Tolkien y répond aux interrogations d'Hastings, patron d'une librairie catholique d'Oxford, au sujet de la dimension métaphysique du SdA. Parmi d'autres sujets, Hastings, observant que Treebeard a indiqué que le Seigneur ténébreux avait créé les Trolls et les Orcs*, suggère qu'il est en fait incapable de créer quoi que ce soit, et quand bien même le pourrait-il, ses créatures n'auraient pas de dispositions pour le bien, même pas une toute petite.
* (SdA tome 2, chapitre IV, SYLVEBARBE, page 114 : "Mais ce ne sont que des contrefaçons, créées par l'Ennemi au cours des Grandes Ténèbres en dérision des Ents, comme les Orques pour les Elfes.")
Dans son projet de lettre, Tolkien répond (en parlant plus des Trolls, mais l'explication doit pouvoir s'appliquer aussi aux Orcs):
"I think I agree about the 'creation by evil'. But you are more free with the word 'creation' than I am [en note, tolkien ajoute : "Inside this mythical history (as its methapysic is, not necesseraly as a methaphysic of the real World), Creation, the act of Will of Eru the One that gives Reality to conceptions, is distinguished from Making, wich is permissive"]. Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord 'created' Trolls and Orcs. He says he'made' them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing. There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements, so wide that Treebeard's statement could (in my world) have possibly been true. It is not true actually of the Orcs - who are fundamentally a race of 'rational incarnate' creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today. Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some erthy wisdom, he is not of the Wise, and ther is quite a lot he does not know or understand. He does not know what the 'Wizards' are, or whence they came (though I do, even if exercising my subcreator's right I have thought it best in this Tale to leave the question a 'mystery', not without pointers to the solution. Suffering and experience (and possibly the Ring itself) gave Frodo more insight; and you wil read in chapter I of Book VI the words to Sam. 'The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the Orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them.' In the Legends of the Elder Days it is suggested that the Diabolus subjugated and corrupted some of the earliest Elves, before they had ever heard of the 'gods' let alone of God.
I am not suer about Trolls. I think they are mere'counterfeits', and hence (though here I am of course only using elements of old barbarous mythmaking that had no 'aware' metaphysic) they return to mere stone images when not in the dark. But there are other sorts of Trolls beside these rather ridiculous, if brutal, Stone-trolls, for wich other origins are suggested. Of course (since inevitably my world is highly imperfect even on its own plane nor made wholly coherent - our Real World does not appear to be wholly coherent either; and I am actually not myself convinced that, though in every world on every plane all must ultimately be under the Will of God, even in ours there are not some'tolerated' sub-creational counterfeits!) when you make Trolls speak you are giving them a power, wich in our world (probably) connotes the possession of a 'soul'. But I do not agree (if you admit that fairy-story element) that my trolls show any sign of 'good', strictly and unsentimentally viewed. I do not say William felt pity - a word to me of moral and imaginative worth: it is the Pity of Bilbo and later Frodo that ultimately allows the Quest to be achieved - and I do not think he showed Pity. I might not (if The Hobbit had been more carefully written, and my world so much thought about 20 years ago) have used the expression 'poor little blighter', just as I should not have called the troll William. But I discerned no pity even then, and put in a plain caveat. Pity must restrain one from doing something immediately desirable and seemingly advantageous. There is no more 'pity' here than in a best of prey yawning, or lazily patting of creature it could eat, but does not want to, since it is not hungry. Or indeed than there is in many of men's action, whose real roots are in stiety, sloth, or a purely non-moral matural softness, though they may dignify thme by 'pity's'Name.
[...]
To conclude: having mentioned Free Will, 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 Leaf by Niggle (Dublin Review 1945)) to make visible and physical the effects of Sin or misused Free Will by men. Free Will is derivative, and is only operative within provided circumstances; but in order that it may exist, it is necessary that the Author should guarantee it, wathever betides: sc. when it is 'against His Will', as we say, at any rate as it appears on a finite view. He does not stop or make 'unreal' sinful acts and their consequences. So in this myth, it is 'feigned' (legitimately wheter that is a feature of the real world or not) that He gave special 'sub-creative' powers to His highest created beings: that is a guarantee that what they devised and made should be given the reality of Creation. Of course within limits, and of course subjetc to certain commands or prohibitions. But if they 'fell', as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things 'for himself, to be their Lord' these would then 'be', even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other 'rational' creatures like Elves or Men. They would at least 'be' real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even 'mocking' the Children of God. They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses ok this highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. 'I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that been going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making - necessary to their actual existence - even Orcs would become part of the World, wich is God's, and ultimately good). But Wether they could have 'souls' or 'spirits' seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible 'delegation', I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them. That God would 'tolerate' that, seems no worse theology than the toleration of the calculated dehumanizing of Men by tyrants tht goes on today. There might be other 'makings' all the same wich were more like puppets fille (only at a distance) with their maker's mind and will, or ant-like operating under direction of a queen-centre."
Il ne reste plus qu'à traduire :-))) (pas évident pour certains passages, aussi je m'en garderai bien tant que mes petits doigts qui viennent de claviotter pendant près d'une heure ne seront pas reposés... si quelqu(un veut s'y coller;-) )
Silmo