Mythopoeia (poem)
Mythopoeia (mythos-making) is a term used by J.R.R. Tolkien as a title of a poem. The term has also been used in English since 1846.[1]
Tolkien wrote Mythopoeia (the poem) following a discussion on the night of 19 September 1931 at Magdalen College, Oxford with C. S. Lewis and Hugo Dyson. Lewis said that myths were "lies breathed through silver". Tolkien's poem explained and defended creative myth-making. The discussion was recorded in the book The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter.[2]
The poem is addressed from "Philomythos" (myth-lover) to "Misomythos" (myth-hater) and takes a position defending mythology and myth-making as a creative art about "fundamental things".[3] The poem begins by addressing C. S. Lewis as the Misomythos, who at the time was sceptical of any truth in mythology:
- "To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though 'breathed through silver'".[2][3]
Tolkien chose to compose the poem in heroic couplets, the preferred metre of British Enlightenment poets, as it was attacking the proponents of materialist progress ("progressive apes") on their own turf:
- "I will not walk with your progressive apes,
- erect and sapient. Before them gapes
- the dark abyss to which their progress tends --..."
The poem refers to the creative human author as "the little maker" wielding his "own small golden sceptre" ruling his subcreation (understood as genuine creation within God's primary creation):
- "your world immutable wherein no part
- the little maker has with maker's art.
- I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
- nor cast my own small golden sceptre down..."
The reference to not bowing before "the Iron Crown", and later reference rejecting "the great Artefact" have been interpreted as Tolkien's opposition and resistance to accept what he perceived to be modern man's misplaced "faith" or "worship" of rationalism, and "progress" when defined by science and technology:[3] It must be stated though that Tolkien believed in rationalism, however, he did not believe that the modernist project was actually based on rationalism.
- "man ...keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
- his world-dominion by creative act:
- not his to worship the great Artefact."
Mythopoeia takes the position that mythology contains spiritual and foundational truths, while myth-making is a "creative act" that helps narrate and disclose those truths:
- "...There is no firmament,
- only a void, unless a jewelled tent
- myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
- unless the mother's womb whence all have birth."