The Nature of Middle-earth
Page 23
XVI
FROM THE STATUTE OF FINWË AND MÍRIEL
Christopher Tolkien notes (X:253 n.15) that there is a shift in the text of The Statute of Finwë and Míriel, in which a break – at “‘So be it!’ said Manwë” (X:247), not at the end of a page – precedes a continuation at the top of a subsequent page – with: “Therefore the Statute was proclaimed …” – in a rougher script than what preceded (usually a mark of Tolkien taking up and resuming a work at a later date). It happens, though, that an apparently supplanted text, and the original recto of the continuation page, intervenes. Though not struck through, much of it was marked with square brackets, which often indicates Tolkien considering its deletion, or perhaps removal to another place. I give this unused/supplanted text here in full.
It was asked, also: What if the bereaved spouse afterwards, by some ill chance, be also slain or die; or if the second spouse also die. Who then shall be the spouse of whom?
It was answered: If the bereaved spouse die, while remaining unhoused clearly he (or she) is the spouse “in will” of the one left among the Living. For the former union was dissolved and is no more; and moreover the second one to die may still be reborn and return to the one left, whereas the first to die is doomed to remain in Mandos. Not otherwise is it if all three die. Still the union of the first and second is no more, whereas the second and third may return and take up their marriage again. But since marriage is of the body, being unachieved or of the will only in the unhoused, the first and the second and the third may meet in Mandos (if they will) in friendship. Nonetheless this is one of the ways in which the Statute may breed grief and not healing. For the meeting in Mandos of those that have been willing to dissolve their union, or of the one that came first in love and the other that succeeded that, cannot be like to the meeting of those between whom no shadow of inconstancy has fallen.
All the preceding text was bracketed, but not actually struck out. Beneath this, and in the left margin of the page, is written:
It was asked: What those in the Waiting do, and whether they have care for those that live, or knowledge of the events in Arda. It was answered: They do nothing; for doing, in a creature of dual nature, requires the body, which is the instrument of the fëa in all its actions. If they desire to do, they desire to return. They think, using their minds (so to speak, for they are their minds) as they are capable, upon their contents. These are the memories of their life;[1] but they may also learn in Mandos, if they seek knowledge. As for those whom they have left in life, or the events of Arda, again they may learn much, if they desire to do so. It is said that they can see some things from afar through the eyes of others to whom they were dear, but in no way so as to disturb or influence the minds of the living, for good or ill. Were they to attempt this, their sight would be veiled. But in Mandos all the events of the Tale of Arda (such as knowable to others than Eru; for the secrets of minds are not readable even by the Valar)[2] are recorded, and to this knowledge and history they have access according to their [?measure] and will.
XVII
DEATH
This typescript text occupies five sides of four sheets of candidates’ examination script pages from University College Cork, Ireland, where Tolkien was an external examiner at various times throughout the 1950s (see TCG II:578). Tolkien added the title of the whole and of part I in the top margin in red ball-point pen.
There are two pieces of internal evidence bearing on the question of the date of this text. First is Tolkien’s use of the form Melcor. In previously published texts Melcor is otherwise found (not including Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxon translations) only in the seemingly contemporary Converse of Manwë and Eru (presented in chap. XV above), the composition of which followed that of Laws and Customs (X:209ff.) in the late 1950s (see X:300) but preceded the Commentary on the c. 1959 Athrabeth (for this date, see X:304). Second, Tolkien initially typed the form hrondor (‘bodies’) before later altering this to hröar; but there is no independent evidence that the latter word was in use until after the typescript text B of Laws and Customs among the Eldar was made in c. 1958 (see X:141–3, 209, 304). On balance, this evidence points to this text having been composed in c. 1957–8.
I. Death of Animals and Plants
Animal bodies “die” when their coherence is destroyed. Their material then becomes unloosed and dispersed. This is painful to behold (especially for any who loved some such creature living, vegetable or beastlike), and is more so as the remains still retain any likeness to their living shape. It is held by the Eldar that in Arda Unmarred things would have died that were limited to a period of time (that is, those whose total shape was small); and that many things were by nature of this shorter duration. But the end would not have been abhorrent to look on.[1] (It would no doubt to the Incarnate have still held the pain of loss and farewell. But that is in part due to the mystery of love within Time;[2] and in part due to the fact that the Incarnate only entered in to the design of Eä after the rebellion of Melcor; so that their whole being is bound up with the Marring. This, some hold, it is the will of Eru that they should redress or atone, by the suffering of love.) The end of things of short duration would not, the Eldar hold, have been abhorrent; for living out their lives completely and unmarred, they would have completely used up and discarded the material of their embodiments,[3] waning slowly (as they had begun to wax slowly) through changes recessive and yet no less beautiful than the changes progressive at the other end of their lives, until they disappeared. But herein the Eldar maybe are importing into their thought of Arda Unmarred the thoughts of hearts destined to live only in Arda Marred and within Time. Is it not the loss of the thing that was, and the love of its former shape, now dissolving, that makes the process of this dissolution painful, or sometimes horrible? (Not all the things that seem evil or unnatural to the Incarnate are the fruit of the works of Melcor.) If the process of dissolution be the right or natural way of the return of the material to the common use of Arda, it would not be painful or horrible to those not bound by Time, who would still see the living thing in all its duration, as a pattern complete.[4] The moment that pattern was complete (which is the precise moment of death) the remaining material would have no concern for those who loved the living thing. If it became slime, this would not be felt worse than the slime in which its growth began. It would be no part of living things loved.[5]
But to this the Eldar answer: True: regret and sorrow come to the Incarnate from love that is (for the duration of Arda) bound within Time. But decay and dissolution is not abhorrent solely because of this. To speak of olvar (that is, plants): The soil in which it springs has no part in it (until it is taken up as food by the life of the growing thing, and appears transformed into living and admirable form). The seed and the soil are clearly different. But at death it is not the surrounding earth nor the ground upon which the dead thing falls that seems horrible; it is the material of the thing itself that disintegrating seems horrible. And in Arda Marred this process may be long. Indeed death may be slow, and even before all life has departed the living thing may become sickly, or deformed. We do not think that this sickening and after it decay and putrescence can seem beautiful (as surely all things in Arda Unmarred should be) or at least not regrettable, to any minds whatsoever that love Arda, whether free from Time or bound therein.
Therefore we hold that death and decay in the kinds that we now see cannot be part of Arda Unmarred, in which we consider only “natural” death and the end of completed life, and not the deaths of violence. Also it may be thought that even those things that have by nature a short duration would in the health of Arda Unmarred have lived longer and more completely.
To speak of kelvar (that is, ‘animals’ or living things of all other kinds than the plants).[6] They do not grow in soil; but their bodies decay into slimes and loathsome forms before they are dispersed. Their end cannot therefore be likened to their beginning.
It would seem a wise conclusion that death, or the ending of livi
ng things of short duration, is now otherwise in Arda Marred than it might have been; and it has been marred in special by Melkor. For he desires ever new things and loves nothing that has been or already is; and at first he recked not how things were removed to make room for others, but came at last in his hatred and despite of all things (even those which he himself devised) to rejoice in their defilement.[7] On the other hand the Incarnate cannot rightly conceive of Arda Unmarred, in this matter of death, for they in their begetting by Eru belong to Arda Marred.[8] And this is most clearly seen herein: they are as it were the heirs and participators in death by violence. They cannot live without causing the death or ending untimely of living things that have corporeal life. Some of the Eldar (and some Men) eschew the slaying of kelvar to use their bodies as meat, feeling that these bodies, resembling in different degrees their own, are in some way too near akin. (Yet none of the Eldar hold that the eating of flesh, not being the flesh of the Incarnate and hallowed by the indwelling of the fëa, is sinful or against the will of Eru.) But even so they must kill and eat olvar or die; for it is their nature to be fed, as to their hröar, by living things corporeal, and things have a right to live according to their nature. Yet violence is done to the olvar (which have a kinship with the bodies of the Incarnate, be it remote), and these are denied the fulfilment of their own lives and final shapes. Therefore we must hold that the Incarnate belong by nature to Arda Marred and to a world in which death, and death by the violence of others, is accepted.[9] Neither Elves nor Men eat willingly things that have not died by violence.
II. Death of Incarnate Bodies
Incarnate bodies die also, when their corporeal coherence is destroyed. But not, by necessity, when or because the fëa departs. Usually the fëa departs only because the body is injured beyond recovery, so that its coherence is already broken. But what if the fëa deserts a body which is not greatly injured, or which is whole? It then, it might be thought, remains a living corporeal body, but without mind or reason; it becomes an animal (or kelva), seeking nothing more than food by which its corporeal life may be continued, and seeking it only after the manner of beasts, as it may find it by limbs and senses. This is a horrible thought. Maybe such things have indeed come to pass in Arda, where it seems that no evil or perversion of things and their nature is impossible. But it can have happened only seldom.
For the function of the body of one of the Incarnate is to house a fëa, the absence of which is unnatural to it; so that such a body is not ever in precisely the like case with a body that has never possessed a fëa: it has suffered loss. Moreover while the fëa was with it, the fëa inhabited it in every part or portion, less or greater, higher or lower.[10] The departure of the fëa is therefore a shock to the body; and except maybe in rare cases this shock will be sufficient to unloose its coherence, so that it will fall into decay. Nor in any case would the deserted body easily turn to feeding itself after the manner of beasts; for the matter of food (as all matters of governance) had long been directed by the fëa, and carried on by means beyond the reach of the body in itself; so that the mere beast senses were dulled, and the body undirected would be less skilful than an ordinary beast. Unless by chance much food of the kind required by it were ready to hand, it would therefore most likely soon perish by starvation, even if it survived the shock of the sunderance.
(The rare cases are those where sunderance has happened in Aman where there is no decay. Also others more horrible. For it is recorded in the histories that Morgoth, and Sauron after him, would drive out the fëa by terror, and then feed the body and make it a beast. Or worse: he would daunt the fëa within the body and reduce it to impotence;[11] and then nourish the body foully, so that it became bestial, to the horror and torment of the fëa.)
To speak of elf-bodies. An elf-body is by nature and function made to be the house of a permanent inhabitant, a fëa that cannot leave Time, nor go whence its return to the body is impossible. Such a body, therefore, will wait much longer, maintaining coherence and resisting decay, but then it will usually seem to sleep, lying passive and essaying nothing, not even the search for food, without the command of its master. (It cannot be fed without waking it, and thus killing it with shock, or rendering it beastlike.) But man-bodies deserted by the fëa perish swiftly. They are made to be the houses of fëar that, once they are severed from the body, never return. The body then has no function (and the shock of the separation is greater); and for the most part it soon decays and passes away into Arda.[fn1] [12] It is known to the Eldar that the fëar of Men (many or all, they do not know) go also to Halls of Waiting in the keeping of Námo Mandos; but what is there their fate, and whither they go when Námo releases them, the Eldar have no sure knowledge, and Men knowing little say many different things, some of which are fantasies of their own devising and are darkened by the Shadow. The wisest of Men, and those least under the Shadow, believe that they are surrendered to Eru and pass out of Eä. For which reason many of the Elves in later days under the burden of their years envied the Death of Men, and called it the Gift of Ilúvatar.
PART THREE
THE WORLD, ITS LANDS, AND ITS INHABITANTS
INTRODUCTION
By 1957 (see the introduction to part one of this book) Tolkien had decided that for astronomical verisimilitude the Sun and the Moon, instead of being formed from the last flowers of the Two Trees, long after the creation of Arda and the arrival of the Eldar in Valinor, must in fact have been (at least) coëval with Arda, and that the Elves must have known this astronomical fact. Tolkien was however thereby left with a dilemma that he never fully resolved: namely, how to incorporate this scientific truth into his mythology without eviscerating its distinctives. (I have long thought that if Tolkien had further decided that, when the world was made round at the Downfall of Númenor and the Undying Lands removed, Ilúvatar had further “demythologized” Arda and Eä – by making the Moon be simply a rocky orb, and the Sun and stars gaseous orbs, and making it appear that they had always been so, and the world always round – he could have preserved both his mythology and a conformance to modern scientific knowledge, and saved himself much time and thought and doubt.)
Even before this decision, from the mid-1940s on, Tolkien was greatly concerned to achieve astronomical and chronological verisimilitude in The Lord of the Rings. He expended great effort, for example, to make the movements of the various members of the separated Fellowship realistic, in terms of distance covered on foot or mounted each day (matters of which, as a former British Army officer with equestrian training, he had much experience); and further, to be accurate and precise in the matter of the phases and positions of the Moon (see L:74, 80; also VII:179–80, 367–9).
Unsurprisingly, when Tolkien resumed work on his legendarium after the completion of The Lord of the Rings, he brought this same concern for verisimilitude to bear. As seen in part one of this book, “Time and Ageing”, Tolkien expended considerable effort (both of thought and mathematics) to bring natural realism to the matters of Elvish population and migration. This third and final part comprises much wider-ranging texts, showing Tolkien’s late consideration, in light of this concern, of broader aspects of his created world, its lands, and its inhabitants.
I
DARK AND LIGHT
This text, written in an at places exceedingly difficult scrawl in black ball-point pen, is found among a bundle of late papers, (nearly) all Allen & Unwin scrap paper dating from the late 1960s, containing writings in reconsideration of various matters of Elvish vocabulary and nomenclature.[1] One of the matters taken up in this bundle concerns certain Eldarin bases and concepts related to light and darkness. The first text from this bundle, which exists in three successive versions (labelled here A–C), shows Tolkien’s development of what he describes as the Elves’ “mytho-astronomical” picture of the world and the phenomena of dark and light.
TEXT 1A
√PHUY: Noldorin Q. fuinë, Vanyarin Q. huinë, S. fuin.[2] In Sindarin fuin was the ordinary wo
rd for ‘night’ without (originally) any sinister tone. It appears far back in Quendian history to have been imagined by the Elves as a “breath” that came out of the East as the Sun went down in the West, which brought a cool shadow that grew ever darker, beginning with *dōmē ‘twilight’ until middle-night, *mori; the process from *mori > *dōmē being reversed when the “breath of light” from the East drove the dark westward, where it was absorbed by Aman.[3] *phuinē was this ‘vapour-like darkness’ (but S. môr was † [i.e. poetic], fuin became ‘night’)[4]
Tindómë followed darkness and began by being starlit still, until it grew to daylight; undómë followed light and became dark, and was the “sad twilight”, an image or sign of the passing of beautiful things.
The text ends at the very bottom of the page. On the next sheet, Tolkien began a new and somewhat different and at points more “scientific” account of the Elvish conception of light and darkness:
TEXT 1B
The words for NIGHT, TWILIGHT, DAY were originally governed by the primitive Quendian imagination of the passage of the Sun; and also by their imagination of light. This they thought of as a “substance”, ever the most tenuous and ethereal of all things, an emanation from self-luminous, light-giving things (such as fire on earth, and the Sun in heaven in particular) that continued, or could continue, in existence after issuing from its source, unless quenched, “swallowed”, or extinguished by DARK. (Dark was also a substance, only less tenuous than Light, but was incalculably more abundant and prevalent than Light.) “Light-substance” was called *linkwē (Q. linque), “Dark-substance” was called *phuine.[5]