The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1. Christina Scull

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СКАЧАТЬ of the Angels’: a rebellion of created free-will at a higher level than Man; but it is not clearly held (and in many versions is not held at all) that this affected the ‘World’ in its nature: evil was brought in from outside, by Satan. In this Myth the rebellion of created free-will precedes creation of the World (Eä); and Eä has in it, subcreatively introduced, evil, rebellions, discordant elements of its own nature already when the Let it Be was spoken. The Fall or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable. Trees may ‘go bad’ as in the Old Forest; Elves may turn into Orcs, and if this required the special perversive malice of Morgoth, still Elves themselves could do evil deeds. Even the ‘good’ Valar as inhabiting the World could at least err; as the Great Valar did in their dealings with the Elves; or as the lesser of their kind (as the Istari or wizards) could in various ways become self-seeking. [Letters, pp. 286–7]

      More expansively, Craig Bernthal states in Tolkien’s Sacramental Vision: Discerning the Holy in Middle Earth (2014):

      This is Tolkien’s mythopoeic variation on John 1:1–5, the Music that was in the beginning. It is a retelling of and commentary on key creation and wisdom texts. It offers a short mythic explanation of the origin of free will and its relation to the fixed frame of God’s order. It identifies the origin of evil as an expression of the free will that God allows. Significantly, Tolkien associates the first sin with the act of creation. Melkor’s frustrated desire to create with the power of God makes him an envious destroyer – or attempted destroyer – of God’s creation. Ilúvatar’s gift of sub-creation, because it entails a powerful grant of freedom, has an equally powerful potential to be abused, and it is the tendency of sub-creation to go wrong, because the sub-creator can grow envious of the works of others and fall idolatrously in love with his own. This misdirected love becomes the archetypal pattern of sin in Middle-earth. In opposition, Tolkien sets an equally archetypal pattern of sacrifice and redemption. Tolkien’s mythic theodicy makes a promise, at least, that all evil will produce even greater glory and goodness. …

      Tolkien was aware that his creation myth differed from the Jewish and Christian versions in one important aspect – evil is built into the world from the beginning rather than brought in, by Satan, from outside. … The difference this makes for Tolkien’s creation is that the built-in darkness of the world gives it more the flavor of Northern myth, and yet this darkness is just as much a part of the Bible, though it begins in Eden. [pp. 99–101]

      Brian Rosebury in Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon (2003) finds the Ainulindalë

      a success both in literary and philosophical terms. Its fundamental mythical conception, the world as a Great Music made visible, its history a fulfilment of creative purposes which proceed both directly from God and mediately from him, through the sub-creativity of created beings, dates from as early as 1918–20 … it is the key to much else in Tolkien’s religious, moral and aesthetic vision. And its prose is at once appropriately ‘scriptural’ and distinctive of Tolkien. [p. 107]

      He points out the similarities to Christian myth with Ilúvatar, the Ainur, and Melkor in place of God, the angels, and Lucifer, and notes that ‘the basic Augustinian apparatus in which nothing is created evil, but evil arises from the free will of created beings, is in place’. He also discusses differences mainly arising because the Creation ‘is carried out partly through intermediaries’ (p. 187).

      See also Howard Davis, ‘The Ainulindalë: Music of Creation’ in Mythlore 9, no. 2, whole no. 32 (Summer 1982).

Akallabêth: The Downfall of Númenor. The penultimate component of *The Silmarillion (1977), pp. 259–82, and the last of three accounts of the island realm of *Númenor (see entry for summary) and its destruction at the end of the Second Age.

      HISTORY

      Tolkien had previously told this story in *The Fall of Númenor (c. 1936) and *The Drowning of Anadûnê (first part of 1946). Probably in the autumn of 1948 he wrote a new version, drawing on the earlier accounts; its original title was The Fall of Númenor, later changed to The Downfall of Númenor, but Tolkien always referred to it as the Akallabêth (‘the downfallen’ in the Númenórean language Adûnaic).

      Although he apparently wrote the Akallabêth in parallel with the Appendices of *The Lord of the Rings, he seems to have intended that the history of Númenor and the Second Age should be part of *‘The Silmarillion’. On 7 April 1948 he referred in a letter to *Hugh Brogan to ‘The Silmarillion, which is virtually a history of the Eldalië (or Elves …) from their rise to the Last Alliance, and the first temporary overthrow of Sauron (the Necromancer); that would bring you nearly down to the period of “The Hobbit”’ (Letters, p. 129). He still hoped to publish The Silmarillion, and indeed felt, as he wrote to *Stanley Unwin on 24 February 1950, that its publication was necessary to make The Lord of the Rings ‘fully intelligible’ (Letters, p. 137).

      Before he began work on the Akallabêth Tolkien made an outline history of Númenor, with rough dates for the thirteen kings (most of them not named) who followed after the death of Elros in Second Age 460, and for significant events. He then produced a manuscript of twenty-three pages, rewriting and replacing several of them in the process, emended these, and made a typed copy. Probably in 1951 he took up and emended the typescript, altered some names and the sequence of some events, rewrote certain passages, and inserted a lengthy rider with more details of the history of the last Númenórean kings, in particular their growing hostility to the Eldar and the Valar and to the Faithful. *Christopher Tolkien notes in detail in *Sauron Defeated (1992, pp. 375–87) and *The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996, ch. 5) how this version of the Akallabêth derives from both The Fall of Númenor and The Drowning of Anadûnê. He also calculates that from ‘the sailing to Anadûnê … no less than three-fifths of the precise wording of [the second version of the Drowning] was preserved in the Akallabêth’, but from ‘the same point … only three-eighths of the latter (again, in precisely the same wording) are present in [the second version of the Drowning]’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 376).

      The emended typescript text, with a few corrections added to a later amanuensis typescript, was published in The Silmarillion as the Akallabêth. When dealing with the Akallabêth in The Peoples of Middle-earth Christopher Tolkien noted only the differences between the published version and the earlier versions, and explained changes he made to the text for publication in The Silmarillion, some of which he came to regret. Earlier he noted other changes in the published text in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 226–7.

      For comment and criticism, see *Númenor.

Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun. Translations of the opening verse of the Gloria (Luke 2:14) into Quenya (*Languages, Invented), edited with notes and analysis by Arden R. Smith, published in Vinyar Tengwar 44 (June 2002), pp. 31–7. Five texts are extant, dating evidently from the mid-1960s.

Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife. Story, published with commentary and notes in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 173–217.

      SYNOPSIS

      Aldarion, son of Tar-Meneldur, fifth king of the island of *Númenor, has a great love for the sea, and from the age of twenty-five makes many voyages to Middle-earth. He forms a Guild of Venturers, and establishes in Middle-earth the haven of Vinyalondë. He is welcomed by Gil-galad, the last High King of the Noldorin Elves in Middle-earth, and by Círdan the Shipwright. In time, while in Númenor Aldarion comes to live on board ship and to spend much of his time improving harbours, overseeing the building of ships, and planting and tending trees to provide timber for ships. But ‘Tar-Meneldur looked coldly on the enterprises of his son, and cared not to hear the tale of his journeys, believing that he sowed СКАЧАТЬ