In 1964, Pantheon Books invited J.R.R. Tolkien (January 3, 1892–September 2, 1973) to write an introduction to George MacDonald’s The Golden Key, which he had praised in Tree and Leaf — the small, splendid essay collection that gave us his uncommonly insightful meditation on fairy tales, the language of fantasy, and why there is no such thing as writing “for children.” He did love the book, so he agreed. But after two years of uneasy work on it, he finally conceded it was a betrayal of his lifelong credo that editorial introductions are an intrusion on the reader’s joy in being confronted by the immediacy of the story itself, with no one to tell them how to feel about it. He decided to bow out of the assignment. In his struggle with it, however, Tolkien had found it “necessary to deal with the problem of ‘fairy,'” as he later wrote to a friend. So he decided to tackle it by writing an actual fairy story, perhaps the way Mary Oliver wrote one of her greatest poems as an exercise in end-stop lines, to better understand the form. Published in 1967 as Smith of Wootton Major (public library), it includes a postscript on “the problem,” which Tolkien chooses to spell “Faery,” to mean more broadly the enchanted world. J.R.R. TolkienAmong the many lovelinesses of the essay is his ready use of the old-fashioned word “ruth” — a feeling of pity, anguish, or grief, from the Old English hrēow, meaning “sorrow” — which also gives us the wonderful underused verb “to rue” and the far more common, even commodified adjective “ruthless.” Enchantment, Tolkien argues, is a fusion of ruth and delight — in other words, a capacity for feeling life deeply in its full range. It is decidedly not religious, though religious experiences may contain elements of it, because religion is one of many possible organizing principles of the ordinary world, but enchantment allows us to partake of extraordinary. He writes:Faery represents at its weakest a breaking out (at least in mind) from the iron ring of the familiar, still more from the adamantine ring of belief that it is known, possessed, controlled, and so (ultimately) all that is worth being considered — a constant awareness of a world beyond these rings. More strongly it represents love: that is, a love and respect for all things, “inanimate” and “animate,” an unpossessive love of them as “other.” This “love” will produce both ruth and delight. Things seen in its light will be respected, and they will also appear delightful, beautiful, wonderful even glorious.It is a moving point, a true point, which we must not forget: Enchantment — wherever we may find it (as in nature, poetry, music), or wherever it might find us (as in love) — is not escapism but a truer realism than cynicism, pessimism, or optimism. In allowing us to touch the extraordinary, enchantment — which asks of the courage of the encounter — returns us to our lives more in love with the so-called ordinary world, which, we must also not forget, is itself an extraordinary triumph against probability.One of Tolkien’s a href=”https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/11/01/art-of-the-hobbit/”>original illustrations for the first edition of The Hobbit, 1936Tolkien writes:Faery might be said indeed to represent Imagination (without definition because taking in all the definitions of this word): esthetic: exploratory and receptive; and artistic: inventive, dynamic, (sub)creative. This compound — of awareness of a limitless world outside our domestic parish; a love (in ruth and admiration) for the things in it; and a desire for wonder, marvels, both perceived and conceived — this “Faery” is as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life.Couple with Loren Eiseley (one of the poet laureates of loving the world by being in it) on how to touch the miraculous in the mundane, then revisit George Saunders’s modern prescription for how to love the world more. donating = lovingFor seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.newsletterThe Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s most inspiring reading. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.