Does Eru care?

[Mithalwen]

My main point which you have perhaps chosen to ignoree is that Tolkien knew that his world was created. I don't agree with your assertion that a mythology for Ngland must be set there. We are a nation of Empire builders and Tolkien was colonial born even if at heart a Warwickshre lad. Perhaps because I have roots several centuries deep in Warwickshire soil it's Englishness seems self evident.

[Galin]

It's interesting that, as late as the Etymologies ('late' when compared to The Book of Lost Tales anyway)

'Q Ingolonde Land of the Gnomes (Beleriand, but before applied to parts of Valinor). N Angolonn or Geleidhien.

And in the Silmarillion of the mid to later 1930s, the Land of Leithian survives the breaking of Beleriand. The character of Elfwine lived even longer (externally), granted he became a figure of transmission more than an active player, but he was an Englishman and was supposed to render all these legends into Old English, and (I would argue) would still make connections between the Valar and the Norse gods.

Anyway, in 1956 Tolkien wrote a draft letter, which included:

'Having set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own: it is a wonderful thing to be told that I have succeeded, at least with those who have still the undarkened heart and mind.'

'It has been a considerable labour, beginning really as soon as I was able to begin anything, but effectively beginning when I was an undergraduate and began to explore my own linguistic aesthetic in language composition. It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. (...)'

So while 'a mythology for England' has turned out to be a misquote, the Waldman letter isn't the only source behind the general notion.

I happen to like the Eriol story myself, the question of the Romans aside. It seems a bold move to play England as not yet in the geographical position of England; but as noted Tolkien certainly abandoned this.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

My main point which you have perhaps chosen to ignoree is that Tolkien knew that his world was created.

I ignored your main point because I agree with it totally and completely. I ought to have mentioned this agreement.

I picked up only on a statement commonly made by Tolkien commentators as though it were by Tolkien when it is not actually by Tolkien. I find that annoying, but understandable, when this statement is wrongly attributed to Tolkien so often, because people blindly accept what they are told. I was disappointed as I would have thought you would have known better. All the more reason to indicate a slovenly error when someone as generally as intelligent as you is making it.

Some claim that it doesn’t matter that Tolkien didn’t say it, because he certainly would have agreed with it. I disagree. Truth matters. And I don’t believe that he would have agreed with it.

Here is an entire thread on the matter: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/17214 .

I don't agree with your assertion that a mythology for Ngland must be set there.

I did not quite say that a mythology for England must be set there. I suggested:

A “mythology for England” surely should take place mostly in England.

Tolkien’s tales of the first three ages of Middle-earth are, in their finished versions, set in a fictional era before England (or Britain) even existed. Tolkien’s early idea was to connect his legendarium with historic England through the identification of the Lonely Isle with Britain (including England) and by identifying his Eriol with the father of Hengest, Horsa, and Heorrenda (a younger brother of Hengest and Horsa invented by Tolkien).

Tolkien rejected those ideas.

Instead Tolkien connected his legendarium analogically with England in The Lord of the Rings by making the Shire parallel to the English countryside of his youth and giving to the Rohirrim the Old English language and Germanic heroic ideals also found in Old English writings.

What most people would call the mythology of Tolkien’s legendarium (Manwë, Varda, Ulmo and all that) is not particularly English. The Elvish history is not especially English and Tolkien was later quite insistent that his Elves were his own invention, not owing much to the Elves of folklore. The history of Númenor is largely the Platonic story of Atlantis. Arnor and Gondor is largely a calc of the western and eastern Roman empires. Aragorn is more Dietrich von Bern than identical to any English figure. I think he also owes something to the fictional Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye) of the American author James Fenimore Cooper.

We are a nation of Empire builders and Tolkien was colonial born even if at heart a Warwickshre lad. Perhaps because I have roots several centuries deep in Warwickshire soil it's Englishness seems self evident.

Empire builders? Colonial? Tolkien in letter 53:

For I love England (not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth (grr!)), and if I was of military age, I should, I fancy, be grousing away in a fighting service, and willing to go on to the bitter end – always hoping that things may turn out better for England than they look like doing.

From letter 77:

I should have hated the Roman Empire in its day (as I do), and remained a patriotic Roman citizen, while preferring a free Gaul and seeing good in Carthaginians. Delenda est Carthago. We hear rather a lot of that nowadays. I was actually taught at school that that was a fine saying; and I ‘reacted’ (as they say, in this case with less than the usual misapplication) at once.

From letter 100:

Though in this case, as I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust, I am afraid I am not even supported by a glimmer of patriotism in this remaining war.

Tolkien clearly and carefully distinguished his personal feelings for England from his personal feelings for Imperial Britain.

The Englishness of the Shire is of course evident to me. It is surely evident to almost all readers. You don’t need to be born in Warwickshire to feel that. Indeed I know at least one person who was not able to read The Lord of the Rings because the early chapters were too English for her.

If you wish to disagree with me, disagree with what I am saying, not with opinions I don’t hold. I am unaware that I have posted anything that would suggest ignorance of the analogical Englishness of the Shire. You rightly blamed me for ignoring most of what you were saying. But you are doing the same, inventing the ignorance that you impute to me.

Tolkien did not say he had ever wished to create a mythology for England. Disagree? Then point out where he said it. He said something like it in the Waldman letter. But he did not say it, and I believe he did not intend to create a fictional mythology that would be believed by Englishmen in place of what he saw as the true religion. Nor did he intend a poetic mythology to be referred to by poets as classical mythology was by custom.

Originally Posted by Galin

I happen to like the Eriol story myself, the question of the Romans aside. It seems a bold move to play England as not yet in the geographical position of England; but as noted Tolkien certainly abandoned this.

Yes, it was a bold move, but one that seems very nationalistic and even racist.

[Galin]

Yes, it was a bold move, but one that seems very nationalistic and even racist.

One reason I like the Eriol tale is because it lends a 'faery' presence to specific places like Warwick -- and more generally (same sense of an ancient faery presence) in that we have an Elvish Isle before it actually becomes 'Britain' in a geographical sense.

I also like the 'impossibility' of the idea of dragging the entire Isle to a new geographical position, including how Ireland became separated -- which goes well enough in hand, I guess, with my liking of Tolkien's 'less scientific' cosmology.

There are other things I find charming or interesting in the Eriol tale, things that seem to have eventually dropped out or fallen away, like the drinking of limpe for example, or the Path of Dreams.

That much noted, I'm not interested in any of the 'was Tolkien a racist?' threads out there, including any discussion of what seems racist to someone.

[Lotrelf]

I was thinking the same. When I read: "The Ainur are the offspring of Eru's thought." I felt does that make Eru a flawed "character"? He is the creator of Arda. Melkor being the the offspring of his thoughts, means He also belonged to Eru. Or Eru created him purposefully, perhaps. The purpose of creation of The Dark Lord meant, that to exist good, there should be evil. Otherwise all the words we use to express goodness will have no meaning.
Eru cared for Arda, and so did Valar. They did not have to directly come and do the favor to the Children of Iluvatar.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Lotrelf

Melkor being the the offspring of his thoughts, means He also belonged to Eru. Or Eru created him purposefully, perhaps. The purpose of creation of The Dark Lord meant, that to exist good, there should be evil. Otherwise all the words we use to express goodness will have no meaning.

Ah yes. This sticky topic. For what it's worth, I think Ilúvatar's admonition in response to Melkor's alteration of the Music speaks much.

'And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the Music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'

The Silmarillion Ainulindalë

Evil was no aberration, but a known quantity to the One, made for his own purpose, dark though it may often be to his creations.

[Lotrelf]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Evil was no aberration, but a known quantity to the One, made for his own purpose, dark though it may often be to his creations.

Yes! Btw, can you answer a question? What was the difference between the evil nature of Melkor and Souron?

[Pervinca Took]

Tolkien said that Sauron "was only less evil than his master in that [at first/for many years? - can't remember the exact wording] he served another and not himself." They were equally evil, but Melkor was a much more powerful being - the most powerful of the Ainur - whereas Sauron was of the Maiar, a less powerful angelic being. Gandalf, too, was a Maia.

[IxnaY AintsaY]

Originally Posted by Lotrelf

What was the difference between the evil nature of Melkor and Souron?

Mostly the laugh. Morgoth's was a rich, rolling, menacing "Mwahh-wah ho ha ha!" Whereas Sauron's was more of a shrill, gibbering "Heh-heh-kehehehehaa!" Think Jabba the Hut versus Salacious B. Crumb.