Unnumbered Tears - what if?

[davem]

Nilpaurion,

I do wonder about the extent to which the Valar's inaction is due to them trying to 'actualise the Music' - which they are bound to do, IMO, & how much is down to shock, confusion & self doubt. They thought they were doing the right thing up to then, & suddenly it all collapses like a pack of cards.

At that point they suddenly cease to do anything effective against Melkor, as if they're afraid that any major action will blow up in their faces, so they wait until they feel they know what they should do - but lets face it, if it hadn't been for the Noldor in ME Morgoth would have had a free rein to do whatever he wanted. The Valar, in their confusion, & desire to see the Noldor humbled, desert Men, Dwarves & Sindarin Elves.

I agree with H-I as regards Morgoth - I recall an essay which describes him at the end 'cowering stupidly' in his lowest dungeon as the forces of the Valar (finally) assail Angband. But then, Morgoth isn;t some kind of Byronic 'anti-hero', going down in a blaze of glory. Tolkien wouldn't have created such a personification of evil, because he had seen real evil on the Somme, & knew that it's really cowardly, self obsessed & cruel. This is the difference between a writer like Pullman, who has lived a safe middle class existence & can play with the idea of evil being darkly attractive, & one like Tolkien who knew evil for what really was, & couldn't play around with it in that way.

[Firefoot]

I do wonder about the extent to which the Valar's inaction is due to them trying to 'actualise the Music' - which they are bound to do, IMO, & how much is down to shock, confusion & self doubt. They thought they were doing the right thing up to then, & suddenly it all collapses like a pack of cards.

Shock, confusion, doubt - isn't that exactly what caused them to stop making music in the first place? They were confused at what was going on because of Melkor's theme and they weren't sure what they were supposed to be doing anymore. They were making music the way they thought was right - and indeed it was! - and then Melkor started his own theme and the music of those Ainur "collapsed like a pack of cards", as Davem so well put it. I don't think they were actively "trying" to actualise the music - they don't have to be for the music to unfold. I agree with Nilpaurion - their non-participation was pre-ordained by the music.

[davem]

Quote:I don't think they were actively "trying" to actualise the music - they don't have to be for the music to unfold. I agree with Nilpaurion - their non-participation was pre-ordained by the music.

But then you could still say they were following the Music. My own feeling is that they lost a sense of what the Music was directing them to do, rather than stopping becuase the Music was stopping them. If they were 'stopped' by the Music from acting, then that would mean that the Noldor were meant to go to ME - though probably not in the way they did - & that they were meant to hold Morgoth at bay till the Valar could act effectively against Morgoth - which would mean that the Noldor's 'sin' is not in leaving Valinor - in fact they should have gone - which would mean the Valar were wrong to try & stop them.

[Maédhros]

I do wonder about the extent to which the Valar's inaction is due to them trying to 'actualise the Music' - which they are bound to do, IMO, & how much is down to shock, confusion & self doubt. They thought they were doing the right thing up to then, & suddenly it all collapses like a pack of cards.

I have to say that I totally disagree with this notion.
From Vinyar Tengwar: Ósanwe Kenta

If we speak last of the "folly" of Manwë and the weakness and unwariness of the Valar, let us beware how we judge. In the histories, indeed, we may be amazed and grieved to read how (seemingly) Melkor deceived and cozened others, and how even Manwë appears at times almost a simpleton compared with him: as if a kind but unwise father were treating a wayward child who would assuredly in time perceive the error of his ways. Whereas we, looking on and knowing the outcome, see now that Melkor knew well the error of his ways, but was fixed in them by hate and pride beyond return. He could read the mind of Manwë, for the door was open; but his own mind was false and even if the door seemed open, there were doors of iron within closed for ever.
How otherwise would you have it? Should Manwë and the Valar meet secrecy with subterfuge, treachery with falsehood, lies with more lies? If Melkor would usurp their rights, should they deny his? Can hate overcome hate? Nay, Manwë was wiser; or being ever open to Eru he did His will, which is more than wisdom. He was ever open because he had nothing to conceal, no thought that it was harmful for any to know, if they could comprehend it. Indeed Melkor knew his will without questioning it; and he knew that Manwe was bound by the commands and injunctions of Eru, and would do this or abstain from that in accordance with them, always, even knowing that Melkor would break them as it suited his purpose. Thus the merciless will ever count on mercy, and the liars make use of truth; for if mercy and truth are withheld from the cruel and the lying, they have ceased to be honoured.

At that point they suddenly cease to do anything effective against Melkor, as if they're afraid that any major action will blow up in their faces, so they wait until they feel they know what they should do - but lets face it, if it hadn't been for the Noldor in ME Morgoth would have had a free rein to do whatever he wanted. The Valar, in their confusion, & desire to see the Noldor humbled, desert Men, Dwarves & Sindarin Elves.

While it is true that the Valar seemed to desert Men, it appears that it was not so.
From Morgoth's Ring: Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth. The Tale of Adanel

Some say the Disaster happened at the beginning of the history of our people, before any had yet died. The Voice had spoken to us, and we had listened. The Voice said: 'Ye are my children. I have sent you to dwell here. In time ye will inherit all this Earth, but first ye must be children and learn. Call on me and I shall hear; for I am watching over you.'
We understood the Voice in our hearts, though we had no words yet. Then the desire for words awoke in us, and we began to make them. But we were few, and the world was wide and strange. Though we greatly desired to understand, learning was difficult, and the making of words was slow.
In that time we called often and the Voice answered. But it seldom answered our questions, saying only: 'First seek to find the answer for yourselves. For ye will have joy in the finding, and so grow from childhood and become wise. Do not seek to leave childhood before your time.'
But we were in haste, and we desired to order things to our will; and the shapes of many things that we wished to make awoke in our minds. Therefore we spoke less and less to the Voice.
Then one appeared among us, in our own form visible, but greater and more beautiful; and he said that he had come out of pity. 'Ye should not have been left alone and uninstructed,' he said. 'The world is full of marvellous riches which knowledge can unlock. Ye could have food more abundant and more delicious than the poor things that ye now eat. Ye could have dwellings of ease, in which ye could keep light and shut out the night. Ye could be clad even as I.' ...
The first Voice we never heard again, save once. In the stillness of the night It spoke, saying: 'Ye have abjured Me, but ye remain Mine. I gave you life. Now it shall be shortened, and each of you in a little while shall come to Me, to learn who is your Lord: the one ye worship, or I who made him.'

It seems that the Valar could not come to the aid of Men as when the Elves came because Men were counselled by Eru himself. Now of course, when one reads the Published Silmarillion it is understandable to come up with the idea that after the Fall of the Ñoldor, the Valar left all of ME for the Ñoldor to battle Morgoth. It is indeed IMO, that the Sindar elves and the dwarves were unjustly punished in a matter between the Ñoldor and the Valar though.

One has to question the idea of what would have happened if the Valar had fought earlier with Morgoth? Look that most of Beleriand had been destroyed in the War of Wrath. Can you imagine how much more of ME would have been destroyed in an earlier battle? Morgoth as a being, would have had more inherent power in itself than he had at a later point. IMO, much more of Arda would have been destroyed.

Or course, the Valar themselves are not perfect an even they lacked estel.
From Morgoth's Ring: Converse of Manwë and Eru

but it was not until the death of Míriel in Aman that Manwë appealed directly to Eru for counsel. Eru 'accepted and ratified the position' - though making it plain to Manwë that the Valar should have contested Melkor's domination of Middle-earth far earlier, and that they had lacked estel: they should have trusted that in a legitimate war Eru would not have permitted Melkor so greatly to damage Arda that the Children could not come, or could not inhabit it.

[davem]

In this, what I see is Tolkien, having the original story of the Valar's inaction - which worked on BoLT, & even in the Quenta, when they were less 'Angelic' in a strictly, shall we say, 'Catholic' sense, attempting to construct a theological explanation for the Valar's inaction. The later writings, as Christopher Tolkien has stated, caused numerous problems for his father, as he attempted to make them conform to scientific & theological standards. I struggle with Tolkien's reasoning here

Quote:Should Manwë and the Valar meet secrecy with subterfuge, treachery with falsehood, lies with more lies? If Melkor would usurp their rights, should they deny his? Can hate overcome hate?

This doesn't work as a justification for their lack of immediate action, & their demand that the Noldor be broken & they themselves be begged for aid, before they will intervene. This is the story of thousands of years of hellish suffering, enslavement & violent death of innocents. Could the Valar not have known what was really going on?

Was Tolkien attempting to find an explanation for the suffering in this world - why doesn't God intervene to stop the horrors? Well, God can't go tricking evil people, & taking away their freedom, can He?

What Tolkien seems to be doing is constructing an explanation, attempting to fathom the motives of God in a world where suffering continues unabated. These later writings are profound theological explorations, but do they belong in ME?

In LotR the explanation is simpler, & more profound - Frodo tells Sam that suffering is simply 'like things are in the world. Hopes fail, an end comes' all else is our feeble attempt to fathom the mind of God, & work out the reason for suffering. These later writings are the attempt of an old man to make sense of his life, & of life & death in general. He is using the medium of his Legendarium to explore questions that baffled him. He has long since left behind his desire to create a mythology for England, or to create a mythology at all.

The events he is using for his theological explorations are in stories which were never meant for such deep analysis. He had written stories to bring back a sense of magic & wonder to a world which he felt had lost it - through war & industrialisation. In these last writings he is using those stories to do something else. They aren't part of the stories, they are his comments, & thoughts on things much deeper. They can be used to give depth to the stories - but that was never their intent, & they contradict too often the stories themselves. But that is not important, because we're dealing with something of a wholly different order. As Christopher Tolkien has stated, these writings became the repository of some of his father's profoundest thoughts.

If we take the stories themselves, the actual events of the tales, out interpretations may stand alongside Tolkien's own - because what we have in the pieces quoted are simply Tolkien's attempts to interpret tales he had long since ceased to tell, & was in the process of trying to understand.

[the phantom]

If they were 'stopped' by the Music from acting, then that would mean that the Noldor were meant to go to ME - though probably not in the way they did - & that they were meant to hold Morgoth at bay till the Valar could act effectively against Morgoth - which would mean that the Noldor's 'sin' is not in leaving Valinor - in fact they should have gone - which would mean the Valar were wrong to try & stop them.

Well, that's pretty much what I have always believed, though I don't exactly think that the music "stopped" the Valar and made it so they couldn't have acted differently. I think the music just foretold that they wouldn't act differently than they did.

[HerenIstarion]

this thread grew reminiscent of Evil Things thread, heh.

Well, since most of what I can do will be repeating my own comments from over there, and in that I will fall short of Maédhros since I lack access to VT resources, I will add just a bit only:

Where meant re:

1. The whole history was meant to happen as it did, for Eru is omniscient and was certainly in the know what was going to happen when He said Ea. (things might have been different, but they could not have been better - as quoted from Leaf by Niggle
2. Freedom of choice is not eliminated by omniscience of Eru and the maxim of "it all was meant to be in this way"

And why should not we lend our ears to Tolkien, even if it seems to some that he contradicted himself in his later writings, after all?

[symestreem]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien wouldn't have created such a personification of evil, because he had seen real evil on the Somme, & knew that it's really cowardly, self obsessed & cruel.

By the Somme I assume you mean the Western Front in World War I. I question your portrayal of the war as 'evil'. Who exactly was evil? The Central Powers, for seeking domination? The Allied Powers, for opposing them and causing bloodshed? I also question the extent to which Tolkien saw real evil on the front lines. Soldiers do what they are told- this was before the Nuremberg trials. The evil to be found would have been in the high command, not the men-at-war. That doesn't mean that the war was right- I just think that evil has to be deliberate. For example, Morgoth was evil because he was trying to be evil, but Feanor was not evil.

[davem]

Originally Posted by symestreem

By the Somme I assume you mean the Western Front in World War I. I question your portrayal of the war as 'evil'. Who exactly was evil? The Central Powers, for seeking domination? The Allied Powers, for opposing them and causing bloodshed? I also question the extent to which Tolkien saw real evil on the front lines. Soldiers do what they are told- this was before the Nuremberg trials. The evil to be found would have been in the high command, not the men-at-war. That doesn't mean that the war was right- I just think that evil has to be deliberate. For example, Morgoth was evil because he was trying to be evil, but Feanor was not evil.

What is your concept of evil, if the Somme battlefield doesn't graphically portray the presence of it for you? Try this link & then tell me there was no deliberate evil to be seen on the Somme:

http://toosvanholstein.nl/greatwar/t.../tolkiene.html

Its not about individual persons doing 'evil' things - its much deeper & more horrible , a callous disregard, a lack of compassion, a deliberate infliction of suffering & degradation. All too often done for the 'highest' reasons, by people convinced they're in the right . Morgoth is a 'symbol' of something monstrous which is just way too close to most of us, & the 'spirit' of Morgoth was in the air of the Somme.

[Lalaith]

There is evil to be found in all wars, but not all wars are alike in cause and situation. I apologise for what I know is generalisation, but I think WWI was, overall, an evil situation which was the result of unbelievable blundering stupidity from those in charge on both sides. WWII was different in that the evil there was more deliberate, one-sided and premeditated.
It is interesting that Tolkien's work, born out of the first kind of evil, actually in general portrays the latter.

[symestreem]

My definition of evil, as best as I can put it into words, is doing something bad or harmful deliberately without extenuating circumstances, to further your own ends or to hurt people. The Somme line was a case of two opposing groups fighting for their lives because their commanders ordered them into battle. There were cases of evil in this campaign, there's no doubt about that. However, the two groups of soldiers killing each other was not evil, or not evil on their part. It was the result of misguided and possibly evil decisions by the command.

[davem]

Well, the soldiers didn't have to obey their orders to kill, so we can't absolve them entirely of any moral resposibility for their actions. They were moral beings, not robots.

Also, we can't say how much deliberate cruelty, & therefore 'evil', was committed by individual soldiers. I just think its too simplistic to say the 'evil' ones were all in the war rooms, & everyone on the battlefield was morally good.

What you have to keep in mind is that WW1 was the first war of the Machines - planes & tanks appear for the first time, there is the use of such things as heavy machine guns, barbed wire, high explosives, barbed wire stretched across the battlefield, & yet the men, from the commanders down are still basically 'victorians'. Men are sent across the mud into machine gun fire with fixed bayonets! There are still cavalry divisions - officers riding horses into battle & fighting with swords.

If you think about that madness surely you're struck by the presence of something beyond callous or incompetent commanders dispatching innocent, unthinking young men to their deaths. There was something else. It was hell & hell is suffused with the presence of evil. there was something'evil' in all that waste, a good part of a whole generation thrown away, the soldiers themselves throwing their own lives away. Some thing more than insanity was going on there, & I don't know what else to call it but 'evil' - not evil individuals, but evil nonetheless.

[symestreem]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien wouldn't have created such a personification of evil, because he had seen real evil on the Somme, & knew that it's really cowardly, self obsessed & cruel.

Originally Posted by davem

It was hell & hell is suffused with the presence of evil. there was something'evil' in all that waste, a good part of a whole generation thrown away, the soldiers themselves throwing their own lives away. Some thing more than insanity was going on there, & I don't know what else to call it but 'evil' - not evil individuals, but evil nonetheless.

In the first quote, you seem to be talking about evil with a face, or evil personified, as you said. In the second, you are talking about a nameless, faceless evil, that appears like the mist. I agree with you that there was wrongness and evil in World War I (and II, and all the others) but it was not the personified evil, like Morgoth and Sauron, found in Tolkien's books. Both forms of evil that you discussed appears in Tolkien's books. The second form may well have come from Tolkien's war experiences- I can't imagine anyone going through that and not being affected by it- but where does he get the idea for the Morgoth-and-Sauron type of evil? Isn't it just as stereotypical as Pullman's Lord Asriel, and the Bell-villain? Is there this kind of evil in the world?

[davem]

I suppose it depends whether you believe that 'evil' must have a motivation beyond human weakness & selfishness. I struggle with this idea most of the time, as its not exactly 'logical' to believe in the existence of some kind of 'Demon King'. Yet there are things that people do, individually & collectively, which seem in their effects, beyond the results of weakness & selfishness. I don't know whether its something 'internal' or 'external' to us, but its not part of our conscious selves. The desire to control, coerce, dominate, destroy, is in us, & can't always be traced to the effects of 'society' on us. You can look at all the economic & social reasons for the rise of Nazism, but none of that will explain the Holocaust.

Tolkien gives evil a mythological form in Middle Earth, & we get Morgoth & Sauron, but the 'effect' they have on Middle Earth is very much the kind of horrors we have witnessed in the past century - whether we can conclude from that that there is some kind of objectively existing 'evil' force behind events like the Somme & the Holocaust is one I can't answer - ask a theologian