Tolkien and the Power of Myth

by Armand Berger

Armand Berger examines the timeless power of tradition and mythology, linking ancient European epics to J. R. R. Tolkien’s works as a guide for today’s youth.

This is the introduction from Armand Berger’s Tolkien, Europe, and Tradition: From Civilisation to the Dawn of Imagination (Arktos, 2022).

It is the signature privilege of man to collect within his bosom all the weight of his tradition and to let it escape, much like a censer, giving off the sweet bouquet of incense when it is released. For it is in ‘an eternal novelty, which forms the grandiose elements of the past’, as Goethe said, that the long immemorial chain is maintained, in the passing down of our spiritual and civilisational heritage. The filial aspect holds the sacred; thus, youth attains a new sensation. But its flame must be maintained so that it does not fade away in the subtle gold hues of evening where the wolf roams! Let it remain upright and intact! Never tire of keeping vigil over the epic of its ancestors! Inevitable is the day when it must take charge of its destiny.

Like Dante, along with Virgil and Beatrice, surveying super-earthly kingdoms, it belongs to those young souls, to generations yet to come, to travel to lands that are still unknown to them, steeped in tales and legends, which transmit a wisdom that gets to the very essence of life, out of the difficulties and complications created by modern society. In this, the universe invented by the writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien offers an authentic re-enchantment of the world, as ancient traditions once did. This contemporary epic occupies a fundamental place in the mental universe of today’s European, in that its author was greatly inspired by European traditions and their founding texts: the Iliad, Beowulf, the Eddas, as well as the Kalevala. Continents falling within a vast civilisational space and in the long term to be rediscovered in a new form. And now we are engaged in this adventure, understood as a stroll along the intersection of the real, the mythical, and the imaginary.

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