Epic battles of Middle-earth in miniature

I'd like to offer a half-hearted apology to readers of The Silver Key who don't care much for Middle-earth. Until I get through Blogging the Silmarillion, for now and in the foreseeable future it's all Tolkien, all the time.

But although I've been shirking RPGs and gaming these days, I thought gamers and Tolkien fans alike would appreciate this link. It's a site with some great pictures of miniatures and detailed descriptions of some of the large-scale battles of Middle-earth, from The Silmarillion all the way up through The Lord of the Rings. These were articles originally published in Miniature Wargames magazine; the owner of the Web site is apparently the author.

Awesome stuff. My personal favorite is Helm's Deep. That and the picture of Eowyn and the Witch-King from the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

I love miniatures and wish I had the time and patience (and talent) to do work like this.

Blogging The Silmarillion: Of northern-ness, the death of Fëanor and the creep of doom

Part four of Blogging the Silmarillion continues with chapters 10-15 of the Quenta Silmarillion.
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“If we insist on asking for the moral of the story, that is its moral: a recall from facile optimism and wailing pessimism alike, to that hard, yet not quite desperate, insight into Man’s unchanging predicament by which heroic ages have lived. It is here that the Norse affinity is strongest: hammerstrokes but with compassion.”

—C.S. Lewis, “The Dethronement of Power,” from Tolkien and the Critics

J.R.R. Tolkien said in a letter that “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” While true, this oft-quoted statement has led some critics and observers to pigeonhole it and his works as simple analogues of Christianity. This leads to conclusions that The Silmarillion is a parable of the Fall of Man, for instance, when in fact Tolkien’s legendarium is perhaps more akin to a hauberk of hard scale armor, its iron plates hammered together from a mosaic of influences, both Christian and other.

The deeper you get into The Silmarillion the more you feel a coldness grip your spine. It’s a bitter wind whose source is the wild North. As the late Steve Tompkins once said, “Norse and Celtic elements are as integral to The Silmarillion as are hydrogen and oxygen to water; the book is so northern that compasses point quiveringly in its direction.” While it may have been only hinted at in past chapters, this northern-ness resounds like the great hammer of Thor in the section of The Silmarillion that I plan to cover here.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Blogging The Silmarillion: Melkor strikes back, and the pride and exile of Fëanor

Part three of Blogging The Silmarillion continues with chapters 6-9 of the Quenta Silmarillion.

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Say farewell to bondage! But say farewell also to ease! Say farewell to the weak! Say farewell to your treasures! More still shall we make. Journey light: but bring with you your swords! For we will go further than Oromë, endure longer than Tulkas: we will never turn back from pursuit. After Morgoth to the ends of the Earth!

—from Fëanor’s speech to the Noldor, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion


Difficult and boring. Too dry. Too much history and too many names. Not enough heat and passion.

These are some of the typical complaints often leveled at The Silmarillion. As you can probably guess I don’t have much sympathy for them, and I hope that my first two Blogging The Silmarillion posts have helped dispel the myth that nothing exciting or worthwhile happens in this book. But after 50 pages of The Silmarillion it’s not an unfair question to ask (literally and figuratively): What’s the story, JRRT?

The disappointed and befuddled critics who reviewed The Silmarillion back in 1977 wanted a main character upon whose sturdy frame the story could be told; at the outset of the book such a protagonist does not seem to exist. Instead of hobbits, we’re fed a steady diet of creation myths and lists of demigods.

But I would counter with: Did these critics and disappointed readers ever get beyond Ainulindalë and Valaquenta? And if they did, how did they miss the great, proud, headstrong, damn the torpedoes Noldorin Elf known as Fëanor? Fëanor is what I would consider the first “big name” in The Silmarillion, a larger than life hero that seems to have strode out of some wild northern legend and into the pages of Tolkien’s magnificent legendarium. He shatters the pale, washed-out, emotionless Elven stereotype that people have unfairly associated with Tolkien.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Blogging The Silmarillion: Of the coming of elves, and several degrees of separation

Part two of Blogging the Silmarillion picks up with the end of chapter 1of the Quenta Silmarillion (“Of the Beginning of Days”) and continues through the end of Chapter 5 (“Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalie”).
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“There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall—all stories are ultimately about the fall—at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.”

–J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters

If the opening chapters of The Silmarillion introduce us to the first painful split on Arda—the evacuation of the godlike Valar from Middle-earth to Valinor, a sort of heaven on earth—in the following chapters the sunderings both multiply and grow more acute. First, we’re introduced to the divisions between Men and Elves—both are Children of Ilúvatar, but have some important differences. Next comes a series of painful rents that occur when the Elves dissolve into various groups, sometimes freely and other times against their will. Finally, there’s the little matter of death, the king of all sunderings.

Why is The Silmarillion so concerned with these small separations (adding up to a great fall) from the early paradise of Middle-earth? I believe the reason is twofold. First, we know that Tolkien constructed his legendarium to create either a foundational myth for Middle-earth and/or for England itself. He needed to provide an explanation for how magic went out of Middle-earth, and how it evolved (devolved?) to become the humdrum, human-populated England that we know today, and/or the Fourth and subsequent Ages of Middle-earth. Each step away from Ilúvatar/the Valar/Valinor/the Elves is a distancing from this magic time, and a step closer to the prosaic age of Men.

Secondly, remember that Tolkien was suffused in death from his earliest days. Both his parents died when he was young, and two of his best friends were killed during World War I. How to make sense of this tragedy? Spend your life creating a grand myth to explain it. The Silmarillion provided him with a stage on which he could grapple with its mystery and create a myth for death itself.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Blogging The Silmarillion: The creation of Arda and myth-making

Blogging The Silmarillion: Series introduction

In part one of Blogging the Silmarillion, I’m sharing my thoughts on the first two sections of the book, “Ainulindalë,” and “Valaquenta,” as well as Chapter 1 of section three of the Quenta Silmarillion, “Of the Beginning of Days”.

The Silmarillion begins with “Ainulindalë,” which means “Music of the Ainur." This is Tolkien’s creation myth. As I re-read this chapter, I was struck by its affinity with John Milton’s Paradise Lost, both in terms of its imagery and characters, and in its thematic similarity to the Christian fall of man. The language is also similar, biblical and epic and “high.”

In “Ainulindalë” we learn that Ilúvatar is the creator of the known universe, including Arda. This place of wizards, heroes, orcs, dragons, and dark lords, has an omnipotent, single creator. This is an incredibly important fact. We can guess at the presence of a creator in The Lord of the Rings, but only barely. For example, Sam, journeying with Frodo in the heart of Mordor and at the nadir of his faith and endurance, senses the presence of something greater beyond this world, buoying his spirit and giving him the strength to continue:

"Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Though we don’t have a name for which to assign Sam’s divine revelation, upon re-reading The Silmarillion I realized that this is Varda (Elbereth), whose face radiates the light of Ilúvatar. It’s always been one of my favorite moments in Tolkien, and The Silmarillion helped me understand why.

The Silmarillion begins with Ilúvatar creating the Ainur, who are like to Norse and/or Greek gods. Each represent concepts and elements, but they are also actual beings, many of whom take shape and choose to dwell on Arda (aka., Middle-earth). This piece of the legendarium allows Tolkien to reconcile the old pagan gods, whose legends he so adored, with the Christian conception of a single creator. I always found the pagan Gods—Zeus, Odin, Thor, Ares, Athena, Baldur, etc.,—extremely interesting and entertaining, much like humans “turned up to 11.” Likewise, in The Silmarillion we’re introduced to great demigod personalities like Oromë the Hunter, Ulmo, Lord of Waters, and Aulë, master of the forge. While powerful beyond human ken, they are not omnipotent, and each comprehends only a piece of eternity.

As in Paradise Lost, Melkor/Morgoth (aka, Satan) is arguably the most interesting character in “Ainulindalë.” He is the greatest of the Ainur, and Ilúvatar imbues him with “the greatest gifts of power and knowledge.” His name means “He who arises in Might.” He’s ambitious and fearless, but also proud, impatient, and tyrannical. This begs the question: Did Ilúvatar create Melkor knowing that he was going to rebel and wreak havoc on Arda? If Ilúvatar is (like the Christian God) all-knowing and all-powerful, he must have. Think about that: He created a being that was, perhaps, fated to bring discord to the new universe. Why? Perhaps he realized that the urge to power is a necessary characteristic of a truly independent, free-willed being.

But another way of looking at this is that Melkor was not destined for evil. As I had alluded to in my introductory post, one of the benefits of reading The Silmarillion is discovering the complexity of Tolkien’s universe. For example, many critics have criticized The Lord of the Rings for its simplistic portrayal of good and evil, complaining that Sauron and the Nazgul are irredeemably evil, and the forces that oppose them are stainlessly good. Examples like Gollum and Denethor to the contrary, this mistake can be (somewhat) excused if your only exposure to Tolkien is The Lord the Rings.

However, once you read The Silmarillion, Middle-earth’s “simplistic” universe grows more complex, for Ilúvatar has created the Ainur with free will. In addition, some of the lesser Ainur (called Maiar) willingly join Melkor’s side. If you buy that Melkor chose evil, and that Sauron chose to follow Melkor, Tolkien’s depiction of good and evil becomes far grayer, and this criticism of “black and white” depictions of good and evil fails to hold water.

Here’s another important bit supporting the case of free will in Tolkien’s universe, and one I had forgotten about until this re-reading: The minor sea god Ossë joins Melkor’s side for a brief time and creates havoc in the lakes and streams. But he repents and receives absolution from Ulmo, the sea god. Ossë’s example is particularly instructive as it indicates that not only is evil a choice, but that redemption is also possible.

Since Melkor was created as the avatar of might, you could argue that rebellion may have been in his blood and an inevitable consequence of his being. But does the fact that Melkor was predisposed toward rebellion absolve him of his evil actions? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Ilúvatar is clearly angry at Melkor for creating discord, and it’s unlikely he’d feel this way if Melkor had no choice and was simply acting according to a pre-programmed, unchanging nature. My reading is that Iluvatar is expressing anger that his most exalted Ainur “failed,” and chose to walk the path of darkness.

Another question with which I’m unclear is whether Ilúvatar is “God,” i.e., the Christian God. Nothing in the text of The Silmarillion suggests this, but neither is this interpretation invalidated. Personally I like the equivocation, as Tolkien’s universe supports Christianity while not invalidating other interpretations, including pagan/other beliefs, even atheism (for those who believe that all such myths are plain fiction). It’s worth repeating that Tolkien was himself a devout Catholic, and that he was seeking to if not wholly align the myths of Middle Earth with Christian belief, than to create the former without invalidating the latter. Tolkien also makes mention in “Ainulindalë” of the end of days in which the choirs of the Ainur and the Children of Ilúvatar (i.e., men and elves) will make music together, and the purpose of the universe will be revealed. This is much like the Christian conception of revelation.

After creating the Ainur, Ilúvatar creates Ea, The World that Is, which is a shapeless mass. Some of the Ainur choose to descend to Ea to give it beauty and form, and these are henceforth called the Valar, the Powers of the World. Arda is, of course, coveted by Melkor, and shortly after their Valar arrive the first battle for its dominion ensues. We’ll see a similar pattern repeated again and again in The Silmarillion. Strife is woven into the fabric of Middle-earth. It’s already there in the earliest stages of Tolkien’s primordial work, and it will follow the history of Middle-earth down through its Ages.

The next section of The Silmarillion is called the Quenta Silmarillion. This section comprises the bulk of the book and encapsulates all of the First Age of Middle-earth, including the shaping of Arda by the Valar, the creation of men and elves, and a chronology of the great events and wars of age, ending with the War of Wrath (awesome) and the overthrow of Melkor.

Chapter 1, “Of the Beginning of Days,” continues the creation myth of Arda. In this chapter we get our second major conflict of The Silmarillion. Aule fashions two mighty lamps and the Valar set them on high pillars, allowing the first rays of light to shine on Middle-earth. Melkor, who has been dwelling in the darkness of the void since his first defeat, has come to love the dark and hate the light. He returns to Arda and delves a vast fortress under the earth, marshalling his forces for a second sortie. When he attacks, he smashes the lights of Aulë, breaking the lands in the process and throwing the seas into tumult.

Arda’s beautiful symmetry is thereafter marred. While Melkor is defeated and dispersed for a second time, Arda’s spring—its period of Edenic peace, to again draw a comparison with Christianity and the myth of man’s fall from innocence—is over. The Valar’s dwelling in Middle-earth is utterly destroyed, and they depart to the Land of Aman, the westernmost of all lands in the world. There the Valar establish their domain of Valinor. This is hereafter known as The Blessed Realm, which lies beyond the reach of mortal men.

Valinor is a place of wonders, beautiful beyond anything in Middle-earth. Here the goddess Yavanna sings and calls forth the Two Trees of Valinor, whose flowering begins the first march of time in Middle-earth, which was previously timeless and unchanging. Recalling the end of The Return of the King, Aragorn (directed by Gandalf) finds one of the seedlings of these trees on the slopes of Mount Mindolluin. The tree is a metaphor for Aragorn’s arrival as king and also signifies a preservation of the glorious past days of Middle-earth.

Poor Middle-earth is dark and wretched in comparison to Valinor, but the Valar don’t completely abandon it. Manwe, the spirit of the skies, watches over it; Ulmo dwells in its Outer Ocean and hovers on its shores, and Yavanna blesses it with spring. This is wonderful myth-making by Tolkien: These gods are the sources of our reverence of the skies, the eternal call of the sea, and the joy we experience with the ending of winter and the coming of spring.

Yet despite the continued attention of the Valar, these two lands—Valinor and Middle-earth—are hereafter sundered, a word which takes on great meaning in Tolkien’s legendarium. A deep, tragic loss, the sense of something great that once was and is irreparably gone (but whose presence we can sense, resulting in great sadness and nostalgia), is at the heart of Tolkien’s works. This separation starts here, in The Silmarillion, and is woven into the fabric of Middle-earth from its earliest days.

And as we’ll see in the later history of Middle-earth, when the Children of Ilúvatar try to reclaim what was lost by forcing passage to Valinor (a metaphor for cheating death), big trouble ensues.

Terrific Tolkien: Oromë the Hunter

(I added this last section to highlight cool scenes/characters from The Silmarillion, in an effort to prove to the  types that cry “dry as dust!” and “A telephone directly in Elvish!” that this book does bring the awesome).

After the Valar leave Middle-earth, a few return as distant watchers and (half-hearted) stewards. One returns to kick ass: Oromë the Hunter, tamer of beasts, rides in the darkness of the unlit forests of Middle-earth. His prey are the fell beasts and followers of Melkor.

“As a mighty hunter he came with spear and bow, pursuing to the death the monsters and fell creatures of the kingdom of Melkor, and his white horse Nahar shone like silver in the shadows,” Tolkien writes. Oromë blows his great horn Valaroma as he rides, striking fear into the heart of his enemies. Remember how the Lord of the Nazgul is checked by the blowing of the horns of the Rohirrim at Minas Tirith? His fear derives from the legend of Oromë, the fierce, pale rider of the dark.

It’s a beautiful image by Tolkien and yet another example of his stellar myth-making.

Cimmerian sighting: Blogging The Silmarillion

Love this image of Maglor, hurling a Silmaril.

Nevertheless it was the work of his heart, which occupied him for far longer than The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. The better-known works are in a way only offshoots, side-branches, of the immense chronicle/ mythology/legendarium which is the ‘Silmarillion.’

--Thomas Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien, Author of the Century

Few works of fantasy are as maligned and misunderstood as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. As the late Steve Tompkins noted, it’s a work that seemed to have been much-purchased upon its 1977 publication but is anecdotally little-read, and is certainly the subject of many strong opinions, both positive and negative. Wikipedia sums up a good portion of the critical response to The Silmarillion upon its release as follows:

Some reviewers, however, had nothing positive to say about the book at all. The New York Review of Books called The Silmarillion "an empty and pompous bore", "not a literary event of any magnitude", and even claimed that the main reason for its "enormous sales" were the "Tolkien cult" created by the popularity of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The School Library Journal called it "only a stillborn postscript" to Tolkien's earlier works. Peter Conrad of the New Statesman even went so far as to say that “Tolkien can't actually write.”

Putting the ridiculousness of “Tolkien can’t actually write” and “a stillborn postscript” aside, there is some truth to the difficulty of reading The Silmarillion. Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey remarks in The Road to Middle-Earth that “it could never be anything but hard to read.” It’s not hard in terms of diction or structure, but rather, as Christopher Tolkien explains in Part One of The Book of Lost Tales, because it “lacks mediation of the kind provided by the hobbits (so, in The Hobbit, ‘Bilbo acts as the link between modern times and the archaic world of dwarves and dragons’).” The second reason is because it is not written as a novel. There is no main character in the foreground through which the story is relayed.

Prompted by the 118th anniversary of Tolkien's birthday and the dawn of the New Year, it’s my intention over the next several weeks to blog about The Silmarillion. I’m re-reading it in its entirety after the interval of several years and thought it would be enjoyable to write down my thoughts, impressions, and observations, and hopefully in the process make a small case for why it’s well-worth reading. I did something similar recently here at The Silver Key while re-reading The Lord of the Rings, and had a lot of fun with it. Please note that I am no self-appointed scholar or expert on Tolkien, just a fan. Writing about that which I read helps to further my own understanding and appreciation of the material.

I’d also like to use these posts to highlight some of the exciting stories to be found in this book, and draw attention to the fact that it can be read for enjoyment. Believe it or not, there are people who enjoy The Silmarillion for the sake of simple reading pleasure (yes, we’re as rare as Third Age Balrogs or Dragons, but we exist). While The Silmarillion serves one purpose as a reference and book of lore for Middle-earth’s history and mythology, including interesting indices that include an elven language reference, it also contains beautiful scenes, breathtaking battles, and visceral stories that pack emotional heft.

Badassery at Gondolin

I will start with a warning: I don’t recommend that anyone who wishes to introduce new readers to Tolkien’s works hand them a copy of The Silmarillion. It may have been Tolkien’s first major work (Christopher Tolkien states in the foreword that the earliest versions can be found in battered notebooks extending back to 1917), and the work of his heart, but it is, in many ways, a difficult read. There is no unifying, plot-driven narrative, and no recurring characters to follow on our journey back to the earliest days of Middle-earth. It also contains its share of foreign names and places with which the reader must cope. In fact, I would actively steer any new Tolkien reader away from The Silmarillion. You certainly don’t need to read it in order to understand and enjoy the events of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. These are far superior as introductory works.

That said, I believe that anyone who has read and enjoyed The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings should pursue The Silmarillion as a natural next step in Tolkien’s oeuvre. In its pages are wonders, including how Middle-earth was created, and from whence (or more accurately, from whom) Arda was formed. All of those tantalizing, evocative names of which the characters in The Lord of the Rings give utterance—Sam calling on Elbereth when facing the monstrous Shelob in dark pass of Cirith Ungol, Bilbo singing the tale of Eärendil in the Hall of Fire at Rivendell, Gandalf relaying the tale of Isildur to Frodo in “The Shadow of the Past”— are not only illuminated and revealed, but given breath and life in the pages of The Silmarillion. It also provides the background for the rise of Sauron and the forging of the rings of power, setting the scene for a more rewarding reading of The Lord of the Rings.

Some may fear that reading The Silmarillion may strip Middle-earth of wonder, that its gears and springs will be revealed and its magic dispelled. That’s not so. In fact, I found that reading sections of The Silmarillion and in particular The Children of Húrin (of which a much truncated version is included in The Silmarillion) infused me with a new perspective on Tolkien and his works. Tolkien has been labeled by some wrong-headed critics as “soft” and guilty of succumbing to happy endings. The Silmarillion reveals otherwise. In its pages are darkness and despair, including implacable evil, heartbreaking betrayals, and endless cycles of war. There’s grand triumphs and unearthly beauty to be found, too. In summary, it makes the world we inhabit when we read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit feel all the more mythic and epic, multi-layered, and real.

Tolkien died before he could finish The Silmarillion and it was published posthumously by his son, Christopher, with help from fantasy novelist Guy Gavriel Kay. I wish Tolkien the elder (Eldar?) had lived long enough to finish it, and flesh out some of the stories that are only presented as sketches. But I am eternally glad that we have The Silmarillion. Middle-earth—and our own world, which are one and the same—are richer, better places for it.