Quote:
Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc
I think if Tolkien had written that sentence in that meaning, he would make Gandalf say something like "They tried to pierce your heart with a Morgul-knife, a sorcerous blade, which remains in the wound...")
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This is the “if I were Tolkien, then I would ...” argument which doesn’t really work. Neither you or I are Tolkien and Tolkien himself changed his mind again and again on many matters. Tolkien loved the works of George MacDonald and then later in life tried reading him again and couldn’t stand him.
The word
Morgul- is first introduced in the
Lord of the Rings exactly like a piece of bafflegab in some modern fantasy of which no-one could possibly know the exact meaning. Of course Tolkien probably would, since he had invented Sindarin but the reader would not. And possibly at that time Tolkien would not yet have imagined Minas Morgul which only comes in later.
But then Tolkien changes his mind on many issues later, for example, the backstory of Galadriel including the meaning of Celeborn’s name.
In short, when the tale tells us that Gandalf uses the word
Morgul-knife but does not tell exactly what he meant by it, either literally ‘black sorcery’ or the derived name applied in Gondor to Minas Ithil. Both work in the final account. I had at some point in my rereading automatically assumed the ‘black sorcery’ meaning. You at some point assumed the ‘Minas Morgul’ meaning.
Neither of was particularly aware that the other meaning might be applied here.
But once aware of both meanings, I find it impossible to choose between them. Both work.
Gandalf’s mention of the Morgul-knife appears to first arise in the Fourth Phase version of Frodo’s conversation with Gandalf at Rivendell, although Christopher Tolkien does not present that part of the story. Christopher Tolkien does say in
The Treason of Isengard (HOME 7), page 82, that the text is then as in FR except for places where Christopher Tolkien indicates differences. But Minas Morgul is not mentioned in the Council of Elrond for two more versions of the Council. In the version of the Council written to go with this version of the conversation between Frodo and Gandalf even Minas Tirith only appears in a late pencilled change to the manuscript.