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.

In addition to being a kick-ass character, Fëanor introduces a couple important themes that run throughout The Silmarillion: The sin of excessive pride, and the danger of embracing the material at the expense of the spiritual. His character also adds another facet to Tolkien’s interesting and complex portrayal of the nature of evil.

(As an aside, Melkor is also shaping up to be another main characters that critics of The Silmarillion seem to overlook. Unlike Sauron, who we glimpse only as a shadowy dark lord or as a burning eye in The Lord of the Rings, Melkor is firmly on center stage. We see his ambitions and fears, his triumphs, defeats, and pettiness all over the pages of this book).

Fëanor is the eldest son of Finwë, king of the Noldor. His name means Spirit of Fire, and this is quite apt: He burns with the fires of unquenchable passion, and seems more akin to Man than Elf in this regard. His mother, Miriel, dies shortly after delivering Fëanor, so much energy has his coming into the world consumed.

The Noldor are master craftsman and Fëanor represents the pinnacle of their unearthly skill. Drawing on all his abilities he fashions the Silmarils, three gemstones which contain the light of the two trees of Valinor. They are a once in a lifetime creation whose beauty transcends the skill of their creator.

But the Silmarils are of course eyed greedily by Melkor. As I alluded to in my last post, Chapters 6-9 of The Silmarillion have a bit of an Empire Strikes Back feel to them: Evil arises from the ashes of defeat to shatter any illusions of triumph. In these chapters Melkor returns to wreak his revenge, of which Fëanor gets the brunt.

Chapter 6 of The Silmarillion begins with a time of bliss. The light of the two trees is shining on Valinor, and the Valar and Elves are at peace. Melkor, defeated by the Valar in the Battle of the Powers, is in chains. But his time of imprisonment (he got three Ages in the slammer for breaking the lamps of Illuin and Ormal, and causing general mayhem on Arda) is drawing to a close, and he sues for pardon. Most of the Valar want to keep him locked up, but Melkor’s words to Manwë are sweet, and he promises to use his powers in the cause of good. Manwë lets Melkor go and allows him to remain in Valinor.

Manwë has made an apparent grievous mistake. Melkor obviously still hates the Valar and the Elves, in fact more than ever after his imprisonment, and shortly after his release begins planning his revenge. Having learned a lesson that he cannot win by force, Melkor uses his sweet tongue to sow seeds of discord among the Noldor. He appeals to their pride, telling the Noldor that the Valar let them live in Valinor only so that they may keep them under their thumb. He tells them that they could be ruling in splendor on Middle-earth, masters of their own destiny, and not the whim of the Valar.

Ungoliant and the Two Trees, Ted Nasmith.

In addition to poisoning the minds of the Noldor, Melkor also wreaks more immediate, visible havoc. In Chapter 8 he flees Valinor, returns in secrecy with the great monstrous spider Ungoliant, and poisons and destroys the two trees of Valinor. He then adds insult to injury by slaying Fëanor’s father and stealing the Silmarils.

Fëanor is enraged. He curses Melkor, naming him Morgoth, the Black Foe of the World, and the Elves call him by that name ever after. Fëanor vows revenge, and against the counsel of the Valar leads the main of the Noldor on a mission of vengeance. He commandeers the beautiful swan-ships of the Teleri and slays a great number of the sea-Elves in terrible incident known as the Kinslaying at Alqualondë.

Fëanor’s actions earn him exile from Valinor. The Valar known as Mandos—aka, Fate—pronounces on them the Doom of the Noldor, which is pure poetry from Tolkien:

Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains.

All in all it’s absolute disaster for the forces of good, and it appears as though it’s all Manwë’s fault. Why couldn’t he have just kept Melkor locked up?

It’s largely a given among Tolkien’s readers that mercy is always the correct path to walk in Middle-earth. Recall Gandalf’s famous quote from The Lord of the Rings, “Pity? It was Pity that stayed [Bilbo’s] hand. Pity, and mercy: not to strike without need.” Indeed, Frodo’s mercy and pity for Gollum saves the Third Age from a long, dark rule under Sauron. But Manwë’s apparent mistake of freeing Melkor makes us re-think this long-held belief.

Of course, we don’t know whether Manwë’s act of benevolence will work out in the long run. Fate has a very long reach in Tolkien’s legendarium, and at this point in The Silmarillion it remains to be seen whether his choice to free Melkor will ultimately work out for good or ill.

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Fëanor: An exile of his own making?

As I mentioned at the outset of this post, Fëanor is three-dimensional character. He’s got grand ambitions and a fearless, take-no-prisoners attitude. He’s also riddled with faults, including a swollen pride and an attachment to the work of his own hands. He’s complicated, and damned interesting.

Personally, I find Fëanor’s thirst for vengeance rather sympathetic. When he says:

Here once was light, that the Valar begrudged to Middle-earth, but now dark levels all. Shall we mourn here deedless for ever, a shadow-folk, mist-haunting, dropping vain tears in the thankless sea? Or shall we return to our home?

My reaction is: Go Fëanor. Screw the Valar: Rally the Noldor and go kick some ass. In a book which doesn’t contain an identifiable main character in its first 50-plus pages, he’s a red-blooded hero we can latch onto like a drowning man at sea. I certainly did upon this most recent re-reading.

Though he’s an Elf, Fëanor doesn’t deliberate or take the long view, but chooses to act, and act like a Man. When the herald of Manwë warns Fëanor of the folly of leaving Valinor on his mission of revenge, Fëanor states that he’d rather find ruin in Middle-earth than sit idly by in paradise:

“If Fëanor cannot overthrow Morgoth, at least he delays not to assail him, and sits not idle in grief. And it may be that Eru has set in me a fire greater than thou knowest. Such hurt at the least will I do to the Foe of the Valar that even the mighty in the Ring of Doom shall wonder to hear it.”

In other words: I may perish, but I’m doing some damage on the way down. I like this attitude: It’s got a northern, hopeless, death-wish feeling about it.

But Fëanor is not without faults. He’s selfish and rather vain, particularly when it comes to his own skill as a craftsman. He lacks humility in the face of his betters: When he utters that the Noldor shall become “lords of the unsullied Light, and masters of the bliss and beauty of Arda,” he has stepped over the proverbial line in the sand and crossed into Valar/ Ilúvatar territory.

Fëanor also seems to lack an altruistic bone in his body. He leads his people into exile not out of a desire to save Middle-earth, or to get revenge for his father (though these certainly add fuel to his fire), but because he wants his Silmarils back. When you get to the heart of why the Noldor leave Valinor, it’s over possessions. Contrast this with Galadriel: She also chooses to join the Noldor in exile, but is motivated by her love for Middle-earth. In this respect, she’s closer to Ilúvatar—to the land, his primary creation—and not a lesser Elf-made subcreation. Thus she is in the right, even in choosing exile.

Ted Nasmith - The Kinslaying at Alqualondë

Later Fëanor goes fey, stranding Fingolfin and some of the Noldor whom he deems unworthy (including Galadriel) on the barren coast of Araman. He burns the stolen swan-ships of the Teleri to prevent his people from returning and helping their brethren, which would potentially slow down his mission of revenge. Fingolfin, Galadriel and the abandoned Noldor respond with a quiet, heroic endurance, eventually reaching Middle-earth (though not without great loss) after a long voyage by foot across grinding ice. In contrast, Fëanor’s brash, brazen, martial quest is not half so noble.

While Tom Shippey explains it far better than I in his seminal work J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tolkien performs a neat trick with his depiction of evil throughout his legendarium: He leaves it up to the reader to decide whether evil is an actual force acting upon us and influencing us, or whether it is of our own making. Shippey calls these two opposing theories Manichaean and Boethian. The Manichaean school holds that evil is a real external force that can influence or overwhelm us, while the Boethian view holds that there is no such thing as evil, that it is an absence, and that “evil” arises out of selfish decisions.

Applying Shippey’s theory to The Silmarillion raises an interesting question: Is Fëanor a victim of Melkor’s Manichaean influence, or a reckless Elf bent on his own destruction? Did he rebel against the Valar and choose exile because of Melkor’s poisonous lies, or did he succumb to his own selfish desire to reclaim the Silmarils, to show up the Valar, and to be a master of his own fate, forsaking the wisdom of the gods?

What do you think? The text seems to support both interpretations, so we can’t be sure, but one thing is certain: Tolkien makes us think in The Silmarillion. This is always a good thing.

Terrific Tolkien: Morgoth dissed

The Lord of the Rings contains a great scene in which Aragorn rides up to the Black Gate and orders Sauron to come out of his dungeons to “have justice done upon him.” It’s an incredibly brave and brazen act, this mortal man issuing marching orders to one of the Maiar.

Yet Aragorn’s act pales alongside the verbal dressing-down Melkor/Morgoth receives in The Silmarillion. No Man or Elf in Tolkien’s legendarium would dare diss a Valar to his face, save one alone: Fëanor.

Here’s the set-up: Shortly after he is freed from his imprisonment in the fastness of Mandos, Melkor comes to Fëanor’s home in Formenos in an attempt to recruit Fëanor to his side. Melkor’s poisonous lies at first find a willing ear: Fëanor’s heart is still bitter from his humiliation at the hands of the Valar, and the smooth words of Melkor, the mightiest of the Valar, seem to promise powerful aid and allegiance.

But when Melkor’s conversation turns to the Silmarils, Fëanor sees through the dark lord’s disguise, and dismisses this greatest of the Valar with a contemptuous send-off that surely echoes throughout fantasy literature:

“Get thee gone from my gate, thou jail-crow of Mandos!” And he shut the doors of his house in the face of the mightiest of all the dwellers in Eä.

Wow … naming Melkor, lord of darkness and the equivalent of Milton’s Satan, a jail-crow of Mandos, and then slamming the door in his face? That takes some serious stones.

Fëanor... fuck around and find out.

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.

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.

Williamson’s reading of The Hobbit available on Youtube

If there was ever a story meant to be read aloud, it’s J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Tolkien intended the tale to be delivered orally, and inserted an authorial voice into the text which imbues it with a lively, conversational quality. He himself read The Hobbit aloud for the Inklings, and countless parents have read it to their children.

If you could name someone perfectly suited to read The Hobbit, who would it be? Boomed by the deep-throated Orson Welles, perhaps, or intoned by the inimitable Christopher Lee? Narrated by the smoky-voiced John Huston, he of Gandalf fame from the Rankin/Bass animated film of The Hobbit? Sung by Hansi Kürsch of German power metal band Blind Guardian ?

While all of the above are great choices, arguably the perfect-sounding version already exists, delivered by veteran stage and screen actor Nicol Williamson. Originally released as a four LP vinyl record set by Argo Records in 1974 (now rare and expensive to obtain), you can listen to the entire recording courtesy of Youtube. It’s split up into 23 parts and is obviously a direct recording from the vinyl. There’s crackly record static, but that only adds to its wonderful atmosphere.

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

The War of Art: Striking a blow against creative blocks

Anyone who has tried their hand at creative writing knows how daunting it is to face a blank computer screen or an empty notebook. Fear of failure, feelings of inadequacy, and general inertia stop the vast majority of wannabe writers, painters, and other artists dead in their tracks, destroying their best intentions as surely as a spear thrust through the thorax.

Steven Pressfield, author of the excellent novels Gates of Fire and Tides of War, gives this enemy a face and a name. Once identified, he provides tactical advice and strong words of encouragement for beating it in The War of Art, his 2002 non-fiction treatise on the writing process.

The War of Art is not a comprehensive book on the craft of writing. You won’t find rules of grammar, tips on writing first drafts, or help with eliminating passive voice. Rather, it has a singular focus on breaking through writing, painting, or other artistic barriers, the cause of which is a fearsome, implacable foe which Pressfield calls Resistance. Writes Pressfield:

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

To which I say: Amen. I love writing with an unshakeable conviction. But it’s not easy, and in particular I hate (and fear) getting started. To make matters worse, once you’ve started a project of any length and significance, you have to set a regular (preferably daily) writing schedule, or else you risk a hard drive full of half-developed stories that will never see the light of day.

As befits an author who brought the battle of Thermopylae to vivid life in Gates of Fire, Pressfield likens creative writing to a life and death struggle on a battlefield in which the only possible outcomes are total victory or utter defeat. He’s right, of course. Resistance must be fought and beaten every day.

After identifying the root causes and symptoms of Resistance in book one of The War of Art, book two provides advice for defeating the enemy. In “Combating Resistance: Turning Pro,” we get advice on living the warrior’s life, including setting a firm schedule and accepting no excuses. “The pro keeps coming on. He beats Resistance at its own game by being even more resolute and even more implacable than it is,” Pressfield writes.

If this seems like a rather grim depiction of the creative process, well, it’s because writing is hard. But writers write not because they want to, but because they have to. And, as Pressfield explains, the act of writing, once mastered, can produce art beyond the capacity of he or she that sets pen to paper. The moment one commits oneself, Pressfield writes, providence moves too. There is truth in this: Who knows from whence grand ideas like Middle-Earth, Camelot, or The Dark Tower spring? Many authors have stated that their characters and stories seemed to stalk, fully formed, from some recess of their imagination. Robert E. Howard used these words almost exactly to describe his conception of Conan. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in one of his letters that Faramir just appeared in The Lord of the Rings one day, as if from thin air: “A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir.”

From where does this creativity come? Pressfield attributes it to the hand of God, the supreme Muse. Regardless of your beliefs, there is great mystery in the act of writing. It’s undeniable that great things happen if we have the courage to begin writing and to keep at it.

Tapping into the potential that lies within us all is what The War of Art helps artists of all stripes accomplish. It’s otherwise rather airy and light, and if you purchase it in the hopes of getting a comprehensive book on writing, you’re probably better off buying The Elements of Style by Strunk and White or even Stephen King’s On Writing. But if you want advice on waging war against the grim foe of Resistance, The War of Art is a staunch ally.

Cimmerian sighting: My top five reads of 2009

Merry Christmas! With the end of the year approaching I thought I would put together one of those ever-popular “best-of” lists for your consideration.

Following are my top five books that I’ve either read or re-read in 2009, and that I thought may be of interest to readers of The Cimmerian. If you’re looking for a few ideas for those book gift cards in your stocking, I highly recommend any of the following for purchase.

They make for pretty grim reading, but hey, The Cimmerian has always been less about “caroling out in the snow” and more of the “scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories” bent when it comes to the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

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

Master storytelling at work in Lansdale's Mucho Mojo

Today I’m here to sing the praises of one Joe R. Lansdale. I consider him to be one of the finest storytellers of this, and perhaps any, generation. He may not have tremendous literary depth and I'm not implying he's the greatest writer ever, but he tells entertaining, page-turning stories as well as any writer I’ve encountered. The guy is a born raconteur (I love that word).

If you’re an aspiring writer and want to study the craft of writing—pacing, plot, characterization, ratcheting up the tension, breaking it with levity—Lansdale is a master of the art and is well worth studying and learning from. If you enjoy reading entertaining stories well-told, Lansdale is your man.

Lansdale has carved out a nice career as a full-time writer. He’s written episodes for Batman: The Animated Series, stories for comic books (including Jonah Hex, Conan, and The Fantastic Four), and the novella Bubba Ho-Tep, which was adapted for the screen starring The Man, Bruce Campbell. Early in his career Lansdale was pigeonholed as a “splatterpunk” horror author, which is absolutely unfair. He apparently did write some gruesome novels early in his career, and violence punctuates everything I’ve read of his, but while graphic and real it’s not overdone. He’s a man of wide interests and moods (gigantic melancholies and a gigantic mirth, to steal a line from Robert E. Howard) and can’t be boxed off in any one genre. Here’s a link to an interview in which he states that his preferred genre is “the Lansdale genre.” That’s probably the best description of his unique style.

But despite a lengthy career and a laundry list of publishing credits, I get the feeling Lansdale isn’t that well-known. Most of the people I talk to (those that are regular readers, anyway) have never heard of the guy. An Amazon.com editorial review I came across says that Lansdale is something of a “cult writer.” If so, consider myself a junior acolyte of the Lansdale sect. I read my first Lansdale book a good 10 years ago and have only read a handful of his novels since (Savage Season, Freezer Burn, The Drive-In: A Double Feature Omnibus, and The Bottoms), plus some of his short stories. But except for The Drive-In, I’ve found them all to be very, very good.

Mucho Mojo is probably my favorite Lansdale story. It’s the second of his Hap and Leonard novels, which feature two recurring characters in rural East Texas. Hap and Leonard are two of the unlikeliest friends you’ll encounter—Hap is a white, perennially destitute, borderline honkey-tonk democrat, while Leonard is a black, gay, no-nonsense republican. Both are wisecracking, hard-fighting, no-nonsense dudes who get mixed up in a lot of tough business, including breaking up drug rings and solving murder mysteries. They always manage to extricate themselves using a mixture of martial arts, wits, and dogged determination.

There’s so much to recommend about Lansdale, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how darned funny the guy is. Humor is very, very difficult to pull off in the written form, but I smiled on nearly every page of Mucho Mojo. A couple times I laughed out loud.

Here’s a sample passage from chapter two of Mucho Mojo in which Hap and Leonard are attending the funeral of Leonard’s uncle Chester while wearing a pair of bad suits just bought from J.C. Penney:

Time we got to the Baptist church where the funeral was being held, we had sweated up good in our new suits, and the hot wind blowing on me made my hair look as if it had been combed with a bush hog. My overall appearance was of someone who been in a fight and lost.

I got out of the car and Leonard came around and said, “You still got the fucking tag hanging on you.”

I lifted an arm and there was the tag, dangling from the suit sleeve. I felt like Minnie Pearl. Leonard got out his pocket knife and cut it off and we went inside the church.

We paraded by the open coffin, and of course, Uncle Chester hadn’t missed his chance to be guest of honor. He was one ugly sonofabitch, and I figured alive he hadn’t looked much better. He wasn’t very tall, but he was wide, and being dead a few days before they found him hadn’t helped his looks any. The mortician had only succeeded in making him look a bit like a swollen Cabbage Patch Doll.

The basic plot of Mucho Mojo is as follows: After Chester passes away Leonard inherits his home and a bunch of money. He also receives a handful of mysterious items in a safe-deposit box. Among other items, it contains a key to a lock box containing the remains of a child, which is hidden beneath the floorboards of the house. The mystery begins. While Lansdale reveals the killer well before the end of the novel, and telegraphs the bad guys just a bit, I wasn’t bothered. It’s the journey that makes Mucho Mojo worth reading, including the writing, the characters, the setting, and the humor. Along the way Lansdale has a lot to say about racism, bigotry, crime, and poverty.

As I mentioned above, there’s a lot to recommend in Mucho Mojo, but perhaps most of all the characterization and dialogue. Hap and Leonard are well-drawn, and while I don’t know much about Texas or its residents they certainly feel like living, breathing residents of the Lone Star state. They’re pals, and convincingly so. When I closed Mucho Mojo I felt like I was saying goodbye to a pair of old friends with whom I’d just shared great conversation over a few beers. Their dialogue reminds me of that which you’d encounter watching a Quentin Tarantino film (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, etc.) but a bit more grounded and rough around the edges.

I’m looking forward to finally reading the rest of the Leonard and Hap novels, of which the latest, Vanilla Ride, was just published earlier this year.

Cimmerian sighting: High hopes and black fears for Del Toro's The Hobbit

Casting for The Hobbit has apparently begun, the news of which means that I’m back to split feelings of incredible exhilaration, and a terrible, impending doom. The Hobbit was my introduction to fantasy literature and made me a lifetime reader, both of the fantasy genre and of literature in general. It’s an important, central work for me and for many others.

While of course we’ll always have the book, regardless of what we get in the final film product, my fervent hope is that producer Peter Jackson and director Guillermo Del Toro get the movie right. It’s too important to screw up.

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

Tolkien: Man and Myth, a review

One cannot afford to ignore Tolkien’s philosophical and theological beliefs, central as they are to his whole conception of Middle Earth and the struggles within it, but on the other hand one can enjoy Tolkien’s epic without sharing the beliefs which gave it birth.

—Joseph Pearce, Tolkien: Man and Myth, A Literary Life

I love critical studies on J.R.R. Tolkien for many reasons. First and foremost I find them intensely interesting: They help illuminate the great depths of Tolkien’s works and enrich my subsequent readings of the source material, as all good works of criticism do. Secondarily, they serve as a bulwark against the absurd claims of the handful of critics who continue to label Tolkien’s works as childish, non-literary, or otherwise unworthy of study (perhaps petty of me, but there you have it).

Joseph Pearce’s critical study Tolkien: Man and Myth, A Literary Life (1998, Ignatius Press) may as well be titled Tolkien: Man and Myth, A Religious Life, as the author places most of his emphasis on and offers his greatest insights into the deep, abiding Catholicism of the author of The Lord of the Rings. It's an engaging, readable, and lively introduction to Tolkien, providing a nice summation of his life, letters, and existing critical works about the author, while managing to break some new ground in a fairly saturated field.

Having previously read Tom Shippey’s two exhaustive and highly recommended studies of Tolkien (The Road to Middle Earth and Author of the Century), along with a handful of other critical works, some of Pearce's book was familiar and seemed to retread old ground. For example, Tolkien: Man and Myth provides biographical details on Tolkien’s life that are readily available and more fleshed out in Humphrey Carpenter’s biography. It provides a summation and commentary on the mixed and often harsh critical reaction to The Lord of the Rings, both when it was first published in the mid-1950’s and again when it was voted as the book of the century in the late 1990’s. Again, Shippey covers the same material in Author of the Century (though to be fair, Pearce beat Shippey to the punch, as the latter was published three years after Pearce’s book).

Where Pearce’s book distinguishes itself from Shippey is providing additional illumination on two facets of Tolkien’s character: His deep and abiding religious faith, and his love for his family. Both aspects inform and inspire Tolkien’s works, yet are often deemphasized.

Most of the critical works I’ve read have identified the following as the primary inspirations for Middle Earth: Tolkien’s love of languages and Anglo-Saxon literature, his wartime years, and his desire to make a foundational myth to replace England’s early heritage, which was largely lost during the Norman conquest. Tolkien: Man and Myth reminds us that Tolkien’s simple love of stories, first expressed in his detailed “Father Christmas” letters to his sons John, Michael, and Christopher, and his daughter Priscilla, started him down the path to The Hobbit and his later tales. Writes Pearce:

When Tolkien scrawled ‘in a hole in the ground there lived hobbit’, the opening sentence of The Hobbit in around 1930, he was writing for the amusement of his children as well as for the amusement of himself. Indeed, it is fair to assume that if Tolkien had remained a bachelor and had not been blessed with children he would never have written either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Perhaps he would have written The Silmarillion, but in all probability it would never have been published.

In addition to the influence of his family, Tolkien’s friendships also spurred him to write. Chapters 4 and 5 of Pearce’s book (“True Myth: Tolkien and the Conversion of C.S. Lewis” and “A Ring of Fellowship: Tolkien, Lewis and the Inklings”) explore Tolkien’s fecund friendship with C.S. Lewis, which provided Tolkien with an invaluable sounding board. Lewis was a constant friendly ear, listening to Tolkien read The Lord of the Rings aloud, chapter by chapter. When Tolkien faltered, Lewis urged him on.

Lewis was an agnostic when he first met Tolkien. But by convincing him of the “true myth” of the Gospels, Tolkien played a critical role in his conversion to Christianity. Tolkien explained that myths are not falsehoods, but are a means of conveying otherwise inexpressible truths. For example, although Middle Earth is fictional, it reveals truths about the human condition and our relation to God, and thus is a form of "truth."

Chapters 6 and 7 (“The Creation of Middle Earth”, “Orthodoxy in Middle Earth”) are the highlights of Tolkien: Man and Myth. Here Pearce contends that Middle Earth, though a fantastic world and bereft of any overt references to religion or god(s), fits neatly into the Christian conception of creation and the Christian universe. Though acknowledging Tolkien’s disdain for allegory, Pearce notes that the Christian doctrine of the Fall is given allegorical treatment in The Silmarillion (e.g., Melkor is Middle Earth’s equivalent of Lucifer, Manwe is the archangel Michael, etc.). The Silmarillion is “the myth behind the man, moulding [Tolkien’s] creative vision.” Writes Pearce:

Tolkien’s longing for this lost Eden and his mystical glimpses of it, inspired and motivated by his sense of ‘exile’ from the fullness of truth, was the source of his creativity. At the core of The Silmarillion, indeed at the core of all his work, was a hunger for the truth that transcends mere facts: the infinite and eternal Reality which was beyond the finite and temporal perceptions of humanity.

Pearce expands upon this theistic reading of The Lord of the Rings in “Orthodoxy in Middle Earth,” in which he compares Frodo’s carrying of the One Ring to Christ’s burden of the Cross, and Sam’s unassuming heroism to Christian exaltation of the humble. Likewise, the examples of Sam, Boromir, and Gandalf embody the Christian value of self-sacrifice.

Death in Middle Earth also mirrors its Christian conception, notes Pearce. While elves are immortal, their deathlessness is as much as a curse as a boon. Death is a gift given to men by Iluvatar, the creator. But because it is shrouded in mystery (“a grey rain-curtain”) and corrupted by Melkor, man fears it as he fears the unknown. “To both writers [Lewis and Tolkien] this world was but a land of shadows, a veil of tears as well as a vale of tears, which shielded mortal men from the fullness of the light of God,” Pearce writes.

There is more to recommend in Tolkien: Man and Myth, including a touching look at Tolkien’s final years (“Approaching Mount Doom”), but again this is material I’ve seen covered elsewhere. It is the examination of Tolkien’s spirituality which makes Tolkien: Man and Myth a commendable work, and highly recommended.

Cimmerian sighting: "Fantasy” a worthy entry in Anderson’s canon

While others seek the passageway to elven realms in vain, Poul Anderson throws wide the gate to let his readers enter into wonder … Anderson is a “literalist of the imagination.” He makes what is magical real and what is real magical. Of such power is poetry born.

—“An Invitation to Elfland,” Sandra Misesel, from Poul Anderson’s Fantasy

Poul Anderson gets a lot of love around these parts, and with good reason. While I can’t speak to his metric ton of science fiction, he’s written a lot of great fantasy novels, including Three Hearts and Three Lions, and the Nordic-flavored War of the Gods, The Broken Sword, and Hrolf Kraki’s Saga. All of these are worth finding and reading.

But Anderson also wrote some excellent short stories. I have a couple of his collections and will vouch for the excellence of Fantasy (1981, Pinnacle Books, Inc).

Belying its vanilla title (Fantasy? Was Pinnacle Books considering Men with Swords as an alternative?), Fantasy is actually a wide-ranging, eclectic group of short stories that includes “soft” sci-fi (debatably fantasy) stories, a handful of essays, including a satirical non-fiction look at the sword-and-sandal brand of fantastic fiction (“On Thud and Blunder”), and a few excellent traditional fantasy tales.

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

Cimmerian sighting: The Living Dead zombie anthology a feast for the brain

When I ordered the new John Joseph Adams zombie anthology The Living Dead, I was hoping for stories of zombie carnage on a large scale, a-la Max Brooks’ terrific World War Z and George Romero’s classic “living dead” films. As I read one story after the next, however, it soon became evident that all-out zombie war was (mostly) not the focus of this book.

Some disappointment naturally ensued. When the book arrived with its cover shot of a horde of shambling undead, zombie wars and tales of gun-porn survival were what I thought I was getting. I liken the experience to purchasing a book entitled “heroic fantasy” with a barbarian on the cover, and opening it to find that, instead of warriors and wizards, it’s mostly about everyday, modern people involved in acts of bravery, sans battle-axes.

In short, sometimes all you want is a little zombie mayhem. I was hoping that The Living Dead would afford me the opportunity to just turn my brain off and enjoy.

But once I got past my initial disappointment, The Living Dead turned out to be a very good collection of horror stories. On a scientific scale of 1-5 stars, I’d give it a solid 3 ½, a very good score for an anthology, given that any collection of short stories is going to contain a few duds. And upon further reflection, The Living Dead does have its fair share of carnage and zombie apocalypse, albeit not as much as I was hoping for.

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

Cimmerian sighting: Knocking some stuffing out of Moorcock's "Epic Pooh"

According to Michael Moorcock, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has endured solely because it’s comfort food. So proclaimeth the author of the Elric stories in his seminal essay “Epic Pooh".

Well, I’m here to knock a little stuffing out of his puffed-up essay.

“Epic Pooh” criticizes The Lord of the Rings on the weakness of its prose style. It also attacks Tolkien’s underlying themes and ideas. It accuses him of failing to challenge the reader and offering artificial happy endings instead. According to Moorcock Tolkien is guilty of glorifying warfare, of failing to question authority, and for ignoring the problem of death. He makes other spirited attacks of the work (and the author) as well.[*]

The first argument is highly subjective, a matter of taste for which I have little argument. Moorcock is entitled to dislike Tolkien’s prose, and if he finds it too coddling, removed, or just plain sub-par, that’s fine. I happen to enjoy it very much, but different strokes for different folks and all that.

But once you get past its criticisms of style, “Epic Pooh” fails rather epically as a critique of Tolkien’s themes. Let me explain.

Moorcock takes Tolkien to task for many perceived crimes in “Epic Pooh,” but perhaps most of all for using The Lord of the Rings to tell “comforting lies” and coddle the reader. Says Moorcock:

There is no happy ending to the Romance of Robin Hood, however, whereas Tolkien, going against the grain of his subject matter, forces one on us – as a matter of policy.

I’ve heard this argument made elsewhere and always found it to be a gross misreading of Tolkien’s work. Presumably because The Lord of the Rings ends with the defeat of Sauron, and the restoration of order, it is therefore a simplistic, neat, bow-tied conclusion in which our heroes return home happy and whole, safe and sound.

On the contrary, I would argue that the victory over Sauron is only a temporary reprieve against the encroaching dark. This is the great sadness of The Lord of the Rings—there is home and hearth for some of the victors, but not all of them, and perhaps not even for most. When Frodo departs for the West it’s on a full ship: Gandalf, and Elrond, and Galadriel, and the main of Middle-Earth’s elves are sailing away, too. Magic has left the world. The great evil of the Third Age is defeated, but its void will be filled with other, more banal but equally sinister incarnations of evil. In the wake of the likes of the elves and of Gandalf (and even Saruman and the Balrog and the orcs) comes the vagaries of men, and with them their propensity for both great good and unspeakable evil.

Wounded soldiers return with traumas seen and unseen, and this is evident in Frodo, who bears wounds that are deep indeed. Some essential part of him has been left on a foreign field, and his wounds are too grave to allow him to enjoy the peace he has so dearly bought:

I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.
In summary, The Lord of the Rings has a complex, bittersweet, melancholy ending. Happy it is not.

Moorcock also derides Tolkien for contributing to the glorification of war and the death of young soldiers:

It was best-selling novelists, like Warwick Deeping (Sorrell and Son), who, after the First World War, adapted the sentimental myths (particularly the myth of Sacrifice) which had made war bearable (and helped ensure that we should be able to bear further wars), providing us with the wretched ethic of passive “decency” and self-sacrifice, by means of which we British were able to console ourselves in our moral apathy (even Buchan paused in his anti-Semitic diatribes to provide a few of these). Moderation was the rule and it is moderation which ruins Tolkien’s fantasy and causes it to fail as a genuine romance, let alone an epic.

This statement is also inaccurate. Nowhere does Tolkien claim that war is a good thing. Rather, the implication in The Lord of the Rings and elsewhere in Tolkien’s writings is that it is, at times, necessary. Lest we forget, Tolkien served in the trenches in the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War. He saw unspeakable carnage and death. But he also witnessed heroism of the highest order.

As I stated elsewhere in a review of John Garth’s Tolkien and The Great War, unlike many of the famous WWI combat veterans whose experience resulted in poems and stories of disillusionment and disenchantment (Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms), Tolkien refused to believe that the sacrifice of brave young men was a waste. Says Garth: “In contrast, Tolkien’s protagonists are heroes not because of their successes, which are often limited, but because of their courage and tenacity in trying. By implication, worth cannot be measured by results alone, but is intrinsic.” This is Frodo’s lot: Thrust into a larger war beyond his control, his selfless heroism in carrying the ring to Mount Doom is but a tiny, insignificant role in the great sweep of combat at Minas Tirith and elsewhere. But it mirrors the great acts of unrecorded bravery on the battlefields of World War I.

The sacrifice of Frodo and Sam is not sentimentalizing, it is Tolkien expressing an honest respect and admiration for the soldiers who suffered through horrific, unbearable circumstances. Tolkien said that the character of Sam was inspired by the British rank-and-file soldiers who served and fought and often gave their lives without fanfare in the blood-filled trenches of World War I, expecting nothing and possessing only the hope of home at the end of it all. Said Tolkien, “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.”

Moorcock states that the hobbits represent a “petit bourgeoisie, the honest artisans and peasants, as the bulwark against Chaos. These people are always sentimentalized in such fiction because traditionally, they are always the last to complain about any deficiencies in the social status quo.”

I would counter with: What is so sentimental and consolatory about Sam’s endurance and will to go on, hoping only to return to home and hearth? I suspect that Moorcock has a problem with the social organization of the Shire to which the hobbits return, not necessarily their bravery in defending it.

Here’s another misguided Moorcock-ianism from “Epic Pooh”:

I don’t think these books are ‘fascist’, but they certainly don’t exactly argue with the 18th century enlightened Toryism with which the English comfort themselves so frequently in these upsetting times. They don’t ask any questions of white men in grey clothing who somehow have a handle on what’s best for us.

This statement makes you wonder whether Moorcock missed the scene from LOTR in which Sam looks upon the slain Southron and questions the very nature of war, including its participants and causes, laying it bare in all its futility. From The Two Towers:

It was Sam’s first battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.

Tolkien believed that war is terrible and of last resort, and slain foes are, in the end, just men–and therefore to be pitied. War is necessary when “destroyers” like Sauron or Hitler would impose their will on the free peoples of the world, but it is a duty to be carried out, not glorified. In his famous forward to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote:

One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.

Here’s another telling quote (from Faramir, again from The Two Towers) that tells you all you need to know about Tolkien’s views on war:

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
Moorcock also attacks The Lord of the Rings for fostering an attitude of selfish self-protection and insularity:

The little hills and woods of that Surrey of the mind, the Shire, are “safe”, but the wild landscapes everywhere beyond the Shire are “dangerous”. Experience of life itself is dangerous. The Lord of the Rings is a pernicious confirmation of the values of a declining nation with a morally bankrupt class whose cowardly self-protection is primarily responsible for the problems England answered with the ruthless logic of Thatcherism. Humanity was derided and marginalised. Sentimentality became the acceptable subsitute. So few people seem to be able to tell the difference.

While the woods beyond the Shire are certainly wild and dangerous, Moorcock’s statement is far too simplistic. Experience of life (i.e., that encountered beyond the borders of the Shire) can be dangerous, and often is, but as Tolkien demonstrates, it’s more dangerous to engage in isolationism, to stick one’s head in the sand and do nothing. War is coming to the Shire, and the hobbits must venture beyond its borders to save it. Self-protection and complacency is not a viable option. I note that Sam, Merry, and Pippin return as stronger hobbits, enriched from their experience. Is this experience dangerous? Yes. Is it necessary, and in the end, a good thing? Yes.

Yet the above statements are not Moorcock’s most egregious misreading of The Lord of the Rings. I reserve that for the following:

The great epics dignified death, but they did not ignore it, and it is one of the reasons why they are superior to the artificial romances of which Lord of the Rings is merely one of the most recent.

This statement completely falls apart when viewed against the entirety of Tolkien’s works, which confront the problem of death head-on. Take The Children of Hurin, for example, which is an expansion of a story Moorcock would have read in The Silmarillion.[*]Here Morgoth is a dark demi-god, and a symbol of all that is twisted in mankind’s soul, all that of which we despair in the dark of night, rolled into a being of unspeakable malice. When he lays his curse upon Hurin and Turin, they are truly doomed. Morgoth evokes the ultimate fear of all mankind: that death is the end, and that nothing—literal, uppercase Nothing—awaits us in the grave. Says Hurin:

“Beyond the Circles of the World you shall not pursue those who refuse you."

“Beyond the Circles of the World I will not pursue them,” said Morgoth. “For beyond the Circles of the World there is Nothing. But within them they shall not escape me, until they enter into Nothing.”

The Children of Hurin begins and ends with death. The Silmarillion contains far more darkness than light, and carnage (and much defeat for the forces of good) on the scale of some of the worst battlefields of World War I. Even The Hobbit, begun as a children’s tale (though morphed in the writing to something quite different), touches on mortality: Following his epic journey and the costly Battle of Five Armies, Bilbo emerges a very different character, far less insulated and more appreciative of the fragile peace of the Shire, with “eyes that fire and sword have seen, and horror in the halls of stone.”

And as for The Lord of the Rings, its entirety can be viewed a metaphor for death. Where do you think the gray ship bore Frodo? He was dying, man.

In short, Tolkien’s works actively grapple with the terrible reality and uncertainty of our mortality. Demonstrably, they do not ignore it.

In fairness, I do agree with some of “Epic Pooh’s” points. Moorcock laments the ignorance of the reading public when it comes to writers like Fritz Leiber, who are often overlooked in favor of lesser fantasy authors that have achieved more popularity simply because they’re an easy, safe read (agreed). I also think that second-rate Tolkien clones—many of which I enjoyed as a youth—have muddied the waters of fantasy literature and contributed to dragging the genre down in the eyes of critics. However, I don’t think they should be actively avoided as Moorcock suggests, just recognized as derivative.

It’s undeniable that Tolkien was nostalgic. He hated seeing the English countryside disappear, to be replaced by factories and fabricated housing. The polluting mill that appears in “The Scouring of the Shire” was based off of an incident that occurred during Tolkien’s lifetime.

In “Epic Pooh,” Moorcock chides Tolkien for not being able to take pleasure from the realities of urban industrial life. But can you blame Tolkien for feeling embittered at the dwindling of the rural countryside? I cannot.

In conclusion, I’ve returned to The Lord of the Rings time and time again over my lifetime. I enjoy slipping into Middle Earth and meeting up with characters that now feel like old friends. I do take comfort in these aspects of the work.

But each time I do, additional unique and challenging facets of this one of a kind work are revealed. It gets better as I grow older, which tells of its surprising depth and multitude of meanings. The Lord of the Rings is not a comforting lie, but a living, breathing book that changes with each re-reading. The more one reads of Tolkien’s legendarium in The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, and The History of Middle Earth, the more suffused in darkness and uncertainty works like The Lord of the Rings (and even The Hobbit) become.

So Mr. Moorcock, pardon me while I return to the table for another helping of this one of a kind “comfort” food, prepared by the finest chef ever produced by the culinary arts school of fantasy fiction. You can take “Epic Pooh” and stuff it.

——

[*]
*A third strand of Moorcock’s dislike for Tolkien also emerges in “Epic Pooh,” that being his antipathy for Tolkien’s Toryism and conservatism. Moorcock takes Tolkien and C.S. Lewis to task for their politics and, to a lesser degree, their religion. It’s noteworthy that Moorcock in a post-publication author’s note lavishes praise on Phillip Pullman, a lesser literary light than Tolkien by any measurable standard, but a writer whose politics fall into lockstep with his own. But while I suspect that political disagreement is the true genesis of “Epic Pooh,” I’d prefer to leave this debate out of The Cimmerian.

[*]
* I was prepared to cut Moorcock some slack on the basis that he may not have read The Silmarillion before writing “Epic Pooh.” Puzzlingly, Moorcock has read it, and actually cites it in the essay. Therefore, I feel perfectly justified in using it and The Children of Hurin in Tolkien’s defense.


–Artwork by Ted Nasmith