Understanding Magic In JRR Tolkien — страница 5

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throughout Arda — through the land, the waters, and the airs. The power had more than one source, but only one of those sources could be utilized in “magic”: the Morgothian source. Tolkien uses the word “sorcery” in several ways. Sometimes he speaks of the sorceries of Sauron or his servants, and we are reminded of the necromancy they practiced. Sometimes Tolkien seems to use the word in a more general way. When the Rohirrim speak of the Lady of the Wood and call her a sorceror, do they truly imply they believe Galadriel consorts with spirits, or do they simply mean they perceive in her a great power they do not share? In the Elvish conception there was no “magic” so much as “Art”. The Elves simply possessed the natural ability to engage in sub-creation. All the

Ainur could do was “sub-create” — manipulate the creation of Il*vatar within those bounds he had set through the creation of E itself. The Elves possessed a similar faculty though much diminished by comparison, except perhaps in some rare cases. F anor, the greatest of the Eldar, rivalled the deeds of the Ainur in some respects, and even aroused envy in Melkor’s heart. And Luthien, being half Elf, half Maia, accomplished a considerable stroke against Melkor himself by singing him and all his servants to sleep inside Angband. Despairing of his use of the word “magic”, Tolkien wrote to Milton Waldman (a publisher to whom he submitted The Lord of the Rings prior to its final acceptance by Allen & Unwin): “I have not used ‘magic’ consistently, and indeed the

Elven-queen Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused use of the word for both the devices and operations of the Enemy, and for those of the Elves. I have not, because there is not a word for the latter (since all human stories have suffered the same confusion). But the Elves are there (in my tales) to demonstrate the difference. Their ‘magic’ is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations: more effortless, more quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed correspondence). And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination and tyrranous re-orming of Creation. The ‘Elves’ are ‘immortal’, at least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and

change, than with death. The Enemy in successive forms is always ‘naturally’ concerned with sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines; but the problem: that this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently good root, the desire to benefit the world and others* — speedily and according to the benefactor’s own plans — is a recurrent motive.” “*Not in the Beginner of Evil: his was a sub-creative Fall, and hence the Elves (the representatives of sub-creation par excellence) were peculiarly his enemies, and the special object of his desire and hate — and open to his deceits. Their Fall is into possessiveness and (to a less degree) into a perversin of their art to power.” (Tolkien, “Letters”, Letter 131) In a draft of a letter written to

Naomi Mitcheson (though this part was not actually sent to her), Tolkien elaborated on the distinctions between “mortal” and “Elvish” perceptions of magic: “I am afraid I have been far too casual about ‘magic’ and especially the use of the word; though Galadriel and others show by the criticism of the ‘mortal’ use of the word, that the thought about it is not altogether casual. But it is a v. large question, and difficult: and a story which, as you so rightly say, is largely about motives (choice, temptations, etc.) and the intentions for using whatever is found in the world, could hardly be burdened with a pseudo-philosophic disquisition! I do not intend to involve myself in any debate whether ‘magic’ in any sense is real of really possible in the world.

But I suppose that, for the purposes of the tale, some would say that there is a latent distinction such as once was called the distinction between magia and goeteia. Galadriel speaks of the ‘deceits of the Enemy’. Well enough, but magia chould be, was, held good (per se), and goeteia bad. Neither is, in this tale, good or bad (per se), but only by motive or purpose or use. Both sides use both, but with different motives. The supremely bad motive is (for this tale, since it is specially about it) domination of other ‘free’ wills. The Enemy’s operations are by no means all goetic deceits, but ‘magic’ that produces real effects in the physical world. But his magia he uses to bulldoze both people and things, and his goeteia to terrify and subjugate. Their magia the