Tolkien's letter #180

[Ophelia]

There is hardly any reference in The Lord of the Rings to things that
do not actually exist* on its own plane (of secondary or sub-creational
reality): sc. have been written.

Footnote:
*The Cats of Beruthial and the names of the other two wizards (five minus
Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast) are all that I recollect.

I have been having troubles with understanding this quote. What I persume Tolkien has said here is that only the Cats of Beruthiel and the names of the two other wizards have references in the Lord of the Rings... This really puzzles me because I am not really sure that I have understood it right.

Your explanations are very welcome.

NOTE : This is very urgent for a great cause !

-Ophelia-

[A_Brandybuck]

It is just a comment of Tolkien, which means, that all things in LotR save the cats of Beruthiel and the names of the Blue Wizards (he surely means their names in Middle-earth), have a background-story elsewhere. LotR is an extract out of his created world. He included many many details, which are not explained in LotR but in other writings and he thinks that only these two things are missed.
Hope that helps.

[Ophelia]

I thank you thousand times for your reply , it really really helps . Very much !
But this doesn't mean I care not for any more thoughts . Do pleace share any other thoughts . It helps more !

-Ophelia-

[Mithalwen]

What I think it means is that APART from these instances, the characters in LOTR refer to things that were already part of the wider creation of Middle Earth - for example Gil Galad , Beren and Luthien, Earendil already existed (in the unpublished Silmarillion) as did Gondolin when Tolkien referred to it in the Hobbit. Tolkien had been working on Middle Earth for decades before he started the LOTR and the characters that know some of the history of Middle Earth refer to it . However when Aragorn refers to the cats of Queen Beruthiel and Saruman (Gandalf ?) to Five wizards it is the rare occasion when the character "knows" something that the author doesn't. They are referring to things that Tolkien hasn't already fitted into his creation. Tolkien later did write up a history for the Cats and the Wizards. Not sure if that makes sense but really it is a question of order. He made the story to fit the reference rather than making a reference to a story he had already written.

[Ophelia]

A very good answer . I already had a thought of that but not as clear .
Thank you too .

-Ophelia-

[HerenIstarion]

And even those two occurrences later grew their own stories - I assume, Tolkien feeling uneasy about there being no background to them. So, the Queen Berúthiel bacame the proud (and a bit cruel) Lady of 9 black cats, who spied upon her subjects, and a white one, who spied upon the black ones, eventually loathed by her own husband and put aboard the ship with her cats to set sail nobody knew where. Blue wizards were named Alatar and Pallando

Both stories, if my memory does not fail me, to be found in Unfinished Tales, the colleciton of, well, unfinished, and well, tales published by Christopher Tolkien in 1980

cheers

[The Saucepan Man]

I am pretty sure that Queen Beruthial isn't in Unfinished Tales, as I have never read of her.

And Alatar and Pallando hardly get much of a backstory. Pretty much all we learn about them is that they were friends, the one asking that the other accompany him, that nothing is known for certain as to their fate, but that they probably failed their mission and possibly started up Sauron-worshipping cults in the east. Poor guys! Hardly much of a legacy.

Personally, I prefer to think of them as having succesfully raised a rebellion against Sauron in the east, thus limiting the number of Variags/Easterlings available to him in the War of the Ring. Although I am aware that this doesn't square with Gandalf having been the only one of the Istari who succeeded.

[A_Brandybuck]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Personally, I prefer to think of them as having succesfully raised a rebellion against Sauron in the east, thus limiting the number of Variags/Easterlings available to him in the War of the Ring. Although I am aware that this doesn't square with Gandalf having been the only one of the Istari who succeeded.

I prefer to think, that they have some success at their beginning to hinder the peoples of the East from attacking Gondor. These thoughts came to me, because of the long phase of quietness at the east-borders of Gondor in the middle of the second millenium in the Third Age.
I would like the fact, that the Blue Wizards are the reason for this long time of peace. But the point of time, when the attacking of the peoples of the east (Wainriders, Balchoth...) starts, signifies for me, that this was point of time of their failure. :-(

@Saucepan: Here is the quote of Queen Beruthiel from UT, The Istari, Footnote 7:

Originally Posted by UT

Even the story of Queen Berúthiel does exist, however, if only in a very "primitive" outline, in one part illegible. She was the nefarious, solitary, and loveless wife of Tarannon, twelfth King of Gondor (Third Age 830-913) and first of the "Ship-kings", who took the crown in the name of Falastur "Lord of the Coasts," and was the first childless king (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, I, ii and iv). Berúthiel lived in the King's House in Osgiliath, hating the sounds and smells of the sea and the house that Tarannon built below Pelargir "upon arches whose feet stood deep in the wide waters of Ethir Anduin;" she hated all making, all colours and elaborate adornment, wearing only black and silver and living in bare chambers, and the gardens of the house in Osgiliath were filled with tormented sculptures beneath cypresses and yews. She had nine black cats and one white, her slaves, with whom she conversed, or read their memories, setting them to discover all the dark secrets of Gondor, so that she knew those things "that men wish most to keep hidden," setting the white cat to spy upon the black, and tormenting them. No man in Gondor dared touch them; all were afraid of them, and cursed when they saw them pass. What follows is almost wholly illegible in the unique manuscript, except to the ending, which states that her name was erased from the Book of the Kings ("but the memory of men is not wholly shut in books, and the cats of Queen Berúthiel never passed wholly out of men's speech"), and that King Tarannon had her set on a ship alone with her cats and set adrift on the sea before a north wind. The ship was last seen flying past Umbar under a sickle moon, with a cat at the masthead and another as a figure-head on the prow.

And another quote from UT, The Istari:

Originally Posted by UT

Beyond the fact that these notes on the choosing of the Istari certainly date from after the completion of The Lord of the Rings I can find no evidence of their relation, in time of composition, to the essay on the Istari.7

I know of no other writings about the Istari save some very rough and in part uninterpretable notes that are certainly much later than any of the foregoing, and probably date from 1972:

We see here, that Tolkien gave them names, but after the completion of Lord of the Rings and after he had written the letter.
Interesting is, that the 7 in the text refer to the footnote, which included the story of Queen Beruthiel and our letter #180. You could imply, that this allude to the fact, that the story of Queen Beruthiel was written after he had written the letter.

So, my post backups the post of HerenIstarion. ;-)

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Personally, I prefer to think of them (blue wizards) as having succesfully raised a rebellion against Sauron in the east, thus limiting the number of Variags/Easterlings available to him in the War of the Ring. Although I am aware that this doesn't square with Gandalf having been the only one of the Istari who succeeded.

Maybe they started a rebellion, diverted some/many easterlings, but got trounced and skewered. Unsuccessful, but still heroic good guys.

(Or maybe they became cave-dwelling cannibals.)