D'abord et on est tous d'accord et Tolkien le reconnaît lui-même, son oeuvre est d'inspiration chrétienne : "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious & Catholic work...That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism." Letter 142
Okay?
Mais pas d'allégorie (on est tous d'accord): "It is not about anything but itself. Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular, or topical, moral, religious, or political...It is a monotheistic world of natural theology. The odd fact that there are no churches, temples, or religious rits & ceremonies, is simply part of the historical climate depicted...I am in any case myself a Christian; but the Third Age was not a Christian world". Letter 165
Et pas de message explicite :" ...Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of tne primary real world..." Letter 131
Okay?
A propos de Gandalf Tolkien refuse tout rapprochement avec le Christ: "Thus Gandalf faced and suffered death; and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be in this reminded of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees". Letter 181
Et enfin pour Galadriel :"...I think it is true that I owe much of the character of Galadriel to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary..." Letter 320
Bon
Mais je pense que le christianisme de Tolkien est plus, à la fois très littéraire et personnel, poétique et tourmenté.
Sa foi est dès plus paradoxale, liée à la mort de sa mère. Quand celle-ci s'est convertie au catholicisme, sa famille anglicane l'a rejetée, moralement et financièrement, situation qui l'a éprouvée physiquement, entraînant éventuellement sa mort (diabète).
Et V. Flieger dans "Splintered Light" dit bien que le catholicisme est pour Tolkien enfant une consolation pour sa perte mais il est aussi responsable de la mort de sa mère: " His Catholicism was inextricably linked with his mother, but her adherence to that religion had, in his view, led to her death and thus to his bereavement. The very thing which gave him his faith robbed him of his mother, and thus mixed with that faith a sense of irretrievable loss" (p.2-3).
Et c'est ce paradoxe qui transpire dans ses écrits et qui fait aussi son humanisme, ce déchirement entre l'espoir et le désespoir: " This alternation between the vision of hope and the knowledge of despair - between light and dark- is both the essence of Tolkien and the clearest characteristic of his work. The contrast and interplay of light and dark are essential elements of his fiction...It engenders Creation and Fall; it becomes language; and its interplay becomes the interplay of good and evil, belief and doubt, free will and fate" (p.4).
Fangorn a écrit un excellent compte rendu sur "Splintered Light", c'est dans la Compagnie de la Comté, à lire et relire ;-)
Après cette overdose de citations ;-)
A+
Cathy
PS Tu as eu des problèmes avec la magie blanche (ou noire) de Gandalf, Vinyamar?