By Kate Whitaker
In his 1931 poem “Mythopoeia,” J.R.R. Tolkien defends the value of myth against his skeptical friend C.S. Lewis, who called the genre “lies breathed through silver.” Literally meaning “myth-making,” the poem consists of seventy-four heroic couplets, within which Tolkien expounds upon the nature of evil, the emptiness of scientific rationalism, and how man may know God. Throughout all, Tolkien holds myth and storytelling as a means to access the divine. This is both because myths have access to spiritual truths, but in a deeper sense, because man, through the act of creation, partakes in a divine act. As God spoke creation into existence and gave preeminent Adam the dominion to name animals, man maintains his prelapsarian power through this myth-making, deemed “subcreation.”
I created these illustrations of three particularly impactful sections of the poem for a final project in Prof. Rachel Fulton Brown’s “Tolkien” course in Spring 2023. I used alcohol markers, pen, and acrylic paint to achieve the vibrant colors, sharp text, and easy blendability. In drawing pictorial representations of Tolkien’s poem, I engaged in the creative act outlined in “Mythopoeia,” visualizing the worlds told of in the text. Art has the incarnational quality, bringing creations to “life” and projecting its creator into a conversation with the viewer, as subcreation becomes collaborative through man’s inherently social nature (Gen 2:18).
In the text of the first image, Tolkien discusses how things gain their phenomenological quality through the speech of man. Trees occupied an especially important place for Tolkien. They are for some a space of refuge. They provide structure, both for the world (as Iggdrisal does in Norse mythology) and also for genealogies (as a family tree). The two most important actions in the Bible– the Fall and the Crucifixion– involve a tree; some say even say the same tree. Additionally, though trees rank lower on the great chain of being, for Tolkien, they can connect the earth to Heaven through the shepherding figure of Treebeard. Finally, as the product of the creator God, trees also lie between art and nature and are used for many acts of subcreation, including Christ’s own occupation as a carpenter.
In the second illustration, I explored Tolkien’s perspective on jewels through his gem-reminiscent language of this section. Influenced by Medieval theologians, jewels themselves for Tolkien resemble humans in that they are filled with the light of Christ. Like the Eucharist, the Simarils of his book The Silmarillion are living things and possess special powers. This picture contains the most human figures of any of them, showing a certain form of life in color peering through the top and bottom panels. Both the private and social natures of subcreation are also reflected here: the first woman writes or draws alone but the gathering in the last panel shows the communal quality of creation. The living shapes “move from mind to mind” because subcreation, like procreation, involves others.
Located in a series of new beatitudes, the final verse pictured shows a different admirable aspect of subcreation. It reemphasizes the communal nature of creation while also developing its evangelical aspects. In a way, art naturally comes with showing people your art (as I am doing now). Creating something also means taking a certain leap of faith, both in sharing your work and in the initial act of putting pen to paper. Transporting an idea to the material world requires the sort of belief that bears fruit, fundamentally trust in the act of invention and in the ability to execute it. Essentially, subcreation asks its author to go on a journey from nothing to something based on faith alone.
Of course, so much of Tolkien’s work revolves around a journey. Like Christ meeting the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the moral questions and the discipline that they necessitate arise on Frodo’s expedition. His journey becomes ours, the story breaks into our reality through its travel.
As we discussed in class, art can become more than a sum of its parts in the process of creation. In this way, we are able to understand both how the artist created something and what it displays. To step in and out of art like we can Tolkien’s stories can only be possible with an immense amount of faith. As the role of an artist requires belief in one’s own interior truth, the role of an observer necessitates yet more dependence. Indeed, a suspension of disbelief and a willingness to reincorporate small inaccuracies or unrealities into a new world calls for trust in an imperfect another. To evaluate the “inner consistency of reality,” the viewer encloses themselves not in their own world (demanding enough!) but in the personal world of another. However, in doing so, the viewer completes the final step necessary in subcreation, recognition of its reality.
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