The Silmarillion: Of the Beginning of Days | Reading Tolkien - Episode 5
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- čas přidán 11. 06. 2024
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This podcast episode was originally published on 7/7/2023 for my Patrons
This series is a close-reading and commentary on The Silmarillion, one section at a time. If you would like access to the most recent episodes, including additional analysis not featured on CZcams, consider joining my Patreon to access these benefits! / girlnextgondor
Timestamps:
Intro - 0:00
Events and Structure - 0:55
A Taste of Men - 12:17
Evolution of Chapter 1 - 17:38
The Shape(s) of Arda - 21:28
Changes in Style and Imagery - 26:32
Smaller Shifts: Melkor, Lamps, and Trees - 32:19
Work Cited:
Rateliff, John D. (2020) ""The Flat Earth Made Round and Tolkien’s Failure to Finish The Silmarillion"," Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 5.
scholar.valpo.edu/journalofto...
Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for fair use purposes such as criticism, commentary, parody, news, reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. All works used in this video (images, audio, etc.) belong to their respective authors and are used with permission or in accordance with the copyright holder's stated usage policy.
Thumbnail Art Credits:
"Ormal, Lamp of the South" by Andrew Bosley: andybosley.artstation.com/pro...
"Tulkas" by Ralph Damiani: www.deviantart.com/ralphdamiani
Thank you to those who have supported me on Patreon!
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#lordoftherings #tolkien #silmarillion
Space Balrogs flying through the universe with their non-existent wings is a mental image I didn't know I needed😂
Tolkien writes the best examples of “non toxic masculinity”. Tulkas is often overlooked and I love you have given a shout out to him! His relationship with Nessa is precious.
You could just call it masculinity at that point.
Melkor escaped to the one place unhallowed by the Valar... SPACE!
The final frontier...
@@ellerose9164 These are the voyages of the Starship Melkoprise...
Comrade Curry would be proud 🫡
This transition to time , days is one of the messiest parts of the legendarium, I love it, it makes me think of several people all trying to tell the same tale and interrupting one another, it makes the handing down of this tale feel more real for me. Thanks illuminating as those trees as you always are GNG.
😂 that's it exactly, and you're right, there's something nice about that chaotic energy of everything getting underway. Glad you enjoyed it.
Nienna's tears water the Trees because she's lamenting the Marring of Arda and the destruction of the Lamps that made the Trees needed in the first place.
Oooh good point. *Retrospectively* her tears make sense, of course, but it also fits that, even if no one at the time is thinking about the Trees possibly being destroyed, Nienna would still be the one in tune with the general marred-ness of *everything* - even magnificent new wondrous things like the Trees are emerging into a world that contains sorrow and strife.
Honestly, I think Nienna is just a cry baby. She will cry at the drop of a hat (if they have one in Valinor)🤪
@@Enerdhil They don't. Melkor stole them all. Another thing she's crying about. ;)
@@Enerdhilshe’s sensitive to marring. So she’s mourning for everything.
@@sainiharika
Besides the trees being murdered, what else in Valinor was marred? When she cried when the trees were made, do you honestly think she was sad because of some kind of marring? She isn't Manwë or Namo, so she can't know the future sad stories of the trees she helped to bring into the world.
I was being sarcastic about her being a cry baby, but in fact.....
“Space Balrogs” 😅
5 videos in 2 weeks! I'm loving this upload frequency.
Same! But don't burn out, Lexi! 😅
I just found your channel yesterday and you may just be my new favorite Tolkien channel! Looking forward to future episodes ❤
About Nienna - I think what she's mourning in a more general sense is the marring of Melkor as a whole, from the discord he sung into the Songs to the destruction he caused when the Valar first were shaping Arda, destruction of the lamps, etc etc. So she does have plenty to cry about when she's watering the Two Trees with her tears.
She's also involved with patience - The Silmarillion mentions that Olorin (Gandalf) learns pity and patience from her. You'd need patience as you wait for seeds to grow and for a world to flourish!
Watch her chats with CluelessFangirl, especially the Vanyar one.
I’d say LOTR is more restricted due to The Long Defeat where magic is bleeding from our world. Arda is our Midgard. Even to Gilraen and Elrond spoke something similar about the remoteness of the ages long past during “Of Aragorn & Arwen.”
I am reminded of an earlier video of yours where you postulated that the Music of the Ainur was far more complicated but that the best explanation the Valar could give the Elves was that it was "like music." I think much of what goes on in this chapter is the best approximation of what happened that incarnates can more-or-less understand. It seems that in many ways the Valar were not just shaping the world but also experimenting with how the "physics, chemistry, and biology" of it would work.
And how can you have real music without air? I guess heaven has music, so maybe that is what Tolkien was thinking about.
Dear Scintillating
Sister Orator of The Squad...
All ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
I like to think that Nessa did a lot of the ahem-espousing-ahem. I mean Tulkas is energetic, but he was weary. Nessa is the only one who can match his energy. And since it was a feast, surely there must have been dancing - definitely right up Nessa's alley (no pun intended). Though the grammar makes Tulkas the subject, I think the semantics makes him the object.
Are you suggesting that Tulkas and Nessa had ACTUAL COITUS?
@@kyyyni Oh, you know... You meet a great angelic spirit, there's sparks, there's a feast, there's dancing, you get married... You can't rule out the horizontal jogging after all that.
Hilarity aside (and it is hilarious) - I feel like Nessa (the Young, the Fleet, the Dancer) gives strong Artemis/maiden vibes, so I love that she is the one Valie we get to see actually *getting* married (however vaguely described), instead of being presented as either permanently single, or already part of a couple. It's an unexpected, but quite nice, integration.
@@GirlNextGondor
Could that have been because Tulkas came so late to Arda?
@@EnerdhilI'm sure Nessa preferred Tulkas "coming late". As opposed to "coming prematurely".
Mr. Plinkett: *HOW EMBARRASSING*
Hmmmm... this whole creation of JRRT is more akin to art... something that points to truth before one can really articulate. JP explains this as a child who plays a game, but cannot tell you the rules... but can surely play and enjoy the game. Over time, the rules/logic can be extrapolated from the many iterations of the art form. Extrapolating the rules/logic is the obvious next step - and you do that so very well... but we have to understand that it is a departure from that pure art form. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this chapter with us.
I agree - and would add that with art, every attempt to extrapolate its logic and meaning will be incomplete. Listening to commentary can (sometimes) deepen appreciation but it can't replace the experience of actually experiencing the work itself.
I don’t typically do audiobooks but you have a passion for the text that is infectious and has reignited my own. Thanks for that.
This might be my favorite part of the silmarillion, maybe because of how myserious it all is. Looking forward to your take on it
Totally agree. ❤
Ah, good call-out on the double meaning of the chapter title. I was in the same boat, haha.
As much as I love the valar drama, trashy elves are coming soon and I can't help but be excited!
And what a ruckus they will cause! While trying to maintain that nimbus of being all civilized about it. Though only the densest of halflings will be fully fooled. And, of course, Gimli, Beren and Aragorn.
I feel like Gimli, Aragorn, and Beren are among those MOST likely to see through any Elven facade of enlightened serenity. Beren watched Finrod have a tantrum that literally involved throwing things on the ground (after his evil cousins threw a similarly dramatic fit of their own). Aragorn was raised in a houseful of them, two of which were several centuries into a personal vengeance quest against All Orcs Everywhere; he tried to flirt with their sister once and she shut him down so hard he had to undergo a 20-year glow-up to save face. And then he and Gimli spent 9 months on the road with Mr. Ai-A-Balrog-Is-Come.
@girlnextgondor
That's really true. I do love how completely unimpressive Aragorn looks in the appendices. Like seriously he went 20 years living in rivendell fostered by elrond and constant companions with the twins and didn't realize Arwen existed.
@@GirlNextGondor I maintain that by the 3rd Age, all or almost all the unenlightened Elves had gotten themselves killed.
@@GirlNextGondor I can only imagine being a mature but still relatively young Aragorn developing a thing for an Elf hundreds/thousands of years older. In the beginning he had to strike her as such a child. The fact that he became worthy of her in her eyes at all, even after decades, is a testament to what a special person he was.
Thank you, Lexi! Love your humor. 😊 I am also a big fan of Tulkas. 💪
Your explanations are great and paint a good picture
0:11 Indeed, thine dudes we be!
man i’ve been missing the silmarillion, thank you
“It’s very splashy! - GNG 🎉🎊
This is my favourite part of the whole story! I have the habbit of reading up until the end of this part when re-reading the Silmarillion, then dropping it there and moving forward to other stuff... only to repeat the same ritual later! Guilty pleasure :D
It's insane though that it didn't occur to me too that the name "the beginning of days" can also be read literally, thanks for this insight!
And, I have an idea regarding the symbolism of the involvment of Nienna in the creation of the Two Trees: it might be related to the psychlogical - and thus, metaphorical meaning of grief: when processed properly, it may (and it usually does) bring (self-)growth and enlightment. In this sense, Nienna's manifestation of grief is vital for the growth of the trees that bring the light to the world. At least, that's how I view it.
Oh thank goodness I'm not the only one having a Zoolander moment about the title. "It's called that because it's when the days... begin! 🤯"
I'm digging these different takes on Nienna's involvement in the Trees; the idea that the Trees were in some ways born in a moment of *catharsis*, either from the grief of the Discord or the more immediate struggles around the lamps, makes a lot of sense!
@@GirlNextGondor Lol, yes, I still can't believe I haven't though about it! I guess, when you deal with Tolkien, at some point you get so accustomed to searching for second, third, fourth, etc. metaphorical meaning in everything you read, as well as to frantic attempts to tie it all to the bigger picture, that the most simple and evident things start falling out of your focus zone, heh... I wonder though if Tokien created this double meaning intentionally or by accident.
How I feel about this chapter... Well, as much as I want the elves to come along and start doing stuff, I'm actually okay with this for now. All this building sandcastles only to have Melkor come and kick them down gets a little repetitive, though.
But I'd like to hear more about the 'friends' that Melkor has among the Ainur. Who _are_ they? How did he seduce them? How do they communicate with him? Is he nice to them or daunting them? Do anty other Airnur suspect them? Do they get found out? Do they repent? Though that would be a completely different chapter and a different style.
At least Mairon and the Balrogs were "friends" of Melkor.
My dude, wake up! My bro just dropped another video for the squad!
Also Melkor! In Space! The Musical!
SPACE BALROGS haha. 😅😂❤
I have been excited for the next chapter! Thanks for not putting mid-rolls in these podcast episodes! 👍
Maybe storing it into vats and such added into creating all sorts of power systems within Valinor such as suped up forges and kilns, and also kept the light from melkor or any other who still lingers around who used to serve him who’d take that light and bend it to their own will or absorb it to become stronger in some way therefore becoming more dangerous sort of thing…? 😮❤
I love your videos, having read it al, it feels like I am having a conversation with someone in the room. Well, the dabs help make you feel like you're in the room. Greetings from a budtender in Colorado.
Loving this series. Cant wait for your analysis of Ungoliant, and how strange her existence in arda is
That's a very good point. It's as if JRRT needed her or something like her to enable Melkor to actually kill the Trees, and once she was there he didn't want to change it. But who and what she was are both very mysterious. How can she have been a part of the Music? Was she hiding within Iluvatar's themes from the beginning? Was she the result of Melkor's discord? If so, why did he not have her in his service from the beginning? Etc.
This is actually one of my favourite chapters, for it presents us with Melkor´s greatest triumph. The few sentences referring to Melkor´s confrontations with the Valar bring forth the imagery of the Olympians battling the Titans.
Thank you for your guidance through this section of a tough, and fantastic book. As usual it was helpful and thorough 🙏🎉
Glad it was helpful!
@@GirlNextGondor as always🌹
Great listen, thank you 😊
Sitting here contemplating how another of my interests of late is pointed in the other direction from examining Tolkien's work. Tolkien provides an abundance of source material while the Bible, including individual parts of it, are sometimes compilations and revisions of earlier works that are lost. This has led scholars to engage in sophisticated analysis to peel apart the text in an effort to see beneath what is there and try to catch a glimpse of what the source material may have looked like and what those writers may have thought.
Melkor is such a smooth talker. Like a super primordial version of SkekSil hahah MmMMM! DC reference. Sorry haha.
Your voice, your personality. I'm done. Dead, literally. Ur my "one ring" my "precious" I cannot escape now...
Amazon should have done an adaptation of "Melkor in Space"
I wanna see more Space Balrogs!
😭 someone get the fan artists on board with this.
Loving this series. Thanks and keep it going 🧝♂️
I actually enjoy those early stories even more than I do the ones that focus on the Elves. Not that I *dislike* the Elven stories - that's not the case. But the early stuff is just fascinating to me.
"Tulkas is a sigma male gigachad paragon of non-toxic masculinity." 😆😂🤣
The best description of Tulkas ever!
When the Two Trees were destroyed by Melkor and Ungoliant, Nienna is said to have washed Ezellohar clean with her tears. This narrative is actually a literary analogy depicting the pacification of Melkor's will that corrupted Arda. The Two Trees are essentially a sub-creation of the synergistic incarnation of Yavanna and Nienna. Therefore, when viewed from this perspective, the light of the Two Trees is an external factor that initiates Nienna's teaching into rational beings and gives them the quality of wisdom and develops the sense of Estel in them. These are my assessments, and I like to read the following passage in this context: "Those who listen to her learn wisdom and endurance in grief." (The Silmarillion - Valaquenta: Of the Valar)
Bugbear! I love how you use that word also! ❤
🐞🐻 it's a most distinguished alternative to "thingamabob"
@@GirlNextGondor
And their cousins "thingamajig" and "whatchamacallit."
And "doohickey."
Besides being strongly biased in favor of Nienna regardless, I would interpret Nienna watering the Trees-as-saplings with her tears a bit differently; that is, I don't get an ominous feeling from it.
It's quite true that there's nothing to cry about -- _in Aman._ But I don't believe she had Aman in mind: as Tolkien might have put it, I think she _took pity upon Middle-earth and turned thither often in thought._ We aren't specifically told where Nienna fell on what I'll call the Ulmo-Mandos Scale of Giving a Care About Middle-Earth (I actually like Mandos, but let's face it, he at minimum comes off as, and possibly is, a low-key dick about Middle-earth), but I have to imagine it's near the Ulmo end of it. I mean, she's the Lady of Pity _so hard_ she apparently volunteered to be Melkor's special counsel when he asked for parole from Mandos. (Or I guess it could have been more of a voluntold situation, but the Silmarillion just says that she "assisted his prayer.") I think it's Nienna's pity for Middle-earth that moves her tears at this point in the history.
I even feel it would be natural for this to nourish the Trees. Not just in the sense that having no pity for Middle-earth would be pretty heartless, especially from the Vala whose "job" is basically that, but in the sense that it implies learning from the time they have already spent trying to shape and care for the place, and from the griefs and frustrations that has entailed. (I was going to say "inevitably entailed," but since most of them have been directly or indirectly been Melkor's fault, I guess really they were pretty evitable.)
Nienna began weeping during the Ainulindalë where she I think was like the only Vala to technically keep more memory of the first song of the Ainur beyond there own part after the amnesia of entering Arda. The waters of the world still reflect that song which they study. Another reason it adds to Ulmo never abandons middle earth! ❤️
Nice work thanks
Algormancy!
4:20 I think Melkor didn´t even fight Tulkas at that stage. I think it´s described as him fleeing from the sounds of Tulkas´ laugther. He came for a fight but unwillingly acted as deterrence. Melkor at that stage was probably still powerful enought to best Tulkas and all the other Valar simultaneously - but he didn´t dare to.
JR: "Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the Beginning of Days pay-per-view...and here comes Tulkas, swaggering like the sigma male he is-..."
King: "Melkor, watch out!!! Watchoutwatchoutwatchoutwatchout-..."
*BOOM*
King: "RKO!!!"
JR: "RKO outta nowhere!!!"
King: "Melkor is down!!!"
Crowd and referee: "1...2...3!!!"
*Crowd screams*
JR: "He got him! Tulkas got him!"
King: "But what's he doing now!? He's going under the ring! Gah!!"
JR: "He's got...he's got the chain! Good gawd almighty!"
King: "The chain Angainor!!"
JR: "Awww that sick sonofabitch!! Damn him! Damn him!"
I can see this as a drabble on fanfic sites😂
I wonder if the light of the trees was similar to the idea of the Luminiferous aether
Space balrogs.....lmao
There is this idea that the Biblical Exodus is really a mythological creation projecting the Babylonian Captivity(an actual historical event) back in time in order to inform a narrative that 'for us, it has always been thus'. Perhaps this can relate to the destruction of the lamps and the destruction of the trees. It certainly does in the sense that there is a core story idea that keeps getting re-visited in a slightly different form.
Some Marxist professor came up with that one, ehh?
@Enerdhil I'm not sure what that means. It is a possible explanation of why an event which is known to have occurred resembles an event which most likely did not occur in the distant past. The people who were returning from captivity in Babylon told a fantastical tale of the same thing having happened to them before as a metaphor for what just happened to them. It also serves as a unifying theme projecting a consistent theology into the distant past that didn't exactly exist prior to the Babylonian Captivity.
@@PrometheanRising
Clearly, you are not a Christian. You believe what godless professors teach. I and the Good Professor believe in the words of the Bible. None of it is mythology to us.
@Enerdhil many, perhaps most, Christians understand that the Bible is filled with parables, allegories, metaphors, and other things that should not be taken as true(which is not to say that none of it is true). The Exodus is an event for which there is a complete absence of physical evidence in spite of the vast sea of humanity alleged to have left Egypt. An archeologist who turned up legitimate evidence that the Exodus occurred would be immortalized in their field, and yet as of the time I posted this, no one has found the barest scrap that could stand up to scrutiny. The strong likelihood is that the Moses story, including the Exodus, is a legend that the Hebrew children told themselves to explain how they came to be, how their laws came about, and why some of their practices set them apart from their neighbors.
@@PrometheanRising
Well here is something I found waaay down the list when I Googled evidence for Israelite Exodus:
biblearchaeologyreport.com/2021/09/24/top-ten-discoveries-related-to-moses-and-the-exodus/
It is not definitive but it does provide some evidence of Israelites in Egypt during the time the Bible says they were there.
Generally speaking, archaeological evidence supports Biblical claims. The Egyptians would never admit to being humiliated by a slave people and their God, so no one expects to find clear "evidence" there. The path of the Exodus is not clear, although most "experts" believe it is the path you can find on Bible maps. This means, everyone very well could be looking for evidence in the wrong places. There was a video made of two amateur archaeologists who investigated a mountain in Saudi Arabia and found what could be evidence of something that happened down there. Also the Saudi government is keeping people away from the mountain. Why? A conspiracy theorist would say that they are hiding the evidence of God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses on that mountain.
Anyway, you can't say there is "no" evidence of the Exodus.
DUDE WHERE IS MY CAR DUDE!?
Athrabeth is the best thing Tolkien wrote! That's way more interesting than the details of what Tuor did!
I mean, I love the Athrabeth, but I would give my pinky toes to have a version of "The Fall of Gondolin" that's as extensive as the Children of Hurin.
@@GirlNextGondor
Ditto!
I have always been puzzled by one particular aspect of Tolkien's legend which does not make much sense. In our world the light of the Sun is required for life now in Tolkien's legend one can say that the light required for life was provided , at first, by the two lamps, which Melkor destroys. Then Valinor has the light of the two trees to provide light. We are told that Middle Earth is in darkness, so how is anything alive there? We are told that one of Gods of Arda put life to sleep in Middle Earth so that is explained I guess. But then we are told that that when the Elves awake in Middle Earth life awakes?!. Under the years of the stars. And for who knows how many years Middle Earth is under the stars, and the Elves, live, move, grow things, plants grow, animals exist etc. Just how?! When Melkor escapes back to Middle Earth after destroying the two trees the Sun and Moon are created then to replace the two trees.
Now it could be argued that the light of the trees also lite Middle Earth, but we are told no such thing and in fact the opposite. The life on Middle Earth is basically like life on Earth that requires the Sun. So it makes no sense to have it living and growing without it.
To me the very story of a vibrant living world without a Sun at once makes this whole story questionable interms of even the world it is in, and one could easily dismiss this aspect of the story has even in its own world a myth without a basis. However we have a big problem Elves, unless, killed outright or dying of disease etc., are immortal and we are expressly told in LOTR etc., that some Elves then living were alive before the coming of the Sun and Moon so it appears to be the years of the stars are real in this world even though it makes no sense.
'It makes no sense' according to the world as it becomes later. Back then Arda was a flat world, in darkness, riven and shifted by powerful spirits from outside it. But in stages, it turned into a world much more like our own. Something that mirrors growing understanding through history.
Yavannah our nature into a long hibernation and that’s when the ents come in to protect everything. Then the creations of the sickle if Varda came into being etc.
I have often thought about the same thing myself. Clearly when the Sun raised for the first time, in the West🙄, the switch is turned on: Men awake and plants come out of their hibernation.
So what did the Elves eat for all those dark centuries?🤔 Beats the heck out of me....
What was the meaning with having two lamps and two trees or was it just to have the precursor to the sun and moon
I guess you'd have to ask Tolkien for the "true" reason (assuming he'd give a straight answer, which is statistically unlikely🤣 ) It could be to set up the sun and moon, but it also seems to be a "thing" in Tolkien that light comes in two flavors, golden and silver, and there's always *two* sources of it. Maybe just something he preferred.
If I had to guess, I would say that it was Eru Iluvatar's plan from the beginning. First, have Varda create the stars in the sky. Next, light Arda with silver and gold.
If Melkor had not destroyed the Lamps Illuin and Ormal, neither the Two Trees nor the Sun and Moon would have been necessary.
Great video! One thing confused me. You contrasted the fate of men with the fate of all other incarnate species, including hobbits. But, I thought you've said elsewhere that it's generally believed hobbits are technically a distant relative of men, and that would imply they share the fate of men. I'm not fully caught up on your videos so apologies if you covered this elsewhere! I also understand that the answer might simply be "Tolkien never really decided," like with many other things you've discussed.
Hobbits and Men are from the same tree of Iluvatar. Their dates are the same.
Thou hast dudes?! 😮
Dudes, bros, brethren, countrymen, thanes, comrades... we welcome them all 😅
"toxic masculinity" by which you mean "masculinity" :P
No. Taking a risk is something we connotate with masculinity. Driving drunk is toxic risk-taking - toxic masculinity.
@@EriktheRed2023 can’t women do that equally ? 😅🤣😂
@@Makkaru112 They can, which shows how gender is a spectrum.
I think during the happy Lamps era, Mandos and Nienna enjoyed the world like high school goths. They, more than the other Valar, would be thinking of what the first music of the Ainulindalë implied about the future of the world, and be actively aware that the beauty and peace of those days couldn’t last. So maybe they stayed largely quiet and out of the way, watching and listening, sighing wistfully, anticipating tragedy, knowing their part comes later.
No. Shows nothing of the sort. Sex is binary, gender is a grammatical construct, and what we think is NOT the same as what is. Women are NOT identical to men, and men cannot become women, even if they think they can. Light is a spectrum, and morality appears to make one, as well, but the facts of the natural world are as they are. You can think what you like, but that doesn't change reality.@@EriktheRed2023