Okay, since nobody seems to be prepared to give me a complete set of the HOME books for Christmas, I turn to the experts here for supplemental information.
The Wizards appear to have been embodied Maiar – “enlisted-ranks angels” as opposed to the “general officer angels” Valar – sent to Middle Earth to combat Sauron, who was a Maia who turned to the Dark Side, so to speak.
Unfinished Tales says that there were five of them: Gandalf (Olorin in Arda), originally designated as grey; Saruman (Curumo in Arda), white; Radagast (Aiwendil in Arda), brown; Alatar, blue; and Pallando, also blue. The latter two pass out of the scene into the East immediately.
What more is said of them in HOMES? What lore did Tolkien incorporate there about them, their nature and function, their activities, and such, beyond what is known from LOTR and Unfinished Tales?
Qadgop? Lilacs? Jayjay? This humble scholar of Elvenlore awaits the teaching of the Wise!
Adding to Polycarp’s questions, the Istari Saruman was a…how to put it?..true inventor-type, yes? I mean, creating the Uruk Hai, halting the flow of the Isen, inventing the gunpowder/dynamite (“the fire of Orthanc”) used to blast Helm’s Deep, the “liquid fire” (petroleum?) that burnt Beechbone at Isengard - all these are signs of a creative, scientific mind, I should think. So, does this have anything to do with the fact that he was from Aule the Smith’s fold?
Talk about syncronicity. I was JUST thinking about the istari on the drive home from work (Probably about the time of aankh’s post. Maybe I’m psychically linked to the SDMB).
Unfortunately, anything to do with HOMES or Letters is NOT my province. I have neither on a permanent basis, and haven’t read either one from Front Cover I to Back Cover XII. I’m strictly a Hobbit/LOTR/Silmarillion man, with commentary from Foster’s Complete Guide, Fonstad’s Atlas of ME, and various websites.
HOMES didn’t say a lot about the istari that wasn’t in the other sources. If we look to “Letters” though, we can find a bit more. And this website is quite good for mining the data out of HOMES and other JRRT resources.
Aw, Polycarp, thanks for including me in the list but I have miles to go to be up to **Qadgop’s ** knowledge. And many others.
Thanks for the sites, Qadgop. Always looking to learn more about my favorite author.
Hmmm…and Fëanor was a very close student of Aulë, as well. All of these relationships of “fallen heroes” and villains with Aulë may be Tolkien’s pastoral fantasies coming to the fore, sort of an “industry corrupts” thing.
Yes, though I’ve never really seen Aulë as fallen so much as overeager but well-meaning.
And I knew about Tolkien’s intense dislike for “progress”. I’d just never put the pieces together of Sauron, Saruman and Fëanor all being of Aulë’s following.
It was the industrialization of the rural areas of England that affected his writing (well, WWI as well, but mostly the former). Tolkien’s writings were always critical of the rape of nature and of the destruction of the bucolic life. The Shire was his ideal, his mythical Midlands, full of villagers who lived mostly in harmony with their environment, producing goods through cottage industries and being largely self-sufficient within their little nation. While he did poke fun at the typical provincialism of that class, he also had a lot of warm feelings for them. What Saruman did to the Shire was Tolkien’s nightmare…destruction of nature, institution of large-scale industry, export economies that concentrated all capital in very few hands.
Well, so was Melkor, in the beginning. He wandered off into the void, seeking the flame imperishable because he was impatient with Eru, and wanted to start making things. That’s when Melkor began having thoughts unlike his brethren and cisterns.
Later when smacked up besides the ear by Eru, Melkor got embarrassed, then mad. Typical adolescent.
I suppose both could be considered “fallen” from Tolkien’s viewpoint. The moral character of the cosmology of the Silmarillion is much more rigid and obedience-focused than is popular today (or probably for that matter at the time Tolkien was writing it), more of a feudal/biblical “to doubt is to sin” sort of framework. Gandalf harkens back to that older morality when he tries to stop Denethor from immolating himself by invoking Eru’s primacy in deciding the fates of men.
Thinking about it, I agree with your view on this. And also that Aulë’s salvation came in humbling himself before Iluvatar when he was discovered rather than nurturing a huff and petulantly determining to prove himself right as Melkor did.
In response to Aankh: I think the WWI experience had a profound effect on Tolkien’s writings (along with the industrialization of the English countryside). Reading his fiction in light of those 2 things (well, along with his Catholicism) really adds a lot. Esp. the war experience. For me remembering that as I read LOTR makes it a more complete experience.
(Why do I make late at night posts; that wasn’t too coherent - hope you get the gist).
According to one bio, he grew up in a bad neighborhood in a grimy industrial town, watching his mother work struggle to make ends meet. Then he would spend holidays with relatives in the country. So, from an early age, the rural/small-town life looked like paradise to him.
From 1896 until 1900 JRRT lived in Sarehole, a rural community, which he loved. In 1900, the family moved to Birmingham, which he quickly came to loathe.
