Leaf by Niggle
jdavidson
Could someone explain 'Leaf by Niggle' to me?
I really liked it and I got some of it but there are parts
that I just don't understand.
--
Joel magec...@hotmail.com
"One to be born from a dragon...
Hoisting both Light and Dark" -- Final Fantasy 2
"When fact is fiction and T.V. is reality,
and today the millions cry,
we eat and drink while tomorrow they die." -- U2
Bruce Hietbrink
In article <01bd6b3d$b3d37a00$e70620ce@hal-9000>, "jdavidson"
<jdav...@conknet.com> wrote:
> Could someone explain 'Leaf by Niggle' to me?
> I really liked it and I got some of it but there are parts
> that I just don't understand.
>
Hi,
I'll try to answer this. LbN ("Leaf by Niggle") was
probably the closest thing to straight allegory that JRRT
wrote. In it he tried to reflect his own feelings about
art, subcreation, and the process of writing LOTR. A
couple of relevant passages from _Letters of JRRT_:
Letter 153:
"I might say that in my myth I have used 'subcreation'
in a special way (not the same as 'subcreation as a term
in criticism of art, though I tried to show allegorically
how that might come to be taken up into Creation in some
plane in my 'purgatorial' story LbN)."
Letter 199:
"[LbN] arose from my own pre-occupation with LOTR, the
knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not
at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be
'not at all'"
So the simple interpretation is:
Niggle = Tolkien himself
The painting = LOTR
Mountains in the distance = Tolkien's whole mythology
Tolkien really wanted to finish the story of LOTR, but he
also would get sidetracked into working in-depth on some
particular detail. This is like Niggle spending days trying
to perfect one leaf. He was also interested in the whole
Silmarillion story, which kept intruding into what was
originally a simple sequel to the Hobbit. This is like
Niggle painting the trees in the distance, or the mountains
behind them. He was afraid that his work would never be
finished and it would be all but forgotten, as Niggle's
painting was chopped up and used to patch the roof, but
he hoped that some small part might be remembered, as
the small fragment 'Leaf' by Niggle was saved.
The part where Niggle gets taken away and sits in
kind of an institution listening to the voices is
very Catholic. The place is Purgatory, and the voices
are Justice and Mercy (others haver argued they are
Satan and God or the first and second Persons of the
Trinity). Once Niggle is let out of Purgatory, it's
on to Heaven. There, he finds that his greatest prayer
has been answered--his attempt as an artist to sub-create,
to add to the beauty of the universe, has been taken
up and given life. It all kind of ties in with what
Tolkien felt about the role of the artist.
Bruce Hietbrink