Do Balrogs Have Wings?

[HerenIstarion]

Originally Posted by narfforc

Like I keep saying, people are quoting things that Tolkien may have wrote, but did not ultimately sanction, You cannot quote from The Silmarillion, it was published after his death, and you cannot know if seeing that sentence he would have been happy leaving it in, especially after what had already been published in LotR

Though I see your point, I tend not to put that much weight on published work as opposed to not published, and what is later as opposed to what was written earlier. After all it is all chance - per instance, should publisher's reader read early version of Quenta in 1937, instead of just seeing scraps of Lay of Leithian, who knows what order (and what kind of at all) books would have been published in? Does the printing press sanctify the truth? Tolkien was not happy with lot of things in his published works either, he just had less freedom to alter them.

Do not misunderstand me - I do rely heavier on what is published and/or what represents later view of the author, but still, I generally tend to view the legendarium as a whole (one may say, historically, or even 'historiographically'), as a complex compilation of sources. Quoting myself from C-Thread:

we, readers ... of Tolkien, are free to use any of the texts (starting with the very first up to the very last) which we know to be canonical – i.e. by Tolkien himself, and apply to them our own judgement.

and part of the list from the same post:

A) What Tolkien was creating is nearly as complex as the history of the world itself
B) What he did create, must be viewed (as he himelf was evaluating it as such, 'finding out' rather than 'inventing') as history derived from and depending on different and quite a number of sources as well
C) Following A and B, different sources need not be in agreement between themselves

(Cf also Two Gandalfs by littlemanpoet)

Following said, there is a place in my head for hosts of marching corporate balrogs and for 7 Balrogs corporate too but wrapped in shadow (even if two types of balrog be purely speculation of yours truly, after all. Freedom of the reader? I suppose, but inside the boundaries set by the author. See C-Thread again)

On the other hand, as any historian may agree, it happens that even most smart&clever bookworm may err reading his sources. I'm 100% sure it is not me who's erring in ripping balrog wings off (if they were there in the first place), I know I'm right, and, following narfforc, I proclaim the truth to stand as 'balrogs had no wings', but (and here we part company with narfforc ) source read-outs may differ, so everybody, who can not be convinced is welcome to have their own opinion on the subject

PS Funny how I, having proclaimed in one of my previous that 'physical form does not count that much' spent precious hour pondering the subject (I lost count of 'agains' to go at the end of such sentence )

[Aiwendil]

HerenIstarion wrote:

Quite so, but that Bal is as in Valar rather, whilst Balrog's Bal is:

Ah, so 'twas in the 1930s ("Etymologies"). But in author's note 28 to "Quendi and Eldar" (1959-1960):

Some other derivatives [of *RUKU] are in Quenya: . . . rauko and arauko (< *grauk-) 'a powerful, hostile, and terrible creature', especially in the compound Valarauko 'Demon of Might', applied later to the more powerful and terrible of the Maia servants of Morgoth. In Sindarin appear, for instance, raug and graug, and the compound Balrog (equivalents of Q rauko, etc.)

So it would appear here that "Balrog" is the S. cognate of Q. "Valarauko", which is translated "Demon of Might" rather than "Demon of Torment".

Or perhaps there are hosts of "Demons of Torment" and a seven powerful "Demons of Might"?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Ah, so 'twas in the 1930s ("Etymologies"). But in author's note 28 to "Quendi and Eldar" (1959-1960):

So it would appear here that "Balrog" is the S. cognate of Q. "Valarauko", which is translated "Demon of Might" rather than "Demon of Torment".

John Garth ('Tolkien & the Great War') gives an account of the origin of Balrogs & the original meaning of the name:

Tolkien had listed several monstrous creatures in the 'Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarrissa & its ethnological chart: tauler, tyulqin, and sarqin, names which in Qenya indicate tree-like stature or an appetite for flesh. . . All these new races of monsters proved transitory, bar two: the Balrogs and the Orcs. Orcs were bred in 'the subterranean heat and slime' by Melko: 'Their hearts were of granite and their bodies deformed; foul their faces which smiled not, but their laugh that of the clash of metal. . .' The name had been taken from the Old English orc, 'demon', but only because it was phonetically suitable. The role of demon properly belongs to Balrogs, whose Goldogrin name means 'cruel demon' or 'demon of anguish'. These are Melko's flame-wielding shock troops and battlefield captains, the cohorts of Evil.

The Balrogs were 'born' on the battlefields of WW1 & I can't help feeling that however much Tolkien's thoughts about them & their nature may have developed over the course of his life, what they meant & their appearance would have changed little in essence.

If we imagine German troops approaching through the mist & smoke of no man's land, spraying flame from their dreadful Flammenwerfers, I think its easy to see where Tolkien got the idea from. We can even see a possible origin for their 'whips of flame':

The smaller, lighter Flammenwerfer (the Kleinflammenwerfer) was designed for portable use, carried by a single man. Using pressurised air and carbon dioxide or nitrogen it belched forth a stream of burning oil for as much as 18 metres.

(Good article here:http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/flamethrowers.htm)

[HerenIstarion]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Ah, so 'twas in the 1930s ("Etymologies"). But in author's note 28 to "Quendi and Eldar" (1959-1960)

True. Still:

Originally Posted by HerenIstarion

I generally tend to view the legendarium as a whole (one may say, historically, or even 'historiographically'), as a complex compilation of sources.

+ rauko and arauko (< *grauk-) 'a powerful, hostile, and terrible creature'[/i] is both powerful and terrible/hostile

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Or perhaps there are hosts of "Demons of Torment" and a seven powerful "Demons of Might"?

Perhaps

Originally Posted by davem

If we imagine German troops approaching through the mist & smoke of no man's land, spraying flame from their dreadful Flammenwerfers, I think its easy to see where Tolkien got the idea from.

Plausible. Very plausible. My compliments . Thanks for the link, too. It is most interesting that on Somme, Brits already had their own flamethrowers ready (quoting from the article you linked us to, davem):

Originally Posted by FirstWorldWar.com

The British, intrigued by the possibilities offered by flamethrowers, experimented with their own models. In readiness for the Somme offensive they constructed four sizeable models (weighing two tons each), built directly into a forward trench constructed in No Man's Land a mere 60 yards from the German line.

But those were not portable, though.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by narfforc
Like I keep saying, people are quoting things that Tolkien may have wrote, but did not ultimately sanction, You cannot quote from The Silmarillion, it was published after his death, and you cannot know if seeing that sentence he would have been happy leaving it in, especially after what had already been published in LotR

That's what erasers and pre-death publications are for. Regardless of how [horrifyingly] much writing someone's got laying around, if a writer has written something that he wants to change, he will track down the proper page[s] and rewrite it. If he died before he could change it, than it stays canon, because it is what was last written. You can't say "what he would want now" because he's not alive now to want it. Although I'll stick with not wholly trusting C's work, because it is obviously not J.R.R's, I still insist on wings, whether or not they were made of shadow.

Before I thought of the wings in terms of an ostrich, or a dodo (<-also explains that inconvenient extinction), but after Saucie's article, I'm all for too big to fly around under ground.

Sorry if this post is a little admonishing, hurried, or offensive to anyone, but I'm in a bit of a hurry and have about 20 seconds before I have to leave.

Regards,

Fea

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

The Balrogs were 'born' on the battlefields of WW1 & I can't help feeling that however much Tolkien's thoughts about them & their nature may have developed over the course of his life, what they meant & their appearance would have changed little in essence.

I think you are right. Still, unless one accepts something like HerenIstarion's theory that there were in fact two quite distinct types of creature referred to as Balrogs/balrogs, there is some major change in Tolkien's conception of them represented by his correction, in the Annals of Aman, of a reference to a "host" of Balrogs, with the note that there were only "3 or at most 7".

Anyone who's really interested in that issue might want to look at this discussion in the New Silmarillion project.

HerenIstarion wrote:

+ rauko and arauko (< *grauk-) 'a powerful, hostile, and terrible creature' is both powerful and terrible/hostile

Yes, but if "Balrog" is the cognate of "Valarauko" then the "Bal" comes not from NGWAL- but from BAL-.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

If we imagine German troops approaching through the mist & smoke of no man's land, spraying flame from their dreadful Flammenwerfers, I think its easy to see where Tolkien got the idea from.

Only if the German troops were flying toward the Allied lines with great big, entirely functional, wings.

(Very interesting link and information, though.)

narfforc: from LotR, written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published in his lifetime:

it stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall.

[Neithan]

OK Fordim, you are just trying to annoy us no wingers aren't you? I must admit I gritted my teeth when I first saw what you wrote, you know full well the argument about the meaning of that quote so I will not bring it up again.