5 replies to this topic

[Miloch]

Split from discussions that started in the Silmarillion overview.

may I direct your attention to HoME - Morgoth's Ring:

"This then , as it may appear, was my fathers final view of the question: Orcs were bred from Men, and if 'the conception in mind of the Orcs may go far back into the night of Melkors thought' it was Sauron who,during the ages of Melkor's captivity in Aman, brought into being the black armies that were available to his master when he returned

I don't hold much stock in Christopher Tolkien's Histories of Middle-Earth. If I were a published writer, I wouldn't want people rifling through my old notes after I bit the dust to see what I *might* have written while I was still sketching out my roughest ideas. What's more important is what J.R.R. eventually *did* write.

From the Silmarillion (p. 49, Ballantine ed.):

For by after-knowledge the wise declare that Melkor, ever watchful, was first aware of the awakening of the Quendi, and sent shadows and evil spirits to spy upon them and waylay them. So it came to pass, some years ere the coming of Oromë, that if any of the Elves strayed far abroad, alone or few together, they would often vanish, and never return...

But of those unhappy ones who were ensnared by Melkor little is known of a certainty. For who of the living has descended into the pits of Utumno, or has explored the darkness of the counsels of Melkor? Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressëa, that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in Ainulindalë before the Beginnning: so say the wise.

Pretty clear to me where orcs came from. And what's more clear is that neither Melkor nor Sauron can create life since they do not have access to the Flame Imperishable (p. 4 et al.):

He had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Ilúvatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness. Yet he found not the Fire, for it is with Ilúvatar.

They can only warp existing life. In the Two Towers (p. 113, Ballantine ed.), Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin:

You do not know, perhaps, how strong we are. Maybe you have heard of Trolls? They are mighty strong. But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.

Now you might say that doesn't necessarily mean he bred them *from* Ents, but he had to breed them from something. From what, then? Occam's Razor would suggest Ents, just as Treebeard suggests. Even more likely if you read *how* Morgoth bred the orcs above (from enslaving and corrupting elves). Men and other races haven't nearly the height, and the hobbits practically mistake Treebeard for a troll at first (p. 83: "almost Troll-like, figure, at least fourteen feet high, very sturdy, with a tall head and hardly any neck"). And what did happen to the Entwives anyway, hmm?

As for the fell beasts, that may be more conjectural, but I didn't make it up. I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere ages ago, so it may have some basis in Tolkien's writings. They had to come from somewhere, and Melkor hated Manwë more than any others of the Valar, so it's likely he would've messed with his special creations possibly before anything else. It's also clear he bred the dragons. He kind of buggered off for a century on this latest warping of his: (Sil. p. 137): "Again after a hundred years Glaurung, the first of the Urulóki, the fire-drakes of the North, issued from Angband's gates by night. He was yet young and scarce half-grown..." And after this initial foray, Glaurung gets his butt whipped by the elves and runs back to daddy Morgoth, who spends another two hundred years perfecting his little experiment, or breeding more. But it doesn't say from what stock Morgoth bred the dragon. Since the original ones were more wormlike and had no wings, he probably bred them from something more serpentine than a flying creature, who knows. Again though, he didn't make them from scratch - he couldn't.

[Pandæmonium]

I don't hold much stock in Christopher Tolkien's The Silmarillion. If I were a published writer, I wouldn't want people rifling through my old notes after I bit the dust to see what I *might* have written while I was still sketching out my roughest ideas.

Tolkien's notes were in hideous disarry at the time of his death, and he was notoriously disorganised as it was. The matter is further complicated by the fact that large quantities of his notes are not even in the possession of the Tolkien Estate, rather languishing in various universities and societies the world over.
It also bears remembering that Silmarillion was published only four years after Tolkien died - Christopher Tolkien (even with the aid of his son and the Tolkien Esate) still hasn't gone through all of the notes bequeathed to him to this day.
When he did have sources for Silm, he had (in almost all cases) to choose between multiple different versions of evens.
See Christoipher Tolkien's foreword to The Silmarillion:

I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arraging in such a way as seemed to me to produce he most internally consistent narrative.

Tolkien was working out vast changes on the Silmarillion towards the end of his life - even going so far as to rewrite the origin of the Sun and the Moon, so as to make them more consistent with the idea of Arda being a prehistoric Earth. Sadly he popped his clogs long before many of them were finished.
What CT was left to choose from in many cases were stories which (though intended to be) had not been fully rewritten since the 1920's or earlier.
So the question is - how canon to you take the Silmarillion to be, and what do you consider to be valid sources?

Of course there's no 'right' answer, but personally I don't consider Silmarillion canon on any subject where it contradicts another source - that's including sources which are external from the 'universe' of the stories - such as Letters and even UT in some cases.
That's not to say I dislike or dismiss it - it's my favourite of Tolkien's books by a long shot, and I would kill for long form books of the stories within, even in their more primitive versions. But it's not something that I would rely upon to provide an accurate record of topics or events which could be ... controversial - such as the origin of various evil species. I think of it rather as a kind of Mythology - it's doesn't have to be literally true, ratehr it's a kind of cultural expression. Or whatever.

As for those Orcs, Trolls;
Of course they have to come from somewhere - my pet theory is the Corruption of The Music, because it doesn't contradict anything. Even Silmarillion doesn't go so far as to make an outright statement saying "THIS is how it happened". It's all conjecture on the part of the Elves, just as the the origin of the Trolls is conjecture on the part of Treebeard.
As Tolkien himself wrote (again, in letters) "Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthy wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand."

As for Dragons and Fell beasts: doesn't Children of Hurin (long form) suggest that they (dragons) are (like Balrogs) corrupted Maiar? I'll have to check in the morning, too wiped now.

Edited by Pandæmonium, 17 January 2008 - 07:39 PM.

[Miloch]

So the question is - how canon to you take the Silmarillion to be, and what do you consider to be valid sources?

Yeah, I know all that about it, and that CT edited it. But I consider it to be more "canon" (if such can be applied to Tolkien's writings) than the Histories, which seem to me more of a money-making vehicle than anything else. The third one was ok (Shaping of Middle-Earth) mainly because of Tolkien's own map drafts.

Of course there's no 'right' answer, but personally I don't consider Silmarillion canon on any subject where it contradicts another source - that's including sources which are external from the 'universe' of the stories - such as Letters and even UT in some cases.

I think you have to look at the dates of those Letters too. And when the Silmarillion matches up with something published in the Two Towers, I'm prepared to believe it.

As for Dragons and Fell beasts: doesn't Children of Hurin (long form) suggest that they (dragons) are (like Balrogs) corrupted Maiar? I'll have to check in the morning, too wiped now.

Haven't read it, and who knows how much of it is CT or "pre-canon" JRR material. I rather doubt it for the fell beasts. They didn't seem to have any special "powers" aside from what animals their size would normally (rending of "beak and claw" etc., and usability as mounts, certainly a similarity to the Eagles there). [Edit: and if Maiar, like the Balrogs, there's no way Legolas could've dispatched one with a single arrow, or Eowyn one with a single sword stroke]. I think Tolkien suggested in one of his Letters they were a remnant of a past age, which some people have taken to suggest they were similar to pterodactyls or the like. But Tolkien's writings reveal he was a Creationist (as opposed to an Evolutionist), so that implies either Ilúvatar created them as-is, or Morgoth corrupted them into what they are from something else. And there's no mention of dragons prior to Melkor's breeding experiment I quoted - it even says Glaurung was the "first" and also "young" when he was released after 100 years.

Even Silmarillion doesn't go so far as to make an outright statement saying "THIS is how it happened".

Well, it kind of does (see above). Unless you want to disregard the Word of the Wise (usually taken to mean the Eldar and/or Istari in other contexts).

Edited by Miloch, 18 January 2008 - 02:12 AM.

[Zyraen]

Just a personal take on this ^^;; I personally never really liked HoME, it really seems like something put together deliberately to try to sell more books. As for which content is earlier and which is later, it doesn't really say much since Tolkein might have eventually settled on either of the stories.

Ultimately if anyone or anybody is going to do a Full Storyline tale of large portions of Silmarillion (excluding the parts done like the fairly detailed Children of Hurin and Lay of Leithian, up to Carcharoth's maw swalloing the Silmaril), it would have to be someone apart from Tolkein.

I think as storywriters tellers or fantasy folks, I try to keep what is useful and discard anything unnecessary. It isn't anymore just about what Tolkein intended, and anyway the man is dead. He did an awful lot of good but that doesn't mean everything Right in his books is Right in our own. What I do take is try to take what is useful, what has detail like the Fall of Gondolin, and Lay of Leithian, and see what can be done with it ; the parts I dislike I simply toss.

[Pandæmonium]

[...]when the Silmarillion matches up with something published in the Two Towers

I'm assuming by this you mean the corruption of the elves mentioned in Silm', and Treebeard's statements on Trolls in TTT?
I admit it had been a few months since I had last read TTT, but this discussion prompted me to look at it again.

You do not know, perhaps, how strong we are. Maybe you have heard of Trolls? They are mighty strong. But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves. We are stronger than Trolls. We are made of the bones of the earth.

Re-reading would (if I considered Treebeard a valid source of such knowledge) make me even less inclined to believe that either Orcs or Trolls are corruptions of pre-existing species.
The word "counterfeit" is very important, because a counterfeit is not a derivative or a corruption. It is a copy. Something which is different, and in essence an imitation - a forgery.

So as I see it - either we take Treebeard as a reliable source of information which actually works against your agument of corruption because he specifically does not use that word or imply it.
On the other hand we can treat him as unreliable and fallible (as I do) which leaves us no better off than if we'd never read the passage at all, because anything could be possible - including the corruption argument, ironically.
Blarg.
Either way, The Two Towers doesn't agree with the Silmarillion on this and all I've accomplished is to make myself dizzy.

As for the Wise of Eressea, I don't trust them any more than I do Treebeard - their knowledge is both antiquated and second, third or fourth hand information at best, and pure conjecture or opinion at worst.
Damn dirty Elves, think they know everything.

But really, I don't want to say I'm right, it's just what I believe.
One of the best things about these questions is that (intentional or not) there is no definite right answer. The Elves believe, but they don't know, Treebeard has an opinion, he doesn't know - but either of them could be right, just as the Corruption of The Music could. The fact that the answer might never be known keeps that fascination alive for me.

As an aside, I never said that the Fell Beasts were inhabited by Maiar, but that the Dragons were, or were suggestest to be. It's tentaive at best, and I wouldn't bank on it, but given the utter lack of any mention of creatures comparable to dragons before they themselves appeard, I'm prepared to accept it as my pet theory.
Ancalagon the Black was so vast that he blotted out the sun even at a distance. I can think of no other creature that could have been corrupted into that. But then, the idea of Glaurung being 'young' somewhat works against the idea of him ever being an immortal Maiar.
Who knows?

[Miloch]

I'm assuming by this you mean the corruption of the elves mentioned in Silm', and Treebeard's statements on Trolls in TTT?

Yes, of course. To quote them again (with emphasis added):

all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves

Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.

When Treebeard says "made," we know he means "bred," since Morgoth cannot create life from scratch. Whether Treebeard is right or not is of little consequence. We know he has a long memory (when he remembers) and we don't have evidence for him to tell outright lies. Even if he did, he has little motive to do so here. And in any case, his explanation is, as I said, Occam's Razor. It's the simplest and there's no need to try to devise others.

The word "counterfeit" is very important, because a counterfeit is not a derivative or a corruption. It is a copy. Something which is different, and in essence an imitation - a forgery.

Indeed, as a clone would be. But I object to your first statement. A counterfeit *is* a derivative, which means pretty much the same thing as a copy. And anyone who works with copies knows they can get corrupted or distorted (especially if you intend to distort them ).

But really, I don't want to say I'm right, it's just what I believe. One of the best things about these questions is that (intentional or not) there is no definite right answer... The fact that the answer might never be known keeps that fascination alive for me.

I guess that is, ultimately, what matters .