'be serious' he says, darling i am wild

Slaying the dragon

Gintama Alternative Universe - Ancient Chinese setting

“How Gintama characters would look if they were in ancient China”

This is how the story goes: 

Why couldn’t the Ainur see? Even his brother, Manwë, could not see the value in pure freedom. He was ignorantly content to serve under Ilúvartar’s reign. So he would make them see. It did not matter how much blood stained his hands–it was the blood of fools. No, it was more than that. Their blood would give freedom to the next generations. Even the children could one day receive that gift of freedom. Surely, a few dead kings were nothing compared to that.

And then there was Mairon. There was a spark, a fire behind his eyes and Melkor thought that perhaps this beautiful creature understood. He was so willing to follow Melkor into open rebellion, more so than any other one of his followers. Mairon was willing to disobey him, to challenge him. He had to understand, Melkor told himself. He must.

He was wrong, of course. Mairon did not understand. He did not want to free the world of Eru Ilúvartar, he wanted Melkor to replace him. Melkor did not want to replace Ilúvartar. He did not want to become what he despised. He wanted to be free and to give freedom.

“Do you love me?” Mairon had once asked.

No, he thought. I cannot truly love that which is not free. 

Disclaimer: I went easy on quotes because I hate how Tumblr is formatting them on mobile now. Seriously, @staff, please explain why that changed. I also am having a weirdly hard time putting a lot of these thoughts in words, so if it stops making sense somewhere, just ask!

Is there an “in-world” Silmarillion [1977] author?

Before we can determine if there is narrative bias, we ought to address the challenging nature of The Silmarillion’s publication. Christopher Tolkien took on the daunting task of editing his father’s work into a cohesive, publishable text. He ultimately decided “to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative” (The Book of Lost Tales, Part One).

One of the choices Christopher Tolkien made was to erase all references to an in-world author (as I’ll explain later, it would have been incredibly complicated to include). So for those who argue ‘there is nothing but the text,’ is there an in-world author? After all, there is not one mentioned. For those who say ‘well, I guess not,’ congratulations, you can stop reading. (I’m jealous).

Others will point to The History of Middle-Earth and say that since the Silmarillion draws from texts attributed to in-world authors, we should assume the Silmarillion has an in-world author, too. For the moment, let’s put aside the issue of who those authors were, and instead ask if the Silmarillion is a faithful rendition of what those authors actually said?

To an extent, the answer has to be no. Christopher Tolkien drew from multiple versions in order to give us a somewhat consistent narrative. Even if a certain chapter comes from the same in-world author, it might not all come from the same version of said author. An in-world author might have had a great deal more to say on any given topic, but Christopher Tolkien, in an attempt at consistency, may have cut them off.

From here on out, I will assume that there is an in-world author, but I want to make it painfully clear that said author’s perspective has been distorted by Christopher Tolkien. (I’m not blaming him. He had an impossible job and did better than anyone could’ve possibly asked for).

Who does the Quenta Silmarillion come from?

I’m going to call the text as it exists within Arda the Quenta Silmarillion, or Q.S., to distinguish it from the book published in 1977 by George Allen & Unwin (which will be referred to as just the Silmarillion).

If one wants to discuss the Silmarillion as the sole basis for the Quenta Silmarillion, then there is simply no information on who wrote the text. It may have been one person, it may have been several. It could have been oral histories that were eventually written down by a single editor.

But adding HoME to the mix gives us more to work with. Strictly speaking, the Q.S. we see is one written down by Ælfwine. The less intrusive version is that Ælfwine was an Anglo-Saxon who, after a shipwreck, found himself on Tol Eressea. There, he was taken in by a group of elves (mainly Noldor) — one of whom was Pengolodh. Pengolodh told him various histories of Arda. Ælfwine memorized these stories and later translated them into English.

If we were going to treat Tolkien’s works like strict history texts, well… We would probably be compelled to dismiss them entirely. A guy returns after years of being lost at sea, claiming to have met elves on an island no one’s ever seen (or seen since) who gave him the real history of the word? But let’s skip past that obvious caveat and assume Ælfwine didn’t just have a saltwater-induced hallucination. He still isn’t a perfect translator.

First, he is doing this entirely by memory. Human memory is fallible and Ælfwine was working with a recently acquired second language. Second, it is likely that even if he was highly fluent and possessed an impeccable memory, he failed to fully understand certain terms that would’ve been necessary in a proper translation (or, if he understood them, failed to properly convey them to his human audience). What could one of those terms be? Perhaps the very concept of authorship.

Who told Ælfwine about the Quenta Silmarillion?

This one’s easy to answer! Pengolodh. Presumably, Ælfwine spoke with other elves, too, but he cites Pengolodh as his tutor in elven history and linguistics. For the sake of argument, we’ll assume no elves contradicted Pengolodh’s accounts while speaking with Ælfwine.

Did Pengolodh write the Quenta Silmarillion Ælfwine translated?

The ultimate question, isn’t it? The only honest answer is: “maybe kinda sorta?” See, various parts of the Q.S. have different attributed authors (and Tolkien wasn’t always consistent on who wrote what). For example, Rumil is often credited with writing the “first part” of what would show up in the Silmarillion, but exactly where he stopped writing is unclear. Sometimes it’s up to and including the creation of the Sun, sometimes it’s up to the Doom of the Noldor. Quennar also was involved, but again, not totally clear how. Certainly, these three Elven authors worked with each other, but the exact timeline and framework is lacking.

Children of Húrin is attributed to a human author, Dírhaval, who lived in Sirion and was killed in the Third Kinslaying. How he got his information is a bit unclear, since Tolkien attributes it to Mablung, but clearly that’s not possible in later drafts what with Mablung being dead. Other bits and pieces are still yet attributed to unnamed Sindarin scribes, others are not cited to anyone at all. None of this is to say Pengolodh wasn’t at all involved in writing: he definitely was, but how involved is a different question. But without a doubt, Pengolodh was heavily relying on other sources.

“It may be therefore that my father now regarded Pengolod as redactor or compiler rather than as author, at any rate in certain parts of the book, and in these Pengolod marked off his own contributions and named himself as authority for them” (The Lost Road and Other Writings).

When did Pengolodh write/compile the Quenta Silmarillion?

The short answer: over time. Much of his work started after the fall of Gondolin. It consistently sounds like he wrote his final drafts in Tol Eressa (where he arrived some time in the late Second Age). It seems safe to assume that the version Ælfwine saw was last edited in the Valinor. (He’s had thousands of years to check sources, rewrite, and clean things up. At some point between leaving ME and meeting Ælfwine, it makes sense that Pengolodh would have done so).

What is the Quenta Silmarillion supposed to be?

This is a question I think we don’t ask enough. The Q.S. was not supposed to be an all-encompassing history. It wasn’t even supposed to be an in-depth history of certain individuals within a certain subsection of society. It was supposed to be a brief summary, an abstract if you will, of other works, not all (or even most) of which we have access to.

“The title [‘This is the brief History of the Noldoli or Gnomes, drawn from the Book of Lost Tales’] makes it very plain that while Q was written in a finished manner, my father saw it as a compendium, a 'brief history’ that was 'drawn from’ a much longer work; and this aspect remained an important element in his conception of 'The Silmarillion’ properly so called” (The War of the Jewels).

Another often-ignored question is what role history texts played in elven societies. The answer: not much.

“the lore of the Eldar did not depend on perishable records, being stored in the vast houses of their minds” (The Shibboleth of Fëanor).

General differences between elven historians and human historians:

Elves have significantly better memories (see quote above), their society is littered with telepaths and psychics, they are immortal and even those who die will presumably return one day, memories in tact. Humans die easily, permanently, and can’t remember why they walked into a room 80% of the time. These differences surely have some degree of relevance in how a historian’s bias shows up in their work.

General problems with narrative bias:

Bias is complex. Everyone has biases, but they rarely play out consistently. Often times, our biases conflict with each other. Sometimes people who might stereotypically hold a bias do not. Some people are better at pushing theirs aside (typically, this is done best by seeking out peer review). Bias is difficult to determine even if we know who the author is, and even then, it’s typically determined via post-hoc reasoning on why an author made an obvious error (or flat out lie).

Knowledge is systematic

Yeah. That. How can we determine the validity of supposed knowledge without comparing it to other knowledge? (In other words, how do we analyze the veracity of a text [i.e. Silmarillion] when there is literally nothing else to compare it to?)

Conclusion:

I am not trying to say narrative bias should be entirely thrown out in analyzing Tolkien. What I am saying is that there are so many caveats and complications in analyzing the Silmarillion that, to me, it makes very little sense to treat it the same way we would a real-world historical text, at least as it pertains to the facts contained within. If it were a real world text, we would simply not be treating it with much seriousness. Ælfwine himself presents too much of a challenge.

I don’t think we can really say who wrote the Quenta Silmarillion. We certainly don’t know how exactly they collected their information, who they spoke to, and how it’s changed since it’s original draft. I think narrative bias is best reserved for discussions about moral judgements, which, frankly, are something we should always rethinking anyhow.

In other words: 

Honestly, Mairon is just brilliant. I don’t think there are many (if any) fictional villains quite like him. He ultimately loses because of fate/chance/whatever you want to call it and because of genuinely being unable to comprehend good and the idea of anyone wanting to or being capable of destroying his ring. Which, yes, he’s being arrogant, but still its a perfectly reasonable assumption if you think about it. Because Frodo couldn’t do it. Frodo, the only one capable of even getting the Ring that far, couldn’t destroy it. It was only Gollum dancing and falling into the volcano that saves the world. Nothing Mairon could have predicted. And while he does lose battles along the way, he always has a backup plan, always, and he always comes back ready to continue his mission. Even when his sanity is at its lowest points, he’s still thinking a thousand steps ahead of everyone else.

For a wickedly intelligent “forge Maia” with too little chaos to challenge his mastermind levels of creativity and penchant for finding patterns, he found opportunity in Melkor. Eru delivered that loophole on a silver platter that no matter what Melkor did, it would only serve to further the glory of Eru’s design, so I believe Mairon said “what the hell” and dove in.

Now imagine this from a sense of law vs morality. What Mairon did would seem “legal” albeit immoral. But immoral according to whom? We know the Ainur loved the elves immensely and took a caring, nurturing role when it came to trying to create Arda for them. They wanted to walk among them and help them. All that jazz. However Melkor’s destruction provided a key role as well. It seemed immoral according to the general love of the Ainur for Eru’s children/creation BUT it still fit within Eru’s music.

Like the changing of seasons, no winter is without a spring but neither is any spring without a winter. The Silmarillion describes the changing landscape of Arda in its creation due to the push and pull of the other Valar creating while Melkor followed behind and disrupted their creations. This tumult ultimately served as a tempering process. It created balance. In the wake of death, new life could rise. It created cycles and demanded that that which remained be strong and able to endure. It demanded new order through chaos. It demanded change and adaptation occur. It demanded that creation heed the passage of time.

Cue Mairon.

Melkor represented the raw nonconformity he delighted in. His actions were nothing short of poetry. For a forge Maia, Mairon was very well aware of the tempering process. He knew full well that to even begin the process, metals must meet the raging inferno of heat to be softened. And if they didn’t form correctly, they could be heated and worked over anew. He knew what it was to bring a piece to the anvil and drive the hammer down over and over again, seemingly in a maddened state of destruction and yet with the precision of an artist.

Through destruction he knew creation. Inside him sat an unauenchable flame like the heart of a star, raw fury and devastation ripping apart the uttermost bonds of creation to release unspeakable beauty and light.

For Mairon, Melkor’s darkness and destruction provided the raw chaotic potential necessary to bring the beauty of order and tempered form to Arda. The idea of Melkor’s kingship was not merely that of an earthly crown and throne but rather that of an artist taking to himself all manner of materials and imposing himself upon them to create something altogether more beautiful. He desired to impose his will not as an ugly act of oppression but in the same way Eru said that Melkor could never be free of his will. It was authority for the purpose of being an author.

So Melkor ripped through the facades, all the pretty superficial cloaks, like cracking open a plain rock to reveal a geode inside. Surely if he could have, he would have cracked Arda in half to reveal the Flame inside. That Flame that he craved. That Flame that burned inside him through the process of creation. That Flame that he knew was a thing of destruction and transformation.

If he came from Eru, and his desires only served to further reveal Eru’s plans, then was it not his right to act with sovereignty? Was he not then as an extension of Eru? Was the Flame not his to command as well? Was it not his responsibility to act out this portion of divine will even if it grieved divinity itself?

For Mairon, following Melkor would have very much come naturally. It would have felt as a fulfillment of divine purpose, just as Melkor pursued his own fulfillment of purpose—the relative narrative of morality be damned. If the creations of the other Ainur required tempering and opposition, then surely even their morality required such at least as equally. It was a matter of changing masks as a Greek hypokrites; Mairon performed on the same stage and within the confines of the same script, but he helped provide the opposing voice that moved the plot along. Melkor’s narrative of opposition was only relatively evil, and without it even the proclaimed “moral” would fail to be moral as they couldn’t exist without the dichotomy from which they derived their morality. Melkor was the champion that opened the door of opportunity.

Through challenge would rise creation. Through destruction would rise beauty. Through the tempering of Flame would rise actualization.

And then in the movies, we get this

Not to mention that Marion’s sentimental ass named his fucking battering ram “Grond” of all things.

Whatcha wanna bet he wore the Ring like this as a sign of deference to Melkor still? That he might be the Dark Lord of Middle-earth now but the true King would always be his Master?

I would bet my last buck homeboy was unfailingly and somewhat obsessively loyal to the bitter end.