The Poet

Last weekend I had the opportunity to speak about poetry. It was a welcome surprise. I had 10 minutes to decide what to say and 5 minutes to present the material. The kernel of what I said centred on the imagination. Poetry, I said, is the unique expression of creative consciousness. This is perhaps best understood by the following quote from Owen Barfield:

To be able to experience the representations as idols, and then to be able also to perform the act of figuration consciously, so as to experience them as participated; that is imagination.

The imagination is unique in that it is experiential, it cannot be readily shared except through the creative process of poetry, music, art and so on, and then only imperfectly. When I read a book I allow the words to become images in my mind which is a sharing in the imagination of the author. You might see something different to me, though it is no less real to either of us, it is however, different.

The poet, one such as Cædmon, is able to create a whole world 9 lines. Others such as Tolkien have not only created worlds but languages, peoples and beings that reflect elements of our inner lives. These poets participated in God’s inner life. They did so by following the exoteric teaching of the Catholic Church, and consciously or unconsciously purified their disordered lower centres through fasting, prayer and diligence. I will leave you to be the judge when it comes to the following poets and their poems.

Three poems on the Nativity

Saint Robert Southwell The Burning Babe

John Milton On the Morning of the Nativity

William Butler Yeats The Second Coming

Edit: Perhaps The Nativity of Christ by Southwell would have been more appropriate, however I do like The Burning Babe. Both speak of a purification by Christ in us through a consuming fire or by consuming bread.

In Arthur’s Kingdom

Logres is King Arthur’s realm in the Matter of Britain. It derives from the medieval Welsh word Lloegyr.

Arthur’s Kingdom of Logres encompassed most of what became England bar Cornwall and possibly Northumbria. Just like other states, it is archetypical of the human state. This is particularly true with reference to the collapse of the realm and the degeneration of man. How does one arrive at this hypothesis? Well there were three calamities that befell Arthur, his court at Camelot, and ultimately lead to the collapse of the Kingdom of Logres:

1. Excessive emotion,
2. Excessive war making,
3. Mortal sin (adultery; incest).

The first calamity to befall the kingdom was excessive emotion. This leads on to the two following calamities. Lancelot trusts in his swordsmanship and won’t give up his passion for the queen (Guinevere), and Arthur trusts in his success in battle, but his own personal feelings must not factor in any decision he makes about the use of violence. Not properly mastered, emotion leads one to anxiety, depression, worry, despair, self-doubt, and inflation. Boris Mouravieff writes:

“In our civilization — as we have already observed — it generally receives neither rational education nor systematic training. Its formation and development are now left to chance, since religious education today has been largely intellectualized and rationalized. All sorts of considerations dictated by worldly wisdom and mundane vanity; the habitual practice of lying — especially to ourselves — and hypocrisy, from which no one is totally exempt, imprint dangerous distortions on the emotional centre. Frequently struck by a feeling of inferiority and by the need for compensation, its usual motivation; accustomed as it is to judge and to criticize everybody and everything; surrendering itself to a strangely voluptuous enjoyment of negative emotions; this centre becomes unrecognizable. It degenerates to the point where it becomes the instrument of destruction of our being, which it accelerates on its way towards ageing and death.”

To avoid collapse of one’s spiritual life one must begin with mastery of the emotional centre, i.e. the heart. We can look to Tolkien’s example as one to follow.

The second calamity was excessive war making. Arthur had to draw the sword (Excalibur) to defeat and put down his enemies, which was just according to the Just War Theory of Ss. Augustine and Aquinas as they were defensive wars. However, soon Arthur, through confidence and success was engaged in wars of aggression where needless lives were lost on both sides. Excessive action for the sake of action, for worldly success or some other unnecessary pursuit leads one away from higher functions. Though as we have written before it is up to us to purify these lower elements too.

In the Catechism of Pope Saint Pius X, we find three necessary conditions for a mortal sin. It must be a grave matter, full advertence (a recognition of the situation), and perfect consent of the will. We see this in the act of adultery Lancelot committed with Guinevere, and to a lesser extent with Morgana and Arthur’s inadvertent incest. Obviously mortal sin is deadly to our spiritual life as it was to the Kingdom of Logres. Read metaphysically these actions disturbed the cosmic order, they were contrary to the “law of God”. Thus, sins of the father effect his sons and his sons’ sons, and we see our actions as eternal – just as they are in God.

Lancelot has arrived at the chapel containing the Holy Grail but because of his sinful affair with Guinevere he cannot enter and instead falls asleep. Launcelot at the Chapel of the Holy Grail by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898).

Many partings

The time has come, the Walrus said[.]

The Walrus in The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll

Bilbo: [to the crowd] “I regret to announce — this is The End. I am going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell.” [whispers to Frodo] “Goodbye.”

Bilbo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end of our elaborate plans
The end of ev’rything that stands
The end

Jim Morrison

“The End” could easily signify death. Coming to terms with death can be difficult if one doesn’t have a point of reference. If one doesn’t have an anchor, something prior from which to view the events, they can appear disjointed or shallow. This is even more the case when we consider our own death. After all it is the one thing in our lives we can count on; we will die and that is that. Therefore we ought to keep our death ever present in our minds so that never a moment is wasted. This is when we see the end as our beautiful friend. Cf. Death and the Real I.

The Walrus went on to talk of many things: including shoes, ships, and kings. Indeed, even esoteric questions as to why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings. My Grandma said to me that the time had come. She used the words of the Walrus in the poem to convey a decision had to be made. But to put it off would be nice. To ignore the typhoon coming on. Yet despite all of this there is hope. “The End” as in a finishing point could also lead to new life or rather a new life. Bilbo goes to live with the Elves, and Frodo goes on an adventure of his own. Both eventually sail into the West.

The metaphor of the sea is apt. It is an eternal rolling image of time. Where those have gone before others will follow. It consumes all. Yet as a prophet is despised in his own country, those bright sparks will not ignite and flourish in damp kindling. So they set sail for new worlds, or perhaps, old worlds that need recovering. I am not comparing myself to a prophet rather it is bound up in the decision to follow an esoteric path. Leaving home is always difficult, as is death, yet prayers of friends help considerably. Is leaving the world a different matter altogether from this? Surely we search for our true home, the Heavenly Fatherland?

Tolkien and the Blessed Sacrament

JRR Tolkien grew up with the Catholic Faith. His mother, a convert and widow, gave to him and his brother this unparalleled gift. His childhood was spent with the Fathers of the Brompton Oratory in London. His closeness to the Blessed Sacrament was to remain a constant throughout his life, he attended Holy Mass and received Holy Communion daily. It is in this we see where he experienced the graces that were to be key to his work and are evident in it.

Craig Bernthal makes the case for Tolkien’s sacramental vision in the eponymous book published recently.[1] He argues that Tolkien, in writing the Lord of the Rings (and the associated literature), has created a ‘holy’ work. Tolkien himself considered that he wrote with inspiration, perhaps even divine inspiration.[2] It might be the case that Tolkien’s work is divinely inspired, he lived a life of sanctity, and there is cause for his canonisation. Yet what I am interested in is how he came to imagine what he did. He wrote “the stories arose in my mind as given things”.[3] What does that mean?

I did not grow up as a Roman Catholic. Though now I am a member of the Church, and I happen to live close to an Oratory. I attend Mass as often as I can and receive Communion in like manner. What arose in my mind was the example of Tolkien, who as an Inkling has connections to rediscovering the Imagination as a creative force. Well we know nothing comes out of nowhere, so where did these stories come from and how can we replicate that? One could say it is only possible to find ‘new’ things by writing them and voicing one’s perspective. Which is a unique because it is uniquely yours.

For Tolkien, he wrote the Lord of the Rings as a home for the languages he had created. We know that words are symbolic of the essence of a created being or object. Adam named the beasts therefore he knew their essences. Bernthal points out, using Tolkien’s poem Mythopoeia, that Tolkien thought through speech we breath the world into life.[4] The creation of Arda in the Silmarillion is done so through music and song. And the Elves, like Adam, name the stars ‘el’ or God. We can link this to the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, and even Plato, who Tolkien was conversant with along with Saint Augustine. Tolkien’s mythopoetic observations have been noted for their similarity to the Logos which acts as both “the […] language of nature” spoken into being by God, and “a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM”.[5]

I believe Tolkien was ‘remembering’ Truths that had been forgotten. It would be worth cultivating a life similar to his in order to know how to proceed. There is plenty of material to work with, and signs to show us the way, all it takes is effort to do the exercises. We have mentioned this before, and it has been mentioned by others before too. Tolkien was evidently able to return to a higher state of consciousness,[6] to wit “the chief practical objectives are mastery of the sexual centre, and the training of the emotional centre.”[7] Spending an hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament each day will help us to with this internal war. Venerable Fulton Sheen declared this more necessary than the external struggle for without it we will not have the moral courage to salute the same flag that others have fought and died for.

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[1] Craig Bernthal, Tokien’s Sacramental Vision: Discerning the Holy in Middle Earth (Angelico Press, 2014).

[2] Bernthal, Tokien’s Sacramental Vision, p. 46.

[3] Bernthal, Tokien’s Sacramental Vision, p. 45 n. 54.

[4] Bernthal, Tokien’s Sacramental Vision, p. 59.

[5] Lisa Coutras, Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-earth (Springer, 2016). Verlyn Flieger, Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (Kent State University Press, 2002). The last from S. T. Coleridge’s famous declaration in Biographia Literaria.

[6] “new source of moral energy”

[7] Boris Mouravieff, Gnosis, p. 229.

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