The Silmarils

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Okay, I have been puzzled recently.

On the cover of my copy of the Silmarillion, there is a picture of the Silmarils, and they are blue. When I read the book, I envision them as being red...
Any comments?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

I always imagined them as clear or "white", or, so to say, simply "bright light". Something very like the icon above (though even it has some strange hues...).

The text says the following:

Like the crystal of diamonds it appeared (...) Yet that crystal was to the Silmarils but as is the body to the Children of Ilúvatar: the house of its inner fire, that is within it and yet in all parts of it, and is its life. And the inner fire of the Silmarils Fëanor made of the blended light of the Trees of Valinor, which lives in them yet, though the Trees have long withered and shine no more. Therefore even in the darkness of the deepest treasury the Silmarils of their own radiance shone like the stars of Varda; and yet, as were they indeed living things, they rejoiced in light and received it and gave it back in hues more marvellous than before.

The "inner fire", I believe, is not meant to be real fire (like what appears when you make a campfire), so this, I believe, says nothing about the color. "Blended light", I believe, also does not mean that the Silmarils would be golden or silver. "Like stars of Varda" is interesting, since all the stars, when you look at them, whatever their original color is (from red through yellow to bright white/blue) look more or less "white" to us. It's not necessary to understand this sentence as speaking about color, but about origin: simply as an illustration that the Silmarils shine of their own radiance. The last sentence is the most important for me: I'd say this clearly states that the Silmarils were translucent (though "boosting" the light that goes through them) and there's no need to think that they were not also transparent, that would mean: clear, like glass, simple crystals, yet giving out radiance of their own.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I would agree, but add that 'hues more marvellous than before' suggests something like the multicolored 'flash and fire' of diamonds.

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Thanks
I guess it was the "inner fire" part that got me...Now I know better!