Galadriel

The Mirror of Galadriel. Sam Gamgee is Torn in Two Once Again.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 351-354

It was the Gaffer, Sam’s father, who expressed a pious hope that his son would not go getting mixed up in the business of his betters or he would land in trouble too big for him, and the Gaffer was right, Sam is way out of his depth, but then so too are the rest of the Fellowship. If they are to triumph in the end it will not be because of their strength or even their wisdom but because something greater than they are is at work in the story of Middle-earth.

But none of this is able to dampen Sam’s curiosity. He would “dearly love to see some Elf-magic”. He knows that what is going on around him in the enchanted land of Lothlórien is of a different order to the fireworks “that poor Gandalf used to show” and that Sam had just celebrated in verse but it is his childlike desire for the wonderful that is at work within him and it is in part at least to this desire that Galadriel responds, almost as a mother will do at a birthday party for her child.

But Galadriel has other purposes in mind than entertainment when she takes Sam and Frodo to see her mirror. She knows that it is these two, the Ringbearer and the one whose faithful companionship will be crucial if the quest is to be accomplished that she needs to test. Each of the others will have a vital part to play but it is only these two that she seeks out at this moment just before they leave.

It is Sam who must be tested first. What he sees in the mirror is what will later be The Scouring of the Shire.

“There’s that Ted Sandyman a-cutting down trees as he shouldn’t. They didn’t ought to be felled: it’s that avenue beyond the Mill that shades the road to Bywater. I wish I could get at Ted, and I’d fell him!”

And there is worse to come.

“They’ve dug up Bagshot Row, and there’s the poor old gaffer going down the Hill with his bits of things on a barrow. I must go home!”

And this is the point of Galadriel’s testing. Will Sam go with Frodo to the very end, knowing, as he now does, that behind him, in the place that he loves the most in all the world, destruction is, or may be, taking place? Already we have seen Sam face the same test, at the moment at the Gates of Moria when Bill the Pony fled in terror and Sam had to help rescue Frodo from the Watcher in the Waters, and at the moment when it seemed that Galadriel was offering him the chance to fly back to the Shire to a nice little hole with a garden of his own. At each stage Sam has passed the test and stayed true to Frodo but this is the hardest of them all. The destruction of his home and he was not there to defend it.

Galadriel does not make a speech about how he must stay true to the Quest so that the Ring may be destroyed and the whole world, a world that includes the Shire, may be saved. She simply reminds him that he could not go back alone, that he knew already that things might be amiss in the Shire, and that the Mirror is not a reliable guide to the future.

Sam is shattered. At this moment he is in full accord with the Gaffer’s anxiety that it is a dangerous thing to get mixed up in the affairs of his betters. He has no more desire for magic. Cabbages and potatoes are better for him. He might, on reflection, note that we do not have to go looking for trouble in order to find it. Trouble is capable of finding us while we sit in peace by a well tended hearth. This is the cautious Gaffer’s experience, much to the malicious pleasure of Ted Sandyman. But at the last Sam speaks the words that emerge through all the tests he has been through; words that express his deepest truth.

“I’ll go home by the long road with Mr Frodo, or not at all.”

“Your Quest Stands Upon The Edge of a Knife.” Galadriel’s Silent Interrogation of Each Member of The Fellowship.

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 346-349

At one time in her life Galadriel was made to endure an interrogation about events for which she was not responsible but in which she played a part. Melian, Queen of Doriath, and the mother of Lúthien Tinúviel, questioned her long about the reason why the Noldor had returned to Middle-earth from Valinor; long and searchingly until at last she learned the truth, or at least enough of the truth for her to be able fit more of the missing pieces into the puzzle and so make sense of it. Now Galadriel undertakes her own interrogation, in this case of the members of the Fellowship. She has good reason to do this and she declares her reason to them all.

“Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.”

And so she begins to hold each one with her eyes. It is the truth of their hearts that she seeks to discern. Her long years of wise perception and her gift of discernment are brought to bear upon each member of the Fellowship. For most of them the experience is excruciating and for some of them it is not so much the motives that they own that are brought into the open but those that they hide from themselves or justify to themselves.

Only Aragorn and Legolas are able to endure her gaze for very long. As we saw when we thought about the words that Aragorn spoke aloud to Arwen at Cerin Amroth, Aragorn no longer has hope beyond the ending of the Quest itself. He no longer has hope that he will win Arwen’s hand. That hope fell into the depths of Moria as Gandalf fell with the Balrog. He said to his fellows, “We must do without hope.” His life has been reduced to a pure simplicity. To take the next step and then the next until the end, doing whatever good he can do at each moment until there is no more that he can do. Legolas has no personal interest to declare in this matter for he has none. Elrond chose him to represent the Elves in the Quest and he will stay true to his calling.

As for the others the search of Galadriel’s eyes is much more disturbing. Sam finds that the possibility of returning to the Shire, to a home and garden, is laid out before him. It is what he will receive eventually but he has the choice, whether to try to grasp it now or to take the long road with Frodo. Later he will receive the same temptation to abandon Frodo but in another form. In the Mirror of Galadriel he will see his father in distress and the temptation will come, not in the form of his desire, which is always present, but as a cry for help. Poor Sam will hear this cry often, just as he did with Bill the pony, and each time with a breaking heart he will have to repeat the same words in his heart. “I had to choose, Mr Frodo. I had to come with you.” Sam’s loyalty to Frodo always comes at a cost.

Sam always has to choose.

That Merry also has a similar temptation is perhaps more of a surprise although we note throughout the story that once the four hobbits left the Shire Merry, who until that point had been the competent organiser until the moment that he fell into the clutches of Old Man Willow in the Old Forest, always and increasingly feels out of his depth, like a piece of luggage that others have to bear.

No-one asks Pippin what he experienced. Pippin is the little boy of the Company. The one that the others do not take with much seriousness. Gimli, and Frodo too, do not speak of what they are offered, or seem to be offered, which leaves us with Boromir.

“Almost I should have said that she was tempting us, and offering what she pretended to have the power to give. It need not be said that I refused to listen. The Men of Minas Tirith are true to their word.”

We do not learn at this point what it was that tempted Boromir. We probably find out at the time that he tries to take the Ring from Frodo and we will think about it then. At this stage it is enough for us to know that while each member of the Fellowship has reason not to be true to the Quest it is not so much the knowledge of that reason that they need to fear but the reasons that they try to hide from themselves. These are the temptations that have real danger both for them and the Quest.

“Do Not Repent of Your Welcome To The Dwarf.” The Fellowship Tell the Story of Gandalf’s Fall to Galadriel and Celeborn.

/ stephencwinter / 9 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 344-347

With the arrival of the Fellowship to the halls of Galadriel and Celeborn in Caras Galadhon at the heart of the realm of Lothlórien the tale of Gandalf’s fall into the abyss at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm must at last be told. So too has the manner of his fall at the hands of the Balrog of Moria, “of all elf-banes the most deadly, save the One who sits in the Dark Tower.”

If news of the fall of Gandalf has been the cause of great grief in the Elves of Lothlórien so news of the Balrog of Moria is the cause of great anger and most especially in Celeborn.

“Had I known that the Dwarves had stirred up this evil in Moria again, I would have forbidden you to pass the northern borders, you and all that went with you. And if it were possible, one would say that at the last Gandalf fell from wisdom into folly, going needlessly into the net of Moria.”

Readers will note that even though Celeborn is angry with the whole company, even with Gandalf himself, it is Gimli who he singles out for his particular wrath. It is Dwarves who have stirred up the evil that has lain hidden long years in the depths of Moria.

Celeborn’s anger against the Dwarves has a long history. It began in the First Age of Arda when his kinsman, the Lord Thingol of Doriath gained possession of a Silmaril through the mighty deeds of Luthien and Beren who took it from the very crown of Morgoth himself. The Silmaril was the price that Thingol had demanded of Beren so that he could have the hand of Luthien in marriage. Thingol asked Dwarf craftsmen to put the Silmaril into the Nauglamir, greatest and most beautiful of the works of the Dwarves in that age. The Dwarves were overcome by desire for the Silmaril and demanded that Thingol give it to them in payment for their labour. When Thingol refused this they killed him and a war broke out between Dwarves and Elves with terrible slaughter upon both sides. Although Celeborn’s role in that war is never mentioned there can be no doubt that he played his part in it and that he carried both anger and distrust towards Dwarves in his heart thereafter.

That the telling of the tale of the events at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm does not end with a swift expulsion of the Fellowship from Lothlórien and disaster for their mission is thanks to the intervention of Galadriel. If Celeborn is the keeper of the memory of a perception of treachery upon the part of dwarves and of a bitter war in which his homeland was destroyed by them then Galadriel is the keeper of a very different one. In her heart she cherishes the memory of Melian, the wife of Thingol, who became like a mother to her. Melian was known for her great wisdom and through all the story of Thingol and his avaricious heart she tried to warn him that such a spirit could lead to no good. Thingol became a grasper after things, even treating his own daughter, Luthien, as if she were a possession and not a free person. Galadriel, after the spirit of Melian, is a giver of hospitality, even though, like Melian too, she has put a girdle around Lothlórien to keep all evil at bay. She made Aragorn and Arwen welcome, both separately and in giving space for their love for each other to grow. And now she extends a loving welcome to Gimli the Dwarf.

“She looked upon Gimli, who sat glowering and sad, and she smiled. And the Dwarf… looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding.”

For Gimli this moment is a turning point in his story. His looking up, away from his anger and sadness and into the face of Galadriel turns him into a lover of beauty. He offers her his heart in worship and this is no idolatry because idolatry is in essence the worship of things for the sake of a small, mean self, the kind of worship that led to the fall and mutual destruction of Thingol, his realm, and the Dwarves, long ago. Gimli becomes a servant of all that is beautiful for its own sake. He “kisses the joy as it flies”, as William Blake puts it and so comes to live in “eternity’s sunrise”.

“I Feel As If I Was Inside a Song, if You Take My Meaning.” The Fellowship at Cerin Amroth.

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 340-343

As so often in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien chooses Sam Gamgee to try to express the inexpressible. The Fellowship have arrived at Cerin Amroth after walking blindfolded all day through Lothlórien. At last messages come from the Lady Galadriel and all the blindfolds are removed. Frodo has had a growing sense that he is journeying back into the Elder Days and that here the ancient world is more than a memory, it still lives.

“Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name.”

For Frodo language is no longer adequate for what he is experiencing.

“He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful.”

This is the unmediated experience in which the ordinary, here expressed as colours with which we are all familiar, is transfigured. Such an experience is possible in any place and at any moment. It always comes as a surprise, surprised by joy as Wordsworth put it, and which C.S Lewis chose as the title of his autobiography. It is never possible to manufacture such an experience, to somehow create the right conditions for it to happen, but Frodo has developed a capacity better than many do to receive it through long practice of a love of beauty and a deep longing for it.

And so does Sam. Whereas Frodo knows that language is hopelessly inadequate for what he is experiencing and so remains silent Sam has no such inhibitions. He does not have any regard for his own ability to put things into words and so retains a childlike simplicity of speech. Whereas his old adversary, Ted Sandyman, constantly congratulates himself for his own cleverness, his ability to see through things and not be caught out, Sam has no such confidence. At the beginning of the story Sam expresses his desire to go on the journey in two simple ways. He wants to go with Frodo wherever Frodo goes and he wants to see Elves. Ted Sandyman would have laughed at him for this and no doubt he did but though Sam might be a little hurt by the scorn of others he is not deflected from his course by it. He is the truly simple one who wills one thing.

And so he is chosen as the right member of the Fellowship to put into words the experience of Cerin Amroth.

“It’s sunlight and bright day, right enough,” he said. “I thought that the Elves were all for moon and stars; but this is more elvish than anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as if I was inside a song, if you take my meaning.”

A song has words but it is rare that they have the intention to explain things. The language of a song is the language of the heart, sometimes of the gut, but rarely of the head. And the music of a song, whether it is a marching tune to send soldiers into battle, or a gentle ballad to help lovers express how they feel about each other, can never be an explanation of anything. So Haldir does take Sam’s meaning, the meaning of Sam’s heart and he smiles.

“You feel the power of the Lady of the Galadhrim,” he said. And this is most certainly true. But might we say that what Sam feels is not a power that originates in Galadriel but that which flows through her, enabling her to subcreate this earthly paradise in praise of Eru?

In his joyous essay, The Ethics of Elfland, G.K Chesterton tries to put into words what Frodo and Sam experience here and he does rather well! In it Chesterton says that perhaps God, like a child (like Sam Gamgee?) never tires of repetition so that the world can never be monotonous to God. “It may be that God makes each daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.” And that repetition in nature is never “a mere recurrence” but an encore.

And it is in this encore in Cerin Amroth that Frodo and Sam delight and applaud.

“My Heart Would be Glad if I Were Beneath the Eaves of That Wood, and it Were Springtime.” The Fellowship Draw Near to Lothlórien.

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.324-326

As Tolkien takes us from the dark of Moria and the terrible events at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm so the language that he uses grows ever richer and more verdant. It is Legolas, the Wood-elf from the green of Mirkwood who first speaks of the land that they approach.

“‘There lie the woods of Lothlórien!’ said Legolas. ‘That is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people. There are no trees like the trees of that land.'”

The history of Lothlórien goes back to the earliest days of the First Age and a settlement there of Silvan, or woodland elves, kindred to Legolas’s own people. When the Valar called the Elves to come to Valinor for fear of Morgoth the Silvan elves had refused the call, choosing to stay east of the Misty Mountains in the vale of Anduin. It was these who were found by Galadriel and Celeborn, fleeing eastward from the war that destroyed the kingdom of Eregion in the Second Age and they became lords of the people who dwelt there. So it was that the two great strongholds of the Elves in Middle-earth were created after the destruction wrought by Sauron, Imladris or Rivendell founded by Elrond and Lothlórien founded by Galadriel and Celeborn.

The Sindarin elves who came with Galadriel named the woodland realm that they settled in Laurelindórenan, or the Valley of Singing Gold, so-called because of the mallorn trees, gifts of Gil-galad, that they had brought with them. It is of these that Legolas speaks in language that becomes ever more poetic.

“For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold. Not till the spring comes, and the new green opens do they fall, and then the boughs are laden with yellow flowers; and the floor of the wood is golden, and golden is the roof, and its pillars are of silver, for the bark of the trees is smooth and grey.”

You can almost feel Legolas savouring his own words like fine wine, especially the adjectives, golden, golden, and silver. Tolkien himself enjoyed a visceral relationship to language so that he could experience a word both in his senses and in his inner life and in passages like this, even though they are written in the Common Tongue, both for the sake of the Company and for his readers like myself, they are still able to convey a sense of this relationship. We too long to travel to this earthly paradise and to hear and taste the music of the singing gold.

But its name is no longer Laurelindórenan but Lothlórien. It has become the Dreamflower or even just Lórien, or Dream Land. Later Treebeard will speak of this to Merry and Pippin.

“Now they make the name shorter: Lothlórien they call it. Perhaps they are right; maybe it is fading, not growing. Land of the Valley of Singing Gold, that was it, once upon a time. Now it is the Dreamflower.”

The dream that the Fellowship will enter will still be potent, still intoxicating, and perhaps just a little frightening, very frightening for those who bring their peril with them as Sam will later put it to Faramir in Henneth Annûn. But it is a land that is falling asleep, “fading, not growing”. Tolkien skilfully shows a world that is still saturated with the myth of Eden. Like Legolas we cry with yearning, “My heart would be glad if I were beneath the eaves of that wood, and it were springtime!” or with Aragorn, “My heart will be glad, even in the winter”, but as we read The Lord of the Rings we come to realise that there is no return to Eden, that if there is to be a place for us, somewhere, then it lies before and beyond us. As Aragorn will say to Arwen Undómiel at his own ending, “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them there is more than memory.”

“What of The Three Rings of The Elves?” Can They Be Used Against Sauron?

/ stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 260-263

When Celebrimbor and Sauron (in his guise of Annatar) studied and then created the Rings of Power during the Second Age of Arda there were three rings made by Celebrimbor alone over which Sauron had no influence. Seven rings were made for the dwarves and nine for humankind. The dwarves proved to be of stubborn stuff and so even when Sauron was wielding the One Ring “to rule them all” these rings and their bearers did not fall under his sway. So began the long unhappy history of Sauron’s search for the rings of the dwarves which ended in Dol Guldur when Sauron took the last of them from Thráin.

The rings given to human lords brought them swiftly under the domination of the Dark Lord. The dwarves were always true to their essential nature, loving the things that they made, implacable both in friendship and enmity, but humankind was always constrained by their mortality in a very particular way. The very brevity of a human life meant that a choice had to be made. It still does. Some would look beyond the confines of their mortality and so live in hope accepting their fate while entrusting themselves to that which lay beyond them. So Aragorn said to Arwen at the end of his life, “We are not bound for ever to the circles of this world, and beyond them there is more than memory”. Or, as in the heroic world of the Rohirrim, they would laugh in the face of despair even as they confronted their own deaths, as did Éomer when it seemed certain to him that he would die in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Or, as with the Dunlendings, there was a dull, grim and embittered spirit, a nation of “Gollums”, ever resentful of perceived slights at the hands of others. Or, as with the people of Bree, the spirit and wisdom of Ecclesiastes, “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your life which you have been given under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun”. The hobbits were perhaps closest in spirit to them.

But for the Númenorians and their descendants, the ones who had come closest to Valinor and the immortality of the Elves, there was for many a growing sense that mortality was a curse that had been imposed upon them and one that they should strive to overcome. It was nine lords from among such as these who seized the opportunity given to them in Sauron’s gift of rings and who learned that immortality as a mere extension of existence is an intolerable burden, a curse rather than a blessing.

The Rings of the Elves were not made by Sauron but by Celebrimbor alone although these rings could not have been made without the craft that they had learned together. Perhaps Celebrimbor had some secret suspicion of Sauron or, more likely, the desire like Fëanor before him to make something that was his and his alone, but they were not made for “strength or domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making and healing, to preserve all things unstained”. As with the Elves themselves, but as an intensification of who the Elves were, they were bound to the earth itself in joy and in sorrow. In the healing of the hurts of the earth and in the preserving of its beauty they brought great joy. If only we could find the earthly paradises of Rivendell or Lothlórien in our world today or even the Shire as Sam Gamgee was to remake it using Galadriel’s gift; or perhaps such places would best be kept hidden from us as we would probably spoil them by turning them into tourist destinations. Could you imagine some kind of “Lothlórien-world”?

There is a sense in which the three rings of the Elves were used against Sauron. Elrond’s healing power, Galadriel’s adamantine resistance and, above all, Gandalf’s unresting work in warming hearts in a world ever growing cold, all of these fruits of the Elven Rings meant that Sauron had been kept at bay for long years but now as Sauron bent all of his might and malice in the task of the conquest of Middle-earth the rings of the Elves could no longer resist him nor could the combined strength of its free peoples. At the last there could only be one choice that could be made and that was as Elrond counselled the destruction of the Ring.

“Aragorn Insisted on My Putting in a Green Stone.” The Importance of Hope in The Lord of the Rings.

/ stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.227-231

Bilbo’s verses, chanted in the Hall of Fire in Rivendell, the house of Elrond have gone remarkably well. Remarkably well because Elrond is the son of Eärendi, the hero about whom Bilbo has sung. A number of commentators have remarked upon the ambiguous reception that the Elves give to Bilbo’s efforts and the way in which they seem to dismiss mortals comparing them to sheep. They ignore the fact that Eärendil was himself a mortal, a mortal who married an elven princess, Elwing the daughter of Dior and grandchild of Beren and Lúthien, and great-grandchild of Thingol and Melian of Doriath. They ignore the fact that the history of mortals and elves are so closely woven together and that Aragorn, like Elrond, is a descendant of Eärendil and Elwing.

Aragorn himself clearly feels this tension, chiding Bilbo for treading upon a subject that is well above his head but he makes one suggestion concerning Bilbo’s verses and that is that he should put in “a green stone”, seeming “to think it important”.

And it is important. For this stone is the Elessar, the Elfstone. In the history of Galadriel and Celeborn, recorded in the Unfinished Tales we read this:

“There was in Gondolin a jewel smith named Enerdhil, the greatest of that craft among the Noldor after the death of Fëanor. Enerdhil loved all green things that grew, and his greatest joy was to see the sunlight through the leaves of trees. And it came into his heart to make a jewel within which the clear light of the sun should be imprisoned, but the jewel should be green as leaves.”

This stone was given by Enerdhil to Idril, the daughter of Turgon, king of Gondolin and she in her turn gave it to her son, Eärendil. And even in these few words we discern a lineage for the Elessar that is entirely different to that of the Silmarils of Fëanor or, for that matter of the Ring of Power. For from the moment of its making the story of the Elessar is one of gift. Enerdhil gives it to Idril and gives it without condition. He does not seek to possess the one who receives his gift. By contrast the story of the Silmarils is one of theft and power. Morgoth steals the jewels from Fëanor and when Beren and Lúthien take one of the jewels from Morgoth’s crown the heirs of Fëanor never cease from their efforts to regain it no matter what the cost, either to themselves or others.

Thus the Elessar is always a sign of hope. “It is said,” so we read in Unfinished Tales, “that those who looked through this stone saw things that were withered or burned healed again or as they were in the grace of their youth, and that the hands of all who held it brought to all that they touched healing from hurt.” And so it passes from Idril to Eärendil, her son, who takes it with him into the west in his quest to seek aid for Middle-earth from the Valar. At last, and Tolkien spoke of two ways in which this might have happened, it passes to Galadriel, either through Gandalf who brought the stone with him from Valinor or through Celebrimbor, the maker of rings who was deceived by Sauron into giving him the means by which the Ring of Power was forged at the Cracks of Doom. Whichever tale you choose the Elfstone remains a gift and so at last Aragorn comes to Lothlórien with the Fellowship fleeing from Moria and Galadriel gives the stone to him as they part.

“She lifted from her lap a great stone of a clear green, set in a silver brooch that was wrought in the likeness of an eagle with outspread wings; and as she held it up the gem flashed like the sun shining through the leaves of spring.”

We do not read of the influence of the stone upon Aragorn in the rest of the story. We know that Galadriel had given the stone to Celebrian, her daughter and that through her it passed to Arwen. Did Aragorn know that Arwen had possessed the stone, the very stone that Eärendil had once worn? Was it this connection that caused him to insist that Bilbo included the Elfstone in his verses? Was Aragorn, in his own way, reminding the son of Eärendil that he too was intimately linked to this story? Aragorn will be crowned the King Elessar and he will bring healing to Middle-earth just as the prayer of Eärendil did so at the end of the First Age. At this point of the story on the eve of the Council of Elrond all there is is hope but it is enough.

The Keepers of The Elven Rings Bid Farewell to Middle-earth

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

 

There are three others who set sail into the West from the Grey Havens. Actually I should not have described them as the “others”. This ship was originally meant for them and not for the Ring-bearers. At the ending of their work in Middle-earth, Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond, the keepers of the Three Elven Rings, were to depart into the West. Arwen was meant to go with them but when she made her choice for Aragorn and for mortality it seems that she was the first to suggest that her place in the ship could go to Frodo. In his letters Tolkien said that Arwen was not able to make such a decision because it was not hers to make but that Gandalf, the true representative of the Valar in Middle-earth, could. It was he who offered the place that was to be Arwen’s to Frodo and realising that the wound of the Ring could not be healed in Middle-earth he also invited Bilbo to make the journey.

Saruman knew that the Three Elven Rings would lose their power when the One went to the Fire but he seems to have thought that their keepers would then diminish with them as unhappy exiles in Middle-earth and that his own unhappiness would be something that he would share with those that he had sought to betray and had learned to hate. His own rejection of grace and his embrace of despair and bitterness had led him to believe that this would be the destiny of his enemies also. The speedy healing of the Shire was a thing far beyond his miserable imagination. And he seems not to have any conception of the grace of the ship that would pass into the West either. Perhaps this was because he knew that to return to the West would also mean to stand before the Valar for judgement and, just like Sauron at the end of the First Age, this was something that he could not countenance. That this grace would be extended to others seems to have been beyond his imagination also.

I think of the journey into the West as being different in nature for each of the Three Keepers.

For Gandalf it was to be rest after his long labours. Although he was tempted to take the Ring and to use it to gain victory over its Maker this was a temptation that he was able to overcome. He was also able to overcome his fear. Tolkien tells us that he was at first unwilling to undertake the mission of the Istari, of the Wizards, to stand against Sauron. He felt himself to be inadequate and was afraid. That he was able to overcome his fear and to offer himself just as he was to the task was a great victory. The victory over the Dark Lord was never accomplished by superior power but by faithfulness and self-sacrifice. Gandalf laid down his life for his friends in the great battle against the Balrog of Moria. He was given his life back and so continued to victory but not a victory that he achieved through his own or any other’s might but one that was achieved through the journey of Frodo and Sam to Mount Doom and the strange grace of Gollum’s taking of the Ring to the Fire.

For Galadriel the return into the West was something that for long years she believed to be impossible and perhaps for a time did not even desire. When she, like Gandalf, was tempted to take the Ring, it was her dream of becoming a Queen over all Middle-earth that she laid down. “I will diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel,” she said to Frodo. This is what she now accepts as the ship finally departs.

And Elrond? I think that for him there is a particular sadness that is bound up with his separation from Arwen. Of course there is the sadness of the separation itself. But there is something more. Elrond is half-elven but not just by birth but also by choice. At the end of the First Age his brother, Elros, made the strange choice of mortality. Elrond rejected this and now at the end of the Third Age, Arwen, too, makes the choice of Elros and rejects the choice of her father. As he steps onto the ship and confirms his own choice he steps away from mortality and from his daughter. He too must embrace his own destiny for good and ill. He must overcome his bitterness and be healed.

The last pages of The Lord of the Rings are as incomplete as any in literature. Tolkien believed in the “Happy Ever After” of the fairy-story and yet he does not grant this to his characters at the end of this story. Full of uncertainty each one of them in stepping aboard the ship must embrace their own destiny. What that destiny is, lies, not in their own hands, but in the hands of the One to whom they now entrust themselves. As we read these last pages we too are invited into our own leap into faith as we let go our own control of our destiny.

The Passing of the Three Elven Rings of Power.

/ stephencwinter / 10 Comments

At the point where the road northward from Isengard to Rivendell meets the way over the mountain pass to Lothlórien the company pauses on its journey for a whole week. This is the parting of the three keepers of the Elven Rings made by Celebrimbor of Eregion in the Second Age. Vilya, Nenya and Narya. Sauron had no part in their making and so they were not under the control power of the One Ring and yet their fate was inextricably linked to the Ruling Ring made by the same lore, the sharing of skill and of knowledge between Celebrimbor and Sauron when the Dark Lord’s intention was not yet known.

Or were there clues enough for the Wise to guess at what Sauron wished to do? Certainly Galadriel and Gil-galad refused his embassies but Celebrimbor received him. In Unfinished Tales Tolkien tells us that Celebrimbor “desired in his heart to rival the skill and fame of Fëanor”. The old Prayer Book of the Church of England counsels us against following “too much the devices and desires of our hearts”. This is wise advice and calls for rigorous self-examination. Celebrimbor was far too upright and honourable to betray his people and friends for the sake of his desire but his desire made him ready to do as Sauron wished and to give him aid in making the Rings of Power.

In this desire even Galadriel was not without blame. When it became clear at the moment when Sauron forged the One Ring in the Cracks of Doom at Orodruin in Mordor that he wished power only for himself she counselled Celebrimbor against destroying the lesser Rings; the Nine, the Seven and the Three. Already she possessed Nenya and by it she was able to create Lórinand that was to become Lothlórien, the most beautiful land in all Middle-earth. Her desire was for the beauty that she was creating and she did not wish to give up her Ring for destruction. As a consequence even though Sauron never found the Three Elven Rings he was able to capture the Nine in his war against Celebrimbor and to give them to mortal men so creating his most terrible servants, the Nazgûl. For a time the Seven, rings of power given to the Dwarf Lords, were free from his grasp, but eventually he held them too.

Celebrimbor’s desire, and Galadriel’s share in it, had led to the forging of the One Ring, to the creation of the Nazgûl and to the diminishing of the dwarves. Although the Elven Rings enabled Galadriel to create the beauty of Lothlórien, Elrond the beauty of the valley of Rivendell and Gandalf to stir up the hearts and wills of the free peoples of Middle-earth they were too much linked to the evil of the Ring of Power to survive its destruction.

Saruman spoke of this in his encounter with the Ring-bearers. “I did not spend long study on these matters for naught. You have doomed yourselves, and you know it. And it will afford me some comfort as I wander to think that you pulled down your own house when you destroyed mine.” As always Saruman’s knowledge was less complete than he believed and his wisdom almost entirely absent but one thing is true and that is that with the destruction of the Ring the power of the Three is at an end and with it much of the work that they achieved. Lothlórien and Rivendell must diminish. Much that is beautiful in the world must come to an end.

Would it have been better if the Ring had not gone to the Fire? The Wise had already been faced with this choice and rejected it. The Ruling Ring had such power to corrupt that it was impossible to keep safely and to use it would have been catastrophic. Never again would the path of withholding be followed. At last the Wise knew what they must do. The Ring must be destroyed and their life in Middle-earth must come to an end.

Saruman in his bitter envy thought of this as an accidental outcome of the destruction of the Ring. He could not imagine that his enemies were prepared to give up so much and to do it freely. And he most certainly did not anticipate the grace that will be shown to the Ring-bearers. After all it was a grace that he himself had long ago rejected.

Meeting Saruman on the Road and It’s Still All About Him

/ stephencwinter / 11 Comments

The great company begin their journey northward from Isengard to Rivendell after saying a last farewell to Aragorn and as they journey along the road they encounter two wretched figures. One is Wormtongue, once the master of Edoras but now “slouching and whining” and the other is Saruman. Once he was Saruman the White and great among the Wise of Middle-earth but now he is reduced to misery.

He is reduced to misery but undefeated. “All my hopes are ruined,” he declares, “but I would not share yours. If you have any.” He rejects Gandalf’s offer of aid. He will remain alone.

Even now Saruman would like to appear brave and noble just as he wished to appear thus before Gandalf when he tried to persuade him to join his alliance with Sauron when imprisoning him in Isengard. Then he said to Gandalf, “We must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see”. Of course Gandalf knew that when Saruman said “We” he really meant “I” and that is the whole point of this kind of speech. As Digory Kirke says of his Uncle Andrew in C.S Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew when he tries to look grave and noble speaking of “high and lonely” destinies, “All it means is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.”

That is all that Uncle Andrew meant and it is all that Saruman means.

And both of them actually are afraid of the loneliness that they boast of. They  have a pathetic desire for the admiration of others even of those for whom they appear to have nothing but contempt. While Gandalf was often truly lonely in the long years of struggle Saruman sought to surround himself with worshippers. Gandalf was the Grey Pilgrim, always dependent upon the hospitality of others but who learnt through his dependence a deep respect and love for all his hosts, even for hobbits! He always remained entirely present to the task that he was given by the Valar and was faithful to it even though few seemed to share his vision and his respect and love for hobbits was to prove crucial to the successful outcome of the whole enterprise although this was never his intention. Unintended consequences are not only or always unhappy ones.

Saruman, on the other hand, always needed walls about him and an endless supply of followers and admirers. His hatred of Galadriel was because he knew that she believed that Gandalf should lead the Council. His hatred of the Elves because Círdan of The Grey Havens gave Narya, one of the three Elven Rings, to Gandalf and not to him. He settled in Isengard, once a great fortress of the Númenorians of Middle-earth, and so became a ruler among other rulers, always dreaming of the day when he might become the ruler over all others, dreaming of the day when he might possess the Ruling Ring. And because he gave himself entirely to his desire he came to believe that all others wanted what he wanted and so were his competitors.

Now all that is left for him is degradation and yet he refuses to repent. As W.H Auden once wrote, “We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die”. Auden could have written these words about Saruman. He does write them for all who share Saruman’s desire. Even now Gandalf offers mercy and help to Saruman but Saruman rejects it. Where Gandalf offers pity all that Saruman can see is the contempt that he has long nourished in his own heart.

At last he looks upon the hobbits who share Gandalf’s pity, Merry even offering Saruman his tobacco. All he can see is the fine clothes that are the fruit of their labours and suffering. All that he can feel is a hatred of their contentment and he is determined to do them some hurt if he can. To determine to do this is a way of refusing to change. It allows him to maintain some last shred of the illusion of greatness.