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Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle
With all due respect, Formendacil (and by the way, welcome to the Downs from a fellow-Canuck) you've not really answered the question -- or at least, not fully.
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Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I didn't quite answer the question. My intent was more to add to what you said, and increase the intensity of the "Why bother?" question than to answer it for myself. I'll try to rectify that now, though.
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Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle
The scenarios you imagine are intriguing and would seem to indicate that you believe that the only "right" way to imagine a balrog, etc, is Tolkien's way. (Which is an interesting assertion to make even as you acknowlege that he was always changing his mind on things like this!)
But why should this be? Why would his imagination be the only valid one (assuming he could ever provide such an "answer") when Middle-earth is in at least some respect the product of his imagination and yours? His imagination because he says "a balrog" and your imagination because you either put wings on that balrog or not depending on what you want/believe.
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Why should Tolkien's imagination be the only valid one on the topic of middle-earth (at least in my own mind)?
Because Tolkien created middle-earth. It was his vision, his imagination, the story that HE wrote that captured my imagination in the first place. My rabid fan-ness comes from HIS imagination. The facts I have memorised come from HIS legendarium. The Elvish language I strive so hard to pronounce properly follows the rules that HE devised. Therefore, it logically follows that I should wish to know HIS opinion on the topic.
After all, if I am going to be a rabid fan, and spend hours poring over the obscure reign of Tar-Ancalimon and other strange, totally-alien-to-a-non-fan items, and do my best to memorise what he said, then surely I will try and capture what he intended in every and all matters.
For example, prior to reading the pronunciation guide in the
Silmarillion, I pronounced many names wrong. A case in point: Celeborn. Sellaborn? No, it should be pronounced Ke-le-born. Right? Of course. No one debates that it should be pronounced that way, because the good professor obviously intended it.
The snag that we run into with the Balrogs is that we don't know WHAT the good professor intended. I believe, and most of the non-wingers with me, believe that Tolkien never intended them to have wings. Unlike the pronunciation of Celeborn, we do not have a text that says in very clear words that "Balrogs do not have wings", although in our opinion, at least, the implication of this is painfully obvious.
I hope that explains my position on the subject at least a little bit better.