Fantasy Morality

[Morthoron]

Occam's razor snips the gristle...

Originally Posted by Dakêsîntrah

[....Snip....]Really? Seemingly throughout all my "addled arcana and mythopoeic minutiae" you have missed my explanation of the occultic ritual of drinking blood. Your quotes of Gurthang support my hypothesis in this instance quite well.

I don't believe I "missed the explanation"; rather, I ignored the superfluity and got to the point. You implied it was Eru's voice speaking through the divine metal of the blade. I proved quite conclusively how that could not be the case. And in a much more succinct manner.

Originally Posted by Dakêsîntrah

[...snip...]And again, Morthoron, you fancy to have Eru speaking anthropomorphically. The "speaking" is the functional/relational action of the sword that defines it; therefore, it "speaks." It has a spirit of its own. And "spirit" ought to be justly defined as that which is simply action defined by function/relation. And who might be the sword relating to in which it is thoroughly defined? Turin Turambar.

Ummm...no, Dak, I don't "fancy to have Eru speaking anthropomorphically" -- as a matter of fact, I don't believe Eru spoke at all. The Elves of that time could imbue their spirit into an item, and so could a Maia such as Sauron; hence, the Silmarils and the One Ring had a semblance of life (not actual life), just as Anglachel/Gurthang had in its cold blade the spirit of Eol, dark and full of malice. Melian sees that right off. She doesn't say "Hey, that's Eru's benevolent aura eminating from that ebon blade". No, Melian the Maia, who would certainly know Eru on an interpersonal level, says explicitly:

"There is malice in this sword. The dark heart of the smith still dwells in it. It will not love the hand it serves, neither will it abide with you long."

No Eru. No divinely wrought blade. Tolkien removes such inferences from the Kalevala altogether. Tolkien certainly wouldn't condone suicide, an act of desperation and a mortal sin in Catholicism, and he certainly wouldn't have Eru acting as the instrument of suicide.

All the rest of your lengthy exposition is mere conjecture on your part. Unless you can quote Tolkien directly in that regard, it remains "addled arcana and mythopoeic minutiae".

Originally Posted by Dakêsîntrah

Bethberry, if you make the claim that something isn't logical, please be logical and offer supplementary evidence for it. If we wish to talk about grammar, then so be it. But Morthoron would like you to apply Occam's Razor first, please.

Simplicity, particularly in a forum discussion, is divine, Dak. When one starts meandering down lengthy corridors of obscure research and starts typing thesis papers for a cultural anthropology class, one loses the reader and the gist of the entire discussion.