“But the queer and the strange, the unrestrained, the grotesque is not only interesting: it is valuable. It is not always necessary to purge it out altogether in order to attain to the Sublime. You can have your gargoyles on your noble cathedral, but Europe has lost much through too often trying to build Greek Temples.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, On ‘The Kalevala’ or Land of Heroes

Tolkien was 22 when he wrote that.

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