To me, there are two take aways from Tolkein saying “I was not inspired by my experiences with the war”
Something that traumatic was always going to seep into his world view and messaging for the rest of his life, even if it wasn’t intentional. We always write what we know. The closer something is to something we know, the more compelling we can be when writing about it. Tolkein wrote something VERY compelling. Probably because he wrote what he knew, and what he knew was a world war.
He did it, knowingly, but the constant questions about the influence of the war on his writing was exhausting and traumatic in its own way. LotR was probably the most he was EVER going to be willing to write about it on account of how horrid and awful it was, and his saying “I didn’t take inspiration from my war experiences, that shit was too awful to revist” was him saying “Stop asking about all that, I’m not ready to talk about it and I never will be.”
Personally, I think with many things in life the answer does not lie in either binary, but instead in a blend of the two. I think there’s some stuff Tolkein put in there knowingly, and some stuff he did accidentally. I think him saying “No, no inspiration, stop asking” was both true in certain contexts, and a way to say he wasn’t willing to talk about it in others.
To me, there are two take aways from Tolkein saying “I was not inspired by my experiences with the war”
Personally, I think with many things in life the answer does not lie in either binary, but instead in a blend of the two. I think there’s some stuff Tolkein put in there knowingly, and some stuff he did accidentally. I think him saying “No, no inspiration, stop asking” was both true in certain contexts, and a way to say he wasn’t willing to talk about it in others.