Dušan Pavlović's Reviews > On Fairy-Stories

I came across this essay while reading Karen Wynn Fonstad's The Atlas of Middle-Earth and, inspired by that, my whole focus while reading Tolkien's essay was on the importance of, as Tolkien says, "inner consistency of reality" while making the Faerie, a Secondary World, the world of fairy stories.

But as a good Secondary World (or Faerie, or fairy story, or Legendarium!) can only be shaped from the writer's own immense knowledge and experiences from the Primary World, as well as the creativity and immagination, the realization of how Tolkien himself has done it with "a kind of elvish craft" for his Legendarium really struck me.

And it is when you read this essay while thinking about the Tolkien's own Faerie, Arda (as a whole and all of its inner worlds, Aman, Valinor, Numenor, Middle-Earth), especially when you include the linguistic background of Tolkien and his ideas behind the Silmarillion and accompanied works into the equation, as well as the passion for the maps and drawings, and remembering and revisiting the details and storytelling lines, concepts, mythology, geography, etc. from the books, that the ideas from the essay arise to the full richness and depth which Tolkien has so amazingly shown in his own "sub-creation"!

Some quotes from the essay I found inspirational and illustrative:

To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story- making in its primary and most potent mode.

Fantasy is made out of the Primary World, but a good craftsman loves his material, and has a knowledge and feeling for clay, stone and wood which only the art of making can give. By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.

It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.

Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality.