The Silmarillion: Book Review by John Gardner

8/6/2019 The Silmarillion: Book Review by John Gardner

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October 23, 1977

BOOK REVIEW | 'THE SILMARILLION'

The World of Tolkien

By JOHN GARDNER

THE SILMARILLION

By J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Christopher Tolkien.

he power and beauty of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" guarantees in

advance the importance and interest of "The Silmarillion," his account of all that

happened earlier in his imaginary kingdoms of towers, dwarfs, elves and men. The

longer we look at it, the more impressive "The Lord of the Rings" becomes; and the

more we see of Tolkien's other work, the more miraculous it seems that the powers

should have granted him that great trilogy.

He was, in many ways, an ordinary man. As a scholar, he was a good, not a great,

medievalist. His famous essay, "Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics," stands out

mainly because it lacks the pedantic stuffiness common in this field and because it

gave early support to a way of reading "Beowulf" that more rigorous critics were

already pursuing to their profit. His edition of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"

was a good, trustworthy edition, not brilliant-curiously weak when it comes to

interpretation-and his modernizations of that poem and also of "Pearl" and "Sir

Orfeo" were loaded with forced inversions, false rhymes and silly archaisms like"eke" and "ere." Tolkien's original story-poems, like "The Adventures of Tom

Bombadil," were even worse, yet "The Lord of the Rings" looms already as one of

the truly great works of the human spirit, giving luster to its less awesome but still

miraculous satellites, "The Hobbit" and now "The Silmarillion."

Tolkien's new book, edited by his Oxford medievalist son Christopher, is a legend

collection of which the long tale, "The Silmarillion," makes up the main part. The

collection begins with the "Ainulindale," a creation myth, proceeds to the

"Valaquenta," an elvan account of the Powers (Valar and Maiar), then to "The

Silmarillion," and finally to two short pieces, the "Alkallabeth" and a short legend

bridging this collection and "The Lord of the Rings," entitled "Of the Rings of Powerand the Third Age."

If "The Hobbit" is a lesser work that the Ring trilogy because it lacks the trilogy's

high seriousness, the collection that makes up "The Silmarillion" stands below the

trilogy because much of it contains only high seriousness; that is, here Tolkien cares

much more about the meaning and coherence of his myth than he does about these

glories of the trilogy: rich characterization, imagistic brilliance, powerfully imagined


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and detailed sense of place, and thrilling adventure. Not that these qualities are

entirely lacking here. The central tale, "The Silmarillion"-though not the others-has a

wealth of vivid and interesting characters, and all the tales are lifted above the

ordinary by Tolkien's devil figures, Melkor, later called Morgoth, his great dragon

Glaurung, and Morgoth's successor Sauron. Numerous characters here have

interest, almost always because they work under some dark fate, struggling againstdestiny and trapping themselves; but none of them smokes a pipe, none wears a

vest, and though each important character has his fascinating quirks, the

compression of the narrative and the fierce thematic focus give Tolkien no room to

develop and explore those quirks as he does in the trilogy.

Character is at the heart of the Ring trilogy: the individual's voluntary service of

good or evil within an unfated universe. The subject of "The Silmarillion" is older,

more heroic: the effect on individuals of the struggle of two great forces, the divine

order and rebellious individualism that flows through Morgoth. Standing in the

crossfire of these two forces, dwarves, elves and men barely have room to move

and, often, no dignity but their defiance. Their vows become curses that houndthem to the grave, and often the only payment for their suffering is the fact that-

soaring up into the clashing music of good and evil in the universe-they live on in

the song of their exploits. Music is the central symbol and the total myth of "The

Silmarillion," a symbol that becomes interchangeable with light (music's projection).

The double symbol is introduced at once in the creation myth, "Ainulindale." The

Father of All, Iluvatar, gives a theme to the Powers (the Ainur) and says to them, "Of

the theme that I have declared to you," I will now that ye make in harmony together

a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable [life and

will], ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own

thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that throughyou great beauty has been wakened into song."

Melkor, Tolkien's Lucifer figure, of course makes trouble, trying to untune the

cosmic jazz, and a battle of the musics, reminiscent of Walt Disney's "Fantasia,"

develops. After Melkor's first wrong notes, Tolkien writes: "Then Iluvatar arose, and

the Ainur perceived that he smiled; and he lifted up his left hand, and a new theme

began amid the storm, like and yet unlike to the former theme, and it gathered

power and had new beauty. But the discord of Melkor rose in uproar and contended

with it, and again there was a war of sound more violent than before, until many of

the Ainur were dismayed... Then again, Iluvatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that

his countenance was stern; and he lifted up his right hand, and behold! a thirdtheme grew amid the confusion, and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first

soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could

not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last

that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Iluvatar, and

they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow

and blended with immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The


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other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly

repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many

trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the

violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by

the other and woven into its own solemn pattern." Now Iluvatar takes the Powers

into the Void and there shows them the visible projection of the contending musics:The world in all its confusion-joy and sorrow, peace and war, beauty and ugliness,

and the evolving agony recall history. That history, down to the Great Destruction,

is "The Silmarillion."

As the passages I have quoted above should make clear, Tolkien's vision in this

book is a curious blend of things modern and things medieval. What is modern is for

the most part the tawdriest of the modern-not that one cares, since Tolkien's vision

transforms and redeems it. Walt Disney is everywhere, though his work may have

had less influence on Tolkien than did that of equally childlike artists, such as

Aubrey Beardsley. Tolkien's language is the same phony Prince Valiant language of

the worst Everyman translations and modernizations-things like" "Death you haveearned with these words; and death you should find suddenly, had I not sworn an

oath in haste; if which I repent, baseborn mortal, who in the realm of Morgoth has

learnt to creep in secret as his spies and thralls." But one pushes aside all such

objections, because the fact is that Tolkien's vision is bargain-basement, he has

greatly elevated it by his art.

What is medieval in Tolkien's vision is his set of organizing principles, his symbolism

and his pattern if legends and events. In the work of Boethius and the scholastic

philosophers, as in Dante and Chaucer, musical harmony is the first principle ofcosmic balance, and the melody of individuals-the expression of individual will-is the

standard figure for the play of free will within the overall design of Providence. This

concord of will and overall design was simultaneously expressed, in medieval

thought, in terms of light: the foundation of "music" was the orderly tuning of the

spheres. Other lights-lights borrowed from the cosmic originals-came to be

important in exegetical writings and, of course, in medieval poetry: famous jewels

or works in gold and silver were regularly symbolic of the order that tests individual

will, tempting man (or elf) toward greed and selfishness-the wish to own the beauty

of the universe and, instead of sharing it, keep it in a box. Hence Tolkien's

"Silmarils," the splendid jewels, now lost, which led to the fall of elves and men andto the Great Destruction.

As he borrows the organizing principles and symbols of medieval poets and

philosophers, Tolkien borrows the standard legends of characters tricked by fate,

characters damned by their own best (or worst) intentions, characters who found


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proper atonement. His characters are of course new, but their problems are

standard, archetypal. There is Feanor, the great artificer who makes the Silmarils-

borrowing light from the original shining trees-then wrongly lays claim to the jewels

and becomes a great betrayer, putting a curse on all his race. There are the

immortals who fall in love with mortals, and vice versa; the accidentally incestuous

lovers who in flight from destiny find their destiny; and so on. In all these storiesthere are splendid moments, luminous descriptions of the kind that enrich the Ring

trilogy, moments of tenderness, though rarely moments of humor.

But in "The Silmarillion" what is finally most moving is not the individual legends but

the total vision, the eccentric heroism of Tolkien's attempt. What Tolkien lacks that

his medieval model possessed is serene Christian confidence. Despite the

affirmation of his creation legend, Tolkien's universe is never safe like Chaucer's.

The Providential plan seems again and again to hand by a thread above bottomless

pits of disaster. Tolkien, in other words, has taken on the incredible task of seeking

to rejuvenate the medieval Christian way of seeing and feeling, although-as all his

legends reiterate-we can no longer see clearly (the songs of the elves are now allbut forgotten, as was the First Age in the Ring trilogy) and our main feeling is now

tragic dread.

Strange man! Strange mind! Why would anyone do it, we keep asking as we read.

Why create a whole Christianlike religion, a whole new creation myth to set beside

those of the Greeks, the Jews, the Northmen and the rest? Why write a mythic

history, a Bible? Nevertheless, he has tried to do just that, and apparently-so

Christopher Tolkien tells us-we have more of this mad-in-the-best-sense enterprise

yet to come: ruminations on the languages of ancient times, theological

meditations, more stories.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality. In the Ring trilogy,

Tolkien went after reality through philosophy-laden adventure. In "The Silmarillion,"

for better or worse, he has sought to mine deeper.

John Gardner's most recent books are "October Light," "The Life and Times of

Chaucer" and "In the Suicide Mountains."

Documents

The Silmarillion: Book Review by John Gardner