[HerenIstarion]

Originally Posted by narfforc

Like I keep saying, people are quoting things that Tolkien may have wrote, but did not ultimately sanction, You cannot quote from The Silmarillion, it was published after his death, and you cannot know if seeing that sentence he would have been happy leaving it in, especially after what had already been published in LotR

Though I see your point, I tend not to put that much weight on published work as opposed to not published, and what is later as opposed to what was written earlier. After all it is all chance - per instance, should publisher's reader read early version of Quenta in 1937, instead of just seeing scraps of Lay of Leithian, who knows what order (and what kind of at all) books would have been published in? Does the printing press sanctify the truth? Tolkien was not happy with lot of things in his published works either, he just had less freedom to alter them.

Do not misunderstand me - I do rely heavier on what is published and/or what represents later view of the author, but still, I generally tend to view the legendarium as a whole (one may say, historically, or even 'historiographically'), as a complex compilation of sources. Quoting myself from C-Thread:

we, readers ... of Tolkien, are free to use any of the texts (starting with the very first up to the very last) which we know to be canonical – i.e. by Tolkien himself, and apply to them our own judgement.

and part of the list from the same post:

A) What Tolkien was creating is nearly as complex as the history of the world itself
B) What he did create, must be viewed (as he himelf was evaluating it as such, 'finding out' rather than 'inventing') as history derived from and depending on different and quite a number of sources as well
C) Following A and B, different sources need not be in agreement between themselves

(Cf also Two Gandalfs by littlemanpoet)

Following said, there is a place in my head for hosts of marching corporate balrogs and for 7 Balrogs corporate too but wrapped in shadow (even if two types of balrog be purely speculation of yours truly, after all. Freedom of the reader? I suppose, but inside the boundaries set by the author. See C-Thread again)

On the other hand, as any historian may agree, it happens that even most smart&clever bookworm may err reading his sources. I'm 100% sure it is not me who's erring in ripping balrog wings off (if they were there in the first place), I know I'm right, and, following narfforc, I proclaim the truth to stand as 'balrogs had no wings', but (and here we part company with narfforc ) source read-outs may differ, so everybody, who can not be convinced is welcome to have their own opinion on the subject

PS Funny how I, having proclaimed in one of my previous that 'physical form does not count that much' spent precious hour pondering the subject (I lost count of 'agains' to go at the end of such sentence )