Faerie or the Escape from the Industrial World — J.R.R. Tolkien

In a short opus, published between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien is working to determine what the concept of fairy tales is. Synthetically, it explains : “The magic of Faërie is not an end in itself; its value lies in what it operates, among other things, in the satisfaction of certain fundamental desires of the human being. One of these desires is to explore the depths of space and time. Another, as we will see, is communion with other living beings.” Addressing the virtue of Escape from Tales, Tolkien defends it, against an inhuman system that leaves its residents with no choice but to find a way to escape or die.

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I have declared that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy tales, and since I do not condemn this term, it is obvious that I do not accept the tone of contempt or pity with which it is so often used today, a tone that is in no way justified by its uses outside of literary criticism. In what individuals who misuse this term like to call real life, Escape is obviously very practical in general, and can even be heroic. In real life, it is difficult to condemn it, unless it fails; in literary criticism, the more successful it is, the worse it would seem. We are obviously dealing with an abuse of language, but also with a confusion of thought. Why should one look down on a man if, while he is in prison, he is trying to escape to return home? Or if, when that is not possible, he thinks about something other than his captors and the walls of his prison, and talks about them? The outside world has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. By using scape In this way, the critics have chosen the wrong word; in addition, they confuse (not always through a bona fide error) the escape of the prisoner with the escape of the deserter. This is exactly how the party spokesman could have described as treason the flight to escape the torments of Reich of the Fuhrer or any other, and even criticism of this regime. In the same way, to compound this confusion and therefore draw contempt upon their opponents, critics label their disdain not only on desertion, but on genuine evasion and what often accompanies it: disgust, anger, condemnation, and revolt. Not only do they confuse the escape of the prisoner with the escape of the deserter, but they would seem to prefer the consent of the “collaborator” to the resistance of the patriot. To this kind of reasoning, simply say that “the land you cherish is lost” to excuse or even glorify betrayal.

Let's take a trivial example: the fact of not talking (or even not showing off), in your tale, electric street lamps of a mass-produced model is evasion (in this sense). But it can result (and certainly results) from a conscious and thoughtful aversion to a product so typical of the Robot Age, which combines the development and ingenuity of means with ugliness and, often, with an inferior result. These lamp posts can be excluded from the story simply because they are poor lighting fixtures, and perhaps one of the lessons to be learned from storytelling is to be aware of this fact. But now the stick is being waved: “Electric street lamps are not about to disappear”, we are told. Chesterton pointed out a long time ago that as soon as he heard that something “was not about to disappear”, he knew that it would be replaced without delay and, moreover, considered lamentably obsolete and shabby. “Scientific progress, at a pace accelerated by the needs of war, continues inexorably [...], making some things obsolete and presaging new developments in the use of electricity”: beautiful announcement, which says the same thing, only in a more threatening way. In fact, you can ignore the electric street lamp simply because it is so insignificant and temporary. In any case, the fairy tale has a lot of other more lasting and more essential things to talk about — lightning, for example. The lover of escapism is not so much subject to the whims of ephemeral fashion as such opponents. He does not do things (which it may be entirely reasonable to consider bad) his masters or gods by venerating them as inevitable, even “inexorable”. As for his opponents, who have such easy contempt, nothing guarantees them that he will stop there: he could encourage men to demolish the street lamps. Evasion has another even more odious aspect: the reaction.

Incredible as it may seem, I recently heard an Oxford clerk say that he welcomed the proximity of mass production plants, as well as the rumble of traffic jammed, as it put his university “in contact with real life.” Perhaps by this he meant that the way in which men lived and worked in the 20th century^E century was gaining in barbarity at an alarming rate, and the loud demonstration of this phenomenon on the streets of Oxford could serve as a warning: it is not possible to preserve an oasis of common sense in a desert of unreason for a long time by simple fences, without really taking offensive action (practical and intellectual). But I am afraid that was not his intention. In any case, the expression “real life” in this context seems not to meet academic standards: the idea that automobiles are more “alive” than, say, centaurs or dragons, is curious; that they are more “real” than, say, horses, is a heartbreaking nonsense. How real is the factory chimney, how surprisingly lively, compared to the elm tree, poor obsolete thing, the intangible dream of an escape lover!

For my part, I cannot convince myself that the roof of Bletchley Station is more “real” than the clouds, and as a human work, it inspires me less than the legendary dome of the heavens. The footbridge to platform no. 4 seems less interesting to me than Bifröst, guarded by Heimdall and his Gjallarhorn^[1]. I cannot get out of my untamed heart the question of whether railway engineers would have received more Fantasy in their education, could not have done better, with all their abundance of resources, than what they usually do. The fairy tale could, I imagine, prove to be a better teacher than the academic I mentioned above.

Much of what he (I suppose) and others (certainly) would call “serious” literature is nothing but a game under a glass roof at the edge of a municipal swimming pool. The fairy tale may well invent monsters that fly in the air or reside in the depths, at least they are not trying to escape the skies or the sea.

And if we leave aside for a moment the Fantasy, I don't think that the reader or the author of fairy tales should even be ashamed of the “escape” that the ancient element provides — to prefer not dragons but horses, castles, sailboats, bows and arrows; not only elves, but knights, kings and priests; not only elves, but knights, kings and priests: it is after all possible, for a reasonable man, after all, after all, it is possible, for a reasonable man, after all (without any relation to the fairy tale or the romance), to reach the condemnation (at least implicit in the very silence of “escape” literature) of elements of progress such as factories, or machine guns and bombs that seem to be the most natural and the most inevitable products, the most unavoidable, undoubtedly the most “inexorable”.

“The harshness and ugliness of modern life in Europe”, this real life whose contact should delight us, “is the sign of biological inferiority, of a false or insufficient reaction to the environment.”^[2] ”. The most insane castle ever emerged from a giant's bag, in a barbaric Gaelic tale, is not only much less ugly than a robot factory, it is also, “in a very real sense” (to use a very modern expression), much more real. Why shouldn't we flee or condemn the “sinister” “Assyrian” absurdity of the top hat or factory monstrosity, worthy of the Morlocks? They are condemned even by the authors of this form of literature that celebrates escape: the science fiction story. These prophets often announce (and many seem to ardently desire) a world that would be a gigantic station with a glass roof. But it is generally very difficult to infer from their words what men Will in such a city-universe. They will be able to abandon the “full Victorian outfit” in favor of comfortable clothing (with zippers), but will use this freedom above all, it seems, to have fun with their mechanical toys in the game that will soon tire of moving at high speed. Judging from some of these stories, they will still be concupiscent, avenging, and greedy as ever; as for their idealists, their ideals will hardly exceed the splendid idea of building more cities of the same kind on other planets. It is indeed an era of “improved means at the service of degraded purposes”. The fact that we are acutely aware of both the ugliness of our works and their bad nature is part of the main disease of such times (generating the desire to flee certainly not from life, but from our current age and our self-generated unhappiness), in such a way that Evil and Ugliness seem inextricably linked to us. It is difficult for us to conceive Evil and Beauty together. The fear of the fairy fairy, which reigned in past eras, is practically beyond our comprehension. Even more alarming: goodness in itself is deprived of its true beauty. In Faërie, one can certainly imagine an ogre who owns a castle of nightmarish hideousness (because such is the evil nature of the ogre), but one cannot conceive of a house built for a commendable purpose (inn, hotel for travelers, palace of a noble and virtuous king) that is however ugly to lift your heart. Today, it would be crazy to hope to see one of this kind, unless it was built before our time.

However, this constitutes the modern and particular (or fortuitous) “escape” aspect of the fairy tale, which it shares with the romance and other stories from or about the past. Many stories from the past have only become “escapism” in the appeal they exert for having survived a time when men were in principle delighted with the work of their hands, until the present day when many have an aversion to man-made objects.

But the “desire to escape” also exists in other deeper forms that have always appeared in fairy tales and legends. There are other things more sinister and more terrible to flee than the noise, the stench, the ruthlessness, and the exorbitant cost of the internal combustion engine. There is hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, pain, sorrow, injustice, and death. And even when men don't face such trials, there are ancient limitations that the fairy tale offers a kind of escape from, as well as ancient ambitions and desires (which go to the very roots of Fantasy) to whom it offers a kind of satisfaction and solace. Some are weaknesses or forgivable curiosities, such as the desire to explore the depths of the seas with the freedom of a fish, or the desire to achieve the silent, graceful and inexpensive flight of the bird, this desire deceived by the aeroplane, except at rare moments, when you see it spinning so high in the sun, silent because of the distance and the wind — that is, precisely when you imagine it and not when you use it. There are deeper wishes, such as the desire to talk to other living beings. It is on this desire, as old as the world, that is essentially the basis for the speech granted to animals and creatures in fairy tales, and especially the magical understanding of their own discourse. This is the source (and not the “confusion” attributed to the minds of men from a past absent from our archives) of an alleged “absence of the feeling of separation between animals and ourselves”^[3] ”. An acute sense of this separation has existed for a very long time, but also the feeling that it is a split: a strange fate and guilt weigh on us. The other creatures are like the other realms with which man has ceased all relationship and which he now only sees from the outside, in the distance, since he is with them in a state of war or a painful armistice. [...]

J.R.R Tolkien

(From the fairy tale, translated by Christine Lafferière, 2022, Christian Bourgeois, p.103-111, 133-134.)

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