Morgoth's Ring (6 page)

save Yavanna and Oromë

Aulë dwelt in Valinor; Manwë with

Varda on Taniquetil; Ulmo in the Outer

Ocean. Relations with the Noldor,

Lindar, Teleri

After the departure of the Valar, Ilúvatar's

silence, and then his declaration concerning

Elves and Men: the gift of freedom and death to

Men; nature of the immortality of the Elves

End of the Ainulindalë spoken

by Rúmil to Ælfwine

The central shift in the myth of the Creation lies of course in the fact that in the old form, when the Ainur contemplate the World and find joy In its contemplation and desire it, the World has been given Being by Ilúvatar, whereas in C it is a Vision that has not been given Being. With this may be compared my father's words in the account of his

MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË -
Version C
- 26

works written for Milton Waldman in 1951 (
Letters
no.131, p. 146): They [the Valar] are 'divine', that is, were originally 'outside' and existed

'before' the making of the world. Their power and wisdom is derived from their Knowledge of the cosmogonical drama, which they perceived first as a drama (that is as in a fashion we perceive a story composed by someone else), and later as a 'reality'.

In the Vision, moreover, in which the Ainur see the unfolding of the history of the World as yet unmade, they see the arising within it of the Children of Ilúvatar (§13); and when the Vision is made real and the Ainur descend into the World, it is their knowledge and love of the Children of Ilúvatar who are to be that directs their shape and form when they make themselves visible (§25). Several passages in letters of my father from the years 1956-8 bear closely on these conceptions (see
Letters
nos.181, 200, 212).

But the nature and extent of the
Ainulindalë
is also greatly changed; it contains now the first battle of Melkor with the Valar for the dominion of Arda, but it does not contain the original concluding passage concerning Ilúvatar's Gift to Men, nor the accounts of Manwë, Ulmo and Aulë: these latter, together with much new material concerning the first wars in Arda, are placed in a sort of Appendix, the Words of Pengeloð to Ælfwine. This is reminiscent of the original
Music of the
Ainur
in
The Book of Lost Tales
, with Ælfwine (Eriol) appearing in person as questioner.

In the pre-
Lord of the Rings
texts Melko's part in the beginning of Earth's history was conceived far more simply. As late as the
Ambarkanta
(IV.238) the story was that

the Valar coming into the World descended first upon Middle-earth at its centre, save Melko who descended in the furthest North. But the Valar took a portion of land and made an island and hallowed it, and set it in the Western Sea and abode upon it, while they were busied in the exploration and first ordering of the World. As is told they desired to make lamps, and Melko offered to devise a new substance of great strength and beauty to be their pillars. And he set up these great pillars north and south of the Earth's middle yet nearer to it than the chasm; and the Gods placed lamps upon them and the Earth had light for a while.

In the
Quenta Silmarillion
(V.208) and the
Later Annals of Valinor
(V.110-11) there is no suggestion that Melko departed from the Earth after the first coming of the Valar, and indeed the cosmology described in the
Ambarkanta
could not allow of it: as I said in my commentary (IV.253):

It is not indeed explained in the
Ambarkanta
how the Valar entered the world at its beginning, passing through the impassable Walls, MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË -
Version C
- 27

and perhaps we should not expect it to be. But the central idea at this time is clear: from the Beginning to the Great Battle in which Melko was overthrown, the world with all its inhabitants was inescapably bounded; but at the very end, in order to extrude Melko into the Void, the Valar were able to pierce the Walls by a Door.

The far more complex account in the new work of the movements of Melkor and of his strife with the Valar is an indication at once, therefore, that shifts have taken place in the cosmology.

In the
Ainulindalë
proper it is now told that Melkor entered the World with the other Ainur at the beginning - he 'was there from the first', and claimed Earth for his own (§23); but he was alone, and unable to resist the Valar, and he 'withdrew to other regions' (§24). There followed the labours of the Valar 'in the ordering of the Earth, and the curbing of its tumults', and Melkor saw from afar that 'Earth was become as a garden for them'; then in envy and malice he 'descended upon Earth' to begin 'the first battle of the Valar and Melkor for the dominion of Arda' (§§26-7).

The words 'Earth was become as a garden for them' are not to be interpreted as a reference to the 'Spring of Arda', for the description of this follows in the Words of Pengoloð; where appears also the wholly new element that Tulkas was not one of the Ainur who entered the World at the beginning, but came only when 'in the far heaven' he heard of the war 'in the Little World' (§31).

Then follows the building of the Lamps and the Spring of Arda; for Melkor had fled from the Earth a second time, routed by Tulkas, and 'brooded in the outer darkness'. At the end of 'a long age' he came back in secret to the far North of Middle-earth, whence his evil power spread, and whence he came against the Valar in renewed war, and cast down the Lamps (§32). Then the Valar departed from the island of Almar in the great lake and made their dwelling in the uttermost West; and from Valinor they came against Melkor again. But they could not defeat him; and at that time he built Utumno. There are thus four distinct periods of strife between Melkor and the Valar, and he departed out of Arda and returned to it twice.

We are brought therefore to the forbidding problem of the underlying conception of the World in this phase of my father's later work. In the original
Music of the Ainur
in
The Book of Lost Tales
Ilúvatar 'fashioned [for the Ainur]

dwellings in the void, and dwelt among them' (I.52); at the end of the Music he

'went forth from his dwellings, past those fair regions he had fashioned for the Ainur, out into the dark places' (I.55), and 'when they reached the midmost void they beheld a sight of surpassing beauty and wonder where before had been emptiness': 'the Ainur marvelled to see how the world was globed amid the void and yet separated from it' (I.55-6). This may not be a simple conception, but it is pictorially simple. In
Ainulindalë
B it was MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË -
Version C
- 28

not changed (V.159). In the
Ambarkanta
'the World' (
Ilu
) is 'globed' within the invisible, impassable Walls of the World (
Ilurambar
), and 'the World is set amid Kúma, the Void, the Night without form or time' (IV.235-7). I take these accounts to be in agreement. 'The World' comprises 'the Earth' (
Ambar
), the region of the heavenly bodies that pass over it, and the Outer Sea (
Vaiya
), 'more like to sea below the Earth and more like to air above the Earth', which enfolds or 'englobes' all (IV.236).

In C, likewise, Ilúvatar 'went forth from the fair regions that he had made for the Ainur', and they came into the Void (§§10-11). There Ilúvatar showed them a Vision, 'and they saw a new World ... globed amid the Void, and it was sustained therein, but was not of it' (repeating the words of B, though they were here written out anew). But then it is said in C (§14) that 'amid all the splendours of the World, its vast halls and spaces, and its wheeling fires, Ilúvatar chose a place for their habitation (i.e. the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar] in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable Stars.' This habitation is 'Arda, the Earth', which is

'in the Halls of Aman' (§15). When Ilúvatar gave Being to the Vision, he said (§20):

'Let these things Be! And I will send forth the flame imperishable into the Void, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall Be; and those of you that will may go down into it.' Some of the Ainur 'abode still with Ilúvatar beyond the confines of the World' (§21); but those who 'entered into the World' (§22) are the Valar, the Powers of the World, and they laboured 'in wastes unmeasured and unexplored ... until in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the vast halls of the World there came to be that hour and that place where was made the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar' (§23). It is also said (§24) that the lesser spirits who aided Manwë 'went down into the Halls of Aman'. It is clear that 'the Halls of Aman' are equivalent to 'the World' (and indeed in the following text D the reading of C in §23

'the vast halls of the World' becomes 'the vast halls of Aman'). I am unable however to cast any light on the use of the name
Aman
in the later
Ainulindalë
texts. In
The
Drowning of Anadûnê
, where it first appeared, it was the Adûnaic name of Manwë, but that meaning is surely not present here.

It emerges then that the word 'World' is explicitly used in a new sense. In the
Ambarkanta
diagram I (IV.243) Ilu
is
'the World', the Earth and Sky, two halves of a globe itself globed within Vaiya. In C Arda, the Earth, the habitation of Elves and Men, is
within
'the World', 'the Halls of Aman'. The evident fact that my father also used 'World' in another sense in C (the clearest case being 'that land upon the borders of the World which is called Valinor', §32) does not make matters any easier, but does not contradict this distinction.

In order to understand the implications of this change, it must first MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË -
Version C
- 29

be asked: What can be said of the nature of
Arda
in this new conception?

In the
Ambarkanta
diagram I my father long afterwards changed the title-word
Ilu
to
Arda
(IV.242). He would scarcely have done this if the conceptions behind the two names did not continue to bear a substantial resemblance to each other.
Arda
, then, retains major characteristics of the image of
Ilu
, and this is shown by what is said in the text of C itself: as that Ulmo 'dwelt from the beginning of Arda in the Outer Ocean' and the echo of his music 'runs through all the veins of the Earth' (§37), or that the spirits flying from Manwë's halls in the shape of hawks and eagles were borne by their wings '
through the three regions of the firmament
' (§36).

On this basis it may be said that the major difference in the new conception is that while Arda is physically the same as Ilu, it is no longer 'the World globed amid the Void': for Arda is within 'the World'-which is itself 'globed amid the Void'

(§11).

But we at once meet with a serious difficulty - and there was no second
Ambarkanta
to help in resolving it. For 'the World', 'the Halls of Aman', which surrounds Arda, is not the Void: though Arda 'might seem a little thing to those ...

who consider only the immeasurable vastness of the World' (§14), the World is spatially defined ('globed', §11), and it contains 'splendours . . . and wheeling fires'; and Ilúvatar chose the habitation of the Children, which is Arda, 'in the midst of the innumerable Stars'. How can this possibly be brought into agreement with the idea (IV.241, 243) of the Tinwë-mallë, the path of the stars, which is the 'middle air' of Ilmen, the second region of the firmament of Ilu? Yet in C (§36) the spirits that fly from Taniquetil pass through 'the three regions of the firmament
beyond the lights of
heaven to the edge of Darkness
' . Since this derives without change from B (V.162), and since C is a reworking of the actual B manuscript, it might be thought that this passage was retained unintentionally; but in fact it comes in a part of the text that was written entirely anew, not emended on the original manuscript (much of C was written anew even when the old text was being largely followed).

It has been seen (p. 27) that the greatly enlarged history of Melkor and the Valar in the beginning depends in part on the changed cosmology, for he twice departed out of Arda. This raises the question of the passage of the Walls of the World, and indeed of the form which that conception now took: for, as will be seen, the idea of the Walls had not been abandoned. But I postpone further discussion of this baffling topic until subsequent texts that bear on it are reached.

Ainulindalë D

This next version of the
Ainulindalë
is a manuscript of unusual MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË -
Version D
- 30

splendour, with illuminated capitals and a beautiful script, in which for a part of its length my father made use of Anglo-Saxon letter-forms - even to the extent of using old abbreviations, as the letter 'thorn' with a stroke across the stem for 'that'. This feature at once associates it closely with
Ainulindalë
C, where in the long passages of new text written on the old manuscript he did the same here and there. There can in any case be little question that this new version belongs closely in time with C, which was a very difficult and chaotic text and had to be given more lucid form; and it shares the common characteristic of the various series of my father's manuscripts of beginning as a close (indeed in this case almost an exact) copy of the exemplar but diverging more and more markedly as it proceeds. In this case I give the full text only for certain passages, and for the rest list the changes (other than a small number of slight stylistic changes of a word or two without significance for the conception) by reference to the paragraphs of C.

The text of D was subsequently emended, though not very heavily, in several 'layers', the earlier made with care, the later roughly; where of any importance these are shown as such in the textual representation that follows.

D has a fine separate title-page, with
Ainulindalë
in tengwar, and then: Ainulindalë