Have you been to Valinor lately? - Page 6
© Michael Martinez
Leave it to a literary critic, one might say, to miss the whole point of a story. The story is meant to entertain and to elucidate. It may also illuminate, but illumination is a gift from afar that an author may not even be aware of, and the reader doesn't fully taste. It is the star within the cake, the gift of Faerie to mortal lands.
In the twilight of our dreams we glimpse afar a place where Tolkien walked and danced and watched immortal warriors march to and from ancient wars no one here remembers. If another author were to set pen to paper Valinor would become a dry and dusty place, filled with modern fears and shadows, bereft of magic and distilled from glittery explanations of every detail. The Outer Mountains would be named, the Inner Mountains would be geographically mapped, the distance from Here to There would be calculated, the Uncharted Waters would be mapped, and the singing would fail.
The savage burdens of the Elves would become subsumed by petty mortal angst and ambition. Every motive would rival the source of cheap thrillers. Every action would become a reflection of trite and formulaic fiction. Why? Because Tolkien didn't dwell on what the thing was, he dwelt on the thing itself. He didn't wonder after the sources of the myth but cherished the myth and passed it on.
The Valinor myth is not a statement on our own failures and desires. It is simply an explanation of what we have sought through the long ages, and have come close to grasping. A few of us have glimpsed it, but either out of fear -- or a realization that we didn't belong -- those favored few did not settle there. Instead they returned to us and passed on the star, and every now and then some old Nokes comes along and tries to figure out what the star is.
He doesn't realize that Alf is sitting there, the King of Faery, watching, smiling, and waiting for the next generation to grow up. The cake is there for us to eat it. The star is there for us to wear on our brows. But we'll lose the magic if we try to define it, if we peak beneath the covers. If we break the thing to see what it is, we'll leave the path of wisdom, and we'll miss out on Valinor.
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