J R R Tolkien, in a letter to Milton Waldman, 1951:
I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course, there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalised, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. [...]
I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story: the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloth; which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I can achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.
After being entertained by Jianyi's inevitable, But we have Sang Nila Utama! Catherine Lim! etc, the problem would remain: we are as poor in stories, and in authors who would change that. I doubt very much any of us could say our country was beloved without irony; we don't even have Tolkien's impetus. He continued, [The stories] arose in my mind as 'given' things, [...] always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'. Is there some Singapore, some Singapura, biding its time in the backwards of our minds?
The stories that arise in my mind are (non-allegorical) stories of flying from a barren land into a terrible unknown; at least there, we would live or die deliberately. I am not idealistic; I have no more material expression of such abstract notions as Freedom, Beauty, Dignity of Life, than the next person. All I have is a strange burden, a bodement, that one day in the future I will wake up to no other choice than end myself in despair that I had not better foreseen that bleak conclusion; that I had been my own Cassandra.
Su-Lin: imagine you were starting on a chocolate cake you knew would be your last: how would you eat it?
I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story: the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloth; which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I can achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.
After being entertained by Jianyi's inevitable, But we have Sang Nila Utama! Catherine Lim! etc, the problem would remain: we are as poor in stories, and in authors who would change that. I doubt very much any of us could say our country was beloved without irony; we don't even have Tolkien's impetus. He continued, [The stories] arose in my mind as 'given' things, [...] always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'. Is there some Singapore, some Singapura, biding its time in the backwards of our minds?
The stories that arise in my mind are (non-allegorical) stories of flying from a barren land into a terrible unknown; at least there, we would live or die deliberately. I am not idealistic; I have no more material expression of such abstract notions as Freedom, Beauty, Dignity of Life, than the next person. All I have is a strange burden, a bodement, that one day in the future I will wake up to no other choice than end myself in despair that I had not better foreseen that bleak conclusion; that I had been my own Cassandra.
Su-Lin: imagine you were starting on a chocolate cake you knew would be your last: how would you eat it?
