mood of silmarillion

[The Lady of Ithilien]

One has a very different view of The Silmarillion from this part of the woods. Rather than it being grim, could it be that we might be hung up on the darkness to the point of missing the light? Making Húrin’s mistake, that is, and viewing the Morgoth part of the story as its reality? What if one rotates the viewpoint a little bit and tries to see it from the perspective of the rest of the Ainur?

True, “The Silmarillion” proper closes on what seems to be a grim note:

Here ends the SILMARILLION. If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.

But we have already been told in “The Ainulindalë” what Manwë and Varda and Mandos apparently are still unaware of, Ilúvatar’s overall plan:

Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.

So The Silmarillion is but the song of the Ainur made visible; that was not a grim song.

True, there are depths (this is not to say Tolkien intended a comparison, as he was concentrating on a fantasy world, but in the Christian world, I suppose, this view of depths could be what is meant by ‘the mystery of iniquity,’ a concept and a controversy which the Pope has recently reintroduced into the public square), but there are also heights. As if to underline this, a bit further on in “The Ainulindalë” Ilúvatar points out to Ulmo:

Seest thou not how here in this little realm in the Deeps of Time Melkor hath made war upon thy province? He hath bethought him of bitter cold immoderate, and yet hath not destroyed the beauty of thy fountains, nor of thy clear pools. Behold the snow, and the cunning work of frost! Melkor hath devised heats and fire without restraint, and hath not dried up thy desire nor utterly quelled the music of the sea. Behold rather the height and glory of the clouds, and the everchanging mists; and listen to the fall of rain upon the Earth! . . ..

And Ulmo answered

Truly, Water is become now fairer than my heart imagined, neither had my secret thought conceived the snowflake, nor in all my music was contained the falling of the rain. . . .

Nor have we built into our own songs of machinery and lust anything as intricate as the snowflake or as beautiful as the sound of falling rain. Wonderful, therefore, rather than grim are those things that go on in “this little realm in the Deeps of Time.”