Have you been to Valinor lately? - Page 5
© Michael Martinez
If the old Cook is a philologist-figure, and Nokes a critic-figure, the suspicion must be that Smith is a Tolkien-figure. Smith himself never becomes Cook, never bakes a Great Cake. It is perhaps fair to remark that Tolkien never produced a major full-length work on medieval literature. Against that Smith's life is one of useful activity: pots, pans, bars, bolts, hinges, fire-dogs -- or, one might say, lectures, tutorials, scripts, pupils. Furthermore Smith has the ability to pass into Fairie, and the mark of his strangeness if not only on his brow but in his song: he brings back visions for others. These visions furthermore expand. The doll 'on one foot like a snow-maiden dancing', the maiden 'with flowing hair and kilted skirt' who drags Smith into the dance, the Queen 'in her majesty and her glory' -- all three are avatars of the Queen of Faerie, representing successively the tawdry images of former fantasy which are all the modern world has left, Tolkien's own first attempts to produce something truer and better, his final awareness that what he had attempted had grown under his hand, from Hobbit to Silmarillion. The image of Smith apologising for his people, and being forgiven -- 'Better a little doll, maybe, than no memory of Faery at all. For some the only glimpse. For some the awaking' -- might be taken without too much strain as Tolkien forgiving himself for 'Goblin Feet'. But still one is left with Alf.Well, Alf is not so important as the fact that literary criticism, even the extraordinary kind which whips back the covers and reveals all the pages as Shippey's is able to do in one fashion or another, misses the enchantment of Valinor. The Valinor myth is not an allegory or an expression of wistfulness. It's the fulfillment of Tolkien's search for an explanation of what men have sought before him. That is, it's the land to which magic fled, the world where all the faeries and angels settled to watch us from afar, knowing more of our destiny than we do, but forbidden to share that knowledge with us. If we visit the forbidden land we cannot stay and we must quickly hide our memories in little cherished trinkets which have greater symbolic value than anything else. The Valinor myth is the stumbling stone in the path of everyone who seeks to explain Tolkien's world. He had more than one world, he possessed a universe and was a dweller amid many worlds. But all those worlds were touched by the same myth. Tolkien never produced a great work on medieval literature because he was too busy producing a great work on something more important, something only he could define. Valinor is hinted at in medieval literature, and perhaps in more ancient traditions. But the literary criticism fails to see it, and the unfolding pages are always too quickly flipped back, leaving two or more swept together.
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