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Letter #131 is quite long, and deals with many issues; therefore, I have
edited it
down to those sections dealing with `magic'.
"I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any
attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical
language. (And of course the more `life' a story has the more readily will
it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a
deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just
as a
story.) Anyway, all this stuff (*) is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality,
and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several
modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or
as I
should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological
function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary
biological life, with which, in our world, it is indeed usually at strife.
This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary
world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied
by
it. It has various opportunities of `Fall'. It may become possessive,
clinging to the things made as `its own', the sub-creator wishes to be
the
Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of
the Creator - especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or
together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more
quickly effective, - and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend
all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of development
of
the inherent inner powers or talents - or even the use of these talents
with
the corrupted motive of domination: bulldozing the real world, or
coercing other will. The Machine is our more obvious modern form
though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognised.
I have not used `magic' consistently, and indeed the Elven-queen
Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused
use of the word both for the devices and operations of the Enemy, and for
those of the Elves. I have not, because there is not a word for the latter
(since all human stories have suffered the same confusion). But the Elves
are there (in my tales) to demonstrate the difference. Their `magic' is
Art,
delivered from many of its human limitations; more effortless, more
quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed correspondence).
And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination and
tyrannous re-forming of Creation. The `Elves' are `immortal', at least
as
far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs
and
burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with death. The Enemy
in successive forms is always `naturally' concerned with sheer
Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines; but the problem: that
this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently good root, the
desire to benefit the world and others - speedily and according to the
benefactor's own plans- is a recurrent motive."
(... much more deleted-sorry!)
* It is, I suppose, fundamentally concerned with the problem of the
relation of Art (and Sub-creation) and Primary Reality.
