I think David Jones wrestled with the excess of human history, and the overwhelming responsibility of the vatic poet to somehow acknowledge the depths that reveal themselves precisely as what announces itself as that which cannot be contained in the linear expositions of the historical record.
The mythic binds, because it arises from elemental relations that ground the historical, rather than simply embellish it. Or put another way, the instance of historical event that acts as seed flourishes as narrative account because there is openness to what is hidden in the manifest. There is a porosity to being, and a rootedness that transcends the narrow confines of what is ordinarily taken as the fictive enterprise. All this is lost on the heirs of post-Enlightenment rationalism, and the post-modern or late modern, what have you, tends, even when it reacts against Enlightenment, to accept some of its founding principles.
For certain, modernity lacks awareness of living tradition or the legendary penumbra that is not falsehood as the literalism of moderns assume, but an acknowledgement of the surplus of the earthy, and what philosophers might call the open-ended reach of the analogy of being. Tolkien's achievement is still resonant with this chthonic and linguistic history that is secretly illumined by grace. The art that knows this is also a wounded art, because it is fruitfully open to revelatory depths. There is a necessary suffering that is also joyful.
I don't think any of this is understood by Tolkien's epigoni. Surface technique and mimetic imitation occurs, but the very earthy, elemental source of insight is replaced with the ersatz and the virtual. It is anodyne, because it has rejected the way of the Cross.
Anyway, as always, I look forward to your further thoughts, Jonathan.
I think David Jones wrestled with the excess of human history, and the overwhelming responsibility of the vatic poet to somehow acknowledge the depths that reveal themselves precisely as what announces itself as that which cannot be contained in the linear expositions of the historical record.
The mythic binds, because it arises from elemental relations that ground the historical, rather than simply embellish it. Or put another way, the instance of historical event that acts as seed flourishes as narrative account because there is openness to what is hidden in the manifest. There is a porosity to being, and a rootedness that transcends the narrow confines of what is ordinarily taken as the fictive enterprise. All this is lost on the heirs of post-Enlightenment rationalism, and the post-modern or late modern, what have you, tends, even when it reacts against Enlightenment, to accept some of its founding principles.
For certain, modernity lacks awareness of living tradition or the legendary penumbra that is not falsehood as the literalism of moderns assume, but an acknowledgement of the surplus of the earthy, and what philosophers might call the open-ended reach of the analogy of being. Tolkien's achievement is still resonant with this chthonic and linguistic history that is secretly illumined by grace. The art that knows this is also a wounded art, because it is fruitfully open to revelatory depths. There is a necessary suffering that is also joyful.
I don't think any of this is understood by Tolkien's epigoni. Surface technique and mimetic imitation occurs, but the very earthy, elemental source of insight is replaced with the ersatz and the virtual. It is anodyne, because it has rejected the way of the Cross.
Anyway, as always, I look forward to your further thoughts, Jonathan.