Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle : A Blossom on the Tree of Tales

Transcription

1 Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle : A Blossom on the Tree of Tales D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. ABSTRACT: J. R. R. Tolkien s short story, Leaf by Niggle, embodies the theories of story, fantasy, and myth which he outlined in his Mythopoeia, in On Fairy-stories, and in his letters. That view was eventually to appear more fully fleshed out in The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien denied, with some heat, the idea that his Lord of the Rings (LotR) was an allegory. His most spirited denial of the proposition appears in a 1947 letter about the draft of LotR which Tolkien had sent to Sir Stanley Unwin and which Rayner Unwin had read and commented on. One of Rayner Unwin s comments concerning the struggle between darkness and light in the version of LotR that he had just read was that sometimes one suspects [it of] leaving the story proper to become pure allegory (Letter 109, Letters, p. 120). 1 Tolkien responds with a vigorous and informative demurral:... do not let Rayner suspect Allegory. There is a moral, I suppose, in any tale worth telling. But that is not the same thing. Even the struggle between darkness and light (as he calls it, not me) is for me just a particular phase of history, one example of its pattern, perhaps, but not The Pattern; 1. From a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin, 31 July 1947; Letter 109 in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), p I cite this text here and hereafter as Letters, with date, letter, and page numbers.

2 24 The Journal of Inklings Studies and the actors are individuals they each, of course, contain universals, or they would not live at all, but they never represent them as such. Of course, Allegory and Story converge, meeting somewhere in Truth. So that the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds... that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily can it be read just as a story ; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it. But the two start out from opposite ends. (Letter 109, Letters, p. 121) Later, in his Foreword to the three parts of LotR, Tolkien again denies that the work is allegorical. Speaking of the work overall, he writes As for any inner meaning or message, it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical [a reference to opinions that the work reflected WWII] I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory ; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. 2 Scholars have for the most part simply echoed Tolkien s denial and pursued such labels as applicability instead. This essay will not suggest, much less insist upon, allegory as a way of reading any of Tolkien s works, including Leaf by Niggle. Nonetheless, it is simply a fact that allegory, as most English- 2. Foreword, The Fellowship of the Rings (New York: Del Rey [Random House], 1994), p. 8. Richard Purtill has commented at length on applicability with respect to Leaf by Niggle : see Three Faces of Myth in his J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), esp. pp ; see also note 20 (Appendix: Literature Review) below.

3 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 25 speakers define the term, is a much broader term in common usage than in Tolkien s vocabulary. Perhaps the most useful discussion of Tolkien s own definition of allegory appears in Jane Chance s Tolkien s Art: A Mythology for England, in her early and wide-ranging discussion of Tolkien s discussion of allegory in his Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics; in his preface to the translation of Sir Gawain, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo; and more generally in his practice in LotR. Tolkien regarded allegory either as the embodiment of abstract principles for characters in an extended metaphor, or perhaps as the fictive embodiment of current events, as Chance notes and as appears in his Foreword. Such writing was not for him. 3 His interest as he once wrote to Milton Waldman was myth (not allegory!) Letter 131, Letters, p. 167). 4 It is as a discussion of myth, then, that this essay on Leaf by Niggle proceeds. Tolkien published two three-volume works in the twentieth century; neither was a trilogy. One the later of the two Tolkien intended for publication in one volume, but the publisher demurred; what became a three-part work is now known worldwide, has been translated into dozens of languages, and has become a major film series. This three-part work is, of course, The Lord of the Rings (LotR). It has been many readers sole contact with Tolkien s writing. Tolkien s pre-rings trilogy, on the other hand, is known chiefly to scholars and to fans (in the old sense of fanatics ). To be sure, Tolkien did not publish the three works as a trilogy. In fact, they have not until recently been published together. They nonetheless form an important unit; they are the poem Mythopoeia, the essay On Fairy-stories, and the short story Leaf by Niggle. 5 These 3. Chance, The Critic as Monster: Tolkien s Lectures, Prefaces, and Foreword, Chapter 1 in Tolkien s Art: A Mythology for England (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, rev. ed., 2001), pp , esp. pp I am indebted to Jane Chancer for this reference; see her Tolkien s Art, p All three now appear in Tolkien s Tree and Leaf, the collection re-edited by Christopher Tolkien after his father s death with the additions of Mythopoeia and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth (London: HarperCollins, 2001). J. R. R.

4 26 The Journal of Inklings Studies three works as a unit define Tolkien s attitude toward story. To be sure, Tolkien s philological and linguistic researches and interests also inform his view of story ; this essay, however, focuses upon his first trilogy, the three short works. Their subject is not only story, but a particular kind of story: fantasy, or perhaps myth. To read these three works, accompanied by Tolkien s own comments in his Letters, is to find one s reading of LotR enriched, deepened, and broadened; much of the theoretical, or better authorial, basis for LotR appears outlined in these three works taken as a whole. I begin at the end of the trilogy, with the short story which embodies much of Tolkien s theoretical base for his writing. I must also begin by refuting Tolkien s generally-accepted account of how he wrote the story: he told Sir Stanley Unwin in March 1945 concerning Leaf by Niggle that he woke up one morning (more than 2 years ago) with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out. I am not aware of ever thinking of the story or composing it in the ordinary sense (Letter 98, Letters p. 113). 6 Again, seventeen years later in a letter to his aunt, Jane Neave (8-9 September 1962), Tolkien mis-remembers similarly about the story: It was written (I think) just before the War began, though I first read it aloud to my friends early in I recollect nothing about the writing, except that I woke one morning with it in my head, scribbled it down and the printed form in the main hardly differs from the first hasty version at all. I Tolkien s first publication of the work appeared in 1964 and contained only On Fairy-stories and Leaf by Niggle. 6. Another of Carpenter s works suggests that he adopted Tolkien s view of the near-spontaneous generation of Leaf by Niggle. He writes that Tolkien had been thinking about a neighboring poplar tree which he cherished, and that [o]ne morning he woke up with a short story in his head, and scribbled it down. Carpenter notes, as Tolkien himself notes in his letter to his aunt (see below), that Niggle s failure to complete his painting of the tree reflected Tolkien s fear that he would not complete his own tree Lord of the Rings. Carpenter s account appears in J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (London: Allen and Unwin, 1977), p. 196.

5 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 27 find it still quite moving, when I reread it. (Letter 241, Letters p. 320) Tolkien errs in these memories, as his manuscripts of Leaf by Niggle show. The manuscripts reside in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; one need only devote a few days to studying those manuscripts to realize that they reproduce not a single writing, not even an overnight inspiration, but rather the painstaking work of days probably months. 7 A detailed working-out of the manuscript history of Leaf will not appear here; suffice it to say that the manuscripts associated with Leaf by the library staff occupy three boxes, or fascicules, containing several folders each. 8 In those boxes appear manuscripts of Leaf by Niggle intermingled with drafts of On Fairy-stories in the fascicules labeled MS Tolkien 6, MS Tolkien 14, and MSS Tolkien 16, 17, and 18. The manuscripts are numerous, and they vary from one-paragraph outlines, or records of initial thoughts, to rough drafts, then to final typescripts. Many a handwritten page some of them scrawled in such haste as to be indecipherable likewise appear. The manuscripts cannot record an overnight inspiration and a morning s writing. The exact date for that writing is unknown. Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher in October of 1944 that he had just sent the manuscript of the story to The Dublin Review (Letter 84, Letters p. 97). In a letter of 1944 Tolkien simply tells Christopher that he is writing a new story about as long as Niggle (Letter 69, Letters p. 81). In his 1945 letter to Sir Stanley mentioned above, he says that he wrote 7. The Arts & Humanities Faculty Development Program of Baylor University (Waco, Texas, USA) made possible my research trip to Oxford; I am grateful for the generous support Baylor has provided me for this and many earlier projects. 8. I must here record my debt to Mr. Colin Harris and his staff at the New Bodleian Library for their help from my first request to work with the manuscripts of Leaf by Niggle throughout several days of my reading in the Library s temporary quarters in the Radcliffe Science Library during July and August of The Library, and its patrons, are well-served by Mr. Harris and his colleagues.

6 28 The Journal of Inklings Studies the story more than 2 years ago (Letter 98, Letters p. 113). And in 1962 he tells his aunt, Jane Neave, that he thinks he wrote the story before WWII began (possibly 1938 or 1939, then), and that he first read the story to his friends early in 1940 (Letter 241, Letters p. 320). 1939, then, is an approximate date of first composition. 9 The story was published first in The Dublin Review in January 1945, wrongly cited as 1947 in Tolkien s Introductory Note in the 1964 printed edition of the combined On Fairy-stories and Leaf by Niggle. 10 It was reprinted by Allen and Unwin in 1975 and in 1988, the date of initial writing still uncertain. Uncertain though its date remains, one can be certain about Tolkien s feelings for his short story. It was important to him, as is particularly clear in the letter to Jane Neave which he sent with a copy of the story from its Dublin Review printing. Tolkien writes that the story still moves him, more than twenty years after writing it. He even explains it to his aunt at some length, significantly using the term mythical : It is not really or properly an allegory so much as mythical. For Niggle is meant to be a real mixed-quality person and not an allegory of any single vice or virtue..... Of course, 9. Tolkien himself cites a date of in his 1964 Introductory Note to Tree and Leaf quoted by Christopher Tolkien in his Preface to the 1988 Edition reproduced in the 2001 paperback re-issue of Tree and Leaf, vi. Heidi Krüger notes that Tolkien wrote this introduction over twenty years after the event, and suggests that the likelihood of his having written the story in is an error: Leaf by Niggle/Blatt von Tüftler: eine literaturkritische Untersuchung. Tolkiens kleinere Werke: interdisziplina res Seminar der Deutschen Tolkien Gemeinschaft 4-6 May 2007, Jena 4 (2008 for 2007): (here p. 158). N.B.: Krüger s essay does not appear in the English translation of the Proceedings published by Walking Tree Press (noted further on in this essay). Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, in their two-volume J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), mention Tolkien s April 1943 postcard to poet Alan Root, in which Tolkien refers to a story relevant to pictures which he wrote this time last year. Scull and Hammond write that the reference must refer to Leaf by Niggle, and that therefore the story should be dated to around April 1942 (p. 495). 10. Christopher Tolkien, Preface, vi.

7 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 29 some elements are explicable in biographical terms... There was a great tree a huge poplar with vast limbs visible through my window even as I lay in bed. I loved it, and was anxious about it.... Also, of course, I was anxious about my own internal Tree, The Lord of the Rings. It was growing out of hand, and revealing endless new vistas and I wanted to finish it, but the world was threatening.... But none of that really illuminates Leaf by Niggle much, does it? If it has any virtues, they remain as such, whether you know all this or do not. I hope you think it has some virtue. (Letter 241, Letters, pp ) Tolkien s use of mythical suggests an approach to his writing first forecast in the poem Mythopoeia, then fleshed out in On Fairystories and, eventually, embodied in Leaf by Niggle. These three works the poem, the essay, and the short story define not only Tolkien s writing process, but also his view of myth as both a springboard into fantasy and the end result of fantasy, 11 a view which comes into full flower in The Lord of the Rings, and which made Tolkien the premier writer and legitimizer of fantasy for the Twentieth Century: the author whom T. A. Shippey calls Author of the Century For Tolkien s later working out of his mythology, see Verlyn Flieger s valuable analysis of Tolkien s mythology as it appears in Tolkien s Silmarillion: her analysis appears in Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien s Mythology (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 2005). Her book is very much relevant to this essay, but she does not refer directly to Leaf. One of her insights will nonetheless appear later in this essay. 12. T. A. Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000). An enlightening recent examination of the foundations of Tolkien s view of myth appears in Philip Irving Mitchell s Legend and History Have Met and Fused : The Interlocution of Anthropology, Historiography, and Incarnation in J.R.R. Tolkien s On Fairystories, Tolkien Studies 8 (2011): Mitchell notes as he opens that Tolkien shared with [Christopher Dawson, G. K. Chesterton, and Owen Barfield] an important pattern that relocated spiritual power at the center of culture; that questioned the impact of current understandings... of Darwinism on human meaning; that rejected the dehumanizing impact of scientification; and that placed the Christian doctrines of incarnation and eschatological hope at the

8 30 The Journal of Inklings Studies Leaf by Niggle : Summary Many who read this essay will recall the plot of the story. To summarize, it opens with There was once a little man called Niggle, who had a long journey to make. 13 Nine pages of characterization follow this opening: Niggle is indeed a niggler one good at details, but not good at finishing the big picture. A reader also learns of his uneasy relationship with his neighbor, Parish, who does not value painting. Niggle has ambitions beyond his abilities or his industry; he is good chiefly at painting leaves, but he desires to paint a great tree on a huge canvas. However, delaying and/or hindered by others, he does not concentrate on his Tree until late in his story and then Parish, who has a lame leg, calls upon him to travel to town in the rain to find a doctor for Parish s wife (who, in the event, proves to have only a cold). Niggle catches a chill and is bedridden for a week or so ( Leaf, p. 93). He has only just returned to his painting of the Tree when an Inspector arrives, telling him he will have to use the canvas of his painting to mend Parish s roof. As Niggle protests, his Driver appears: his journey is to begin, now. That journey takes Niggle first to a workhouse, then to an infirmary in the workhouse. His treatment reflects the workhouse more than the infirmary; he labours at dull tasks with no pleasure in accomplishing them. He does become useful, and he does learn to plan his time sensibly. After what seems a century ( Leaf, p. 103), or at least years, he overhears his case being debated by two center of the meaning of myth, religion, and history (p. 1). He concludes that for Barfield, Dawson, Chesterton, and Tolkien, a typological (not teleological) end informs human history: The... outcome of history promises a measure of value and purpose in the present, a purpose both material and spiritual. For these four, the Zauberfluidum, Brahman, Rta, Wakan, and Orenda has [sic] put on flesh and dwelt among us (p. 14). 13. Leaf by Niggle, in Tree and Leaf, pp (here p. 93). References to this text will appear parenthetically in the text hereafter with Leaf and page numbers.

9 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 31 Voices, one stern, the other gentle ( Leaf, p. 105), The stern Voice notes that Niggle was an underachiever who will profit by a longer time in the workhouse; the gentle Voice cites Niggle s service to Parish, and recommends a little gentle treatment now ( Leaf, p. 106). The treatment proves to consist of a trip by railroad to a green country where to his amazement his Tree stands, gloriously realized as he intended to paint it. It is the Platonic Idea of his tree. He resumes work on the tree, completing it as well as filling in the details of the land surrounding it. Soon Parish appears, to work with him; it takes both to finish the tree, and to set out a garden (Parish is a gardener). They come to another phase of Niggle s progress: it becomes time for him to move on, following a Shepherd into the Mountains. Meanwhile, back in the scenes of his pre-workhouse life, his pre-journey neighbours barely recall him, and speak slightingly of his painting and of his life; in the final paragraph, however, one learns that the area around his nowcomplete Tree has been titled Niggle s Parish, and is often visited by others in need of convalescence or of an introduction to the Mountains ( Leaf, p. 118). Contexts of Leaf : Biography, Mythopoeia, On Fairy-stories, and Tolkien s Letters One context of Leaf is of course Tolkien s day-to-day observations of the life and countryside around him. 14 For example, part of his inspiration for Niggle s tree came from his sympathetic interest in the large poplar growing outside his window in Oxford (mentioned 14. Diana Pavlac Glyer and Josh B. Long have discussed in considerable detail the biographical details of Tolkien s life and self-concept which appear in Leaf ; see their entire essay for observations on biography in the shorter works in general, and pp for comments on Tolkien s life as reflected in Leaf : Biography as Source: Niggles and Notions, Tolkien and the Study of His Sources, ed. Jason Fisher (Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland, 2011), pp

10 32 The Journal of Inklings Studies above in his letter to his aunt). 15 Tolkien was keenly aware of his natural surroundings, and did many paintings and drawings of forests and fanciful mountains; these forests, mountains, and a tree or Tree made their way into Leaf as well. 16 Tolkien s interaction with that poplar tree, and his sympathetic response to trees in general, may be the single most important context of Leaf. The cover-art for Tolkien s 1964 edition of Tree, also appearing on the 2001 edition, supports that view: it reproduces Tolkien s own drawing in pencil and colored pencil, signed by him with JRRT and labeled beneath the signature ligna regis conjecturally, the woods of the king, or perhaps the royal woods [?royal tree?]. 17 According to Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, the cover reproduces the Tree of Amalion one of Tolkien s many versions of a mythical tree of poems and major legends that he repeatedly calls The Tree of Tales in On Fairy-stories. 18 Tolkien wrote of 15. Letter to Ms. Jane Neave: Letters, Letter 241, 8th-9th September 1962, pp The letter appears more fully discussed later in this essay. 16. On Tolkien s interest in nature see the biographical analysis by Colin Duriez, Sub-Creation and Tolkien s Theology of Story, Scholarship and Fantasy, ed. K. J. Battarbee (Turku, Finland: University of Turku, 1993), pp Heidi Steimel discusses Tolkien s painting in some detail, noting the confluence of his subjects in painting and in Leaf : Steimel, The Autobiographical Tolkien? Tolkien s Shorter Works: Proceedings of the Jena Conference 2007, ed. Margaret Hiley and Frank Weinreich (Zurich and Jena: Walking Tree, 2008), pp , especially p The text most often cited with respect to Tolkien s paintings is Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull s edition of J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995). 17. In medieval Latin, ligna (the plural of lignum) usually means woods. The term appears used for trees in a Medieval Latin lyric, found in the Cambridge Songs Manuscript, #32 in K. Breul, The Cambridge Songs: A Goliard s Song Book of the Eleventh Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915): Struunt lustra quadrupedes Et dulces nidos volucres; Inter ligna florentia [flowering trees] Sua decantant gaudia. 18. See, e.g., Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson (London: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 39. Later in his essay, in a passage highly suggestive to readers of Leaf, Tolkien remarks, It is easy for the student to

11 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 33 this tree in a 1963 letter to Rayner Unwin, wherein he mentions that he has made more than one version of a mythical tree... elaborated and coloured... the tree bears besides various shapes of leaves many flowers small and large signifying poems and major legends. 19 Judging from the letter and the image in Hammond and Scull, the cover of Tree reproduces one of his versions of that mythical tree of poems and major legends ; fittingly, mountains appear in the background on the cover as they do in the short story. Other elements of the context of Leaf are likewise important, however specifically, his poem Mythopoeia of 1931 and the essay On Fairy-stories of 1939 (recall that it may have been in that Tolkien wrote Leaf ). As will be shown, he also makes scattered comments on Leaf in his Letters. Likewise part of the context, though only in the background, was Tolkien s continuing and growing work on his Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, both of them seeming to him to branch endlessly under his hands and mind at the time he wrote Leaf. Mythopoeia Others have analyzed the poem Mythopoeia, frequently in the context of The Lord of the Rings, but also as the poem may explicate both On Fairy-stories and Leaf. Some, too, have analyzed the story without noting the poem. 20 According to the well-known story as recounted by Humphrey Carpenter, indefatigable biographer of the Inklings, feel that with all his labour he is collecting only a few leaves, many of them now torn or decayed, from the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 66. (Hereafter references to Tolkien: On Fairy-stories appear parenthetically.) Hammond and Scull reproduce Tolkien s tree, identified as the Tree of Amalion one which Tolkien drew regularly, as he remarks in his Letter 253 to Rayner Unwin (see following text of this essay and note below). The drawing appears in Hammond and Scull J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, p From Letter 253to Rayner Unwin (Letters, p. 360). 20. See Appendix: Literature Review for comprehensive sources.

12 34 The Journal of Inklings Studies Tolkien wrote Mythopoeia following a lengthy conversation with C.S. Lewis and Hugo Dyson on the evening and morning of September The conversation took place as Lewis, Dyson, and Tolkien strolled along Addison s Walk at Magdalen College, Oxford; the conversation continued between Dyson and Lewis after Tolkien left at about 3 a.m. on 20 September. As Carpenter recounts the event which, he writes, he constructs with the aid of the poem Mythopoeia 21 the three men were discussing the nature of myth. Lewis said of myths that they were lies. Tolkien s response, as reconstructed long after the event by Carpenter, is lengthy but central to understanding both Mythopoeia and Leaf and, indeed, to understanding most of Tolkien s writings. No, said Tolkien, they are not. And, indicating the great trees of Magdalen Grove... he struck out a different line of argument. You call a tree a tree, he said, and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a tree until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth. We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a sub-creator and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic progress leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil. In expounding this belief in the inherent truth of mythology, Tolkien had laid bare the centre of his philosophy as a writer... (Carpenter, Tolkien, p. 147). 21. Note, Carpenter s Tolkien, p. 147.

13 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 35 Clearly, and as he acknowledges, Carpenter has injected into the conversation a great deal of content from the poem. Thus, the trees which Carpenter cites as the beginning point of Tolkien s new argument appear in the first two lines of Tolkien s poem, which is addressed To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless (i.e., to Lewis): You look at trees and label them just so, (for trees are trees, and growing is to grow ) 22 Soon thereafter noting such daily happenings as [t]he movements of the sea, the wind in boughs, / green grass, the large slow oddity of cows (Mythopoeia lines 23-4, p. 86), Tolkien moves to a discussion of the role of the human observer of these phenomena. His poem gives to that observer a role like Adam s in the Garden, Adam who, at God s command, gave names to every living creature... to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field (Genesis , NRSV). Tolkien, who sees trees as living creatures, begins his discussion of naming thus: Yet trees are not trees, until so named and seen and never were so named, till those had been who speech s involuted breath unfurled, faint echo and dim picture of the world, [...] response of those that felt astir within by deep monition movements that were kin to life and death of trees... (Mythopoeia lines 29-37, p. 86) The human observer, suggests Tolkien, makes real in this world the tree, which was not a tree until it was so named and thus put into words. One recalls that Tolkien s first title for Leaf was The Tree. In Leaf he has embodied the suggestion he made in his poem of 1931: the author s word, or the painter s work, makes real. Niggle 22. Mythopoiea, in Tree and Leaf, p. 85. The entire poem appears on pp , immediately preceding Leaf by Niggle.

14 36 The Journal of Inklings Studies tries to give body and form to a Tree his tree ( Leaf, p. 109) in niggling and ultimately ineffective ways. Nonetheless, his tree in whole form appears in the final third of the story, once he returns to the Garden in which such concepts take on form and reality; they are no longer a faint echo and dim picture of the world, but are instead named and seen. Tolkien put it as follows in Leaf, as Niggle has left the purgatorial Workhouse and has bicycled into his new land, A great green shadow came between him and the sun... Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished.... He gazed at the tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. It s a gift! he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally. ( Leaf, pp ) Niggle is an artist, or a maker ; in terms of the 1931 poem, he is literally a little maker (line 128, p. 89; recall that Tolkien opens Leaf with There was once a little man called Niggle Leaf, p. 93). This passage with the Tree shows that his tree has all along mirrored, as in a glass darkly, the true Tree of his imagining. He was able to sub-create (as in Mythopoeia line 61, p. 87) only a small part of that Tree as it were a leaf. Nonetheless, his gift in subcreating reflects the greater gift which now appears as the Tree in the Garden the Tree which he all along strove to make real. As the poem puts it, We make still by the law in which we re made (Mythopoeia line 70, p. 87). Even Niggle, who is only a little man ( Leaf, p. 93), an artist who has many works on hand and finishes none, one who is the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees ( Leaf, p. 94) even Niggle can, both poem and story suggest, partake of the nature of the Maker and, to repeat, make still by the law in which we re made (Mythopoeia line 70, p. 87). As early as 1931, then, Tolkien was thinking about the role of the sub-creator the Maker. His ontology as thinker and writer

15 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 37 is obviously platonic; 23 in Leaf, Niggle s Tree appears finished, total as he had dimly conceived it, but had not in his earlier life been able to paint it. As appears above, Tolkien had already outlined his conception of the sub-creator in Mythopoeia. Humans are less than their Maker, Tolkien notes yet, still, the human makes by the law in which he/she is made, and creates a shadow of what the Maker has embodied in Tolkien s (and Plato s) endless multitude of forms (Mythopoeia line 15, p. 86). One writing on Mythopoeia and its influence on Leaf is tempted to quote endlessly, eventually reproducing the entire poem; almost every line seems related more or less to the short story, or to elements of Tolkien s biography that relate to the story. Hardly surprising, since the poem represents Tolkien s idea of the human- God relationship as expressed in human sub-creating, and the short story clothes that concept in a narrative in which God appears only thinly disguised as two Voices and as the Giver of the gift embodied in the Tree. 24 As many have noted, however, the concept first expressed in the poem appears much more fully fleshed out in Tolkien s 1937 essay, On Fairy-stories an essay which, though often unknown (like Mythopoeia) to the world-wide readers of LotR, nonetheless shows Tolkien s theoretical base for his trilogy as it does (though less clearly) for Leaf. On Fairy-stories Tolkien writes in his Introductory Note to the first edition of Tree and Leaf that On Fairy-stories and Leaf are related: by 23. See Weinreich, Metaphysics of Myth: The Platonic Ontology of Mythopoeia, passim. 24. Richard Purtill has discussed the Christian element in Leaf at considerable length; see his J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), especially Chapters 2 and 3, Three Faces of Myth and Myth and Story. He outlines the case for seeing Leaf as religiously allegorical in Chapter 2, especially pp

16 38 The Journal of Inklings Studies the symbols of Tree and Leaf, and by both touching in different ways on what is called in the essay sub-creation. 25 As appears above, sub-creation was an element of Tolkien s thinking at least as early as 1931 s Mythopoeia, about eight years before he delivered On Fairy-stories at the University of St. Andrews. On Fairy-stories further shapes the ideas he discusses in Mythopoiea, particularly in its discussion of the elements of sub-creation and of eucatastrophe Tolkien s term for the happy ending of a fairy story, and especially for what he sees as the ultimate happy ending, one that goes beyond the sub-creation of secondary truth in the writer s world to an ultimate, Christian end. 26 Sub-creation first appears in Tolkien s writing in Mythopoeia, as discussed earlier. Later, in On Fairy-stories, he wrote concerning sub-creation that [t]his aspect of mythology sub-creation, rather than either representation or symbolic interpretation of the beauties and terrors of the world is, I think, too little considered ( On Fairy-stories, p. 42). As virtually all commentators have realized, 27 the idea of sub-creation is central to Tolkien s view of his task as a writer, as will continue to appear below. It is also in On Fairy-stories that he notes the three faces of the fairy-story: the Mystical towards the supernatural; the Magical towards Nature; and the Mirror of scorn and pity towards Man (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 44). As Richard Purtill has suggested, it is the Mystical face which Tolkien employs in Leaf, where the supernatural element contains both a Purgatory and intimations of Paradise (Purtill, p. 26). 25. Quoted by Christopher Tolkien in his Preface to the current edition of Tree and Leaf, v-vi. 26. In Mythopoeia Tolkien refers to Paradise or the Blessed Land (lines 131, 135, 144) in On Fairy-stories he is more guarded and more erudite. 27. See, for one example, John Ellison s brief essay, The Why and the How : Reflections on Leaf by Niggle, pp Ellison develops the theme of sub-creation with liberal references to On Fairy-stories, supplemented with illuminating comments on parallels between Leaf by Niggle and both The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. He does not cite Purtill s 1984 J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion, but arrives at some of the same conclusions.

17 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 39 Continuing in On Fairy-stories, Tolkien turns to an argument for primarily adult readership for fairy-stories, concluding that children are of course not excluded from reading fairy-stories, but adults are to read fairy-stories as a natural branch of literature (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 58). In the process of his argument for adult readership he further discusses the role of the writer as sub-creator. The relevance to Leaf is almost immediately clear as Tolkien opens his further discussion of sub-creation with a paragraph on Imagination. He reminds his audience that imagination is simply the ability to create images in the mind. Expressing those images, he continues, is another thing: expressing them well enough to bring about Secondary Belief the perception by the viewer/reader/ auditor of the inner consistency of reality is Art; the expression of that Art, its final result, is Sub-creation (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 59). Seeking a word to express both the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to fairy-story, he arrives at the term Fantasy (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, pp ). 28 Fantasy in this sense, he continues, produces images... of things not in the primary world (if that indeed is possible). This form of Art, moreover, has the advantage of embodying arresting strangeness and is not to be confused with dreaming (which has no Art) nor with hallucination or delusion, neither of which shows the control necessary to Art. Fantasy in this sense, he concludes, is not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 60). It is also difficult to achieve difficult so compellingly to combine the inner consistency of reality with the images and practices of a Secondary World that the combination produces a reader s 28. Tolkien adds of Fantasy that he uses it in the sense which combines with its older... use as an equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of unreality (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), [and] of freedom from the domination of observed fact, in short of the fantastic (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 60).

18 40 The Journal of Inklings Studies temporary belief in that Secondary World. Successfully to create that Secondary World... commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, pp ). That craft, he adds, is story-making in its primary and most potent mode (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 61). Recall that Tolkien wrote, in his Introductory Note to the first edition of Tree and Leaf, that On Fairy-stories and Leaf were related both by the symbols of Tree and Leaf, and by touching in different ways on what is called in the essay sub-creation (quoted by Christopher Tolkien, preface to Tree and Leaf, v-vi). Even if one did not have that statement from the elder Tolkien, it would be immediately clear that Leaf shows Tolkien s own practice of the elvish craft of sub-creation, or story-making, as he creates the story. Niggle s attempt at the elvish craft, to be sure, is not wholly successful he paints leaves well, but does not succeed with his tree, and [o]f course, he is only a little man (the Second Voice, on Niggle, Leaf, p. 105) but his painting is clearly Niggle s partiallysuccessful attempt at what Tolkien considers sub-creation. Thus, Niggle and his story properly accompany Tolkien s essay, showing Niggle s effort to sub-create a tree whose depiction does indeed require labor, thought, and a special skill a skill which attempts to go beyond the leaf to the tree in its wholeness, a tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed and had so often failed to catch.... All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind... ( Leaf, pp ). Tolkien s view of Imagination, or image-making, combining with Art to produce Fantasy, could hardly be exemplified more clearly. In Leaf as in Mythopoeia, it is also clear that this elvish craft is combined with the Divine: where Tolkien s essay arrives

19 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 41 at a discussion of evangelium, eucatastrophe, and the Gospels, Leaf arrives at a purgatorial Workhouse, spring sunshine, a Tree, and eventually at a shepherd and Mountains. In short, and in Tolkien s own words from On Fairy-stories, the ultimate happy ending, for any fairy-story as for Leaf, reflects evangelium, the happy ending of the Christian story which results in the reunion of humankind with its Creator. He discusses this happy ending, or eucatastrophe, in detail in his Epilogue to the essay (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, pp ). The concluding sentence of the Epilogue clarifies the relation of his essay to Leaf : All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 79). One recalls that when Niggle again sees his Tree in the new land which he reaches after his purgatorial time in the Workhouse, he sees All the leaves he had ever laboured at..., as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them ( Leaf, p. 110). In short, Imagination and Art have resulted for Tolkien and for Niggle in sub-creation in Fantasy, for Tolkien. Again from the close of the essay: [an author] may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation (Tolkien: On Fairy-stories, p. 79). (One cannot help appreciating the resonance of effoliation Tolkien s term opposing exfoliation, or removing foliage. To effoliate, one assumes, would be to cause to leaf out to add foliage, as in Tolkien s repeated drawings of The Tree of Amalion or as in Niggle s repeated sub-creation of exquisite leaves. 29 ) The Letters Tolkien wrote many letters, and kept copies. Those who study his works must be grateful to Humphrey Carpenter for his labour 29. Tolkien wrote to Sir Stanley Unwin concerning the term effoliation that it is the key-word of his essay: Letter 248 (5 October 1963), Letters p. 335.

20 42 The Journal of Inklings Studies in examining those letters and collecting many of them into The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Those letters provide another useful, even luminous, insight into the context of Leaf. For example, in a 1945 letter to his son Christopher, Tolkien mentions that he finds most moving stories that [convey] a sudden sense of endless untold stories: mountains seen far away, never to be climbed, distant trees (like Niggle s) never to be approached or if so only to become near trees (unless in Paradise or N[iggle] s Parish) (Letter 96, Letters, p. 111). In a later letter (1954: drafted but not sent) to Peter Hastings, manager of the Newman Bookshop in Oxford who had taken exception to certain passages in The Lord of the Rings concerning creation Tolkien answers his objections at length, then turns to examining his personal intent as a writer: I would claim, if I did not think it presumptuous in one so ill-instructed, to have as one object the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to bring them home. [Opening the next paragraph after this comment, Tolkien adds that he sees such writing as a] potent mode of myth. (Letter 153, Letters, p. 194) 30 Further developing his ideas as he writes the letter, Tolkien adds the following as he comes to his conclusion concerning his writing of LotR:... having mentioned Free Will, I might say that in my myth I have used subcreation in a special way (not the same as subcreation as a term in criticism of art, though I tried to show allegorically how that might come to be taken up into Creation in some plane in my purgatorial story Leaf by Niggle (Dublin Review [sic] 1945)) [sic] to make visible and physical the effects of Sin or misused Free Will by men. (Letter 153, Letters, p. 195). 30. Tolkien writes at the end of the letter that it was Not sent, and adds It seemed to be taking myself too importantly, p. 196.

21 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 43 Tolkien suggests here that Niggle has misused his free will; he frittered and niggled, instead of arranging his life in an orderly and productive way. As the First Voice puts it, Look at the time he wasted, not even amusing himself! He never got ready for his journey. He was moderately well-off, and yet he arrived here almost destitute... ( Leaf, p. 105). Leaf, in other words, exemplifies and embodies not the allegorical in the narrow sense of an extended metaphor personifying abstractions, but rather applicability as a mythical story of humans who embody the good and bad choices humans make. Leaf is first of all a story, and if worth the telling it has a moral, according to Tolkien. Recall that he wrote to Peter Hastings in 1954 and the passage bears repeating that he sought to embody in LotR the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world (Letter 153, Letters, p. 194). By extension, his ruling intent for Leaf, if one can judge by his afterthoughts, was to write a true story of the human condition, one aspect of which includes leaving tasks unfinished, not taking up tasks on time, not being prepared for one s Journey. Tolkien saw that condition in himself and doubtless in others. Based on that truth, Tolkien wrote the story of Niggle and considered it sufficiently true to call it mythical, a subcreation which make[s] visible and physical the effects of Sin or misused Free Will by men ; such misused Free Will calls for purgation, evidently, in Tolkien s Roman Catholic Christian value system at any rate, he sends his Niggle to the Purgatory represented by the Workhouse and its infirmary, and calls his story purgatorial in his letter to Hastings (Letter 153 to Peter Hastings, Letters, p. 195). Conclusion This essay opened by noting the existence of a theoretical trilogy which predates Tolkien s later three-volume LotR: the trilogy of

22 44 The Journal of Inklings Studies Mythopoeia, On Fairy-stories, and Leaf. A discussion of selections from Tolkien s Letters added further insights into Tolkien s creation, or sub-creation, of Leaf. Throughout the essay, Leaf has been taken as an example of Tolkien s approach to narrative, to fantasy, and to myth. That is, the theory behind Tolkien s writing process has appeared, first as grandly outlined in the early Mythopoeia. That theory has further appeared as Tolkien worked it out in considerable detail in On Fairy-stories, then as he further amplified his theories in his letters. And, of course, Leaf itself is both a part of Tolkien s Tree of Tales and a working out of one approach to his preferred genre: Fantasy. Imagination and Art combined to produce Niggle s Tree and his story; in the process Tolkien wrote an early fantasy which illustrates, if perhaps not the perilous, magical land of Faëry, the mystical face of the fairy-story which also preoccupied him. Further to summarize: this essay also notes a misapprehension fostered by Tolkien s recollection of writing Leaf as an overnight inspiration scribbled down in the morning. His manuscripts show that the story was not so easily or quickly written. Evidently, though, the story was so important to Tolkien that his recollection, though surely meant sincerely, simply placed in his memory an inspired writing instead of what his manuscripts show to have been a more orthodox approach to writing a story. In fact, as implied in Tolkien s letter to his aunt, the story was so important to him that the writing of it seems to have taken on mythic qualities in his own recollection. Leaf embodies in a small compass the process Tolkien followed in works both longer and grander in design. 31 The story appears in a 31. Verlyn Flieger may imply as much in her Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien s Mythology, though she there discusses only The Silmarillion as background to LotR. In her whimsically-titled So What? coda to Chapter Four, The Tradition, she discusses the value of knowing The Silmarillion s mythology. Answering the question, what difference does it make to the reader s enjoyment to see the separate works as parts of a larger whole? she replies that Tolkien felt that it did make a difference (to the thoughtful reader...) to be invited to see the forest as well as the trees (p. 83). This is not a direct reference to Leaf by Niggle, but it could easily be; recall that after arriving in the land of his Tree, Niggle wanders further, marvelling, to discover that the

23 Hanks, Tolkien s Leaf by Niggle 45 collection named by Tolkien Tree and Leaf, a title which refers both to the essay On Fairy-stories and to Leaf by Niggle ; the collection now includes Mythopoeia. These three works together first present the theoretical base upon which Tolkien erected his fictional works, then culminate by embodying those theories in Leaf. Tolkien s Christian devotion and practices form an important part of that theoretical base, as appears in his remarks on eucatastrophe and the Christian Gospels at the close of On Fairy-stories, and as is implied by the editor of The Dublin Review s request of Tolkien that he contribute to the journal s endeavour of an effective expression of Catholic humanity. 32 Leaf, a little story about a silly little man, is the penultimate step in the process which began with Mythopoeia, proceeded to On Fairy-stories, then to Leaf by Niggle, and finally arrived at The Lord of the Rings. Leaf illustrates the earlier works as it illuminates the latter. Its story is a good story, one to which both Tolkien and today s readers could/can return and be moved as they savor its mythical qualities. 33 Forest... was a distant Forest, yet he could approach it, even enter it, without its losing that particular charm ( Leaf by Niggle, pp ). Forest and trees, write Tolkien and Flieger; the cliché he couldn t see the forest for the trees is cancelled in Leaf by Niggle. 32. MS. Tolkien 6 box, folder/fascicule 1, fols 1-1v of This essay has been improved by the helpful comments of Professor Corey Olsen of Washington College, who kindly reviewed it and suggested important changes.

24 46 The Journal of Inklings Studies Appendix: Literature Review I have benefited chiefly from the following works. Pride of place must go to Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond s encyclopedic two-volume work, The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), which provides both a helpful overview of the short story and a critical review up to Though Leaf by Niggle was published in 1945, in the low-circulation Dublin Review, and then later in 1964 in Tree and Leaf, it (and much of Tolkien s work) was to await Tolkien s growing popularity with the reading public before it gained much scholarly notice. The 70s saw three seminal works: Paul H. Kocher s Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972); Randel Helms Tolkien s World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974); and Jane Chance s Tolkien s Art: A Mythology for England (New York: St. Martin s Press, 1979). These were soon followed by Katharyn [sic] W. Crabbe s 1981 J. R. R. Tolkien (written as Katharyn F. Crabbe, published in 1988 under Katharyn W. Crabbe,) J. R. R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition (New York: Continuum, 1988). Later works, which must be assumed to have profited from these earlier essays, will appear below. Kocher, in Master of Middle-earth, pp , precedes many in pointing out Tolkien s medievalism in Leaf in its parallel to Everyman (p. 164). Seeing the story as crowded with allegories reflecting the genre theories propounded in Tolkien s On Fairy-stories (p. 162), he notes the Christian and Catholic elements of the story (pp ). Kocher also precedes many in suggesting an autobiographical element of the story: Tolkien s attempt to find meaning in his non-academic writing (pp ). He succeeds, Kocher finds, and has fought through to a meaning for his work ; his own sub-creations embody a glimpse of ultimate reality for which there is usefulness beyond the primary, or day-to-day, world (p. 169). Helms, in Tolkien s World (pp ), discusses Leaf chiefly as Tolkien s autobiographical and [t]herapeutic allegory (110), rooting much of his analysis in Tolkien s Roman Catholic beliefs. In his view, Niggle embodies both the artist and Tolkien the writer, each of whom has many demands upon his time; writing Leaf was Tolkien s imaginative solution to the problem of being an artist in a demanding community. Not only could the artist provide entertainment and recovery from mundane life, but, as Helms puts it, Tolkien embodies in Leaf the realization that fantasy can bear the Good News, in