also sprach Tolkien

    Herewith as requested, out of J.R.Tolkien, courtesy of Daniel.

    Scottie B.
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However good in themselves, illustrations do little good to fairy-stories.
The radical distinction between all art (including drama) that offers a
visible presentation and true literature is that it imposes one visible
form. Literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive. It
is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of
bread or wine or stone or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to
their ideas; yet each hearer will give them a peculiar personal embodiment
in his imagination. Should the story say 'he ate bread', the dramatic
producer or painter can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste
and fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and
picture it in some form of his own. If a story says 'he climbed a hill and
saw a river in the valley below', the illustrator may catch, nor nearly
catch, his own vision of such a scene; but every hearer of the words will
have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills and rivers
and dales he has ever seen, but especially out of The Hill, The River, The
Valley which were for him the first embodiment of the word (67).
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Received on Wed Aug 20 12:46:35 2003