Thread: Bye Bye Balrogs
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Old 01-16-2002, 09:32 PM   #62
jallanite
Shade of Carn Dûm
 
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Sting

More Horrible Possibilities:

My current thoughts on that most problem-causing of sentences added by JRRT to the margin of a revision removing the word "host" in respect to Balrogs who came to Melkor's aid:
Quote:
There should not be supposed more than say 3 or at most 7 ever existed.
As as has been regularly pointed out it is almost impossible to accept 3 as a credible number for all Balrogs that ever existed yet Tolkien uses it. I therefore believe it almost certainly must apply only to the Balrogs slain in the final battle against Melkor at Udûn, that is, as I elsewhere posted, Tolkien meant:
Quote:
There should not be supposed more than say 3 [who came here to Melkor's defense at this time and place] -- or at most 7 ever existed.
It would be wrong to remove any mention of the slaying of Balrogs from this passage and yet keep this dependant note limiting the total number of Balrogs to seven.

Accordingly, 3 Balrogs slain in the War of Wrath, leaving only 4 of which one is Durin's Bane. It seems unlikely that all but Durin's Bane would be killed at Gondolin, accordingly, in this scenerio, only Gothmog and the Balrog slain by Glorfindel would be slain at Gondolin. Rog and his troops must fall before Orks.

But there is a further change found in The Peoples of Middle-earh (HoME 12), chapter XIII, "Last Writings", Glorfindel. Tolkien writes of Glorfindel:
Quote:
... a chieftain of Gondolin, who in the pass of Cristhorn ('Eagle-cleft') fought with a Balrog [> Demon], whom he slew at the cost of his own life.
Then later:
Quote:
... Glorfindel had sacrificed his life in defending the fugitives from the wreck of Gondolin against a Demon out of Thangorodrim,^10 and so enabling Tuor and Idril daughter to Turgon ....

10 [In the margin, and written at the same time as the text, my father note: 'The duel of Glorfindel and the Demon may need revision.']
Is the replacement of Balrog by Demon and the use of Demon instead of Balrog in the other two mentions of the battle significant? Is it possible that Glorfindel is no longer fighting a Balrog but some other kind of Demon? What other reason might Tolkien have for using Demon instead of Balrog] in three places, the first by emendation?

So we have a scenerio in which we replace most of the mentions of Balrogs in the story of the fall of Gondolin by Demons.

This does not seem to me satisfactory either because if JRRT had made such a change he would probably have made these new lesser Demons distinct in form and action from the Balrogs, the greatest of the Demons. We cannot.

This partly parallels Bob's suggestion of two kinds of Balrogs, but without any suggesting that Tolkien envisioned two levels of beings who were both named Balrogs or adding any complication of two different origins for these different kinds of beings.

If this supposition is correct, then Tolkien would have revised "The Fall of Gondolin" to include hosts of Demons, of whom the greatest are those called the Balrogs, of whom only four would have then existed. Gothmog would perhaps have still been slain at that time by falling into the Fountain of the King when knocked off balance by Ecthelion.

In this scenerio Glorfindel would then have slain a Demon who was "like a Balrog". Three Balrogs would have survived, two slain in the War of Wrath and one fleeing to hide under Caradhras.

Other variants are also possible, in which some of the original Balrogs become lesser Demons and some are replaced by Orks.

In Morgoth's Ring (HoME 10), Myths Transformed[/i], VIII, Orcs, JRRT writes of embodied Orks:
Quote:
... but by practising when embodied procreation they would (cf. Melian) [become] more and more earthbound, unable to return to spirit-state (even demon-form), until released by death (killing), and they would dwindle in force.
Here "demon-form" appears to be a lower kind of "spirit-state". Possibly what is envisioned is a body of a more subtle kind. Since slaying a spirit embodied in an Ork ought free the spirt embodied, yet JRRT considers that spirit cannot return to "spirit-state", here "spirit-state" seems to refer to the original powerful "spirit-state" proper to an eäla.

Accordingly we have four levels of power:
  • The original "spirit-state" where the ëala can assume various bodily forms.
  • "Demon-form" where the ëala may assume only one particular kind of body. Note that Sauron, after the destruction of his body in the downfall of Númenor was only able to assume a hideous form.
  • Fully incarnate as and dependant on a fully physical body.
  • Ghost form as a houseless spirit dependant on a physical body but lacking one and unable to create one.
This does raise further questions. For example, since Sauron is able to re-embodied himself when forced to relinquish his current body by Huan, does this mean that he, and possibly other followers of Morgoth, are less tied to physical form than was Morgoth at that time? Fortunately, praise Eru, such conundrums do not have to be solved for any writing of The Silmarillion that I can see.
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