"Leaf by Niggle" is a short story written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1938-39 and first published in the Dublin Review in January 1945. It can be found, most notably, in Tolkien's book titled "Tree and Leaf", and in other places. This is notable because the book, consisting of a seminal essay called "On Fairy-Stories" and "Leaf by Niggle," offers the underlying philosophy (Creation and Sub-Creation, see below) of much of Tolkien's fantastical writings. This article is in need of attention. ... J. R. R. Tolkien in 1972, in his study at Merton Street (from by H. Carpenter) John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) is best known as the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings. ... 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Tree and Leaf is a collection of works by J. R. R. Tolkien including an essay called On Fairy-Stories, a short story called Leaf by Niggle and a poem called Mythopoeia. The book was originally illustrated by Pauline Baynes. ... On Fairy-Stories is an essay written by J. R. R. Tolkien, first published in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, Oxford University Press, 1947. ...

"Leaf by Niggle" is very much an allegory of Tolkien's own creative process, and, to an extent, of his own life. An allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, other, and αγορευειν, agoreuein, to speak in public) is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. ...

Plot Synopsis

In the story, an artist, named Niggle, lives in a society that does not much value art. Working only to please himself, he paints a canvas of a great Tree, in the middle of a Forest, with many other trees around as well. He invests each and every leaf of his tree with obsessive attention to detail, making every leaf uniquely beautiful (of course, he niggles over each one!). Niggle ends up discarding all his other artworks, or tacks them onto the main canvas, which becomes a single vast embodiment of his vision. Resources ArtLex. ... The Mona Lisa is perhaps the best-known artistic painting in the Western world. ...

However, there are many mundane chores and duties that prevent Niggle from giving his work the attention it deserves, so it remains incomplete and is not fully realized.

At the back of his head, Niggle knows that he has a great trip looming, and he must pack and prepare his bags.

Also, Niggle's next door neighbor, a gardener named Parish, is the sort of neighbor who always drops by whining about the help he needs with this and that. Moreover, Parish is lame of foot and has a sick wife, and honestly needs help — Niggle, having a good heart, takes time out to help.

And Niggle has other pressing work duties that require his attention. Then Niggle himself catches a chill doing errands for Parish in the rain.

Eventually, Niggle is forced to take his trip, and cannot get out of it. He has not prepared, and as a result ends up in a kind of institution, in which he must perform menial labor each day.

Eventually he is paroled from the institution, and he is sent to a place in the country to work as a gardener in a forest. But he discovers that the forest is in fact the Tree and Forest of his great painting, now long abandoned and all but destroyed (except for the one perfect leaf of the title which is placed in the local museum) in the home to which he cannot return — but the Tree here and now in this place is the true realization of his vision, not the flawed and incomplete form of his painting.

Niggle is reunited with his old neighbor, Parish, who now proves his worth as a gardener, and together they make the Tree and Forest even more beautiful. Finally, Niggle journeys farther and deeper into the Forest, and beyond into the great mountains that he only faintly glimpsed in his painting.

Analysis

Of course, the allegory of "Leaf by Niggle" is life, death, purgatory and paradise. Niggle is not prepared for his unavoidable trip, as humans often are not prepared for death. His time in the institution and subsequent discovery of his Tree represent purgatory and heaven. Life is a multi-faceted concept. ... Death is the cessation of physical life in a living organism or the state of the organism after that event. ... The term purgatory is best defined as the means by which the elect reach perfection before entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. Many different theories on how purgatory takes place have been discussed in the past. ... Look up Paradise in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Paradise is also a title of a tv-series The word paradise is derived from the Avestan word of pairidaeza (a walled enclosure), which is a compound of pairi- (around), a cognate of the Greek peri-, and -diz (to create, make). ... Michelangelos interpretation of Heaven Heaven is an afterlife concept found in many religions or spiritual philosophies. ...

But "Leaf by Niggle" is also about Tolkien's profoundly religious philosophy of Creation and sub-creation. True Creation is the exclusive province of God, and those who aspire to Creation can only make echoes (good) or mockeries (evil) of truth. The sub-creation of works that echo the true creations of God is one way that mortals honor God. God is the Supreme Being believed to exist in monotheistic religions as the creator of the Universe. ...

(This philosophy is evident in The Silmarillion — one Vala, Morgoth, creates the Orc race as a foul mockery of the elf. Another Vala, Aulë, creates the Dwarf race as an act of Subcreation that honored God (called Eru in JRRT's invented mythology), and which God accepted and made real, just as Niggle's Tree was made real.) The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkiens works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher R. Tolkien, with assistance from fantasy fiction writer Guy Gavriel Kay. ... Vala can mean: Völva, a priestess in Norse mythology The singular form of the plural term Valar in J.R.R. Tolkiens fiction. ... Morgoth Bauglir (Morgoth means The Dark Enemy, Bauglir is The Constrainer), originally named Melkor (He Who Arises in Might), is a fictional character of Middle-earth, created by J. R. R. Tolkien. ... Orc or Ork, an Old English word (orc-néas orc-corpses in Beowulf) for the undead monsters of Grendels race, was revived by J. R. R. Tolkien in his Middle-earth legendarium. ... A small forest elf (älva) rescuing an egg, from Solägget (1932), by Elsa Beskow An elf is a mythical creature of Germanic mythology which survived in northern European folklore. ... Aulë is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkiens legendarium. ... Khazad redirects here. ... Eru (the One), also called Ilúvatar (the Father of All), is the name in the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien for the supreme God, the creator of the angels (Ainur) and the universe (Eä). ... The word mythology (from the Greek μυϑολογία mythología, from μυϑολογειν mythologein to relate myths, from μυϑος mythos, meaning a narrative, and λογος logos, meaning speech or argument) literally means the (oral) retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and...

Niggle's yearnings after truth and beauty (God's creations) are echoed in his great painting; after death, Niggle is rewarded with the realization (the making-real) of his yearning. Or, if you prefer, Niggle's Tree always existed — he simply echoed it in his art.

On a meta-level, then, JRRT's Middle-earth is itself a Subcreation designed to honor the true stories of the world-that-is. Thus, Middle-earth, despite its lack of overt religious elements, is a profoundly religious work. A map of the Northwestern part of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Arda. ...

So, on a final level of allegory, Tolkien himself is Niggle — and, humorously, in mundane matters as well as spiritual ones. JRRT was compulsive in his writing, his revision, his desire for perfection in form and in the "reality" of his invented world, its languages, its chronologies, its existence. Like Niggle, Tolkien came to abandon other projects or graft them onto his "Tree," Middle-earth. Like Niggle, Tolkien faced many chores and duties that kept him from the work he loved. And like Niggle, Tolkien was a horrible procrastinator — late in life, Tolkien spent hours playing solitary card games instead of working on The Silmarillion. Solitaire or patience is a family of single-player card games of a generally similar character, but varying greatly in detail. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkiens works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher R. Tolkien, with assistance from fantasy fiction writer Guy Gavriel Kay. ...

Finally, Tolkien himself might have disagreed with an allegorical interpretation. He wrote, in Letter 131 of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, "I dislike Allegory." And in specific reference to Niggle, he wrote in Letter 241, "It is not really or properly an 'allegory' so much as 'mythical'." On the other hand, in Letter 153 he said, "I tried to show allegorically how [subcreation] might come to be taken up into Creation in some plane in my 'purgatorial' story Leaf by Niggle." The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (ISBN 0-618-05699-8) is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkiens letters published in 1981, edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and the biographer Humphrey Carpenter. ...

External links

• Leaf by Niggle - a symbolic story about a small painter
• The volume Tree and Leaf that contains "Leaf by Niggle" along with other works by Tolkien, available at Amazon.com