Mythological Limbo

[Ren]

Last night I was listening to the Tom Shippey seminar on Tolkien's Beowulf. Fascinating!

He speaks about how the story of Beowulf exists in a kind of mythological limbo, a pagan story written by a Christian englishmen, allthough it never mentions England or Christ. So it was left ambiguous: not Christian, not religous, not really pagan.

He then explains Tolkien learned from that and made Middle-Earth a mythological limbo as well. That means the pagan mythology has to be conform with Christian believes. As such there has to be the one, Eru, the omniscient, the father of all, Ilúvatar.

Now, coming back to season 2 in the Silm Film project. We discussed that it was actually a mistake that the Valar brought the elves to Valinor in the first place. It was also a mistake that the Valar freed Melkor from imprisonment, which forced us to write the Valinor story in a way that the Valar, in particular Manwe, do not look like fools.

But it never occurred to me that this might have been Tolkien's intention from the beginning. The Valar are just Demiurges and in order to make them distinct from Eru as subordinated beeings, they were deliberately set up to make mistakes and wrong judgements. All in the service of the concept of a mythological limbo.

I know Corey has talked about the different depiction of the Valar and their decisions in the Silmarillion and the History of Middle-Earth seminars, but it never hit me so directly that it might have been intentional. Is that just my perception and crit-fic on Tolkien or is this actually the case?

 

[Nicholas Palazzo]

I have often wondered of late if the Silmarillion were a morality tale of what might have befallen Earth had God given the angels more agency.

 

[MithLuin]

The Valar being fallible is definitely intentional. And Tolkien explained that his story was meant to be written in such a way that it could be accepted by someone whose mind accepted the Trinity - ie, palatable to a Christian imagination.

So....Eru remains infallible, and all the errors are committed by created beings. Also, by allowing the angels to participate in creation, the flaws can be built into the world from the beginning, allowing for a unique answer to the question of why evil exists in the world - Melkor was singing during the song of creation itself.

 

[Fell Critter]

I have often wondered of late if the Silmarillion were a morality tale of what might have befallen Earth had God given the angels more agency.

what if it wasn't a what-if tale at all?

I wouldn't call it allegory, exactly... but there are unmistakable parallels to mythology, beyond what might be expected. it's easily overlooked, because Tolkien hardly beats anyone over the head with it - but the clues are there, and the degree of apparent correspondence really seems like a very deep acknowledgement of the connectedness of myth to his own faith, and the mysterious grains of truth that they potentially contain.

to the point, if you've ever imagined gods of any pantheon as representing angels, or vice-versa, I would strongly argue that you have the right idea. that Tolkien considered "pagan" mythology to be henotheistic seems obvious from his story alone: but the extent that his world resembled ours can only be seen by looking more carefully at existing myths, and superstitions, and even archaeology.

evidence of correspondence exists between Greek, Egyptian, Levantine, Mesopotamian, Biblical, Hindu, Scandinavian and even Celtic myths to an extent, although Celtic mythology is definitely unique - but by correspondence, I don't mean mere syncretism (if I can help it): I mean that a certain portion of many mythologies are (or seem to be), at the root, actually one.

some of the correspondences in the Silmarillion seem to be chosen almost at random (whether for their importance to Tolkien's own philosophies, or for their potential to weave a compelling tale), and so I wouldn't argue that it's a whole summary of mythology at all; but I do believe that there was nevertheless a wide selection of material that was considered in its preparation, and that it would certainly benefit us to look into every potential source, to gain as much insight as possible about the characters and events he may have been referring to, and to provide clues about what some of that white space could be filled with.

in the end, the license he took in claiming Elven provenance was essentially to pretend to cut to the source of all mythology, so that instead of seeming to be inspired by them, they could be seen as having been inspired by this.