Tag: myth

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What is True Art? Tolkien and Heidegger on Art vs. Machine

What is true art? Speaking of “The Machine” in On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien contrasts it with organic, sub-creative work of a true artist or storyteller.

By the [Machine] I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of development of the inherent inner powers or talents—or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills.

So, what is the Machine? It’s anything external I use to force my will upon the world. According to Tolkien, the Machine differs from Art (sub-creation) in that it arises from a desire to amplify self-will rather than from an attunement to the Music of IlĂșvatar.

All true Art, which is the province of the Elves, proceeds from one’s inner alignment with the Great Music. The Elves first hear the Music and then express it through their Art. Their purpose is to attune to the Thought of IlĂșvatar in all things and to pour this harmony into the world. In contrast, the purpose of the Machine-creator is to attune to self-will and devise ways to impose it upon the outer world.

Art is prayer springing from: â€œThy will be done”; the Machine is anti-prayer springing from: â€œMy will be done.” Art is internal; the Machine is external. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien insists that evil cannot be defeated by wielding the Power of the Ring.

You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power. Letter 96 to Christopher

When we use external means to defeat external means we amplify the external means. The Machine perpetuates the Machine. Power cannot defeat power. Paradise cannot be achieved through external means. Only the renunciation of power can overcome power. Art is the ultimate renunciation of external power and amplification of the internal power—the intrinsic power of Being.

That’s why the Art of the Elves is not technology. It may look like technology—Elvish ropes, robes, fials, boats, lembas bread, blades, ploughs, bows, harps, bowls, etc.—its purpose is not domination but the manifestation of the Great Music in the world. All Art taps into spiritual power and brings it into the physical realm, which is the ultimate triumph over evil.

The “products” of Art reveal the Music. That’s why the Elvish rope burns Gollum’s neck—he can’t bear the “sound” of the Great Music. That’s why all Elvish things ward off evil, not through external force but by the light they emanate. The “power” of Sting lies not in its external properties but in how much Divine light it carries.

Elvish tools—chisels, harps, hammers, bowls—are not technology in the conventional sense of the word but an organic part of the creative process. Elvish boats are carved with Elvish knives, each infused with a prayer to Elbereth. Elvish tools are not “external means” to bend reality to the Elvish will; they are an outer expression of their inner attunement to the Higher Will. So, what is true art?

As Heidegger says in his essay The Question Concerning Technology, modern technology is not just an instrument — it’s a way of revealing (aletheia). It reveals how we view the world. It is a Gestell (enframing) — a rigid framework that configures our vision, causing us to see everything as a resource. Its purpose is to order and command nature, not to listen to its Song.

Modern technology doesn’t hear any Song, and it teaches us not to hear it either. It limits our perception of reality, reducing everything—including humans—to mere means to an end. After renouncing the nature of modern technology as a Gestell, Heidegger concludes,

Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such a realm is art.

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Is Winnie-the-Pooh Wise?

Is Winnie-the-Pooh wise? The two most sane characters in literature, Tom Bombadil and Winnie-the-Pooh, are poets.

“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” G.K. Chesterton

They are poets to such a degree that they speak in rhyme about everything. They see poetry in everything. Sanity is all about seeing the world as a multi-layered nesting doll for you to open up and explore.

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.” G.K. Chesterton

Poets don’t go mad. They don’t rely on their reason. They don’t try to get the heavens into their heads. They already have the heavens in their heads — that’s what poetry is. The presence of heaven informs their minds, which is the very definition of sanity.

Tom Bombadil is J.R.R. Tolkien’s absolute metaphor for pure poesis — the Divine making. The world was created through poesis — speaking Divine words: “Let there be light. And it was light.” This is poetry at its pinnacle.

Tom Bombadil, who calls himself “the Elder,” was the first one to see the first dust of the universe. He is the pure poesis, the speaking of the world into being. The world is still held together by poetry.

“He [The Son of God] holds everything together with his powerful word.” Hebrews 1:3

Tom Bombadil is unaffected by the One Ring. He is immune to insanity. He is like the awakened Neo in The Matrix who is able to see the code behind the world. The code is poetry. He sees it and speaks it — 24/7. He knows that the world is spun from words. He doesn’t look for words; words look for him.

Winnie-the-Pooh’s head is also in that word-heaven. He famously said,

“Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.”

Winnie-the-Pooh is another paragon of sanity. His every sentence is just as silly and whimsical as Tom Bombadil’s and yet they reveal incredible profundity of perception.

“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”

Behind his hilarious puns hides a world of meaning. Obviously, nothing is not nothing, it is everything. It is something full of potentiality. It’s the womb of the world. That’s what poets do 24/7 — birth the world into being through speaking. Speaking out of nothing. That’s how God created the world.

Winnie-the-Pooh took words out of Heidegger’s mouth (or the other way around), who said that “nothing” is inextricably connected to being.

His “Das Nichts nichtet” means “The nothing nothings” — nothing is not merely the absence of something but an active force. A poet does nothing every day — because he does everything. Winnie-the-Pooh’s nothing is everything, just like Tom Bombadils silly songs are nothing, and yet they order the Old Forest.

Old Man Willow obeys Tom’s silly song because Tom is Master. He is Master because he knows how the universe is ordered and run. It is ordered and run through words. He goes around his realm, he picks flowers for Goldberry, he talks to the trees — he does “nothing.” Every day. He is too connected to being to waste his time on trifles.

Sanity is art. Sanity isn’t the thing you get; it’s the thing that gets you when you leave the trifles of the world and do the only productive thing in the world — the nothing of Tom Bombadil and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Check out my 3rd book in the Mystical Vision of the Inklings series Daily Spiritual Readings from Literature Classics.

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How Aletheia Saves Us From the Shadows of Lethe

How does Aletheia save us from the shadows of Lethe? The mythological river Lethe in the kingdom of Hades is the river of “oblivion.” Lethe means oblivion or forgetfulness. The river flows through hell, and whatever falls into Lethe is forgotten.

Surprisingly, Lethe is related to the Greek aletheia, truth. The prefix “a” means “the opposite of” and Lethe means oblivion. Truth is something that doesn’t fall into Lethe. In Greek, aletheia is something that doesn’t fall into oblivion.

But what doesn’t fall into oblivion? Eventually, everything falls into oblivion. Everything is forgotten, except the things (and the times) we have salvaged from being consumed by the flow of chronological time.

Salvaged time is the time snatched from oblivion. It is aletheia.

“Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work; for their good deeds follow them!” Rev. 14:13

Whatever we have done in chronological time to transcend chronological time remains. It follows us. It has been saved from Lethe. It is aletheia. It cannot disappear. Michelangelo said,

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”

In aletheia, we turn shadows into glimpses of divine perfection. They cannot disappear. We do something “into the law in which we were made” – to use Tolkien’s vernacular. We become sub-creators.

We have glimpsed divine perfection, and we reproduce it within the confines of our shadow world. The only way to salvage the world of shadows from falling into the shadow of oblivion is to transcend the shadows.

Whether we bake bread, write articles, talk to a friend over a cup of tea, build a cathedral, or fix cars – if we glimpse and reflect the divine spark in what we do, we engage in aletheia. We transcend the shadow land.

Everything in the shadow land is a shadow until we see through it and infuse it with divine perfection. We can do it by virtue of our divine birth. We have that spark in us. We are that spark. We are but shadows transcending ourselves by pursuing aletheia every moment of the day.

How does Aletheia save us from the shadows of Lethe? When we pursue aletheia, it follows us. We rise above Lethe. We are timeless.

“Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.” James Huniker

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What is “Through the Looking Glass” About?

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What is “Through the Looking Glass” about? One of my favorite quotes from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland runs like this:

“Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”

“It makes perfect sense,” I thought after reading it. Since that fateful morning when she followed the white rabbit into the hole, she wasn’t quite herself. Everything was topsy-turvy, to say the least.

That’s probably what the disciples felt around Jesus when he would say things like,

“You give them something to eat.”

They said to him, “That would take more than half a year’s wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?”

When you have been around Jesus for a while, you are not quite yourself anymore. He always says something that blows your mind into smithereens. How can you give something you don’t have?

Apparently, you have much more than you think you do. Apparently, you are other than what you think you are. It’s just the sort of jaw-dropping reaction that Jesus is after. He is creating a nonsensical situation that helps people make sense out of life. He turns the world upside down for us to see what it looks like.

G.K. Chesterton said: “Paradox is truth standing on her head to get attention.” We all have more than we think we do. As Eckhart Tolle said:

“Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.”

Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you already have, but unless you allow it to flow out, you won’t even know that you have it. This reminds me of the “Looking-glass cake” that Alice was trying to cut before handing it out. It didn’t work — the pieces would join back together.

“You don’t know how to manage Looking-glass cakes,” the Unicorn remarked. “Hand it round first, and cut it afterwards.”

It sounded so nonsensical that Alice got up and obediently carried the dish around. The cake divided itself in three pieces as she did so.

We are more than we know. We have more than we think we do. The world is upside down — it must be put on its head for us to see what it really is. By going through the Looking-glass, we, like Alice, will be changing several times until we find ourselves. To make sense, everything must be other than what it seems to be.

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.” Alice

We can only give what we don’t have. We can only have what we have given up. We can only know what we don’t. We can only win if we surrender. It is so nonsensical that we get up like Alice and obediently carry the dish around. Surprisingly, as we do so, it works!