[Formendacil]

It's been a couple weeks, which has either given people a chance to catch up or to forget this project completely, but with Thanksgiving passed, let's put another chapter up--"The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr," which is a direct continuation of "The Chaining of Melko" and told by the same teller, Meril-i-Turinqui.

The basic bones of this tale are much the same as the later version of the tale, though with the big context-changer introduced in "The Chaining of Melko": the fact that the Elves waken AFTER Melko's imprisonment. This changes the context of their arrival and allows Tolkien to make it seem more surprising and wonderful to the Valar. Perhaps it's the season, but this reminded me a little bit of Christmas, with the Valar playing the roles of both the choirs of angels AND the inhabitants of the world, to whom the Eldar (collectively the "Son of God") are born.

And the dual role of the Valar has a parallel in the dual revelation of the Elves' coming: the direct knowledge granted to Manwë and the "discovery" made by Palúrien and Oromë. Christopher Tolkien thinks this a deficiency: he says in his commentary "The story of Oromë's coming upon the newly awakened Elves is seen to go back to the beginnings ... but its singular beauty and force is the less for the fact of their coming being known independently to Manwë, so that the great Valar did not need to be told of it by Oromë." I'm not entirely sure I agree with this assessment, but it does highlight a couple of things:

1. Tolkien is being careful to safeguard the preeminence of Manwë. Like All-seeing Zeus or Odin-who-has-drunk-of-the-well-of-wisdom, Manwë's knowledge must be superior to the rest of the Valar. Perhaps this is the real element that counterbalances Manwë against Melko: Melko may have the power, but he lacks the knowledge.

2. CT is certainly right, whether or not it's weakened by Manwë's independent knowledge, to say that there is singular beauty and force to Oromë's discovery of the Elves--at least in my opinion. The excitement that courses through Valinor (including the second star-making) is palpable and much stronger than in the more clinical version seen later. The celebration is underlining with a touch of foreboding in the detail that this is day Melko is released from Angaino--a detail not possible in the later story, when Melkor's imprisonment follows a different timeline, and his release is changed to darken the years of the Eldar in Aman.

The major change--other than the immediacy of the tale--that I note is the fact that the earlier story lacks the "genealogical" detail of the later text--for good reason. Finwë has yet to acquire any descendent other than Turgon, Tinwë (the later Elwë) has no Olwë--though In(g)wë's family, as I've noted before is actually fuller in the original version--and the later multiple divisions of the Teleri into Nandor and Falathrim and Sindar have not yet arisen for the Solosimpi--at least not in as formal a matter. This is a common element of the Lost Tales: a shorter list of names than the later versions, counterbalancing a lusher descriptiveness.

Things to consider:

1.) Why does Ilúvatar wipe the Elves' memories of what came before? Or, rather, what I'm trying to get at: what is there to wipe? Why did they have a prior existence and where was it?

2.) The detail of imagery given about the Kôr is greater here than in any later text, reminding me of CT's comment somewhere in HoME III The Lays of Beleriand, about Nargothrond, where he compares it to Gondolin in the BoLT--and I paraphrase here: "only once, it seems, did my father visit either of these cities in up-close detail." If this is true of Kôr also, is it fair to say that Tolkien seems to have had single-impulse creative motivations regarding his fictional cities?

3.) "Indeed, war had been but held off by the Gods, who desired peace and would not suffer Ulmo to gather the folk of the Valar and assail Ossë." Wait, war? War! Ulmo and Ossë certainly do not care for each other in the later texts, but the idea that the Valar could go to war against anyone other than Melko(r) is really hard to wrap my mind around, even as unrealised possibility.

4.) CT points out in the commentary that the Lonely Isle was much lonelier in the earlier conception, far out to sea between the Great Lands and Valinor, not (as in the later conception) within the Bay of Eldamar. I feel like this SHOULD colour my impression of Eriol's own story--not only has the sundering of the Earth post-Númenor not even been conceived of yet, but reaching the Lonely Isle is not quite the Eärendil-like endeavour I'm defaulting to imagining as a result of my knowledge of the later legendarium.



There are two poems included in the commentary: "Kôr," a poem picturing that city as it was (probably) at the time of Eárendel's arrival, and "A Song of Aryador," recalling those lost on the Great March.