Quote:
Originally Posted by Pitchwife
Legate, now that I've mulled over your long earlier post for a while, I think you described the 'job contract' between the Valar and the Istari very well, especially the bit about the Valar cancelling Saruman's contract as he had already broken it himself. The only problem I have with your interpretation is this: if the contract said all along that the Istari could return to their Maiarin existence in case of death, would it still make sense to say that Gandalf really 'died' (I noticed Tolkien put 'died' in inverted commas, but still)? I mean, how would his death then be any different from what Sauron suffered at the end of the Second Age, or even when he was defeated in werewolf form by Huan (after which he instantly assumed another shape)? If we assume that the Istari were truly incarnate, as opposed to merely 'clothed', in human form, wouldn't that have consequences for their fate in case of death?
Looking at the matter from a slightly different angle - why would Eru's special permission be needed at all to send Gandalf back, unless he really died and went beyond the circles of the world? Couldn't the Valar just change his contract themselves, or give him a new one?
As for Saruman, anyway - we know from the horse's mouth that his disembodied spirit did not haunt Middle-earth. UT, The Istari:
If he did not remain in Middle-earth, and was refused to return to Valinor, the options where he could have gone seem pretty limited - Eru or the Void.
|
Ha, well done indeed with the research on the last quote. I guess that changes the matters a lot. In any case, my former speculation was indeed just a speculation, or a theory. The thing with Istari bodies is probably a more complicated one. I agree with
Inziladun about the need of approval from Eru, since the Valar needed his approval for the Istari project (or at least "perhaps", as it is said in one of the drafts), that's the basis for all the thoughts of Gandalf's return being approved by Eru himself and not just by Valar. Okay, so the question would be: what would happen to a perfectly faithful and hard-labouring Gandalf who would happen to die along the way, if there was no intervention from Eru? I believe the gaze of Saruman's spirit into the West is the answer: it really does not seem that a dead Wizard would expect to go beyond the Circles of the World (but perhaps he just was not prepared for the alternative?), but that even a formless Maia, however diminished in power in Middle-Earth, would be once again accepted back in Valinor. Also, think of one more thing. The destruction of a Wizard's physical body does not put him into the same basket with Men, in the sense that they would go to where the Men do. This has several reasons. Firstly, Death for Men is a
gift from Eru, and it would seem to me against all logic to actually give the Wizards a gift intended for totally different type of creatures and reserved for them alone. And secondly, whoever said that an incarnate Wizard would be any closer to Men than to Elves. The Wizards' forms were those of the Children of Ilúvatar, and that is, both Men and Elves. The fact that they had beards is merely a cosmetic thing (not to speak of that Círdan had a beard as well), and let us not forget that Men themselves considered the Wizards being Elvish (although for various reasons based on rather simple and surface perceptions). It is indeed told that they were walking among both Men and Elves who perceived them as ones "of them". In any case, in the matters of death the Maiar were still far closer to Elves than to Men (heading to the West, Mandos, etc., basically
inside Arda, not somewhere out of it, like Men did), and it would be really really strange to have such a big change in the paradigm of the world by the Istari's incarnation. The Istari were still mere messengers, not really a big deal in the large scale, whereas the matter of Death of Men seems from all that is said in the books as one of the last things that could ever be tampered with (we had Beren, Lúthien and a few others whose fate was actually
changed in some way).
But all right, in the light of the quote - "his spirit went whithersoever it was doomed to go" - it would seem that we have indeed the banishment to the Void here. Which would actually make sense. Though still a distinct possibility remains that we can leave this question open and that still there was somewhere
else for Saruman's spirit to go to. But that would be a question of speculation again, I guess.