I’ve long been fascinated by the idea that imagination could tell the truth, that it could teach us crucial lessons about the human condition.

It has seemed to me that imagination is a sort of junction between reason and desire, and that a study of it would appropriately follow last episode's ideas. To introduce the idea, I want to focus this episode on the one thinker who created the most imaginative fantasy of the twentieth century: J.R.R. Tolkien.

On March 8th, 1939, Tolkien gave a talk at the University of St. Andrews which was then published under the title “On Fairy Stories.” It is perhaps the closest thing to a literary manifesto that we get from Tolkien. In it he lays out his thoughts on imagination, fantasy, language, myth, and so forth and argues that, as far as we can tell, the creation of mythologies, the sub-creation of other worlds, has been present with Man as long as he’s been able to think and speak. Departing from Tolkien's thoughts, my argument is that human imagination is a central element in navigating ourselves in the world.

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Much of this material was originally published in Reconsiderations, a publication of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, and it is with their permission that this material is here now. The essay was entitled “Sub-Creation: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Vision of Imagination at Work.”

References for this episode:

1. “On Fairy-Stories” included in the collection The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (HarperCollins Publishers, 2006).

2. “Mythopoeia,” Tree and Leaf (HarperCollins Publishers, 2001).

3. The Lord of the Rings (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994).

Poem from Tolkien to Lewis:

Mythopoeia

“The heart of man is not compound of lies,

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,

and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,

man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,

his world-dominion by creative act:

not his to worship the great Artefact,

man, 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 sow 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, 85)

The relationship between reason and desire in human experience presents perennial problems. These problems have been with us a long time. They’re as ancient as Plato’s dislike for poets and as current as every advertisement that makes an appeal to our passions. These issues will always be with us. Why? Because we are both thinking creatures and longing creatures. But just because there seems to be a constant tension between two seemingly irreconcilable concepts doesn’t mean we should abandon the attempt to understand the relationship between them. In this episode, we'll attempt to do just that.

To support the production of these podcasts, donate the amount of your choice at The Poiein Podcast’s Patreon account:

patreon.com/poieinpodcast

or at:

juanpalcala.com/podcast.

Much of this material was originally published in Reconsiderations, a publication of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, and it is with their permission that this material is here now. The essay was entitled “Learning to Love: Reflections on the Relationship between Reason and Desire.”

References for this episode:

1. Saint Augustine, Confessions, Translated by Henry Chadwick (Oxford University Press), pg. 3.

2. Ibid., pg. 208.

3. James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love (Brazos Press), pgs. 1-2.

4. Saint Augustine, Confessions, Translated by Henry Chadwick (Oxford University Press), pg. 202.

5. Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Translated and edited by Ronald Martinez and Robert Durling (Oxford University Press), pg. 663, lines 46-63.

6. Ibid., pg. 667, lines 130-131.

7. Ibid., pg. 667, lines 142-145.

8. Excerpt from Lino Pertile, Paradiso: A Drama of Desire, pgs. 154-155, found in Elena Lombardi, The Syntax of Desire (University of Toronto Press), pg. 167.

9. Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Translated and edited by Ronald Martinez and Robert Durling (Oxford University Press), pg. 682

10. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperCollins Publishers), pgs. 136-137.

Excerpt from Dante's Paradiso (Lines 46-53):

And I, as I approached the goal of all desires,

perfected within me, as I should, the ardor of my desire.

Bernard was beckoning to me and smiling, to

make me gaze upward, but on my own I was

already such as he wished,

for my sight, becoming purer, entered deeper

and deeper into the ray of the supreme Light that

is true in itself.

From here onward my seeing was greater than

speech can show, which gives way before such a

sight, and memory gives way before such excess.

As is one who sees in dream, and after the

dream the passion impressed remains, but the

rest does not return to the mind:

so am I, for almost all my vision has ceased,

but still there trickles in my heart the sweetness

born if it.

Final Sentence of Paradiso:

Here my high imagining failed of power; but

already my desire and the velle were turned, like

a wheel being moved evenly,

by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.