Christopher
Garbowski, Recovery and Transcendence for the Contemporary
Mythmaker. The
Spiritual Dimension in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien,
Maria Curie-Sklodowska
University Press,
(translation into English by Jimmy Bishop)
Chris Garbowski is of Polish origins; after spending the first
part of
his life in Canada he returned to Poland, where he teaches history at
the
University of Lublin. He is thus bilingual, though with a fuller
command of
English than Polish. In 2003 he participated as a speaker in the second
Brescia
convention “Tolkien and Middle-earth”. I met him again in 2005 in
Birmingham at
the 50th anniversary celebrations for Lord of the Rings.
We
maintain correspondence via email and he gave me critical advice whilst
I was
writing the paper on Tolkien and the Second World War which I presented
in
Birmingham. I know him as a calm and composed person and appreciated
his
courtesy both in Brescia and in Birmingham, where on several occasions
he bought
me drinks in a pub during lengthy conversations about Tolkien, history
and
other topics and demonstrated notable patience with my rather limited
knowledge
of the English language.
I have always
appreciated his works of Tolkienian criticism (first brought to my
notice by my
friend Alqua, alias Alberto Quagliaroli, who first found Chris on the
web and
put me in contact with him in autumn 2002) and referred to them in my
own
writings on Tolkien (e.g. in the introduction to the Italian edition of
Tom
Shippey’s book, Tolkien, Author of the Century); I also
published the
text of his Brescian paper in the volume Mitopoiesi. Fantasia e Storia in Tolkien (Grafo
Editore,
Brescia, 2005) which I edited. I
have still a debt with Chris though, which is to review his book; I
have promised this review a number of times, but always put it off
because of
other obligations. But now, with great pleasure, I want to release
myself from
this debt.
In the initial
acknowledgements, the author expresses special thanks to Brian
Rosebury,
acclaimed as having inspired the book and assisted, in the role of
consultant.
This reference to a scholar of Rosebury’s calibre indicates to the
careful
reader what may be expected of the work: it will be a study learned
with regard
to theory and factually well-informed, interested in history and
literary
aspects, up-to-date concerning criticism and little inclined to flights
of
fancy.
The book’s structure
is made clear by the General Index: 1. Introduction; 2. Tolkien
the
Soldier, Scholar and Storyteller: the Man and his Middle-earth; 3. The
Mythopoeic Process: the Elder Days and the Problem of Myth; 4. Art and
Axiology
of Middle-earth; 5. Authority and Revelation: Aspects of the Religious
Artist;
6. Cosmic Eucatastrophe and the Gift of Ilùvatar; 7. The “Good
Life” and the
Journey; 8. Epilogue: a Little Faerian Drama.
In the Introduction,
the first citation quotes Luthien and her choice of mortality and the
consequent abandonment of this terrestrial dimension and the author
comments
(quoting a famous theologian of secularisation, the American Peter
Berger)
that, although man has always searched for a meaning to life in
transcendence,
in contemporary western society the idea of transcendence is often not
expressed in the easily recognisable forms of the past, i.e. metaphysics
and
religion. And Garbowski immediately says that in the 20th
century,
Tolkien used his “myth” to speak to us of the transcendental aspects of
life
without using metaphysics or religion, as another man of the 20th
century, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, has also done. Frankl was
anti-positivist and therefore anti-reductionist: he did not think that
if one-hundred
men were taken and observed under extreme conditions, such as the
extreme
hunger experienced in Nazi concentration camps, all would behave in the
same
fashion, that material “need and instinct” would annihilate the
differences in
spirit between individuals; Frankl himself was able to observe (whilst
detained
in a Nazi concentration camp) that what happens is in fact the
opposite: individual
differences are exaggerated, the beast is unmasked, but also the saint.
Frankl
thought and theorized that the strongest force which determines human
behaviour
is not need or instinct, but the search for a meaning in life.
Instincts also
act, but they are only instruments of the search for meaning. The quest
for
power is also a force which acts in men, but only after the search for
meaning
has failed.
According
to Frankl, the search for meaning is based in the capacity to
“transcend
ourselves”. What is self-transcendence? It is the fact that man is a
responsible creature and must concretise the meaning of his life, a
meaning
which is initially only potential. Consequentially, the individual
experiences
a creative tension between the “I am” situation and the “I should be”
situation, the expression of this potential that all of us – each in a
different and unique manner – carries within.
What, then, is the
meaning of “spiritual”? In contrast to the “New Age” cliché, the
Spiritual is
not something which refers to the self and its structure, but rather to
the
world and the people around us to which our Self is drawn. It
is the outreaching
to the world, metaphorically expressed so well in the literary
creations of the
episodes of the Journey (of life) which expands the limits
which
previously confined us. Frankl wrote that: “The self should be like an
eye, an
organ which is aware of itself only when it suffers from some physical
defect.
The more an eye sees itself, the less the world and other objects are
visible
to it”.
In the first chapter,
the author analyses how certain events in Tolkien’s own life, his
experience as
a soldier in the trenches during the Great War (after he was
prematurely
orphaned), gave a tone of “pagan pessimism” to his first mythological
writings
(of Silmarillion tendency). An interesting problem is to explain how
Tolkien
passed from that pessimism to the “subtle optimism” of Lord of the
Rings.
One instrument which led to this passage was the activity of study: the
love of
knowledge for its own sake (apart from being a means for developing
one’s own
personality) was cultivated by Tolkien during and thanks to the decades
he
spent as professor of medieval philology. It was centred on his
membership of
the group known as the Inklings. His linguistic work and profound
knowledge of
real medieval sources vaccinated Tolkien against the danger of
idealizing the
medieval period (in contrast to traditionalists, both
nineteenth-century
romantics and twentieth-century neo-romantics). According to Garbowski,
Tolkien
never saw poetic intuition as being in contrast with reason, but rather
to be
taken in conjunction with it, and never expressed exaggerated nostalgia
for the
past (although often he felt it). He was a Christian, and for
Christians “every
generation is equidistant from Eternity” (a quote from the historian
Leopold
Von Ranke), no period is superior to others (such as to inspire
nostalgia);
Tolkien did not fall into this error of “chronocentrism”. The
non-idealization
of things medieval allowed Tolkien to create Bilbo, who in The
Hobbit
plays the part of “spokesman” of modern reactions against old values,
of modern
sensibilities and opinions.
Then the author
follows the long and tormented process by which Tolkien constructed
Middle-earth and, following Rosebury, shows how “flat” the epic Silmarillion
is compared to the romance of LotR, which in fact takes its
three-dimensionality from the references made by Gandalf,
Aragorn or Elrond to the events of Silmarillion.
Here I must comment that in this part of the book the reader is not
given a
linear and conclusive explanation. On this question of the relations
between Silmarillion,
The Hobbit and LotR, The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien
by
Alex Lewis and Elisabeth Currie is rather more clear and perceptive. It
is true
that Garbowski is not particularly interested in this evolution, but
rather in
several issues such as that of “recovery”. Tolkien wanted to show how
goodness
possesses its own beauty, but it was not an easy task, with the risk of
falling
into the cloying happy ending of popular literature. The Tolkienian
“eucatastrophe” served to create a rebirth of optimism from the
pessimism
present throughout almost all of LotR, and without making the
operation
seem rhetorical and artificial. The “recovery” is not so much a
faithful
description of reality as an exercise in “seeing things the way we
should see
them”: a demonstration of human beings’ positive potential (without
having in
any way forgotten their negative capacities).
Speaking of Middle-earth’s moral qualities, the author stresses that the Ring represents a
different evil to that, say, of a dragon: the latter constitutes an
external
evil, whereas the former is, above all, internal. In addition, we are
told that
evil is “monologic”, whilst good is “dialogic”, and the Ring embodies
the
monologic tendency of the ego.
Tolkien did not aim
his writing to receive approval from intellectuals, those who worked in
similar
fields (a fairly easy goal achieve, if pursued intentionally), but
rather to
speak to the heart of the common man (a more difficult aim). He spoke
to the
heart, but also instructed the mind; the union of the search for
entertainment
with the search for profundity is typical of LotR. An example
of a
profound idea is the notion that life does not have to achieve
any clear
purpose (Frodo does not have to find a magical object, but already has
it and
must destroy it), but instead herself calls us, saying
“Do not despair!”, beseeching us to accept
the actual facts of history and resist the desperation which they could
provoke.
Garbowski next
discusses the relationship with Christianity and shows how Middle-earth
speaks
to us of “virtuous pagans” who lived before any premonition of the
Christian
revelation, and thus creates a scenario suitable for appreciation by
non-believing modern readers, offering a space for dialogue and thus
anticipating the Gaudium et Spes of the 2nd Vatican
Council,
the proclamation which considers
relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. If
Tolkien
had not already conceived the ideas of the Council and instead had
explicitly
inserted Christianity in his fiction (apologetically or even in the
form of
instruction), the LotR would now appear “hopelessly dated for
many
thinking religious readers of today, and certainly unpalatable for the
secular
one”. The author then acutely observes that Tolkien implicitly refers
to the
problem of Protestant reform when, in the Silmarillion, he writes of
the
flight of the Noldor from Valinor to Middle-earth: they leave the Valar
“of the
same race as Melkor” – in the words of – just as in the reformers left
the
Church of Rome, accomplice of the Antichrist. This rebellion (or
“protest”)
gave rise to many tragedies, but also to many benefits, much as the
Reformation, as well as causing reciprocal hatred and religious wars,
produced
fruit such as secular education, political liberalism, free scientific
research
and tolerance. The Valar took the Elves to Valinor because of their
over-protectiveness, and their decision was not “infallible” because
they did
not consult Iluvatar. Tolkien wants to tell us that religious
authority at
times does not have divine sanction, because its actions may derive
from human
frailty.
The various moral
failings of the peoples invented by Tolkien, and recounted in both the Silmarillion
and the LotR, are, the author maintains, inspired by the Old
Testament
(Adam and Eve, the Flood, Babel etc.). The destructive presence of
Melkor
resembles biblical Satan, not a divinity of evil in a Manichaean
dualism, but
an involuntary executor of the plans of Ilùvatar.
Nature is often
described in emotional and aesthetically motivated terms, but at the
level of
moral values Tolkien does not subscribe to the romantic idea of “man
who has
isolated himself from Nature and thus condemned himself to
unhappiness”.
Instead, Tolkien shows how man has ruined his natural environment (e.g.
by
destroying trees) and also that nature herself is cruel: the Ice of
Forochel,
the eruptions of Mount Doom, the Carahdras storm, the crow spies, the
Willow
Man of the Old Forest. Cruelty – in a world corrupted by sin – is
present both
in extra-human nature and human civilization.
The theme of the
“eucatastrophe” rests on a philosophical theory concerning happiness:
for
example, Kant’s theory separates morality and happiness and would be
more
suited to a narrative of “tragic” rather than “mythic” type. But
Tolkien is a
“eudaemonist”; he prefers an ethical theory which does not separate
morality
from happiness, and therefore he constructs a (problematic) happy
ending. And
here the author once more makes a comparison with Frankl’s ideas:
“human
behaviour cannot be fully understood if
one subscribes to the theory that man seeks pleasure and happiness
independently
of the possibility to experience them”. According to Thomas Aquinas,
every
rational act has as its purpose a good consequence, and these
intermediate
“goods” guide us towards (although they do not lead to) the Highest
Good, which
is God. In LotR – the author observes – the more rational the
characters
are, the more they incline towards good actions: figures such as
Saruman believe
themselves to be rational, but in fact this is self-delusion and they
drive
themselves mad.
Garbowski, following
Frankl, is convinced that each human life has a special “mission”, each
person
has a concrete task which must be carried out, and thus no life can be
replaced
or repeated. For example, three leading characters of LotR -
Aragorn,
Sam, and Frodo - follow different paths. Aragorn is the incarnation of the
“purposeful
action”: he is the “real gold” of Bilbo’s song, as opposed to the
“counterfeit
gold” of the Ring, and his goal is to become the true king, the Lord of
the
Ring, not by means of the Ring, but by rejecting it.
Sam embodies
“service” rendered to other people – in his case, especially Frodo –
driven by
a personal love which leads to strong loyalty, but which is free and
uncommitted by any vow (for Tolkien, vows are connected with power, as
he
explains concerning Feanor and his sons, and Gollum with respect to
Frodo, but
– speaking through Elrond – excluded from the Fellowship of the Ring).
Frodo represents the
path of “suffering”: he must continue to carry the burden of the Ring,
accepting the episodes that befall him without yielding to desperation.
Frodo
experiences three types of suffering: from Weathertop to Rauros he
suffers from
illness; from Rauros to
In this third phase,
not even Gandalf can help him, and Frodo must find on his own the
redeeming
sense of his suffering: I had to sacrifice myself so that others might
be
happy. When Frodo becomes aware of this, the author says, he reaches
“transcendence”. Thus with this realization, the transitory nature of
the
journey (of life) achieves a clear significance: once we realize the
meaning
inherent in a concrete situation, and intuit and fulfill the actions
which it
suggests to us, we have “converted that possibility into a reality, and
we have
done so once and forever!”, writes the author, using Frankl’s words.
The deepest meaning
of life may be sought, but not “seen”, because it is a gift which comes
from an
Other (Tolkien implies this through the richness, diversity and
unpredictability of Middle-earth), and a task which we have yet to
accomplish.
According to Garbowski, both Tolkien and Frankl agree that
self-transcendence
is found in awareness of the Other rather than in awareness of
oneself; he
therefore denies that LotR may be understood
mystically (in the sense of oriental Orthodox
Christian theology).
At the conclusion of
his work, the author reminds us that in his essay, On Fairy Stories,
Tolkien wrote that literature is not the most powerful medium for
fantasy, but
that there exists another more potent art-form which he called “Faerian
Drama”.
Garbowski comments: here in Middle-earth, the form of art which most
closely
resembles Tolkien’s “Faerian Drama” is cinema, which, like the Second
Music of
the Ainur, is created by many people (script and screenplay writers,
director,
actors, musicians etc.). Twentieth-century cinema, in contrast to
twentieth-century literature, has often that happy ending which is also
found
in LotR. The best example the author can think of is Frank
Capra’s It's
a Wonderful Life. This film especially resembles “Faerian Drama” in
the
Pottersville episode, when Clarence the second class angel shows the
protagonist – George Bailey – what would have happened if he had never
been
born. This experience is similar to dreaming (and at times confused
with it),
but different. A critic has said that Bailey’s real enemy is not the
cynical
speculator Potter, but his own indecision about what he really wants
from life:
to be successful or to do good.
For Tolkien, eternity
is not as it is commonly imagined, a chronological moment which comes
at the
end of all preceding time, but rather as Augustine of Hippo saw it:
eternity is
always present, here and now, available to those who yearn for it.
Tolkien’s
“recovery” is the awareness of the closeness of the transcendental to
everyday
existence. The realization that, if the “horizontal” dimension of
transcendence
did not exist, the “vertical” dimension would become ephemeral.
“Horizontal
transcendence” guides each person towards a concrete relation with the
“Other”
in Middle-earth.
The
author closes with the observation that Tolkien suffered in the
trenches during
the First World War and Viktor Frankl in Second World War concentration
camps;
both have tried to show how it is possible to search for a meaning to
life even
in extremely painful experiences, and that it is possible to not be
overcome by
desperation. Garbowski writes :
In the fantasy of one
and the psychology of the other simple truths are wrested from the
cataclysms
of the twentieth century. It would be a pity if these
truths were lost
on those
of us less profoundly tried.
* * *
After
this – admittedly incomplete – account of Chris Garbowski’s book, I
will add a
few brief comments.
This
study certainly demonstrates the author’s extensive and open-minded
general
culture; it is enough to glance rapidly at the list of names referred
to:
Adler, Adorno, Althusser, Aristotle, Mikhail Bakhtin, Marc Bloch,
Herbert
Butterfield, Cassirer, Cervantes, Chesterton, Dante Alighieri, Dumezil,
Dostoevsky, Descartes, Freud, Goethe, Illich, Joyce, Jung, Kafka, Kant,
Keats,
Leonardo da Vinci, Colin Manlove, Nietzsche, George Orwell, Perrault,
Leopold
von Ranke, Ricoeur, Sartre, Socrates, Tolstoy, Simone Weil, H. G.
Wells, Wim
Wenders (and many others). The author’s references range from literary
theory
to philosophy, sociology, psychiatry and cinema.
Of
prime importance is Garbowski’s knowledge of religion and theology:
detailed
reference is made to the Bible, Augustine of Hippo, Irenaeus, Thomas
Aquinas,
Cardinal Newman, theologians such as T.
de Chardin, Peter Berger, David Tracy, Zachary Hayes, Waclaw
Hryniewicz, Andrew
Louth, Thomas Merton, Gabriel Moran, Clark Pinnock, J. R. Porter, John
Rogerson, Jeffrey B. Russell, Nbahum Sarna, Ronald Simkins and Avivah
G.
Zomberg ( a pity, though, that he had not also read Henri De Lubac!).
Discussion of the relationship between Christianity and paganism,
between
Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy, of the 2nd Vatican
Council, the difference between “dialectical theology” and “analogical
theology”, eschatology and eudaemonism: these all demonstrate that the
author’s
cultural interests and competence are deeply-rooted and were not
pursued merely
for the purpose of this work.
On
the other hand, the book shows an unusually profound knowledge of
Tolkien: the
informed reader will notice that Garbowski has read and meditated upon
all of
Tolkien’s available writings: e.g. all the volumes of History of
Middle-earth, Unfinished Tales, poems (such as Mythopoeia
and
The Sea Bell), academic essays, short works such as The
Smith of
Wootton Major, and in particular read with great attention and
perception
the Letters. He also commands a most extensive and up-to-date
knowledge
of critical writing on Tolkien: Shippey, Flieger, Curry, Helms,
Rosebury,
Joseph Pearce, Auden, Lewis and Carpenter, papers edited by Isaacs,
Zimbardo
and Paul Kocher. Not to forget: Hammond & Scull, Charles Coulombe,
John
Flood, Karen Fonstad, Willis Glover, Charles Huttar, Maria Kuteeva,
Jakub
Lichanski, Jared Lobdell, Sean McGrath, Timothy O’Neill, Tadeusz
Olsanski,
Richard Purtill, Mary Sirridge, Gunnar Urang, J. R. Watson, Richard
West and
Andrzej Zgorzelski.
Apart
from the author’s culture, I appreciated other things amongst which a lack
of academic snobbery: references are not made to exhibit erudition,
but
only in order to sustain or illustrate arguments at the appropriate
juncture;
the language used tends as much as possible to be accessible, and when
Garbowski is obliged to introduce technical terms (for example
“chronocentrism” or “self-transcendence”), he is at pains to give a
full
explanation; quotations are taken from the widest range of sources: not
just Aristotle
and Goethe, but also Frank Capra, George Lucas
and Van Morrison.
Another
aspect which I appreciated is the work’s moral and instructive intent.
The
author, especially by means of his references to Viktor Frankl, wants
to give
the reader not just a critical reading of a novelist who wrote of the
“Good
Life”, but also to give suggestions and advice towards the reader’s
attainment
of a “Good Life”.
I
also appreciated the author’s moderation. Through my reading of his
work, our
email correspondence and private conversations, I have formed the
opinion that
Chris Garbowski is, politically and
culturally speaking, a conservative: he does not celebrate secular
culture or
social justice, criticize nationalism, or praise non-reactionary
liberation
movements (political, sexual or economic). He condemns communism, the
consumer
society, technology and liberalism, but does not feel the urgency to
express
criticism of fascism, peasant culture or the patriarchal family. And
yet in his
book, though one can see the conservative, one does not see a
reactionary:
fascism, theocracy, patriarchal values or the class structure of
society are
never propounded. He feels sympathy for the 2nd Vatican
Council. He
appreciates theological research (and therefore innovation). He is
sceptical of
the idyllic nature of “local communities” (called “heimat”). He shows
no signs
of xenophobia, racism or chauvinism. He feels no nostalgia for the
medieval
period. His virtue of moderation, in other words, keeps him well away
from
extremism.
Since
this essay is a review and not an elegy, I must also explain certain matters in which I disagree with the author.
I
disagree with Garbowski’s treatment of Sigmund Freud and
psychoanalysis: he has
not read Freud’s works carefully and lacks knowledge of great
Freudians, such
as (to name but a few) Karl Abraham,
Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, Roger
Money-Kyrle,
Hanna Segal or Donald Meltzer. His portrait of Freudianism is thus
largely a
caricature: it is presented as a reductionist theory, positivist,
materialist
and anti-humanist. There certainly existed – above all in North
American
society and culture from the nineteen-fifties to the eighties – a
degraded
Freudianism of this type that is treated with irony in the films of
Woody
Allen, for example. But Freud’s heritage is far from being reduced to
these
distortions and misunderstandings: it would be like attacking Charles
Darwin
because his theory was misunderstood and manipulated by Spencer,
Haeckel,
Rosemberg and Hitler. Garbowski rightly argues against “cosmetic” and
consolatory introspectionism and comments that a healthy psychotherapy
must
remember the outside world and other people. But Freud and his
important
followers have always done exactly this! For them the positivist
apparatus of
“drives and needs” was never of primary importance and eventually, with
the
passage of psychoanalytical generations, it was eliminated. In the
forefront of
Freudian theory there has always been the external world with its
traumas and
healing resources, the principle of reality, the so-called Object,
interpersonal relations (the Oedipal triangle, transfer,
identification
models), a great faith in the continuous and unpredictable growth of
knowledge
(“Acheronta movebo”) according to an unending analysis of reality.
Another
criticism I wish to make is more specifically philosophical: when the
author
(and Viktor Frankl) speak of “self-transcendence” and the “search for
meaning”,
there is a certain lack of rigour. They either describe these things as
the
accomplishment of an individual’s internal potentialities (which
already exist
within him), thus referring to an Aristotelian-naturalistic vision of
the
relation between potentiality and act, or alternatively as the entrance
of the
Other, an unpredictable external novelty, with reference to a
religious-supernatural and historical-extranatural vision. I hope that
Garbowski will find an occasion to develop this aspect in greater depth
and
more precision, and to explicitly address this theoretical question
with a
description of how much and in what circumstances the “meaning of life”
and
“transcendence” are connected through the concepts outlined above:
innate
qualities, individuality, potentiality, accomplishment, the interior,
the
exterior, nature and history.
I
was also unsatisfied for the reason that this book – as often happens
in
Tolkien studies, even with masterly writers like Shippey – treats
Tolkien with
too much respect. Acute and penetrating as he is in finding Tolkien’s
positive
qualities, Garbowski never makes
criticisms, never finds weak aspects in his characters, his ideas or
his works.
It is undeniable that many literary critics have treated Tolkien
unjustly and
with disdain. But it is also true that one can feel respect and
affection for a
person or a work and at the same time make criticisms. Respect and
intellectual
honesty require that nothing and no-one should be criticized without
being
read, studied and researched!
* * *
I
will conclude this review with a passage from the book that I
particularly
liked, because it contradicts a widespread prejudice which is hostile
towards
Tolkien and fantasy literature in general. After having argued against
the
superficiality with which Tolkien’s spirituality is confused with the
very different
model available in the “New Age supermarket”, Garbowski writes:
In the title song
“Enlightenment” from an album of the early nineties Van Morrison, one
of the
more perceptive of popular artists, exposes a key juncture where the
two types
of spirituality certainly part ways. “Enlightenment”, sings the artist,
“says the
world is nothing but a dream”.
Conversely Tolkien
uses the somewhat dream-like art of fantasy to imaginatively recover as
much of
the real world as possible for our spiritual advancement, a world that
he
believes is anything but a dream.