Fall, Mortality and the Machine

When I was twelve years old, I was given J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and a box set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Growing up without distractions such as TV, I devoured books. We didn’t go to the city library often (it was further away and a hassle to get to) so I read books multiple times. Lord of the Rings is probably my most-read book of all-time. It was only 3-5 years later that I finally had access to a copy of The Silmarillion, and yes, I also read it multiple times.

Adult life interrupted all that free time reading. The last time I re-read Lord of the Rings was maybe 4-5 years ago, and even further back for The Silmarillion (I don’t actually remember how long ago). The old copies of these books have pretty much fallen apart. About 15 years ago, I bought a new version (second edition) of The Silmarillion (cover pictured below) along with the matching boxed set of Lord of the Rings. I finally got around to re-reading The Silmarillion this week. (Yes, it is the first week of classes, and of my summer goals that went unfulfilled.) I’m savoring it slowly, just reading a few chapters every evening.

The second edition has a Preface containing a letter written by Tolkien to his editor friend Milton Waldman. In the letter, Tolkien tries to explain the premise, context and history of the “background” to the Lord of the Rings world. The letter is actually quite long and wordy, but one section struck me. Tolkien starts the paragraph by explaining his dislike of the “conscious and intentional [use of] allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.” In this one paragraph, he boils down The Silmarillion into the themes of “Fall, Mortality and the Machine” – the title of today’s blog post. Having just read Atul Gawande’s rather sobering Being Mortal, I was looking for some grandeur and a bit more escapist as a follow-up. Let’s just say that The Silmarillion provides all this, but is also a different kind of sobering read.

Here is an excerpt of Tolkien’s summary in the letter explaining the three themes.

“With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world, is usually at strife. This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. It has various opportunities for ‘Fall’. It may become possessive… the subcreator wishes to be the lord of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality. Both of these (alone of together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, and so to the Machine (or Magic)… [using] external plans or devices instead of developments of the inherent inner power or talents – or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognized.”

There follows an interesting paragraph about how to think about Magic, particularly the magic of the elves and their role in sub-creation. I have been contemplating a blog post about the nature of magic in Lord of the Rings, which is of course very different from magic in the Harry Potter stories. But I should re-read the trilogy before I make that attempt. The linking of Tolkien’s exploration of sub-creative desires and what we in today’s world term ‘creativity’ is another interesting topic to explore. There is in a sense a ‘dark side’ of creativity because of the possibility of Fall and its obsession and rebellion against mortality. In The Silmarillion, mortality is a strange gift not quite understood by the Elves or the greater powers shaping the world as sub-creators, who are bound to their world – immortally, i.e., death does not remove their connection. The capital-C Creator (in addition to creating the greater powers and the Elves) creates Men with this strange gift of freedom of not being bound to the world.

The Silmarillion is actually five books in one. The first, Ainulindale, (in my opinion) is the best mythical creation story out there. If string theory turns out to be true, it seems fitting that the physical world is created from music – the vibrating of strings! Valaquenta is a short treatise about the greater powers and spirits. Quenta Silmarillion takes up the lion’s share of the book, and is the main story concerning three special jewels called the Silmarils. These first three books constitute the First Age. Highlights of the Second Age are discussed in Akallabeth, the fourth book. Finally a connection is made to the more famous of Tolkien’s book with a fifth section titled Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age.

I’m partway through Quenta Silmarillion at the moment. Wow! It’s nice to revisit this old classic.