Editing Leaf by Niggle (section)

=== Surrealistic dream memory ===

Michael Organ, writing in the ''[[Journal of Tolkien Research]]'', notes that Tolkien stated in a letter that the story came to him one morning in 1939, shortly before the start of the [[World War II|Second World War]], when he woke up with the story, which he called "that odd thing", in his mind "virtually" complete.<ref group="T">{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=Letter 98 to Stanley Unwin, c. 18 March 1945 }}</ref><ref name="Organ 2018"/> Tolkien stated in another letter that he then wrote it out "almost in a sitting and very nearly in the form in which it now appears", commenting that looking back at the story<!--over a decade later-->, he thought it "arose" from a combination of [[Trees in Middle-earth|his love of trees]] and his concern that ''The Lord of the Rings'' would never be finished.<ref group="T">{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=Letter 199 to Caroline Everett, 24 June 1957 }}</ref> Organ describes the birth of "Leaf by Niggle" as "a frenzy of activity" resembling the [[automatic writing]] "popularised by proponents of [[Dada]] and [[Surrealism]]" in the early 20th century.<ref name="Organ 2018"/> He notes, too, that Tolkien knew that dreams had an irrational side, and had commented that it was "exceptional" for fantasy to appear in dreams, as "Fantasy is a rational, not an irrational, activity".<ref name="Organ 2018"/> Organ comments that Tolkien may have resisted "what he saw as the morbidity of surrealism" in connection with his story, precisely because "Leaf by Niggle"'s message is so positive.<ref name="Organ 2018">{{cite journal |last=Organ |first=Michael |year=2018 |title=Tolkien's surrealistic pillow: Leaf by Niggle |journal=[[Journal of Tolkien Research]] |volume=5 |issue=1 |at=Article 7 |url=https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol5/iss1/7}}</ref>