Tolkien related video's.

LG

{{ Compilation of all Tolkiens recorded interviews}}

oo - looking forward to listening to that. Hope there's a lot of video as well.

Don't always watch these videos for the content. Find some of the art work quite stunning.

A bit annoyed by those portrayals of Shelob that give her a mouthful of teeth. That actually makes her less frightening. It's the inhuman mouthparts of insects that make them most dreadful - the thought of being consumed by those things is too grisly to contemplate.

Some really good paintings in this video

{{ Not a new vid (its 7 years old) but I hadnt heard the full interview before-



There were two particular things he said I was unaware of, and in fact something it seems Ive been getting wrong in my head all these years!
I always thought the world before the fall of Numenor was basically flat, and it was after the fall the world was reshaped into being round. But in this Tolkien says, 'And of course if Numenor was drowned then the earthly paradise was moved so then you could then get to South America! Then the world became round. You see it always had been a vast globe but people can now sail around it; discovered it's round.'

This is quite revealing for me, it implies that when Valinor was physical, and not able to be entered by mortals, it was also like a vast land block that prevented people from sailing round the world which was always a 'vast globe' just one people previously couldnt discover was a gobe as they couldnt sail past Valinor (not sure why they couldnt have gone east and come to Valinor from the other side but still).

The other thing that struck is that those able to still take the 'straight road' appear to be indulging almost in a sort of time travel in order to be able to reach Valinor (something which had simply never occured to me) Tolkien puts it as, 'All lines leads to what was. Of course, I don't know what your theory of Time is but: what was, what is, what ever had an existence must- still has that same existence but it's a- We won't go, you can't go too deeply into those things but they really are sailing back to a world of memory.' }}

I'm impressed you could pull that out clearly from his famous muttering.

He always said "Valinor was removed from the circles of the world" but it was usually taken as a poetic statement. Seems he was being very explicit about it raised out above the existing globe so that it could now only be reached by some sort of bridge that only the elves could find. The difference is that he envisioned the earth as always being a globe and then valinor was raised out into a tangent plane, while the typical reading is that it was flat then the rest of the world was curved into a globe leaving valinor behind.

He's also discussed the idea of the flat earth as being a mannish myth. This puts in the mechanics of it.

Pettytyrant101 wrote: There were two particular things he said I was unaware of, and in fact something it seems Ive been getting wrong in my head all these years! I always thought the world before the fall of Numenor was basically flat, and it was after the fall the world was reshaped into being round.

The Drowning of Anadûnê [Mannish tradition of the fall of Numenor, in which the Elves of the West teach the Numenoreans, before the destruction of Numenor, that the World is round] was written somewhere between Christmas vacation 1945 and August 1946. And an always round world version of the Ainulindale dates from 1946.

But Tolkien wasn't convinced that this should be the "truth". . . not yet anyway! Later I think he landed on a multi-perspective legendarium in any case -- and I've often claimed that later in life, Tolkien "ratified" The Drowning of Anadûnê as part of this idea.

(not sure why they couldnt have gone east and come to Valinor from the other side but still).

Ar-Pharazon wondered this as well: "For if we shall believe this," he said, "that one who goeth west shall return out of the East, then shall it not also be that one who goeth ever east shall come up at last behind the West, and yet break no ban."

But it had been said that "ere the shape of things was changed", eastward of Numenor the land stretched in truth from the North even into the uttermost South, where are ices impassable. "But the King said:" Nonetheless we may give thought to this road, if it may be discovered." The Drowning of Anadûnê [DA III], Sauron Defeated


Anyway, in the posthumously published corpus, there are texts in which the World was actually made round. And there are also texts in which certain folks discovered that the world was round -- with some perhaps thinking that it had been made round in history, at the Fall of Numenor.

And as I bleated above, when we get to the 1960s, it's my opinion that JRRT was happy enough to let his legendarium contain both (once) flat and (always) round world texts, as well as two ideas concerning the origin
of the Sun.

Multi-perspective!

{{Brilliant Elthir. Glad to see you are still popping your head full of Lore by. I had rather hoped a Lore Master (or Mistress) would spot it and have more to add.
That clarifies (by further muddying ) a few points. }}

{{ I am very curious Elthir if you know of any other statements or writings that espouse on the, sort of, time travel aspect to going to Valinor after its removal.

'All lines leads to what was. Of course, I don't know what your theory of Time is but: what was, what is, what ever had an existence must- still has that same existence but it's a- We won't go, you can't go too deeply into those things but they really are sailing back to a world of memory.' - Tolkien

Did he ever go into this in any more detail? }}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ I am very curious Elthir if you know of any other statements or writings that espouse on the, sort of, time travel aspect to going to Valinor after its removal.

'All lines leads to what was. Of course, I don't know what your theory of Time is but: what was, what is, what ever had an existence must- still has that same existence but it's a- We won't go, you can't go too deeply into those things but they really are sailing back to a world of memory.' - Tolkien

Did he ever go into this in any more detail? }}

Hmm. I remember this statement: "the exact nature of existence in Aman or Eressea after their "removal" must be dubious and unexplained, as must the question of "how mortals" could go there at all." JRRT Reincarnation of Elves, Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth Appendix, Morgoth's Ring

It seems to me that Aman and Eressea, after removal, must be within Time (see letter 246 for example, 1963), even though it can be said to be a memory of what was. In an effort to seem helpful [cough], here are statements from three different traditions of Numenor's Fall: Elvish, Mannish, and Mixed (although I think that the Elvish tradition [FN] was either to be revised, or abandoned, or possibly could represent a tradition of certain Elves that varied from the tradition, or traditions of other, Western Elves):

Fall of Numenor (world actually made round): "For the ancient line of the world remained in the mind of Iluvatar, and in the thought of the gods, and in the memory of the world, as a shape and plan that has been changed and yet endureth."

Drowning of Anadune (always round world): [in the youth of the world, it was a hard saying to men that the earth was not flat, and few even of the Faithful had believed in their hearts this teaching -- but when the Kings of Men found out that the world was indeed round]: " . . . then the belief arose among them that it had so been made only in the time of the great Downfall, and was not thus before. Therefore they thought that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the earth went on towards heaven, as it were a mighty bridge invisible."

Akallabeth: "For the Dunedain held that even mortal Men, if so blessed, might look upon other times than those of their bodies' life . . ."

There's also a "new" text published in The Nature of Middle-Earth, called The Numenorean Catastrophe & End Of "Physical" Aman, in which Tolkien asks (himself, I guess): "But how then would the corporeal union of fear and hroar be maintained in an Aman of memory only?" (keeping in mind that Elvish bodies were remembered in Elvish spirits).

Well . . . I'm still pondering this text and its "answer" . . .  noting Carl Hostetter's commentary at the end, especially regarding Frodo's bodily journey to a seemingly very physical Tol Eressea!

Anyway, I hate to admit it, but I haven't finished NOME yet! Nor have had time to contemplate those parts I have read, and let stuff sink in. I also can't recall what Verlyn Flieger's book A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faerie has to offer here, but looking on the web, chapter two is named: Remembrance That Never Dies. I did read this book, but it's been so long now; nor can I find my copy, if I still have it!

Anyway again, that's all I can remember right now. Probably not helpful.

Anyway again again, time for a nap! Then a jog. Then [maybe] another nap. Then food. Then more stuff.

What are the sources for the first two quotes, Elthir?

Oh sorry.

The first two Numenor quotes are from HOME 9, Sauron Defeated, in The Drowning of Anadune section, which also looks at The Fall of Numenor (meaning the text).

As I have often mumbled, I think Tolkien "ratified" The Drowning of Anadune in the 1960s -- as it was, that is,
a Mannish text in which the Western Elves taught the Numenoreans that the world was round (round from the beginning). To my mind this fits right in with a multi-perspective legendarium, which, also in my opinion, helped
solve Tolkien's concerns about a once flat world, as well as the Sun being the fruit of a tree.

To be clear-ish, my argument is that a multi-perspective, multi-authored legendarium helped Tolkien retain these "unscientific" ideas, as Quenta Silmarillion became a mostly mannish version of things.

Or something.

{{ Thanks Elthir that clears everything up ( bloody Lore Masters ).
So rather than having his cake and eating it Tolkien found a way to have several cakes and scoff the lot.
Still not sure however it clarifies on the matter of if Tolkien is implying some sort of time travel involved in actually getting there once it has been removed. }}

I saw that too, and almost posted it.

{{ Ive always enjoyed Tolkien's conceit abut the past, sadly beyond perhaps theologically it just doesn't work anywhere historically. There's no real way to fit Gondor to Rome into our history, or to explain how Numenoreon crown design ended up influencing the headwear of Ancient Egypt's pharaohs. And even closer to home for Tolkien, the UK, even in his day the eras of Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages were already long established, this works fine for explaining why the Shire looks like it does visually, but it doesn't fit otherwise at all. The Neolithic was stone age, its people the first to clear, farm and build barrows and stone circles in Britain. The Men of the North Kingdom who first cleared and farmed and built barrows and raised standing stones on the edge of the Shire were more like Anglo-Saxons however, from thousands of years later as they had Anglo-Saxon style brooches and jewellery and worked metals. You just can't make historically reality fit.
Perhaps had Tolkien started out with a clear intention of joining present to past he would have done things differently, but it seems clear the idea in detail of how to fit it together was not something he embarked on till very late on.
There is a quote from somewhere I half recall, Letters I think, where Tolkien talks about if Fell Beasts are pterodactyls and his reply hints at some regret he didn't really think through better their connection. This tells me he didn't have these ideas very near the front of his thoughts when he began to write his tales but came to it later after they had solidified and formed. }}

He needs a cataclysm between his ages and ours, in which technology was forgotten and rusted away. There is the bronze age collapse, but that's too recent unfortunately.