[davem]

Quote:Vanyar re: I suppose they must have been calm since they were not proud. (anger as the direct consequence of pride)

Quote:
Tolkien is trying to construct an account of the Valar's behaviour which would be consistent with the later form of the Mythology
Where is the bad thing in that?


The problem with Tolkien doing this, as I just mentioned in the Unnumbered Tears thred, is that he is not so much adding & developing the Legendarium as trying to 'explain' it - sometimes to explain certain events away. In the later writings he is writing theology, & what he writes has more to do with his feelings about events in this world, than events in ME. He attempts to explain the Valar's lack of action. He says this is necessary because 'some' have criticised their lack of action against Morgoth during the FA . But who are the critics? My own feeling is that after LotR, partly as a result of letters recieved questioning events in the book, often questioning its 'orthodoxy', he began to look at it in a more 'detatched' way, analysing events & characters. Its notable that during the writing of LotR & later he begins referring to the Devil by the name of Sauron, & uses the term 'The Authority' when he is referring both to God (in this world) & to Eru. The Legendarium begins to overlay the 'real' world in his imagination. The 'critics' I mentioned seem really to be one (by the time of the later writings the Inklings are no longer meeting) - Tolkien himself is the 'critic'. He has re read the Silmarillion, & it no longer works - or rather it is no longer what he wants or needs to write. The behaviour of the Valar, which in their original form of Pagan gods, was capricious, confused, selfish. Now, it can't be. So he either has to rewrite the whole thing (which he eventually attempts, unsuccessfully), or he has to construct complex theological explanations, which really explain very little. His problem is that the stories are fixed in his mind, integrated with each other - changes in one tale would necesitate changes in all the others. This is one reason he cannot finish the Silmarillion. The other is that, as an old man who had seen terrible things, & known incredible loss - parents, friends - he felt a need to write somthing else. Theology - specifically a theology of suffering. How can a good God allow pain, loss, death. So lots of things which earlier could be simply stated as background events - like the fall of Man - come centre stage, & are dealt with. But this is no longer about creating a mythology, it is about understanding God, himself & all the suffering in the world. The Legendarium provides the means for this exploration, but he's no longer writing the Silmarillion - that was effectively finished before LotR was begun, & simply needed 'tidying up' for publication. He wanted, needed to do something else. Its not so much that its a 'bad' thing. Its a 'different' thing. Unfortunately, pursued in the way it was, it risked unravelling the Legendarium. I think he simply wanted to write something else - perhaps follow Lewis as a Christian apologist, but couldn't leave the Legendarium, so he combined the two.

Quote:Somewhere in preceeding posts you also mentioned that when authors were all elves it made it even more confusing as to why accounts differed to that extent. It is fine by me (as was quoted in someone's signature around here, "some people are wise, and some are otherwise") - some scribes knew better, some not. Most of what was written accounts the history of elves this side of the sea. Possibly, those allegedly calm Vanyar and other dwellers of beyond the sea were exactly the people to know better (all them kinds of things - that sun was round, that Manwe was wise and not confused - they were on the spot to judge it, whilst those on this side had their sight dimmed with distance and, yes, again, you guessed rightly, with their pride)

Except we don't have any accounts from beyond the Sea - how could we - ok, possibly the Vanyar updated the people of ME - but my sense is that all these 'speculations' on the Valar's motives are not 'canonical' - what they are are Tolkien's own comments & interpretations -they are given in the form of a canonical work, certainly, but I think he had changed his 'role' by then - he was both recorder & interpreter of that world, & in some writings the roles blurred - often to his own confusion.

My own feeling is that originally the Valar intervened with the Elves, saw the whole thing turn out to be a mistake, & then didn''t know what the Music was telling them to do. They called the Elves to Valinor out of desire for them - a lesser 'sin' than Pride, perhaps, but not so much less. They learnt from that mistake, but were still unsure of what the right course of action was. The drive to actualise the Music is not wholly a conscious thing, even with the Valar themselves, because they don't know the whole of it - mostly only their own parts in it. So most of their attempts to actualise it would be 'best guesses'. After the death of the Trees & the Rebellion of the Noldor they were suddenly unsure of their skill at guessing. They wouldn't have had to bring Men to Valinor to protect them. Why not at least go to ME, explain the situation, offer to move them out of Beleriand, so they could deal with Morgoth. Why not at least try something. But here we are back with the situation of the Valar's behaviour being based on wholly different motives, not the High ideals of the later writings. We also come to the question of how much 'freedom' men & other races could be said to have in the extremely straightened circumstances they found themselves in. And finally, Morgoth is the Valar's responsibility, which they simply shirk for most of the FA. They leave the Chiildren at the mercy of a being who they cannot hope to defeat, in the midst of a war of attrition which they can only lose.

As to Earendel - if his repentence was the only thing the Valar were waiting for, why make it so hellishly difficult for him to get there & repent? I don't see either that the Sindar knew what they were letting themselves in for - they had no real knowledge of what Morgoth was going to do - & once he had been removed to Mandos, they certainly had no idea the Valar would release him. But then, either Manwe had to release him, because it was in the Music - which takes away any choice of the Valar, & they become 'puppets' without choice, or it wasn't 'specifically' set out in the Music, in which case it was a stupid thing to do - the Valar don't come off too well in either case.

My own feeling regarding the Music is that it sets out too possible 'futures' & Valar, Maiar & Elves are moved to try & bring about one or the other by choices they make - not that every single event is laid down by it & set in stone.