Some thoughts on the role of imagination in Tolkien’s works.
Barfield said in “The Tower.� Our memories simply amplify the secrets that were already there but were missed. Our memory (or imagination) creates that necessary distance between us and “that thing,� so we can see it for what it is. C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory,
What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it� We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
We want to enter that picture that we only imagine. We want to penetrate those glimpses and enter that which has been amplified by the distance of our imagination.
Barfield said in “The Tower.�
Our memories simply amplify the secrets that were already there but were missed.
Our memory (or imagination) creates that necessary distance between us and “that thing,� so we can see it for what it is.
C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory,
What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it� We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
We want to enter that picture that we only imagine. We want to penetrate those glimpses and enter that which has been amplified by the distance of our imagination.