The Relation of Art and Primary Reality
In the Waldman letter, Tolkien says his work is fundamentally concerned with “the problem of the relation of Art and Sub-creation and Primary Reality.” (Letter to Milton Waldman, publisher, 1951)
Art is not mere ornament. Sub-creation has a mysterious relation to Primary Reality. The imagined world is not “unreal” in a simple sense. It refracts, echoes, interprets, and participates in the real world.
Story is not secondary to existence, but reveals existence.
The Sub-Creative Desire and Mortality
Tolkien says the creative or sub-creative desire seems to have no biological function and is often at strife with ordinary biological life. It is wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it.(Letter to Milton Waldman, publisher, 1951)
The artist loves the world because it is beautiful, but suffers because it passes away. Sub-creation arises from the desire to preserve, transfigure, and answer the wound of mortality.
Storytelling is born partly from love of a vanishing world. Story rescues mortal beauty into a more enduring form.