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.

All of these divisions are either caused by, or fall under the corruptive influence of, the wicked Valar known as Melkor, known to the elves as Morgoth. Melkor/Morgoth is shaping up as the arch-villain of all villains, so much so that Sauron looks like a kid with his hand in the candy jar in comparison.

But despite Melkor’s power—remember that he’s the greatest of the Valar—in Chapter 3 of the Quenta Silmarillion (“Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor”) he gets his comeuppance. In this chapter Iluvatar creates the Quendi—aka., the Elves—which are the first of his Children. Men will follow later. The Valar, who had previously left Middle-earth to its own devices, fear that these lovely new creatures will fall under the yoke of Melkor and decide to take action: They will “take up again the mastery of Arda, at whatever the cost, and deliver the Quendi from the shadow of Melkor,” Tolkien writes.

That’s right, more war. In a conflict known as The Battle of the Powers (the third major battle of The Silmarillion, by my count), the Valar attack Melkor’s forces and drive them back to his fortress of Utumno. They then successfully assault the fortress and take Melkor away in chains, bound hand and foot. Melkor never forgets that the Valar waged war on the Elves’ behalf and this is the reason for his eternal spite for the race.

After whipping up on Melkor, the Valar decide to grant the elves the unimaginably sacred gift of sharing eternal life with them in Valinor. Orome picks three ambassadors from the Elves to come to the Blessed Realm and speak for their people to determine if they want to go. These are Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë. Filled with the awe of the Valar and suffused with the light of the two trees, they return to Middle-earth and counsel their people to go West, and leave broken Middle-earth behind.

But, as is Tolkien’s wont, this results in another sundering, this time among the elves themselves. Some of them choose to go to Valinor right away (the Vanyar), some of them go for the time being, and later return to Middle-earth (the Noldor), and some of them tarry and are either too late to join the others, or decide to remain behind altogether (the Teleri). The Teleri are further broken up into various tribes, including the Umanyar and the Avari, who are both later both dumped into the same bucket known as the Moriquendi (Elves of the Darkness, for they never see the light of the trees of Valinor). There’s many more Elvish subdivisions besides. I will freely admit that I still don’t have all these straight in my head, and this is a point in The Silmarillon that perhaps (gasp) begins to feel a bit like a telephone directory in Elvish.

But this is a minor complaint. These first few chapters of the Quenta Silmarillion contain more wonder and magic than I can possibly capture here. Instead, I’ll highlight a few of the creation myths that provide the backstory of the wonderful peoples and places we’ll come to meet in The Lord of the Rings:

• The origin story of the dwarves. I found it fascinating that the dwarves were made by Aulë, not Ilúvatar, and are therefore not one of his Children. As a result they are flawed: they share Aulë’s love of the forge and of making, and stone and tunnels and earth instead of the outdoors. They also resemble Aulë in their physical traits and stature, including their hardihood. It’s a wonderful myth for why dwarves are as they are, and provides the reason for their mistrust and strife with the nature-loving elves.

• The creation of the great eagles and ents. Yavanna, a Valar and queen of the earth, asks Ilúvatar to protect her beloved trees, and he responds by creating shepherds of the trees to walk the forests of Middle-earth and eagles to fly over them. I found it interesting that these races are older than men.

• The unholy birth of the orcs. The orcs are not a created race, but elves corrupted and twisted by the malice of Melkor. As Tolkien explains, evil cannot create life anew, only twist and manipulate that which already exists.

• A love at first sight to end all loves at first sight. Chapter 4 of The Silmarillion (“Of Thingol and Melian”) is a wonderful one-a-half page interlude that tells the story of how the great Elf-king Elwë falls head over heels in love with Melian, a Maia of the race of Valar. The feeling is mutual. When these two clasp hands, they stand dumbstruck, like no other lovers that I can recall in books or film. “They stood thus while long years were measured by the wheeling stars above them; and the trees of Nan Elmoth grew tall and dark before they spoke any word,” writes Tolkien. The image of this fair goddess and the tall Elf-lord standing still, hand-in-hand in the glade of a virgin Middle-Earth, is simply beautiful. Remaining thus while the trees around them grow from saplings to giants is awe-inspiring

• An island as a ship. The sea-god Ulmo uses an island to transport the Elves across the sea to Valinor, which verily rocks. Later while bringing a group of Teleri over to Valinor he halts the island permanently in the Bay of Eldamar just off the coast of Valinor at the behest of the Teleri, who don’t want to leave their god Ossë behind. There it becomes a dwelling for the Teleri, who mourn for their separated brethren. This is how it earns its name Tol Eressëa, The Lonely Isle.

• The swan-ships of Aqualonde. I very much enjoyed this minor but cool detail by Tolkien in which we learn that the sea-shore dwelling Teleri made their unparalleled ships “in the likeness of swans, with beaks of gold and eyes of gold and jet.” The gate of the harbour of the Teleri is an arch of living rock sea-carved.

While I tremendously enjoyed the first chapters of the Quenta Silmarillon, I’ve already started on the next section, which is starting to look and feel like The Empire Strikes Back. Melkor may be defeated and in chains, but he’s not vanquished, and in the next chapters he administers some serious payback to the Elves and the Valar alike.

The Silmarillion and the myths of death

As I stated in the lead-in to this entry, Tolkien uses The Silmarillion to explain why Men are subject to age and decay, and why mortality is a Good Thing. Eternal life on this planet seems like a wonderful fate, but a host of problems result when we’re denied the ability to age and properly shuffle off our mortal coil (including the fact that we become navel-gazers and possession-hoarders). To demonstrate this point, Tolkien introduces Elves as a counterpoint to Men.

There are some important differences between the two races, both in this life and in the afterlife. Whereas Tolkien’s Elves are more like in nature to the Valar, to Men Iluvatar bequeaths “strange gifts.” They are lesser in beauty and brilliance, but burn with the hot fires of ambition, and are also promised more in the afterlife (or, more accurately, an assured afterlife). Writes Tolkien:

Therefore he willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else; and of their operation everything should be, in form and deed, completed, and the world fulfilled into the last and smallest.

Man can never be satisfied nor fulfilled in this mortal life, and shall always yearn for something he cannot have here on (Middle) Earth. He is doomed “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” and never experience fulfillment in these pursuits. But Men are promised something greater beyond the Circles of the World which will give purpose to all their wanderings and struggles.

Elves are doomed to live forever, immortal unless they be slain or waste away in grief. Even when they “die,” they are gathered to the halls of Mandos in Valinor until the world’s ending (this has always reminded me of Valhalla, the hall for slain warriors, but of course more solemn and without all the drinking and fighting). Elves are peerless artists and craftsman, with the ability to create items like The Silmarils. They love Arda much more deeply and unreservedly than Men. But with the long passage of time the Elves experience correspondingly less joy and greater sorrow. They see the world changing—sometimes for the better, sometimes not—and they miss that which used to be.

Imagine your worst bout of nostalgia and multiply it a hundredfold. This is the plight of the Elves and the problem with deathlessness, and is why death is viewed rightly as a boon for mankind, “the gift of Ilúvatar which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy,” Tolkien writes. It’s rather strange to think of death with its bitter grief, terrible finality, and unsolvable mystery as a gift, but Tolkien has an explanative myth for this too: Melkor has cloaked it in darkness and fear and corruption, which is the root of our fears.

Tolkien’s iron-clad faith assured him that there was life after death in the arms of God; The Silmarillion is his explanation to his readers for why this is so.

Terrific Tolkien: A divine royal rumble

During the Battle of the Powers, a vengeful Tulkas tracks down Melkor, who, his forces broken, takes refuge in the uttermost pit beneath his fortress of Utumno. The two demigods wrestle and Tulkas casts Melkor down on his face.

This scene was surely inspired by Tolkien’s love of the Norse and Greek myths, which often featured gods like Thor and Herakles wrestling other gods, monsters, and giants. It also hearkens to E.R. Eddison’s high fantasy novel The Worm Ouroboros, which opens with Goldry Bluszco wrestling King Gorice XI over the fate of Demonland.

Though Tolkien’s description of the match is quite short it’s nevertheless revealing. It feels like a formal affair. You would expect someone like Melkor to go for a dagger in his belt or stoop to some other form of treachery, but there is no mention of this. Perhaps Melkor understood that this was a formal contest whose conventions he dared not break. Pitting naked strength against strength in a bout of wrestling just feels right in this scene, a true contest for mastery.