The Trickster's Consort

[davem]

Ok, the 'poem-reality' is connected to the 'real' landscape of that part of Middle-earth, but the 'feel' is different. As Sam might have put it, when I read those chapters I feel as if I were 'inside a song'. Another thought occurs. Frodo's dream in the house of Bombadil. Its as if he is both dreaming himself back into his own reality but at the same time dreaming himself into paradise. As if he has passed from the secondary 'poem-reallity' into another, deeper kind of reality. Worlds within worlds

Tolkien's theology, however, he being a Roman Catholic, was that of original sin, which means that we are all born tainted with sin; we start out that way.

But is this the theology of M-e? Certainly M-e has nothing like the Christian concept of original sin, in that there is no single, all encompassng Fall, just lots of falls - the Noldor, Men (possibly- some speculation in Athrabeth) & Morgoth's. But this is difficult. Tolkien states that Morgoth 'suffused' his evil, his power, into the stuff of Arda, so that matter itself becomes tainted. But this then becomes a given, & all things inherit it. All matter is corrupted, but is it 'fallen' in the Christian sense? I don't know enough of Christianity to say, but it seems different, in that no-one has chosen to be corrupted in that way. It is simply a kind of 'poison' which all things carry around inside them. So there is no personal moral failing involved, & freedom of choice remains. Perhaps this must be so, there being no 'saviour' who can enter in & redeem the inhabitants of Arda (though in Athrabeth Finrod speculates on this possibility).

Perhaps, as fallen beings ourselves, our vision is tainted, & we can only see Middle-earth from that perspective...

Sorry, I'll have to stop there, because I don't know where I'm going with that....

[littlemanpoet]

I do see a lot of similarity between "original sin" and Morgoth's tainting; and I think you are right in thinking that the differences between the two have to do with the lack of a savior in Middle Earth. It must be remembered that the Athrabeth is a very late part of Tolkien's lengendarium, in which he was rethinking everything in terms of a round-world mythology with modern physics in place from the get-go. So maybe part of his rethinking was the introduction of a savior after all! But who's to know?