Re: Was Tolkien a good conlanger? (was: Re: Good Books)

Jörg:
> Hallo!
>
> On Fri, 5 Mar 2004 15:16:42 -0000,
> And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:
>
> > A separate message for the non-OT bit of this discussion...
> >
> > David P:
> > > Further, I remain to be convinced that Tolkien was actually a
> > > *good* language creator, rather than just a prolific, or highly
> > > public, one.
> >
> > I would like to try to convince you, then, but first I need to
> > know what you think are the criterial properties of being a
> > good conlanger.
>
> A good question, and not an easy one.  There are very different
> currents within the conlanging community, and every conlanger
> has her personal style.  This reminds me of the discussion
> we had here when Jesse Bangs posted his famous manifesto
> two years ago.  One could, for example, say that from a
> "naturalist" viewpoint, conlang X is a great achievement
> because the conlang really feels like a natural language,
> has a well-worked-out (and plausible) history, a vocabulary
> with interesting and realistic lexico-semantic distinctions,
> etc., and maybe conlang Y is a less fortunate creation according
> to the same criteria.  But these criteria are meaningfully applicable
> only to languages that purport to represent fictional ethnic languages,
> while attempting to apply them to an auxlang or an engelang
> is as meaningless as rejecting abstract paintings as "bad art"
> just because they don't represent any (real or imagined) part
> of the physical world.  Just as abstract paintings require
> a different set of measures (which in turn apply poorly to
> representational art), engelangs require a different set of
> measures than naturalist conlangs (which in turn apply poorly
> to the latter).
All true. Engelangs virtually by definition have criterial
properties for whether they are or aren't successful, so here
we can set them aside and think just of artlangs. (I am studiously
ignoring auxlangs!) David and Tolkien are both artlangers.

> > Long-time readers of this list may recall that I have been
> > prominent in articulating my distaste for Quenya and Sindarin,
> > so I think I'm quite well placed to defend his reputation.
>
> As a fairly long-time reader (I have been following this list
> for about four years now) I know that your chief interest lies
> in engelangs, which is something quite distinct from the
> "naturalist" approach Tolkien evidently applied to his conlanging.
> Me, I also follow the naturalist approach in my conlangs,
> and my *subjective* judgement of Quenya and Sindarin is that
> they are great (though not necessarily unsurpassed; Tokana,
> Teonaht and a few others are at least of equal merit IMHO)
> naturalist artlangs.  Which doesn't mean that I'd do the same,
> and indeed, my style is different in some respects.
I'm sure that your subjective judgement is founded on criteria
on which there could be intersubjective agreement. Where Tolkien
still stands out, even when judged only by his conlang products
divorced from the historical circumstances of their production,
is, I feel, in their profound meditation on Europeanness, and
in their philologicality. Lots of other conlangs are inspired
by this language or that, but there aren't many that amount to
a kind of disquisition into the soul of geographical-cultural-
linguistic-ethnic complex in the way that JRRT's work relates
to a Europe centred on Mercia. I say "there aren't many",
because I am conscious of Tepa as a kind of paean to Uto-
Aztecan.

I don't think you can divorce his conlanging from the circumstances
of its production, though. He was working at a time when -- at
least until the last decade of his life -- he would have presumed
(wrongly) that nobody would be interested in his languages and
(rightly) that many would condemn him for wasting his time on
such a frivolous and contemptible pastime instead of doing the
research a professor ought to be doing. That excuses the
incompleteness of the languages, especially the gross inadequacy
of their documentation. And we need to ask ourselves what sort
of state our conlangs would have reached if we had been labouring
in similar circumstances. Nowadays we know not only that we are
not going to be despised for our Vice, but also that there will
be a small but appreciative -- impatient, even -- audience for
our labours, and we also have the stimulus of quotidian
intercourse with people with similar interests (whereas JRRT had
to make do with the oafish C.S. Lewis).

(The stimulus of quotidian intercourse I am referring to here
is of course the Conlang list. Presumably the enjoyment of
the stimulus of other sorts of quotidian intercourse is
available to us to varying degrees.)

> >From an engelang viewpoint, however, Quenya and Sindarin
> are most likely deficient (their morphologies aren't
> self-segregating, their lexical semantics are haphazard,
> and what else), but that actually misses the point because
> that's not what Quenya and Sindarin are meant to be.
Fair enough, though I doubt anybody would dream of evaluating
Elvish by those criteria. (Well, perhaps some lunatic auxlang
proselytizer might...)

> It would equally miss the point if I said that Rick Morneau's
> monumental work was bad conlanging because it doesn't feel like
> a natlang, has no history attached to it, etc., etc.;
> that would be meaningless because it doesn't attempt to render
> a fictional natlang, it is an engelang, and thus other criteria
> apply (of which I cannot say much, so I abstain from a judgement).
>
> > > Yet, despite all this, and how hateful such words are to fans
> > > of fantasy and Tolkien (which includes a good many conlangers,
> > > I know), I claim that, as a conlanger, you should be glad of them.
> > > Why?   Simply because, as a community, we need diversity.
>
> Yes.  Diversity is a virtue.
>
> > Slavish conformity is the enemy of creativity, but mindless
> > heterodoxy is not a virtue in itself. For example, the glorious
> > pluralism of American culture is scarcely enhanced (except as
> > black comedy) by, say, white supremacists or New Age astrologers.
>
> I wholeheartedly agree.  New Age astrologers are a harmless and
> sometimes amusing nuisance.  The world would be neither better
> nor worse if they weren't there.  White supremacists are a disgrace;
> the world would be better without them.  But that's enough said
> here on that matter; let's not get deep into politics.
>
> > > If every conlanger was a Tolkienite, without exception, then it
> > > would be easy for someone like me (who dislikes Tolkien and fantasy)
> > > to dismiss the whole art (or craft or hobby) of conlanging, based on
> > > the logic, "Conlangers like X. I hate X. Therefore, I hate that which
> > > conlangers do." This logic is anything but logical, but who says that
> > > any opinion will be logical?
>
> Opinions tend not to be logical.  And that kind of "logic" is
> of course bullshit.
>
> >       If it's a goal of ours to at least be
> > > accepted or acknowledged for what we do (and I do know that there are
> > > some who wish for exactly the opposite), then at very least we can try
> > > to dismiss the stereotypes outright. This way, there'll be less for
> > > those who don't understand us to attack us with, and hopefully once
> > > they run out of weapons, they'll start listening.
> >
> > Like Andreas, I don't believe in pandering to the opinions of the
> > small-minded.
> >
> > However, if I may put words in your mouth, one could argue that
> > Tolkien is to us as Shakespeare is to Eng Lit. It is taboo to
> > criticize Shakespeare or to fail to pay sufficient homage;
>
> Which is certainly *not* a good thing.
>
> > [...] It is the same with Tolkien, for reasons that
> > I have described in my other reply.
>
> I am of the opinion that Tolkien was a great conlanger and also
> a good fantasy writer (few works of fantasy fiction can compete IMHO,
> though there is certainly better *literature* than Tolkien's),
I don't know about that. By orthodox literary criteria, yes it's
true. But as a work of fiction it attains that level of excellence
at which is ceases to be reasonable to rank works by a hierarchy
of quality.

> but I am far from putting him into a sacrosanct position.
> He is one of several great conlangers of equal stature, and the
> same applies to his books.  It is perfectly o.k. to me
> if someone dislikes Tolkien, his books or his conlangs.
> Even if he *was* the best, it would be perfectly o.k. to
> criticize him.
I agree about the unsacrosanctness of course. I wonder, though,
(and respectfully, of course) whether you are influenced by the
everything-seems-easy-once-it-has-been-done phenomenon, like the
way in which tens of thousands of people are now intimately
familiar with the theories of Newton and Einstein. There's also
the question of whether you are judging only the Elvish languages
themselves, or also the entire artistic life that, thanks be to
Christopher Tolkien and Humphrey Carpenter, we are privileged to
have a window onto. Looking at the languages themselves, one sees
that they are the product of an exceptionally gifted philologist,
but I agree that other conlangs achieve equal artistic success in
other ways. Looking at the entire life, one can't but be convinced
that one is seeing the characteristic that is generally called
genius.

(None of this renewed praise for Tolkien should be read as
implicitly witholding praise from other conlangers, mind.)

--And.