Re: Tolkien's Subcreation

Steg Belsky scripsit:

> Do any of you happen to know of good relatively short passages or
> quotes from JRR Tolkien about his philosophy of Subcreation?  Something
> explanatory, that would work as a primary source to give students or
> anything like that.
	"Dear Sir," I said, "Although now long estranged,
	Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
	Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
	and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
	Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
	through whom is splintered from a single White
	to many hues, and endlessly combined
	in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
	Though all the crannies of the world we filled
	with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
	Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
	and sowed the seed of dragons -- 'twas our right
	(used or misused).  That right has not decayed:
	we make still by the law in which we're made."
		--from his poem "Mythopoeia", quoted in his essay
		"On Fairy-Stories", both reprinted in _Tree and Leaf_.

The full text of the poem is on line at
http://home.agh.edu.pl/~evermind/jrrtolkien/mythopoeia.htm .


--
John Cowan   jcowan@reutershealth.com   http://www.reutershealth.com
    "Mr. Lane, if you ever wish anything that I can do, all you will have
        to do will be to send me a telegram asking and it will be done."
    "Mr. Hearst, if you ever get a telegram from me asking you to do
        anything, you can put the telegram down as a forgery."