톨킨의 자연: 느림의 경제

Abstract

In Tolkien’s literature, any attempt to revise the slow-tempo of nature creates evil and trouble. Evil or ingenious beings—Melkor, Sauron, Saruman, as well as Fëanor—are unanimously labelled as “impatient,” “hasty,” “rash,” and “swift.” All these hasty creatures are manufacturers, the descendants of Aulë who as one of the Valar is the expert at making things with metal or wood. Tampering with nature as created derives, in a deeper level, from the desire to imposes one’s will upon nature. This desire is in fact the hunger for power, which in turn invents machines to make itself “more quickly effective.” Tolkien himself calls the device of machines a “magic,” which resembles modern technology. Tolkien offers many creatures living close to nature, Woses, Beorn, Tom Bombadil, but at the center of his natural environment are the Ents, the walking and talking trees in Fangorn. They are by nature slow, indifferent, carefree, and collective. The trees have lived a long time in the forest and the accumulated experience in nature composed a story, that their name of each natural object is like a long story. This episode seems to be in keeping with a recent trend of ecocriticism—ecocriticism as storytelling. On the other hand, Tolkien’s narrative touches upon the gradual disappearance of Entwives, and it is not difficult to understand why. Entwives represent feminine care for food and safety and as such cultivate the wild, “green” earth to the extent of turning it into barren “brown” land. Tolkien is rigid and relentless in this point: any hasty and purposeful attempt at taming wild nature dooms it to eventual extinction. Further, Tolkien’s natural environment is comprised of local, equal, and independent beings, and is never anthropocentric. Rather than proposing a binary opposition between male culture and female nature, it serves as a locale for the strife between the one male force of nature and the other same male force of culture. So Tolkien’s nature can never afford to be romantic or nostalgic, but itself is a composite of dangerous and autonomous biological and social entities.