- 3,364
- 3,168
- Thread starter
- #41
I'll make one more addition (for this part) in that, as understood by Tolkien, Sub-creation is something that is inherently interconnected.
Verlyn Flieger put this quite eloquently in that "light, emanating from the Creator, is, in her view, splintered and passed on through every author's works in the act of subcreation"thanks Wikipedia and thus it is Tolkien's seeming belief that all sub-creative works all fall under the same umbrella, the same system. That of tribute and existence to and from God.
"We differ entirely about the nature of the relation of sub-creation to Creation. I should have said that liberation 'from the channels the creator is known to have used already' is the fundamental function of 'sub-creation', a tribute to the infinity of His potential variety, one of the ways in which indeed it is exhibited, as indeed I said in the Essay. I am not a metaphysician; but I should havethought it a curious metaphysic – there is not one but many, indeed potentially innumerable ones –that declared the channels known (in such a finite comer as we have any inkling of) to have been used, are the only possible ones, or efficacious, or possibly acceptable to and by Him!" - Letter 153
"Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we're made."- Mythopoeia
"To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though "breathed through silver"." - Mythopoeia
Verlyn Flieger put this quite eloquently in that "light, emanating from the Creator, is, in her view, splintered and passed on through every author's works in the act of subcreation"
"We differ entirely about the nature of the relation of sub-creation to Creation. I should have said that liberation 'from the channels the creator is known to have used already' is the fundamental function of 'sub-creation', a tribute to the infinity of His potential variety, one of the ways in which indeed it is exhibited, as indeed I said in the Essay. I am not a metaphysician; but I should havethought it a curious metaphysic – there is not one but many, indeed potentially innumerable ones –that declared the channels known (in such a finite comer as we have any inkling of) to have been used, are the only possible ones, or efficacious, or possibly acceptable to and by Him!" - Letter 153
"Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we're made."- Mythopoeia
"To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though "breathed through silver"." - Mythopoeia
- The poem being as much an exposition on Tolkien's beliefs regarding Sub-creation and Creation as it is a rebuttal to C.S. Lewis.