J. R. R. Tolkien on writing without recognition
The only important critic sees the value
J. R. R. Tolkien, the creator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and a major figure in his scholarly field of philology, needs no introduction. This is taken from a letter in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien.
Tolkien is writing about the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and his friend Canon Dixon, who both saw their works unappreciated.
H. seems clearly to have seen that "recognition" with some understanding is in this world an essential part of authorship, and the want of it a suffering to be distinguished from (even when mixed with) mere desire for the pleasures of fame and praise.
Dixon was rather bowled over by being appreciated by Hopkins; and much moved by Burne-Jones' words (said to H. who quoted them) that "one works really for the one man who may rise to understand one." But H. then demurred, perceiving that Burne-Jones' hope can also in this world be frustrated, as easily as general fame: a painter (like Niggle) may work for what the burning of his picture, or an accident of death to the admirer, may wholly destroy.
He summed up: The only just literary critic is Christ, who admires more than does any man the gifts He Himself has bestowed.
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