Dragons - How did they come to be?

[davem]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Now you make a good point there. I'd have to disagree though; although his ambition to make his secondary world consistent to both its own internal logic and to the logics of the real world we live in ultimately proved futile, it was also this very ambition which made his works so rich and wonderful to explore.

Yes, but. My point is he never achieved his ambition. Thus, its hardly possible to take any statement he made about M-e as definitive. One can draw conclusions from statements he did make, but its impossible to be sure that Tolkien himself would have come to the same conclusion - & even if he had there's no way of knowing if he would have changed his mind about it later.

My point is HoM-e is a bad (if not useless) resource for anyone wanting definitive statements, let alone a coherent, internally self-consistent history & physics/metaphysics of M-e. You find the same thing with the letters - people take the letter to Michael about women :

Their gift is to be receptive, stimulated, fertilised (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point - & how they can go no further when they leave his hand... etc

as a definitive statement of his views. However, as David Doughan shows in his article in the latest Mallorn Tolkien's views can be seen to change over the years, & his depiction of Erendis seems to reflect that. And he was certainly very proud that he had a daughter, as well as sons at Oxford - plus, as Doughan points out, one can hardly imagine the writer of a letter like that quoting Simone de Bovoir with such approval as he did in the 'Tolkien in Oxford' documentary. Tolkien changed as an individual. His attitudes changed, & his fiction reflected that.

The real problem, as I indicated earlier, is that later changes both to the overall physics/metaphysics may have worked to an extent, but would have devastated the earlier stories - some of which had not been touched for decades. His later theorising on the nature of Orcs is fascinating - but contradicts what he wrote about them in LotR & elsewhere. The stuff in 'Myths Transformed' would have destroyed the Sil which existed up to that point.

A lot of Tolkien 'fans' have constructed a very complex physics & metaphysics for M-e earth which is all their own work, although based in Tolkien's writings - thing is these writings were produced over a period of 60 odd years & don't all fit together that well. I think the problem is that Tolkien managed to create an illusion of M-e being a 'real' place, which worked according to certain rules, a place of facts & figures which could be proven, confirmed & replicated in a laboratory. It wasn't. It was a work of imagination, which Tolkien was making up, changing & evolving as he went along. Just as you could only achieve a 'complete, self-consistent' Silmarillion by excluding more of Tolkien's writings than you included, so you could only achieve such a 'complete, self-consistent' cosmology, history & physics/metaphysics by doing the same thing - & to attempt either rather misses the point (to my mind, at least).

Bombadil is never explained, but explanations have been offered 'in line' with statements made by Tolkien - in other contexts & in regard to other characters. Same with Ungoliant. Some of the stuff in Osanwe Kenta is fascinating - other stuff, like Tolkien's attempt to explain the behaviour of Manwe, is, frankly, unconvincing & doesn't 'fit'. The fate of Balder as given in Rivers & Beacon Hills of Gondor is creepy, but belongs rather to the worlds of Lovecraft & RE Howard (whose work he had been reading around the time he wrote it) than to Middle earth as we know it. The Athrabeth is clearly an attempt to introduce the central aspect of Christian belief into M-e - not because he wanted to turn the Legendarium into a Christian 'allegory', but because he wanted to tie it into the primary world (same motivation as was behind the 'Myths Transformed' fiasco - which it is in the context of the Legendarium, however beautifully written & inventive in itself). But, as Tolkien himself seems to realised, it collapsed rather into a parody of Christianity, & for all the beauty of its language & the truly moving story of the love between Andreth & Aegnor it's unconvincing & doesn't feel like it belongs in the Legendarium - the Eru presented in the Athrabeth is simply not the Eru we encounter everywhere else he appears in the Legendarium. As a stand-alone work it is interesting - like much of the other speculative writing.

[skip spence]

Well, you did say that Tolkien made a mistake of trying to make his fictional world plausable as a real ancient history of our world. I don't agree that it was a mistake, even though he didn't realise his ambition, or was ever likely to. This ambition, although never fully realised, is a major part of the attraction his works has on many fans.

But I don't think we're in any real disagrement. His fictional world did, as you say, evolve over many years and many parts aren't consistant with each other. It seems you've read much more of the obscure works written by (or related to) JRRT than I have. I've recently read "Morgoth's Ring" however and found it fascinating, especially the fictional theology stuff and the writings about the fea and hroa (sp?). What's Osanwe Kenta by the way?

And besides, even if we did accept JRRTs world as complete and fully realised, we must consider its fictional perspective. The writings are presented as stories or rather translations written down by mortal men or hobbits, with sources often having passed though many hands and renditions and with many long years between when the events took place and their final documented form. This would render the stories uncertain truthwise. Also, not even the high elves or the Valar were present at the creation of orcs or dragons or balrogs, and none save Morgoth and his most trusty servants therefore know the full truth about their conception. What is written about the orgins of these creatures are usually presented as the speculations of the wise.

[davem]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Well, you did say that Tolkien made a mistake of trying to make his fictional world plausable as a real ancient history of our world. I don't agree that it was a mistake, even though he didn't realise his ambition, or was ever likely to. This ambition, although never fully realised, is a major part of the attraction his works has on many fans.

But, as CT stated, the project would have been fatal to the mythology. We'd have lost the story of the Two Trees & the creation of the Sun & Moon, the creation & nature of the Silmarils would have had to be altered. 'Myths Transformed' may have contained some interesting ideas (& some beautiful prose) but it would also have been an absolute disaster. Ultimately it was a dead end.

But I don't think we're in any real disagrement. His fictional world did, as you say, evolve over many years and many parts aren't consistant with each other. It seems you've read much more of the obscure works written by (or related to) JRRT than I have. I've recently read "Morgoth's Ring" however and found it fascinating, especially the fictional theology stuff and the writings about the fea and hroa (sp?). What's Osanwe Kenta by the way?

Osanwe Kenta was an essay Tolkien wrote on thought transference in M-e (there's an example of it in LotR where you have Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel & Celeborn sitting together & communicating 'telepathically'.

Here now for seven days they tarried, for the time was at hand for another parting which they were loth to make. Soon Celeborn and Galadriel and their folk would turn eastward, and so pass by the Redhorn Gate and down the Dimrill Stair to the Silverlode and to their own country. They had journeyed thus far by the west-ways, for they had much to speak of with Elrond and with Gandalf, and here they lingered still in converse with their friends. Often long after the hobbits were wrapped in sleep they would sit together under the stars, recalling the ages that were gone and all their joys and labours in the world, or holding council, concerning the days to come. If any wanderer had chanced to pass, little would he have seen or heard, and it would have seemed to him only that he saw grey figures, carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. For they did not move or speak with mouth, looking from mind to mind; and only their shining eyes stirred and kindled as their thoughts went to and fro.

O.K. basically explains how it operates. For some reason it was excluded from HoM-e but published in the Journal Vinyar Tengwar no 39. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/%C3%93sanwe-kenta

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

My point is HoM-e is a bad (if not useless) resource for anyone wanting definitive statements, let alone a coherent, internally self-consistent history & physics/metaphysics of M-e. You find the same thing with the letters - people take the letter to Michael about women :

Quote:
Their gift is to be receptive, stimulated, fertilised (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point - & how they can go no further when they leave his hand... etc

as a definitive statement of his views. However, as David Doughan shows in his article in the latest Mallorn Tolkien's views can be seen to change over the years, & his depiction of Erendis seems to reflect that. And he was certainly very proud that he had a daughter, as well as sons at Oxford - plus, as Doughan points out, one can hardly imagine the writer of a letter like that quoting Simone de Bovoir with such approval as he did in the 'Tolkien in Oxford' documentary. Tolkien changed as an individual. His attitudes changed, & his fiction reflected that.

It's amazing how many fathers change their minds/attitudes when faced with a daughter's abilities and education.

As always with any writer's letters, it is helpful to keep in mind the recipient of the correspondence. That dynamic differs from the dynamic between writer and audience of a story, of a scholarly article, of a documentary, of an interview. None of those secondary sources really supplant the primary ones, anyway.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Bear in mind not only changes of opinion over the long term, but also specific contexts in which a given opinion was given written form. For example, the notorious letter to Michael was written in an attempt to dissuade him from a marriage his father deemed hasty and ill-considered. His snort about the Nibelungen Ring was made in an angry letter excoriating the odious Ake Ohlmarks; in conversation with say Lewis or an intelligent fan Tolkien would probably have had a lot to say about the parallels and differences.