, abiding in
and discovering their access to truth, leading me into communion with the
‘Spirit’ – the energy of our existing here – with which the Universe is
invested.
SCIENCE – ART – SPIRITUALITY
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