J. R. R. TolkienThe Philosophical Basis of Sub-Creative Words Jon Mentxakatorre Odriozola (bio) Keywords Tolkien, On Faery-stories, Barfield, Middle-earth, mythopoeic, sub-creative, poiesis, Elvish language, language creation, Elves, Frodo, Bilbo, naming, myth Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch wohnet Der Mensch auf dieser Erde friedrich hölderlin A poet, one might say, is someonewho tries to give an experience its Proper Name w. h. auden I. Introduction There is something in Tolkien’s stories in Middle-earth that makes them stand out from other fictional stories insofar as their inspiration was primarily linguistic. Welsh names on the wagons in Birmingham and Gothic adjectives he encountered introduced him into philology as a scientific discipline. These words led Tolkien to the study of languages simply and plainly for the intense aesthetic pleasure he obtained from them, free of their functional capacity or as vehicles of literature, as well as to the invention and use of a personal aesthetic language.1 So perhaps Tolkien is the only one in the history of Western literature following the primordial creative act: “In the beginning was the Word” (Jn 1:1). For him, words and their inner [End Page 105] beauty came first, and then stories unfolding these words.2 Therefore, his literary creations were the framework in which the meaning of these words could be developed, and became the place where his invented languages could exist. That is, in Tolkien’s works, the foundation is the poetic diction of beings and things, and the plot or the argument—the creation of (interrelated) stories of these beings and things—comes thereafter. This was difficult to understand in the second half of the last century: Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an “allegory.” And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn’ omentieimo, and that the phrase long antedated the book.3 Tolkien stated that through linguistic invention he discovered that languages carry within them the coordinates of a world in which words of these languages have a certain meaning and so are vehicles of truth.4 All languages, in their poetic diction, contain a mythological horizon that make them exist. As a consequence, the intrinsic relationship between language and mythology highlights how humans experience reality. Using spoken words, they experience their reality and so build a particular worldview, a unique culture, from those words. My article will reflect on this proposition from a philosophical point of view. Assuming that the mythopoeic basis of Tolkien’s work is linguistic,5 I aim to explore the philosophical basis of sub-creative words. That is, how languages are able to house beings or things and to demand the construction of a unique worldview (mythology) through its unfolding, as well as to describe the metaphysical nucleus behind the languages of a corpus of myths and fairy stories dedicated to England.6 First, the notion of perception of the world as a gift and of [End Page 106] languages as an art will be explored through two examples from Tolkien’s world. The naming of the wealth of reality in the beauty of sound and the form of words will have recourse to the theory of ancient semantic unity of his friend and fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield. This concept of languages, an enormous influence on Tolkien,7 was presented for the first time in Barfield’s History in English Words in 1926 and fully developed two years later in Poetic Diction.8 I will then explore the double path that Tolkien followed in light of the attempt or recovery of this diction in ancient semantic unity: language invention and creation from philology. Finally, I will draw from the most significant philosophical contributions of the last century that understand the essence of language as poiesis espoused by Martin Heidegger to examine Tolkien’s theory of sub-creation through language...