SPLINTERED LIGHT

For a long time now, I have taken the phrase "splintered light" as an evocative impression of the value to be gleaned from all human myths, that is, stories that express the longing in our hearts and give our world and our lives in our world meaning and significance. Or to expand the idea even further, all human artifacts that point to our creativity and longing—man is the great "sub creator" as Tolkien has called him. The phrase "splintered light" comes from a conversation between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien:

"But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.

No, said Tolkien, they are not.

And, indicating the great trees of Magdalen Grove as their branches bent in the wind, he struck out a different line of argument.

You call a tree a tree, he said, and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a ‘tree’ until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.

We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

…

You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand.”

Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000). 151. Emphasis is original.