Morgoth's Ring (12 page)

$511-29 The great expansion of the pre-Lord of the Rings narrative (QS, AV 2) is in part derived from the later Ainulindale' (that AAm followed the last version, D, of that work is shown by various details, as for instance the names Ea, Illuin, and Ormal, the first of these entering D by later addition, and those of the Lamps replacing Foronte and Hyarante by emendation). But there is much that is entirely new: as that Manwe held a great feast on the Isle of Almaren, where Tulkas espoused Nessa; that Sauron was 'a great craftsman of the household of Aule'; that the Valar were unable to overcome Melkor at that time because of the need to subdue the turmoil of the Earth and to preserve what they might of what they had achieved; and other features mentioned below. - The question of the cosmology is discussed at the end of this commentary.

$15 The statement that under the light of the Lamps 'there was great growth of trees and herbs, and beasts and birds came forth' (cf.

also $18, where Vana robed Nessa in flowers at the feast on Almaren) belongs with the Ainulindale' ($31): 'flowers of many hues, and trees whose blossom was like snow upon the mountains... beasts and birds came forth' - where however the text was corrected ('As yet no flower had bloomed nor any bird had sung'). See p. 22 note 17, and p. 38, $31.

$20 A structural difference between AAm and the Ainulindale' is that in the latter Melkor did not begin the delving of Utumno until after the overthrow of the Lamps and his escape from the Valar ($32) - a story that goes back through the texts to the old

'Sketch of the Mythology'. In AAm, on the other hand, Melkor built Utumno, or was at least far advanced in the work, before the Valar were aware of him, and it was from Utumno that the blight and corruption proceeded; the Valar then perceived his presence in Arda and 'sought for his hiding-place', and it was this (as it appears) that led to Melkor's sudden emergence in open war and the casting down of the Lamps.

$22 The attack on Melkor by the Valar returning out of Valinor, described in the Ainulindale' ($32), is not mentioned in AAm, which says only that they 'could not at that time overcome him', taking up the words of QS $12 (V.208). That the idea had been abandoned is seen subsequently, p. 78, $47.

$23 That all life in Aman was free from any fading or withering, and free of blight and sickness, had not actually been said in previous texts.

$24 Whereas in the texts of the 1930s the old idea of the Lost Tales that the stars were created in two separate acts (1.69, 113 - 14, 133) had been abandoned, it now reappears: Varda wrought stars 'in the ages forgotten of her labours in Ea', and later in AAm (p. 71, $35) it is told that 'she made stars newer and brighter' before the awakening of the Elves. This is presumably to be associated with the conception in the later Ainulindale'

($$14, 28) of the establishment of Arda 'in the midst of the innumerable stars'.

$$25 - 6 That the Trees grew on a green mound in the Ring of Doom is a new detail, though the implication of QS $14 (V.209) is that the Trees were in the Ring. The Ring and the Mound are here said to have been before the western gate of Valmar; in the Lost Tales the Trees were to the north of the city, and were moreover

'leagues asunder' from each other (1.71, 143).

$28 This account of the light that spilled from the Trees being drawn by Maiar from the wells of Varda to 'water' all the lands of Valinor has its roots in the old idea that the Trees 'must needs be watered with light to have sap and live' (1.73).

$29 At the end of this paragraph is a remarkable new detail, that after a thousand days the Trees put out a new branch; and that this was why a Valian Year was so constituted. It is apparent -

and is stated here expressly - that the Valian day had twelve hours because the period of mingled light was exactly five times shorter than the period of full light-flowering of either Telperion or Laurelin; if it had been three times shorter the day would have had eight hours, and so on. The Valian day was therefore of the Trees' nature. We now learn that the Valian year of 1000

days was 'also due to,the Trees' nature, since after that time the Trees would put out a new branch.

There is no suggestion here that the further calculation that a hundred years constituted a Valian Age (which goes back to the earliest Annals, IV.263) was related to the inner structure of the Trees; but it is said in the section Of the Beginning of Time and its Reckoning ($6) that the Lore-masters supposed 'that the Valar so devised the hours of the Trees that one hundred of such years so measured should be in duration as one age of the Valar (as those ages were in the days of their labours before the foundation of Valinor)' - i.e., before the Trees. Since the two passages are only separated by a few pages in the same manuscript the presumption is that they are not contradictory; and taken together the meaning can only be that the periods of the Trees, which were of their nature, were nonetheless related to a mode of measurement of time before the Trees came into existence. That in turn seems to demand that the Valar knew, and had 'devised', before ever Yavanna and Nienna came to the Green Mound, the periodic nature of the Trees' light.

The cosmological problem is here provided with new evidences. The relevant statements in this first section of AAm are these: $1 Ea is 'the World that is'; the Valar are 'the Powers of Ea'.

$11 After ages of labour 'in the great halls of Ea the Valar descended into Arda in the beginning of its being'.

$13 Tulkas came to Arda 'out of distant regions of Ea'.

$17 Melkor gathered spirits 'out of the voids of Ea'; and he 'drew near again unto Arda, and looked down upon it'.

$18 The Valar did not perceive the dark shadow 'cast from afar by Melkor'.

$19 Melkor 'passed over the borders of Ea' > 'passed over the Walls of the Night upon the borders of Arda' > 'passed over the Walls of the Night' (note 19).

$23 The Outer Sea 'encircled the kingdom of Arda, and beyond were the Walls of the Night'.

The Walls of the Night have not been named elsewhere: but it is hard to see, especially in view of the sentence cited from $23, how they can not be equated with the Walls of the World. I have said (p. 29) that the departure of Melkor from Arda in the Ainulindale' - the new story that i came in after The Lord of the Rings - raises the question of the passage of the Walls of the World and of the form which that conception now took. The idea of such a passage in fact appeared, and most puzzlingly, in the earlier period, at the end of Q, where it is said that some believe that Melko at times returns to the world, and that he

'creeps back surmounting the Walls' (IV.164, 253). The passage in AAm $19 (as emended) is unequivocal: Melkor passed over the Walls of the Night. We have returned to the earliest imagination of the Walls: cf. my remark in 1.227, 'the implication seems clear that the Walls were originally conceived like the walls of terrestrial cities, or gardens - walls with a top: a "ring-fence".' Thus, we may suppose, Melkor could 'look down upon Arda' ($17); thus his vast shadow could be cast even before he passed over the Walls ($18); and thus Tulkas ($13) and the spirits summoned by Melkor ($19) could enter the 'fenced region' (as Arda is defined, p. 7).

But the phrase 'he passed over the Walls of the Night' was an emendation of what my father first wrote: 'he passed over the borders of Ea'. Can this mean anything other than that on entering Arda Melkor left Ea? In this connection one may turn back to the two Ambarkanta diagrams of 'Ilu' (IV.242 - 5), on which much later (perhaps about this time) my father made pencilled corrections to Ilurambar 'the Walls of the World', changing this to Earambar ('the Walls of Ea'). (Of course, if the Walls are no longer conceived as a spherical shell - whence the expression 'globed amid the Void' as used in the early Ainulindale' versions - but as a surmountable rampart, the Earambar cannot be taken as the same conception as the Ilurambar, but only as a new name for the Walls, now differently conceived; and the substitution of the new name on the old diagrams is therefore to that extent misleading.) It is likewise hard to see what Earambar can mean but 'the Walls that fence out the dark wastes of "the voids of Ea" ' (an expression used in $17), in contrast to Ilurambar 'the Walls that fence in Ilu.'

The difficulty with this, of course, is that Ea is elsewhere defined as the 'Universe of that which Is' (p. 7), 'Creation the Universe' (p. 39), and Ea therefore necessarily comprehends Arda; it is in any case abundantly clear from all the texts of the later period that Arda is within Ea. But it may be that Arda can nonetheless be regarded as separate from Ea when Ea is regarded as 'Space'.

Amid all the ambiguities (most especially, in the use of the word

'World'), the testimony seems to be that in these texts the Ambarkanta world-image survived at least in the conception of the Outer Sea extending to the Walls of the World, now called the Walls of the Night

- though the Walls have come to be differently conceived (see also p.

135, $168). Now in the revision of 'The Silmarillion' made in 1951 the phrase in QS $12 (V.209) 'the Walls of the World fence out the Void and the Eldest Dark - a phrase in perfect agreement of course with the Ambarkanta - was retained (p. 154). This is a central difficulty in relation to the Ainulindale', where it is made as plain as could be wished that Ea came into being in the Void, it was globed amid the Void ($$11, 20, and see pp. 37 - 8); how then can the Walls of Arda

'fence out the Void and the Eldest Darkness'?

A possible explanation, of a sort, may be hinted at in the words cited above from AAm $17: Melkor gathered spirits out of the voids of Ea. It may be that, although AAm is not far distant in time from the last version (D) of the Ainulindale', my father's conception did not in fact now accord entirely with what he had written there; that (as I suggested, p. 39) he was now thinking of Arda as being 'set within an indefinite vastness in which all "Creation" is comprehended', rather than of a bounded Ea itself set 'amid the Void'. Then, beyond the Walls of the Night, the bounds of Arda, stretch 'the voids of Ea'.

But this suggestion does not, of course, clear up all the problems, ambiguities, and apparent contradictions in the cosmology of the later period, which have been discussed earlier.

I have mentioned (p. 47) that there exists a typescript of the early part of AAm that is quite distinct from the amanuensis typescript of the whole work. I was unaware of its existence when the text of The Silmarillion was prepared for publication. It was taken directly from and closely based upon the AAm manuscript, and was certainly made by my father, who introduced changes from the manuscript as he typed. It has in fact a great many such changes, mostly minor or very minor, but also some important alterations and additions; and it does not include the section Of the Beginning of Time and its Reckoning.

None of these changes appear in the emendations made to the amanuensis typescript or its carbon copy, except the removal of the section on the Reckoning of Time (p. 68).

I will refer to this text as 'AAm*'. There seems no way to determine with certainty when it was made, and I can only record my feeling that it belongs with the writing of the AAm manuscript rather than to some later time. At any rate my father soon abandoned it (see p. 80). It may be that having set it aside he forgot about it, or lost it; and when the opportunity arose to have the work typed by a secretary who was a trained typist (as appears to be the case) he simply handed over the AAm manuscript as it stood (including therefore the section on the Reckoning of Time, although in AAm* he had cut this out).

I give now the noteworthy changes in AAm* (which extends a short way beyond the point reached in this first section; for the remainder of the text see pp. 79 - 80).

The preamble

Here begin the 'Annals of Aman'. Rumil made them in the Elder Days, and they were held in memory by the Exiles. Those parts which we learned and remembered were thus set down in Numenor before the Shadow fell upon it.

This is especially interesting since it shows a different mode of transmission from the 'Pengolod - AElfwine' tradition: the Annals are conceived as a written work made in Numenor, deriving from the

'Exiles', the Noldor in Middle-earth, who themselves derived it from the work of Rumil. The idea that Numenor was an essential element in the transmission of the legends of the Elder Days will reappear (see especially pp. 370, 373-4, 401-2).

$1 For 'chieftains of the Valar' AAm* has 'lords of the Valar', and subsequently. Lorien was changed in pencil on the typescript to Lorion (but not in the passage cited under $3 below).

$2 In AAm the old phrase 'Manwe and Melkor were most puissant and were brethren' was preserved, but AAm* has here: Melkor and Manwe were brethren in the thought of Eru, and the eldest of their kind, and their power was equal and greater than that of all others who dwelt in Arda. Manwe is King of the Valar...

It is said in the later Ainulindale' ($$5, 9) that Melkor was the mightiest of the Ainur, and this in fact goes back to the pre-Lord of the Rings text B of the Ainulindale' (see V.164 note 4 for the different statements made on this subject). Later in AAm (p. 97, $102) Feanor 'shut the doors of his house in the face of the mightiest of all the dwellers in Ea'.