Authorial Detachment or "The Vanishing Harper"

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Anguirel

At last it struck home. All these assorted bards and scribblers seem to me to be one, huge, fascinating authorial metaphor. From here stems the apparently omniscient perspective. All characters in the Legendarium are, of course, extensions of Tolkien; but these sub-authors occupy a middle ground, a twilight world. They have to depart to obscurity to represent the distance the author must, in the end, maintain between himself and his creation. Even Tolkien has never walked the streets of Minas Tirith, or wondered at the glades of Doriath. Regretful he might be, but Maglor cannot come back among the people of the Elves-he has his story to tell, to lament in song, and must remain detached. Likewise the others.

Even the varying styles Tolkien indulged in are reflected in these "mediums", these guides, these historians, these lost wanderers. Salgant and Bilbo, I am sure, would happily cooperate on many a comic scene; Maglor and Frodo would be "high, purged of the gross"; while love scenes and tender romance falls to Daeron's flute...

So listen to the note of the harp or the squeaking of a quill. Their importance is paramount. Eru has bestowed the power of creation upon them; they preserve with more eficacy than any Elven ring; but in the end, they must always elude both author and subject.

I'm not sure I would take these characters, this fate, as a metaphor for the author. There is, first of all, the question of each character's omniscience: do they sing us the full story? And, secondly, it is always tempting to contemplate characters as a reflection of the author--even, as you say, Anguirel, extensions--but much more contemplation would be needed, I think, to justify this. Some writers sometimes throw off distance, some write only with extreme distance, and these conditions vary with character, scene, event. Were they explorations of Tolkien's sense of the writer's and singer's role? Well, we'd need to see more 'in the text' I'd think, to see the subject of the writer and his work, brought out as a topic more prominently.

On the other hand, I think there is something here about the siren call of the road. The road, the song, the quest, requires only one thing of the singer, the teller, of Frodo. And that is the one thing which the singer desires above all else and longs to give: a perfect economy of action and focus. All heart, all mind, all focus, all emotion are devoted solely to that one purpose, the road, the song, the Quest. There is no distraction exception those which challenge the focus, no residue of other commitments, nothing messay with cross purpose. It is perfect in its simplicity.

This perfection of economy does not pertain to others--certainly not to Sam as Mayor of the Shire and definitely not to Frodo upon his return to the Shire. The focus is no longer pure, but splintered through all the colours of messy world. This, too, pertains to readers, for at the close the single-minded focus, the pure pursuit of story, must also be scattered for our thoughts about the story must now find a new discipline in our own scattered thoughts about the road, the Quest, the story. And this is a far harder thing to accomplish.

The loss is of this perfection of action and focus, I think, rather than a necessary detachment or a not knowing. Nothing now is simple.

[Lush]

This also seems to be a commentary on creativity in general, a reminder that the creative process is both bitter and sweet. I can imagine Tolkien at his desk, writing in pleasure and writing in pain, producing characters that act out the sacrifices one must often make for their craft.

Talent equals power equals responsibility; an often heavy burden to carry through life, and nobody else can do it for you. You're out there on your own.

I wonder if Tolkien is associating the creative process with birth and death, and the idea that perhaps we chip away at ourselves when living the creative life, and obscure ourselves through our stories and songs, for better or for worse.

Furthermore, I believe that this could also be another take on the Biblical notion of not loving one's own creations too much. Just like when it comes to the fall of Gondolin.

[littlemanpoet]

I tend to see things the way Bêthberry does. The "lost bard" seems "the right" way to handle the role in myth and legend. Maybe there's more to it than that for Tolkien. Maybe some of us are finding applications he never intended, and some he wouldn't mind.

[Anguirel]

Originally Posted by Of the Ruin of Doriath

It is told that a seer and harp-player of Brethil named Glirhuin made a song, saying that the Stone of the Hapless should not be defiled by Morgoth, nor ever thrown down, not though the sea should drown the land; as after indeed befell...

I came across this most minor of minor characters when researching the Haladin for Silmarillion Survivor. I believe his single over-looked appearance is critical to our question. Glirhuin is a "seer and harp-player", as if these are two elements of the same role; and of course, in parts of folklore and in Tolkien, they are. There has always been an intimate connection between recording the past and recording the future; the harp is the instrument of both. Maglor also perhaps prophecises, in his famous "less evil shall we do in the breaking" speech.

For my folklore sources, I recall firstly the Celtic "priesthood", and the people of Brethil seem to me to be deeply Celtic, if in a Welsh rather than Gaelic sense. Celts wishing to become druids first trained as bards; then, after many years of bardic performance, as itinerant judges called brehons, one of whom, incidentally, I portrayed in Werewolf IV; then finally trained as full druids.

Folklore perhaps rooted in this includes heroes of the Mabinogion like Gwydion and Math, mysterious magicians who exercise their powers through music; the legendary Merlin of the Prophecies, Precepts and Vitae Merlinae; the semi-factual Taliesin, bard to Owain ap Urien, prince of Rheged, and to Maelgwyn of Gwent (I think) whose mystical powers are well documented; and Thomas the Rimer, who predicted accurately the death of Alexander III, King of Scots, who fell from a clifftop.

Furthermore, in Tolkien's world the whole structure of destiny is based, of course, in the Music of the Ainur. It makes sense, therefore, that bards are attuned to it, can to an extent tap its knowledge. (Though this does raise the question: when the Ainur sung, who was playing the harp?) Perhaps the invariably mist-shrouded departures of minstrels and harpers portray them finally going to join the music they have chased, mostly unknowingly, for the whole of their lives.