J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes About Art
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Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
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What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.
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Their 'magic' is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations.
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And its object is Art not power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation.
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Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.
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Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.
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Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief.
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It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill.
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