(avg. read time: 10–19 mins.)
On this edition of Tolkien Tuesday and the next I would like to look at something that does not appear to get much attention: Tolkien’s thoughts on criticism. Specifically, I will be looking at his thoughts as represented in his letters. The reader can also find plenty of cases of Tolkien reflecting critically on his own work in the textual histories presented in the History of Middle-earth series, but since I have not read through that entire series and I am most interested in where Tolkien directly articulates his thoughts on criticism, I have decided to stick with his letters. I will also not be covering here instances in which Tolkien merely answers questions inspired by his work. In this first part, I examine Tolkien’s more general thoughts on criticism, whether from himself or others. In the second part, I examine Tolkien’s response to specific criticisms.
Especially notable for this first part is Letter #113, which Tolkien sent on Septuagesima 1948 to C. S. Lewis. The precise circumstances for this letter are unclear, but the general impression of what led to it is that Tolkien had criticized some work of Lewis’s in a meeting of the Inklings. Afterwards, Tolkien gets the impression that he has been in some way hurtful towards Lewis with his criticisms. This whole situation, and Lewis’s response to it (which is indicated as him making some good out of it), leads Tolkien to write reflectively on his fault in the process, along with how he thinks God in his providence can use it for good (a theme that is crucial in Tolkien’s work and reflective of his thoughts inspired by his own life):
I have been possessed on occasions (few, happily) with a sort of furor scribendi, in which the pen finds the words rather than head or heart; and this was one of them. But nothing in your speech or manner gave me any reason to suppose that you felt ‘offended’. Yet I could see that you felt – you would have been hardly human otherwise –, and your letter shows how much. I daresay under grace that will do good rather than harm, but that is between you and God. It is one of the mysteries of pain that it is, for the sufferer, an opportunity for good, a path of ascent however hard. But it remains an ‘evil’, and it must dismay any conscience to have caused it carelessly, or in excess, let alone willfully. And even under necessity or privilege, as of a father or master in punishment, or even of a man beating a dog, it is the rod of God only to be wielded with trepidation. There may have been one or two of my comments that were just or valid, but I should have limited myself to them, and expressed them differently. He is a savage physician who coats a not wholly unpalatable pill with a covering of gall!
The rest of the letter continues his thoughts along this line of human responsibility and God’s ways of making good out of evil, but inserted in this reflection is what is most directly relevant for this post. After all, the statement above leads directly to his general reflections on criticism. He, in fact, steadfastly insists that he is not a critic and does not want to be one. He can be when it is pressed upon him by the setting of the scholarly world in which he operates, but it does not come naturally to him. For the most part, he says, “I am usually only trying to express ‘liking’ not universally valid criticism.” A footnote in the letter appears to strike at the heart of how Tolkien thinks of criticism and his orientation towards the practice:
I think ‘criticism’ – however valid or intellectually engaging – tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off). Indeed (if I dare yet venture on any criticism again) I should say that I think it gets in our way, as a writer. You read too much, and too much of that analytically. But then you are also a born critic. I am not. You are also a born reader.
On one level, this appears to be another example, as I have noted before, of Tolkien’s tendency to overstate matters in his letters. Anyone who read his “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” would be surprised by this statement. But his basic claim is perhaps more applicable to direct interactions with an author, rather than the more open forum of scholarly journals engaging with the broader world of scholarship.
It is also applicable in another way that does not seem directly connected to this letter, which I have also noted previously. Tolkien makes this description of himself in contrast to Lewis because he thinks Lewis is too open to influence from certain critics (such as himself). Tolkien, of course, had people read his work before publication—including Lewis—and took feedback from them, but he perceived himself as being less open to making significant changes because of critical feedback—rather than because of his own thinking—than Lewis was regarding certain people close to him. His basic conviction in this regard is that the writer must write to deliver his/her own message, make his/her own argument, tell his/her own story, rather than writing in such a way as to address all criticisms.
Even more interesting is a situation Tolkien relates later in the letter. He thought of the interaction of G. M. Hopkins (an English poet and Jesuit priest) and Canon [Richard Watson] Dixon, the latter of whom wrote a History of the Church of England that the former expressed appreciation for (much to Dixon’s surprise). Hopkins also passed on the words of Edward Burne-Jones (an English artist) to the effect that “one works really for the one man who may rise to understand one.” But Hopkins insisted that even this notion was not quite right. An author and other artists may dedicate much work to things that may be destroyed in an instant (e.g., by burning or by the maker’s death). But such apparent consignment of work to oblivion does not in itself attest to the (lack of) value of a work. Rather, “The only just literary critic is Christ, who admires more than does any man the gifts He Himself has bestowed.”
As noted in the series on Tolkien’s theology of sub-creation, there is thus an eschatological criticism that no earthly critic can fully embody. No critic, no matter how incisive and insightful, no matter how well supported by the public, has the last word on a given work, or on a given act of sub-creation. That last word belongs to the Judge who is himself the Creator. This idea explains why Tolkien, regardless of the precise merits of his belief about writers attending to the words of critics, would sit loose to external criticisms, even if he at times acknowledged their validity.
A similar statement appeared that same year in Letter #117 to Hugh Brogan (31 October 1948), a schoolboy at the time who had already written to Tolkien expressing his appreciation for The Hobbit. Tolkien tells Brogan about the progress of The Lord of the Rings and of his desire to revise it if not for the term at Oxford catching up with him, and that he should like to send Brogan a copy. (This is also the letter in which he amusingly says, “This university business of earning one’s living by teaching, delivering philological lectures, and daily attendance at ‘boards’ and other talk-meetings, interferes sadly with serious work.”) But he insists that he wants to revise it first because, “it is astonishingly difficult to avoid mistakes and changes of name and all kinds of inconsistencies of detail in a long work, as critics forget, who have not tried to make one.”
Tolkien here expresses a common frustration makers of all kinds have with critics adjacent to their fields. People who have not, or perhaps even cannot, do the work the makers do are nevertheless given positions to influence the potential audience’s perception of the quality of the makers’ works. Of course, a similar complaint is not lodged against those same critics if they should—even against expectations—perceive a high degree of quality in the work in question.
But this is again where Tolkien’s overarching perspective of Christ as the ultimate, and only just, critic comes into play again. Tolkien, like any maker, can appreciate such positive response, but it is not something he aims for to feel validation. Even if the person criticizing him were someone who had engaged in work similar to his, he might have a greater appreciation for their criticism, but it would again not be something decisive for him. The more important point with this backhanded and offhanded comment about critics is that it would be better for critics to remember humbly their own limitations and to take more sympathetic account for what goes into the work they criticize. But such is only Tolkien’s ideal. It is not what he expects, and that is why he would not be surprised by the chilly reception The Lord of the Rings would receive.
In fact, in Letter #142 to Robert Murray, S.J. (2 December 1953) he expressly states that he expects the public to be unreceptive to what had become a trilogy of books. He agreed with Murray’s assessment that many critics would not be able to make much of the book because, “they will not have a pigeon-hole neatly labelled for it.” This is then followed up with a statement that shows, even though Tolkien maintains his belief about Christ as the only just literary critic, he could not help but have some sensitivity towards how his work was received by the public at large, “I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at. I think the publishers are very anxious too; and they are very keen that as many people as possible should read advance copies, and form a sort of opinion before the hack critics get busy.”
Again, he treats the professional critics dismissively, but he cannot deny feeling vulnerable in this situation. Even with his belief about eschatological criticism, he cannot ignore the personal investment in the response that comes with putting forth for public response something that one has spent so much of their life working on. He had written The Lord of the Rings at various times across the span of 1937 to 1949. As he struggled to get the final product to be printed alongside his Silmarillion, it would not be until 1954 that the general public would be able to read it.
At another level, he feels like he has not put the best version of his work forward. After all, he could not publish The Silmarillion at the same time and he thought that this book was necessary to properly contextualize The Lord of the Rings. Also, Allen & Unwin had insisted on splitting the book into a trilogy, which worked logistically, but which Tolkien felt undermined the integrity of the work, which he had made one volume divided into six books. In Letter #143 to Rayner Unwin (22 January 1954), he registered complaints with the second volume, not liking the title The Two Towers. He found it to be a victim of what one might call the “trilogization” process. The title most appropriately refers to the Towers of Orthanc and Cirith Ungol, but he also notes that there is much in the book about the opposition of Barad-dûr and Minas Tirith. But this lackluster title is a product of the fact that Books III and IV were never meant to be a separate volume, and so there is no obvious connecting link that would produce a clearer title (Peter Jackson and co. would also realize the difficulties created by making The Two Towers separate when it came time to adapt the book into a film).
There certainly were negative reviews and we will look at those next Tolkien Tuesday, but generally the reception of the public was positive. When Tolkien wrote Letter #151 to Hugh Brogan (18 September 1954), only The Fellowship of the Ring had been released, but Tolkien was already beginning to feel vindicated in his belief that it would have been better to publish The Silmarillion as a companion volume. After all, he thought the fascination with the book:
consists in the vistas of yet more legend and history, to which this work does not contain a full clue. For the present we had better leave it at that. If there is a fault in the work which I myself clearly perceive, it is that I have perhaps overweighted Part I too much with attempts to depict the setting and historical background in the course of the narrative. Of course, in actual fact, this background already ‘exists’, that is, is written, and was written first. But I could not get it published, in chronological order, until and unless a public could be found for the mixture of Elvish and Númenórean legend with the Hobbits.
Interestingly, as the volumes were published, Brogan would continue to correspond with Tolkien, including by conveying his criticisms. We will address the specifics next time, but what should be noted now is that Brogan feared causing offense to this author he admired so deeply with criticism that he thought might be impertinent. Tolkien assured him on more than one occasion that he should not feel bothered about reviewing his work critically. When Brogan wrote to Tolkien that he had recurrent nightmares that his criticisms gave Tolkien the wrong impression of his admiration of Tolkien’s work, Tolkien wrote back to him in Letter #179 (14 December 1955):
Dismiss the nightmare! I can stand criticism – not being unduly puffed up by the success (v. unexpected) of ‘The Lord of the Rings – even when stupid, or unfair, or even (as I occasionally suspect) a little malicious. Otherwise I should be in a fine taking, what with ‘emasculate’ and other kind adjectives. But you are welcome to let your pen run as it will (it is horrible writing letters to people with whom you have to be ‘careful’), since you give me such close attention, and sensitive perception.
Again, while he hints at scorn for professional critics that have manifested the negative qualities he lists, he harbors no ill will towards this young man who resembles them in no way. Thus, again, negative criticism in itself is not Tolkien’s problem. Nor is he, in fact, bothered by negative criticism from someone who has made no attempt to do the scale of work that Tolkien has. His problem is not with criticism itself, but with the spirit in which it is engaged.
Likewise, Tolkien would remain sensitive to the general Zeitgeist of reviews, both positive and negative, of his work. He remained scornful of dismissive critics in Letter #227 to Mrs. E. C. Ossen Drijver (5 January 1961), where he tells her of The Silmarillion. That book contains no hobbits nor much of anything associated with them (such as “fun” or “earthiness”). He thus says, “Those critics who scoffed at The Lord because ‘all the good boys came home safe and everyone was happy ever after’ (quite untrue) ought to be satisfied. They will not be, of course – even if they deign to notice the book!” Tolkien was well aware that there are some people that the maker simply cannot please, and it is not worth trying to please such people, especially when they have already shown themselves to be engaging with one’s work in bad faith.
Such strident statements should not be taken to mean he was any less self-conscious about his work. As he relates in Letter #282 to Clyde S. Kilby (18 December 1963), one of the original scholars to be experts on the Inklings:
I have never had much confidence in my own work, and even now when I am assured (still much to my grateful surprise) that it has value for other people, I feel diffident, reluctant as it were to expose my world of imagination to possibly contemptuous eyes and ears. But for the encouragement of C.S.L. I do not think that I should ever have completed or offered for publication The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion is quite different, and if good at all, good in quite another way; & I do not really know what to make of it. It began in hospital and sick-leave (1916-1917) and has been with me ever since, and is now in a confused state having been altered, enlarged, and worked at, at intervals between then and now. If I had the assistance of a scholar at once sympathetic and yet critical, such as yourself, I feel I might make some of it publishable. It needs the actual presence of a friend and adviser at one's side, which is just what you offer. As far as I can see, I shall be free soon to return to it, and June, July and August are available.
This letter was sent about a month after Lewis had died and Tolkien provides a hint here of what his departed friend meant to him. Now that Lewis is gone and Tolkien is put to it to find a way to publish the book he once spent years attempting to get published alongside The Lord of the Rings—and, as he mentions, a book that has been the subject of considerably longer labor—he finds that he is lost. He used to rely on the private encouragement and public support of Lewis, but now he is in need of someone to fill that vacuum to complete the longest of his labors. Kilby offered just such a support and Tolkien wished to take him up on his offer. Unfortunately, it would still be almost another fourteen years before The Silmarillion was published, four years after Tolkien’s death.
But if he was so self-conscious about his own work, that did not mean he was overly elated to find that people actually deeply enjoyed his work. He expressed in Letter #336 to Sir Patrick Browne (23 May 1972), “Being a cult figure in one's own lifetime I am afraid is not at all pleasant. However I do not find that it tends to puff one up; in my case at any rate it makes me feel extremely small and inadequate. But even the nose of a very modest idol … cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!” Tolkien was pleased with the success his work had, but was hardly enamored with the fame and even reverence it brought him.
Now before we leave this subject, there is one other aspect to consider: Tolkien’s thoughts on a certain kind of literary criticism. Tolkien expressed multiple times how he generally disapproved of attempts to discern the “sources” of things in his books. One can see this more generally in Letters #297 and #337, in the latter of which he says, “To my mind it is the particular use in a particular situation of any motive, whether invented, deliberately borrowed, or unconsciously remembered that is the most interesting thing to consider.”
He also did not approve of looking for such sources in terms of his own biography. He made this point rather directly in Letter #199 to Caroline Everett (24 June 1957): “Though it is a great compliment, I am really rather sorry to find myself the subject of a thesis. I do not feel inclined to go into biographical detail. I doubt its relevance to criticism.”
In the same way, when W. H. Auden was contracted to write a book about Tolkien, the latter said (in Letter #284 on 23 February 1966):
It does meet with my strong disapproval. I regard such things as premature impertinences; and unless undertaken by an intimate friend, or with consultation of the subject (for which I have at present no time), I cannot believe that they have a usefulness to justify the distaste and irritation given to the victim. I wish at any rate that any book could wait until I produce the Silmarillion. I am constantly interrupted in this – but nothing interferes more than the present pother about ‘me’ and my history.
Just as this biography would distract from his work, he thought (as shown in Letter #213 to Deborah Webster [25 October 1958]) the obsession with connecting a maker’s biography with their work ultimately ended up distracting from the work. And besides, as Tolkien perceived accurately, even the author—despite knowing biographical details better than any critic—cannot perceive all the real connections between their life and their production, “only one’s guardian Angel, or indeed God Himself, could unravel the real relationship between personal facts and an author’s works.”
Furthermore, Tolkien supplies some examples of the kinds of facts he regards as particularly irrelevant for the purposes of criticism of artists and authors:
There are insignificant facts (those particularly dear to analysts and writers about writers): such as drunkenness, wife-beating, and suchlike disorders. I do not happen to be guilty of these particular sins. But if I were, I should not suppose that artistic work proceeded from the weaknesses that produced them, but from other and still uncorrupted regions of my being. Modern ‘researchers’ inform me that Beethoven cheated his publishers, and abominably ill-treated his nephew; but I do not believe that has anything to do with his music.
This is often a discussion that is raised anytime someone who made some work(s) of art is later found to be a reprehensible person: can you separate the art from the artist in your evaluation of the former? Tolkien appears to be squarely in the camp that says, “Yes you can.”
But he goes on in Letter #213 to say that there is still a scale of significance for the biographical facts in question and he does oblige to give some biographical account. What he considers more important in this category is that:
I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic. The latter ‘fact’ perhaps cannot be deduced; though one critic (by letter) asserted that the invocations of Elbereth, and the character of Galadriel as directly described (or through the words of Gimli and Sam) were clearly related to Catholic devotion to Mary. Another saw in waybread (lembas)=viaticum and the reference to its feeding the will … and being more potent when fasting, a derivation from the Eucharist. (That is: far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy-story.)
Given his general thoughts about criticism that looks into the author’s biography, the fact that he is nevertheless willing to impress upon his reader this information is interesting. It also makes the bungled treatment of this subject in the Tolkien biopic all the more pronounced.