[Gorthaur the Cruel]

Originally Posted by davem

I'd have to refer you to Flieger's 'Splintered Light' for a full analysis of Light in Tolkien's works & the way it fragments & becomes weaker over time. Suffice to say that Calaquendi (Elves of the Light) & Moriquendi Elves of the Darkness are more than merely shorthand titles. I don't think Glorfindel redux is a 'lesser' version of his old self. His mere presence is enough to drive off the Nazgul, & what is central to his 'presence' there is the Light which emanates from him (which Frodo sees in his near wraith state. In the First Age Glorfindel was under the Doom of the Noldor, & like Finrod he was spiritually & morally weakened by that. On his return, after having passed through Mandos, he was 'renewed' - he was as he had been before the Revolt, an Elf of the Light. The High Elves were of a different order, not simply in terms of intellect & physical prowess, but in terms of 'spirituality', & that spirituality was a consequence of their living in the Light of Aman, which shone in their faces. When Gandalf talks of 'the power that is in him' I don't think he was referring to Glorfindel's strength or smarts, but of something of a wholy different order. On his return to Middle-earth he was, in a sense the Elven equivalent of a Gandalf the Whiite, purged, purified, once more a Calaquendi.

Why send him back otherwise - what use would he have been if he was no more 'potent' a force than any of the Elves currently living in M-e? No, I think the 'power that is in him' was the Light of Aman. And I suspect that he could well have done to the Balrog what Gandalf did, if it had come to a confrontation, because that wasn't a battle where victory depended on physical strength or intellect, but on the power of 'Light', the Secret Fire, overcoming darkness (the 'Dark Fire').

Can you gimme the link for this "Fleiger's splinetred light"? thanks.