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JBM – September 2017

The Legendarium from Age to Age

COMMUNICATION

FOR THE COLLOQUIUM OF RAMBURES

JUNE 2008

I. The chronotopes of the Legendarium

The work of J.R.R. Tolkien is exceptional in many aspects in the history of the western literature. Without needing even to go farther into the matter, it seems exceptional from the beginning under three aspects at least. At first, in the process of constitution of the Legendarium, whose first germs go back up at the time of the Great War of 1914, whose intention becomes clearer in the beginning of the thirties, but it appears, step by step with the publication of The Hobbit in 1937, that of The Lord of Rings in 1954, then with the posthumous publications due to Christopher Tolkien – The Silmarillion in 1977, immense archipelago of Home from 1983 till 1997 - finally, now, the quite recent publication of The Children of Húrin by Adam Tolkien. Here is still, it seems to me, an unpublished specific line in the history of the western literature, that this lineage which goes from the father to the grandson, and where the son - Christopher Tolkien - played a part in the implementation of the Legendarium from his youth, by his attentive listening and by his contribution in the establishment of the mapping of the Middle-earth

Secondly, The Legendarium of Tolkien is exceptional by the multivalence - rather than the ambivalence - of its status: certainly, Tolkien imagines - or rather explore, if we enter the implemented narrative logic by the Legendarium - a fictional universe which spreads the picture of age-old times; a fictional universe filled with characters belonging to multiple races from which the ontological status postpones considerably; a universe, also, filled with prestigious or terrible places, but we find on no card of our current world; and nevertheless, these former worlds are presented as strata previous of "our" world - and not as "other" worlds, which would be of the pure whim or the science fiction. And this singular universe spreads, as it can be found in the Arthurian fiction of the literary French Middle Ages, on the double register of the supernatural and the heroic, the chronicle of the wars led by the Valar against Melkor or the civil wars between the Elves matching narratives where the marvel is present, of a way moreover rather discreet, most of the time concentrated around magic objects.

Exceptional finally is the global frame of the Legendarium because, unique fact to our knowledge in all the history of the literature, this frame includes all the area of the time and of the space, and even beyond, because it includes the design stage of the universe before its creation, and because it envisages, after the end of the world, the prospect of a new big creative song.

RAMBURES 2008 – LE LEGENDAIRE D’AGE EN AGE 2

However, the Legendarium does not appear as a block, and, in the course of its exploration and in the course of its update by J.R.R. Tolkien, he forms itself according to a succession of Ages which present each their own spatiotemporal organization. We shall set, as operating tool of our reading, the concept of "chronotope", forged by Mikhaïl Bakhtine in the context of formal Russian, school which found its continuation, in the sixties, at the Soviet semioticians of Tartu, in the front row who takes place Iouri Lotman's work. This notion of " chronotope ", study of the structure of the space and of time appropriate to a work or in type of literature, does not have to get on in a too narrow sense; besides the structuring of time and of the space, which are certainly fundamental, the chronotope includes a whole series of aspects which qualify such or such type of narrativity: nature of the characters, the type of scene the type of action. It is especially advisable, it seems to us, to seize well what constitutes what we could call the "organizing hearth" of a chronotope, the typical trademark of such or such fictional universe, as well as its dynamic tension, its own orientation. If we set for example, the Arthurian universe - such as there is in novels in the verse of the end of the XIIth century, but especially in novel in prose of the first third part of the XIIIth century, when this kind reaches its fullness with - Lancelot-Grail – the organizing center is constitued by the institution the Round Table around King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, with the constant play of round trip of the knights between the periphery which constitutes the forest or the islands, the places of the adventure and the testing, and the center where we meet periodically, usually in the Pentecost, for the big solemnities during which King Arthur appears in majesty, wearing the crown. The dynamic tension, here, seems to us double, at the same time cyclic and eschatologic : it is due to the singular adventures in which make a commitment the best among the Knights of the Round Table, and which often arouse collective quests to find the one the absence of which king notices during one of the solemnities of the court ; but it is also a matter of the collective adventure which is the highest quest, that of the Holy Grail, whose fulfillment pulls however the decline of the Arthurian world, from whom the crepuscular glories are enough to prevent the final disaster.

Les rivages de Valinor (Ted Nasmith)


What about, in this connection of the Legendarium? First of all, if we take it in its entirety, without taking into account specificities of every Age, it seems to us that we could assign as " central home " relationships between the Kingdom blessed by Valinor and the Middle Earth, jointly moreover in the theme of the diffraction of the light, so masterfully studied by Verlyn Flieger. In the course of Ages, essential light, always present at first - either at the bottom of the look of Gandalf in the worst periods of the War of the Ring or in the brief sparkling of a star observed by Sam Gamegee hired in dry peregrination in Mordor – tends to withdraw from Middle Earth, which the Elves leave also via(including) Grey Havens; and in the same logic, the distance between the Middle Earth and the blessed Kingdom increases, the communications slacken until almost disappear except exceptional meetings, as the appearance of Ulmo to Tuor on the shores of Vinyamar or as the welcome of Eärendil to Valinor. There is there a classic plan of temporal involution which we can observe also about the legend of the Grail and its withdrawal of the world, at first on a horizontal plan, of West in East, then on a vertical plan, with the rise of Grail seized by a celestial hand, which echos the gobbling up of Arthur's Excalibur, King magical sword, in a lake where a hand takes back this symbol of sovereignty. This theme of the withdrawal of Grail outside the world was interpreted by René Guénon, in the Symboles fondamentaux de la Science sacrée, as a picture of the withdrawal of spiritual centers the beneficial influence of which does not any more find to be applied in a world invaded by dark strengths. In the Legendarium of Tolkien, the withdrawal of Valinor corresponds to the same logic. As for the dynamic tension which livens up Legendarium taken in general, it holds in this involutive logic which has to lead to a disastrous end of the world following an ultimate battle, on the model of Scandinavian Ragnarök


But what gives to the Legendarium all its complexity and at the same time all its suggestive wealth, it is that it is not reduced to this general movement and that every Age possesses its particular chronotope. The First Age gets organized around the polarity between Valinor, the house of Valar - beings whose status oscillates, in the mind of Tolkien, between that of the gods of the Roman Greco pantheon of the Antiquity and that of the archangels in the Christian tradition - and the Middle Earth, it even split, in a north-south cut, between Angband, the fortress of Morgoth, and the lands of Beleriand, lived by the Elves after their awakening near the lake of Cuiviénen, then by the Men, after their appearance in the same day of the first dawn of the Sun.

Despite the abundant wealth of the adventures and the characters, this first Age finds its spatiotemporal unity in Beleriand where became established three elvish kingdoms those of Gondolin, Nargothrond and Doriath, and in three heroic gestures those of Túrin, Tuor and Beren who will end in the fall of these kingdoms under the assaults of the dark strengths of Morgoth. The " organizing home" of this Age is constituted by Silmarils, forged by Fëanor and to which becomes attached a curse which will pull the ruin of Beleriand. It is around the picture three Silmarils returned to elements - the earth,the sea and the air - that ends Silmarillion, which the title indicates that these jewels are at the heart of the first Age, as well as the Ring of power will be in the center of the Third Age. The dynamic tension is the one of the curse, the prediction and its final fulfillment. It seems hard to imagine to separate, in the coherence of this chronotope of the First Age, three gestures of Túrin, Tuor and Beren - and in particular both first ones, which have for theme the fall of Gondolin and that of Nargothrond.

One of the strong moments when articulates the set of these narratives is the one where both cousins cross without recognizing themselves, each going towards his fate, and each being also expanding of the collective fate of an elvish kingdom. This First Age is characterized by a heroic tone and, according to a doctrine of the styles which goes back to the Antiquity and which was resumed and developed in the Middle Ages by Dante, Tolkien tended to handle this part of the Legendarium in a high style, in particular in The Book of Lost Tales, whose translation in French, by Adam Tolkien, returns admirably the deliberate effects of archaism. We can indeed specify that the First Age is the object of a narrative two-pronged approach, in The Silmarillion and in The Book of Lost Tales. According to this previous version, the events of the First Age are included in the narrative-frame of the navigations of Eriol, and the " central home " is then occupied by the place where expresses itself the narrative, the Cottage of Lost Play, home shining with legends of age-old times which pass on the songs which open this closed and delicious place to the epic dimensions of the world and to the most exciting adventures. This way, moreover, the "Cottage" prefigures one of the narrative functions of the Shire in the bruise of the War of the boxing ring: allowing the reader invited to heighten at the haughty level and requiring from the epic to find a possible identification with a protective place, being of an idyllic register, closer to his ordinary conditions of existence.

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In the Second Age, the island of Númenor upset at the heart of a world following the great war led by Valar against Morgoth, from now on thrown in the outside Space. Númenor occupies a central position between the Middle Earth - from where Beleriand disappeared but where are going to appear the kingdoms which will play a central role during the Third Age, Arnor and Gondor - and the blessed Kingdom of Valinor of which was moved closer the solitary island of Tol Eressëa, place of refuge of the Elves. From now on, the Men are going to tend to impose their ascendancy on the Middle Earth, thanks to the navigations of Númenúreans.

The form of the island of Númenor, a kind of five-point star, evokes by the symbolism of the Numbers this new brilliance of the Men. The dynamic tension appropriate to this Age is the one of the slow rise of a dark power from now on embodied by Sauron, who, unlike Morgoth, aims at imposing his power on souls and spirits more still than on the material and on the bodies. The seduction of Sauron on Númenúreans will play the desire which lives in the latter to become immortal just like Valar, while they received in return for their loyalty during the wars against Morgoth the gift of an exceptional longevity. The progressive perversion of Númenúreans which leads them to worship Dark Lord will be the cause of their loss and the flood of Númenor with which ends the Second Age, evoking the end of the Atlantis. This time, the structure of the world is upset from top to bottom, the roundness of the Earth prevents from now on any communication with the blessed Kingdom – except through the «narrow path» used, at the end of the Third Age, Frodo and the carriers of the Three elvish Rings.

Each of the Ages is presented, in the Legendarium, according to different narrative methods. A

continuous and chronological narrative covers almost the total of the First Age. The Second Age appears as a "archipelago" of fragmentary narratives which were collected in the Unfinished Tales, while the part of the narrative which is dedicated to it in the Silmarillion is hardly reduced. For the Third Age, the accent is placed on the final phase, the War of the Ring, which leads to the fall of Sauron and to the crowning of Elessar; the Lord of the Rings illuminated the current events by means of retrospective narratives or by means of songs which relate either to the beginnings of the Third Age, or to the previous Ages. Songs have here an essential function, as vehicle of the memory of age-old times, function which we could move closer to that of the dream which allows the access in « The Cottage of Lost Play » in the Book of Lost Tales. The "Central home" of the Third Age appears to us to be the confrontation between Gondor and Mordor, which face each other in the card of Middle Earth, confrontation that evokes moreover the title of the second part of the Lord of the Rings, «The Two Towers». Everything gets organized around the polarization between the powers of the Shade growing

Carte – Gondor et Mordor


and the resilience of the beings of light which symbolizes the Fellowship of the Ring led by Gandalf before its explosion around the Rauros Falls. The dynamic tension rests on the outing of Frodo which leads some adventurous Hobbits to leave the protective cocoon of the Shire to heighten - to allow the survival of this small world to which they are so attached - until the wide world where spreads the big epic confrontation. If the travel from west to east until Rivendell calls back the previous outing of Bilbo, the big turning point occurs when the Fellowship of the Ring sets off to the South, which will lead Frodo and Sam up to the heart of Mordor.

But, because of the presence of Hobbits, as well as by the evocation of the " hospitable resting places", the appropriate tone of Lord of the Rings is not the one of the sublime appropriate to the epic dimension, but rather a mixture of sublime and idyllic, what makes moreover so charming the reading of this work and what allows every reader to enter on the same level this universe, while the reading of Silmarillion is drier. The Legendarium does not stop, however, with the end of the Third Age. According to the chronology inserted into Appendixes to the Lord of the Rings , this one ends on September 20th 3021, two and a half years after the crowning of king Elessar, when the carriers of three Rings leave The Grey Havens. The Fourth Age so opens on a world where from the Elfs disappeared and where from the Men dominate from now on. But of this Age, the Legendarium presents only fragments - sorts of isolated islands - what does not mean that these pieces are without interest. The narrative sketched in The New Shadow is so very promising and opens up deep perspectives; it stages young people which, a century after the crowning of Elessar, are already enough corrupted to concern their interest and their curiosity to the barbaric customs of Orcs. The law of the cyclic involution is at work and, as Gandalf implied, the victory over Sauron is only a moment allowing the temporary re-etablishment of a traditional order, dedicated in turn to the degradation and to the corruption of any things in this world. Beyond the Fourth Age, the Legendarium goes as far as exploring periods which are situated in our contemporary world, especially with the remarkable narrative The Notion Club Papers, which stages Oxford professors, among whom one appears rather clearly as a fictitious embodiment of Tolkien himself. The author entering his subcreation: it is the reflection of there what is at the heart of the Christian doctrine, the Embodiment of the Creator in his Creation. However, all which relates to Ages following the fall of Sauron remains rather fuzzy, unfinished, fragmentary. And above all, the Legendarium avoids carefully specifying too much the continuation of Ages likely to connect the current world with the Former Ages of the Legendarium.

It is there doubtless an internal necessity to the chronotope of the Legendarium, as well as the fuzziness and the visible contradictions concerning the structure of the world. The Legendarium, it is always worth recalling, is neither a theological work nor a scientific work, even if it contains reflections of theological, philosophic and scientific order.


Let us stop for one moment. We have just sketched, in broad outline, some of the aspects of chronotopes peculiar to each of the Ages of the Legendarium. It is advisable to raise here that our approach remains very schematic, that we only wanted to grasp the overall movement; but what makes the inexhaustible charm of the Legendarium, is also the details. It is advisable to return to Niggle his part: once the Tree, the work of his whole life, registers in its overall harmony, is not it good and justifiable to lean lovingly on each sheet ?

The desire to perceivethe great articulations of the Legendarium should not deprive us of the happiness of daydreaming, the happy musing, in Bachelard - that for example to which invites us the geographical imagination which Pierre Jourde explored, formerly, at Tolkien, but also at Gracq, Borges and Michaux. It is a delight that to go through, for example, an atlas of the Legendarium, such as that of Karen Wynn Fonstad, without arguing too much about details, always questionable, but by taking this geographical imagination as a springboard for a creative musing, which leads the reader to pursue the exploration of this fictional universe undertaken by Tolkien. Until now, among the followers, it is illustrators of great talent - Alan Lee, John Howe, Ted Nasmith - that embellished the Legendarium, without extending it in a creative way.

Yet, the Legendarium is carries a multitude of potential narratives, it teems with brief allusions to

episodes remained except the narrative; It leaves blank - as on world maps still in the middle of the XIXth century - of vast areas, both in space and in time. Doubtless, this alternation of the height of the narrative and the narrative void is one of the constituent elements of the chronotope of the Legendarium.

It's the same also as regards the complementarity of the narrative texts and the "encyclopaedic" texts which concern the languages, the customs and the manners, the philosophy and the metaphysics. There is a strong trend of the Legendarium to evolve into a global grasp of the fictional universe, to propose a "total history", in the sense where the historians of the new school, such as Fernand Braudel, were able to do it in France. Let us not forget that Tolkien was contemporary of great historian of the civilizations that was Arnold J. Toynbee, whom he met in Oxford where he also taught. With this trend to transform the fictional universe into secondary universe, endowed with a life so intense, so rich, and with potentialities as multiple as the real world, the subcreator has to do himself not only narrator, but also historian, geographer, ethnologist, artist. All this, Tolkien was completely, as shown, for example, in his pictorial work so varied, presented by Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond. This "totalizing" aim of the Legendarium can be put in touch with what was the evolution of the literature during the last centuries of the Middle Ages, in any case in its richest home, in France.

Indeed, if we take the Arthurian literature, the trend has been increasigling to the constitution of vast cycles including fictional universes initially separated. It begins with Lancelot-Grail, which contains the material of two novels in verse by Chrétien de Troyes, the Knight of the Cart and the Tale of the Grail. Tristan in prose comes to fasten the legend of the lovers of Cornwall to the Arthurian matter. A century later, in Hainaut, Perceforest proposes a synthesis including Alexandre's history and that of king Arthur and the Round Table, within the framework of a narrative which affects at the same time the theme of the size and some decline of the empires and that of the progress of the religion from ancient paganism to the Christian revelation. If on leaves the Arthurian matter, we find the same totaling tendency very marked in the theater of the Mysteries of the Passion of the XVth century, culminating in the works of Arnoul Gréban and Jean Michel. Here, the chronotope is the one of the history of Salvation, from the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to the Passion of Christ, the Resurrection and the Pentecost.


One could think that such totalizing aims are perhaps peculiar to periods of decline or transition, when a civilization becomes more or less confusedly aware of its fragility and the possibility of a collapse. In this way, the friendship which bound J.R.R. Tolkien and P. Louis Bouyer, author of the Prelude to the Apocalypse or the Last Knights of the Grail, is not the fact of a simple chance, but perhaps testifies of an intimate affinity for the feeling of the "end of a world". And the same is true of the spiritual relationship which we revealed, in our work The Song of the World, between Tolkien’s work and that of the the Lithuanian painter and composer M.K. Čiurlionis : the latter foresaw the imminence of a disaster which he did not know, having died in 1911 at the age of 36, but which Tolkien crossed twice, as fighting himself on the front of the Somme in 1916, and then as father of a son engaged in the fights of the Second World War. But it is advisable to specify that the Legendarium, in spite of the often dark and terrible tone of the narratives it contains, is in no way an

overhelming work, carrying to despair. On the contrary, the Legendarium is crossed by the very diffuse light of a hope that resides in the certainty of the infinite benevolence of the Creator, the Unique, Ilúvatar, which is a Father as well as for the Elves as for Men. The tragic element, registered from the Great Song of Ainur because of the conflict of Melkor, lives up to the end, but it does not have the last word. The end of Arda, inevitable, will not be the end of any things, but the opening in a new Great Song, to which will be called to participate the Elfves, the Human beings and maybe also the Dwarves.

Charles Ridoux

Amfroipret, juin 2008


II. The succession of the four Ages

FIRST AGE

The First Age is marked by the constant fight between Valar and Morgoth for the growth -

beneficial or disastrous - of the Middle-earth in order to welcome the Elves and the Human beings. The stages of this fight extend during a succession of three homes of light: Lamps, Trees, then the Sun and the Moon. But at the heart of the First Age are the Silmarils, forged by Fëanor to collect the light of Trees after their poisoning by Melkor and Ungoliant: the jewels stolen by Morgoth will be the object of a curse which will lead to endless infighting among the Elves. So that the fate of three elvish kingdoms established in Beleriand-Doriath, Nargothrond and Gondolin - will happen in the course of three heroic gestures of Túrin, Tuor and Beren. The prediction will find its fulfillment at the end of the Great Battle during which Thangorodrim will be broken, Morgoth rejected in the void and the three Silmarils lost in the depths of the sea, the earth and the sky. One can so observe a parallelism in the end of each of the first three Ages: the definitive fall of Morgoth; first defeat of Sauron, with the loss of the One Ring; War of the Ring, destruction of Barad-dûr and The fall of Sauron.

The chronology of the First Age appears all the more complex because it rests on a multiplicity of

different calendars. The First Age opens with the entry in Arda of the Valar, whose task is to shape the world in agreement with the vision stemming from the Great Music of Ainur. The account of Time takes place at first according to the Valians Years (whose duration amounts to ten years of the Sun approximately). After the destruction of the Lamps, at the end of 3 500 Years Valians (35 000 Years of the Sun), a comput begins according to the Years of the Trees, which will last 1 500 years (15 000 Years of the Sun) until the first sunrise and of the Moon. The time of Lamps knows its peak with the Spring of Arda, while Melkor is hunted for a while. The Elves wake up to Cuiviénen under the light of the stars, whereas the awakening of the Human beings occurs with the first dawn of the Sun. But if the Sun appears as the forerunner of the decline of the Elves, the Moon keeps their memory. It is still during the time of the Trees that occurs the walking of the Elves westward, the installation of some of them in Valinor, then their rebellion under Fëanor and their return in Middle-Earth.

Les Lampes des Valar (Ted Nasmith) La première aurore du Soleil


From then on, Beleriand - Where the three freat elvish kingdoms of Doriath (with Thingol and Melian), Nargothrond (Finrod) and Gondolin (Turgon) - becomes fiels of the wars led by Morgoth, who throws his armies of Orcs, dragons and Balrogs against the Elves to whom join the three Houses of Men (of Bëor, Hador and Haleth). After a first victory of Noldor, led by Fingolfin (Dagor Aglareb), begins the Seat of Angband, which will last about four centuries; this seat will be broken during the Battle of the Sudden Flame, where Fingolfin dies during his duel with Morgoth (in 455). A new defeat takes place during the Battle of Tears (Nirnaeth Arnoediad, in 472), during which Húrin was

captured. About twenty years later followed the fall of Nargothrond (495), where settles down the dragon Glaurung that will come to be killed by Túrin Turambar, then the sack of Doriath by the Dwarves (500) and the fall of Gondolin (510), which the warnings of Ulmo transmitted by Tuor to king Turgon fail to prevent.

The story of the Fall of Gondolin is one of the oldest of the Legendarium, with coverage from the years 1916-1917; it is also one of the most endearing texts by its literary qualities, in passages such as the description of the journey of Tuor towards Gondolin, or the great evocation of the fall of the City. The first narrative concerning the fall of Gondolin in the Books of Lost Tales is marked by an epic tint, with traditional epic themes such as that of the equipment of the warrior (Tuor in Vinyamar) or the enumeration of twelve Houses of Gondolin before the final battle. As for the text published in the Unfinished Tales and Legends, it establishes a most attractive piece, with the magnificent description of the crossing of Seven Gates which lead Tuor up to the place from where he contemplates the city of Gondolin rising in the plain. Two images of the fall of Gondolin are particularly striking: the assault given by the Balrogs, in large numbers, and the end of King Turgon, who falls down from its tower in the middle of the roarings of mockery of Orcs. "Great is the fall of Gondolin!" : These last words of Turgon seal the fulfillment of a former prediction.

The mission of Eärendel which, thanks to the Silmaril torn away by Beren from the crown of Morgoth, reaches Valinor to implore, in the name of the Elves and Human beings, the forgiveness of the Valar there, ends in the War of the Wrath (545-587): the intervention of the Valar in Midle-earth ends with the final defeat of Morgoth, but also with the destruction of almost all Beleriand. This is when both sons of Eärendil and Elwing, stemming from both human races and elvish, make a decisive choice: Elrond will remain, as Elf, in Middle-Earth; Elros, who chooses the fate of the Men, will become the first king of Númenor.

La fin de Glaurung (Ted Nasmith)


During the half a century during which extended the creation of the Legendarium (from 1916 up to Tolkien’s death in 1973), overall or detailed revisions were constant as appeared new developments and Christopher Tolkien's very invaluable comments in his edition of The History of Middle-earth (1983-1996) provide a striking testimony. Among these modifications, those relating to the chronology are of first importance, as far as they aim at supplying a coherent temporal frame in the various narratives. In several of these revisions, the tendency goes to the senseof an extension of duration: it happens, especially for certain eras of the First Age, that Tolkien adds several centuries, even millennia, for certain events, without changing besides the subsequent chronology. So, the duration of the periods which precede or which follow the comput ordered at the Trees Time are considerably spread. Besides the adjustments of the chronology, Tolkien was led, following a revision of the philosophic concepts and the cosmological notions of his mythology (towards the end of the fifties) to operate adjustments to avoid excessice discrepancies with the conceptions of science (the roundness of the Earth, the existence of the Sun and the Moon long before the life in Middle Earth). The preservation of the former conceptions has been made possible by attributing them to human myths ensuing from truthful teachings received from the Elves, but badly likened by the Men.

SECOND AGE

The first versions of the of Tolkien’s mythology ended with the overthrow of Morgoth at the end

of the First Age. When, in December, 1937, Tolkien leaves aside “Silmarillion” to engage in the writing of the Lord of the, his conception of Ages is then hardly sketched. It is through the Atlantean myth that the Legendarium is going to go on to a Second Age, and it is during the writing of the Appendixes in the Lord of Rings, in 1954-1955, that emerge an all-emcopassing historical structure and a precise chronology of the Second and Third Ages.

In his famous letter to Milton Waldman, dated from 1951, Tolkien presents three main themes

which characterize the Second Age: " The Elves who linger in Middle-Earth”,the transformation of Sauron into a new Lord Tenebrous, master and god of the men"," Númenor (the Atlantis) ". Númenor indeed occupies a central position because of its situation between the Middle-Earthand the blessed Kingdom of Valinor and the power and the greatness of Númenóréens testify to the ascendancy of the Men and of the beginning of the disappearance of the Elves. Besides, is evoked the slow rise of a dark power from now embodied by Sauron: while the power of Morgoth practiced on the material and on the bodies, that of Sauron aims at the domination of souls and spirits. The seduction exercised by Sauron on the Númenóréens leans on their desire to become immortal just like Valar. Finally, this time which marks the peak of Númenor constitutes, for the Middle-Earth a dark and restless period.

The great scansions of the chronology of the Second Age revolve around Númenor: its foundation ( 50 ), the fall of the Shadow (2000 ), its destruction ( 3319 ); however, the Second Age continues with the installation of Númenóréens in exile in the Middle-Earth), with the foundation of the kingdoms of Arnor in the North (Annúminas) and Gondor in the South (Osgiliath); and the Second Age ends on the last alliance between Elves and Human beings, on the defeat of Sauron and the death of Elendil and Gil-galad, finally on the loss of the Ring which Isildur took from Sauron’s finger, but which gets lost in the waters of the river Anduin when Isildur is killed in the Fields of Iris.

The Second Age appears as that of foundations,some of wich will remain till the end of the Third

age: in the year 1, it is the foundation of Grey Havens by Cirdan and Lindon, Gil-galad's kingdom, in the northwest, in the lands which remain of former Beleriand. In the year 32, year of the foundation of the city of Armenelos, Elros becomes, under the name of Tar-Minyatur, the first king of Númenor, and his reign extends over three centuries (32-442). In the neighborhood of the year 1000, Sauron, worried about the power of Númenúréens, settled in Mordor and begans the construction of Barad-dûr; the making of the Rings of Power began by 1500 and in 1600, Sauron forged the One Ring and finished Barad-dûr. In 1697, Elrond bases Imladris (Rivendell), which would become the center of resistance in a new growth of the Shade during the Third age. t the end of the Second Age, comes the foundation of kingdoms in exile, over which reign the grandsons of Elendil, leader of the Believers and the survivors of the flood of Númenor: Valandil, son of Isildur in Arnor and Meneldil, son of Anárion in Gondor.


The story of Númenor takes place in two major phases: that of its ascent and its greatness, followed by an increasing spirit of pride and revolt which lead to the final disaster. During the first phase, the Númenúréens worships on the mountain of Meneltarma the unique God, Eru, but they do know neither worship nor temple. The Kings of Númenor enjoy an exceptional longevity, they bear names in the language of the Elves (Quenya), and they pass on the scepter to their heirs in their lifetime, when they feel approaching death. Friends of the Elves, they receive from them the gift of a sucker of the White Tree of Tol Eressëa, which is itself a memorial of Telperion, one of the Trees of Valinor. Great sailors, Númenúréens come to the rescue of Gil galad and settle down little by little in the south-west of the Middle Earth. But the greediness and the thirst of the power testify, around the year 2000, of a first intrusion of the Shadow at Númenor. Tar-Atanamir is the first one to dispute the Prohibition of Valar, which prevents Númenúréens from navigating westward. The big turning point occurs in 2899 when new king, Ar-Adûnakhor, assumed the power under a title in Adûnaic langage and usurped the title of "Lord of the West", which belongs to Valar; he also forbade the use of the Elvish languages at his court. The 23rd king, Tar-Palantir, regrets and reveres again Eru. At his death, his daughter Mielriel becomes queen, but his cousin forces her to marry him and

usurps the crown for himself, taking the name of Ar-Pharazôn (3255). His power is such as he compels Sauron to an apparent submission and takes him to Númenor; As a prisoner, Sauron will soon reach, by his guile, the status of main councillor of king, he will establish a cruel worship sent to the supposed god to live in the void, will persecute the Fatihful and, finally, will urge Ar-Pharazôn to undertake against Valinor a conquering expedition which ends in the disaster, pulling the flood of Númenor and a complete reshaping of the Earth (3319).

La Submersion d’Anadunë (John Howe)


Tolkien presents the fall of Númenor as " the result of an internal weakness to the man, a

consequence of the first Fall " and adds that on earth the rewards are often more dangerous for the men than the sanctions. The allied Human beings of the Elvess during the War of the Anger which ends the First Age were rewarded, indeed, royally by the gift of Númenor and by the exceptional longevity which allows them achievements similar to those of the Elves. But it makes them all the more possessive towards the works and towards the wealth, and especially they bear more and more badly their condition of mortal, so that they come there to rebel against the Forbidden put by the Valar: never to sail westward to the point of losing sight of their own earth. Tolkien considers three stages in the fall of Númenóréens: At first a phase of obedience and consent, but without having the clear awareness that immortality would be against their nature and against their fate; then a reluctant obedience, accompanied with increasing recriminations; finally, the open rebellion, which leads to Númenor a fracture between the menof King and the Faithfull (in the Valar). The great expedition launched by Ar-Pharazôn on Valinor ends in a catastrophic way: the old world is disrupted and Númenor gobbled up in the abyss. With the withdrawal of Valinor and Tol Eressëa, there is not visible presence anymore of the divine or the immortal on earth, the world became round and finished. For the Elves, the " straight way " remains, which allows them to reach on the real.

The various accounts about the fall of Númenor provide many examples of the descriptive talent

of Tolkien and the constancy of certain recurring images, including that of the Great Wave which submerges the island. From his childhood, Tolkien knew what he will call his "Atlantis Complex", maybe hereditary phenomenon, and which was also the sharing of his son Michael. This personal complex starts resonating with that of time: indeed, during the first half of the XXth century, both narratives of Platon on the Atlantis contained in the Timée and in the Critias arouses many searches and discussions among the scholars. Tolkien speaks about a terrible and recurring dream, which he will attribute to Faramir, and Tolkien specifies that after the writing of The Fall of Númenor this dream was as exorcised for him. His dream is that of a gigantic “Great Wave”, which inexorably approaches, crossing over trees and green meadows: "... a prodigious and inexorable wave advancing from the Sea or over lands, sometimes dark, sometimes green and sunlit". The same theme reappears several times in the work of the writer.

So, in The Notion Club Papers, Ramer has the vision of an empty throne at the top of a mountain; a green, ridgy wave of white, fluted foam and in the shape of shell, raises in a impressive way on the grey fields. In Akallabêth, the description is more dynamic, with the evocation of the Queen Mίriel submerged in the middle of the unchained elements: " at the end, a wave as high as a mountain, green and icy, plumed of scum, came to cover the earth and to take within it Tar-Míriel, the Queen purer than the silver, the ivory or the pearls. She too late wanted to climb the slopes of the cowned place on the Meneltarma, the waters took her and her cry got lost in the roarings of the wind. ". At the time of Sauron’s fall, Faramir and Eowyn contemplated the scene down from the walls od Minas Tirith : “Soon, it seemed to them that over the distant crests rose another vast mountain of darkness, raised as a wave which was going to gobble up the world (...) - it reminds me Númenor, said Faramir.". The description of the fall of Barad-dûr, the dark fortress of Sauron, resumes the image of a breaking wave : "... vast turns of smoke and the gushing vapors rose, always higher until they break out as an irresistible wave, which undulating and impetuous crest beat down foaming on the earth. This theme of the wave had already appeared in a poem dating 1917, which has for title The Horns of Ylmir and which evokes the fall of an elvish kingdom, the hidden city of Gondolin:


A dome of shouting water, Smote those dripping black facades, And its catastrophic foutains smashed In deafening cascades

But the swallowing of the fleet of Ar-Pharazôn and the reshaping of the world also gives rise to

great evocations in which we see the great seas diving into the abyss, the tumult of waters filling all the earth, and the vapors rising over the tops of mountains. In The Notion Club Papers, two members of the society, Lowdham and Jeremy, have both a vision of the destruction of Númenor: the mountains smoke, throwing towards the sky their flames and their vapors, and the earth trembles and collapses, whereas the shadow of the Eagles of the western Lords extends over Númenor.

This theme of the Great Wave which swallows, at the end

of an Age, s formidable and proud powers is magnificently illustrated by a the Lithuanian painter and composer, M.K. Ciurlionis, who lived from 1875 to 1911. The parallel is imperative between both visionary worlds of Ciurlionis and Tolkien, in the form of a spiritual kinship excluding any idea of influence of one or the other. The scale of their vision makes them able of showing to the world a universe which is imperative by its magnificence and its majesty, and which wakes in us inmemorial memories. Both artists share an inspiration which draws from close sources: sense of the cosmos stemming from the chaos, a cyclical and involutive vision involutive of history, the prescience of disastrous upheavals. At Ciurlionis, the motive for the big wave appears, with an impressive power, in the "Final" of an entitled triptych : Sonata of the Sea, which dates from 1908. The art critic Marc Etkind highlights in this picture" the wild dynamics of the terrible rising diagonal, forming as a monstrous hand with fingers of foam (...) [Arousing] the presentiment of the next end of a world, a civilization.


THIRD AGE

Tolkien presents the Third age as a "misty Age, a kind of

Middle Ages". It is the first Age of a broken and upset world, after the destruction of Númenor and the withdrawal of Valinor. It is also the last Age of the domination of the Elves, still completely embodied. It is finally the last Age in which the Evil appears in an embodied form (Sauron). At that time, the center of the tensions turns around the confrontation between Gondor and Mordor, symbolized by the Two Towers (Mina Tirith and Barad-dûr). A polarization takes place between the powers of the Shadow which grow and the resistance of the beings of light which symbolizes the Company of the Ring guided by Gandalf before its breakup. The tone appropriater to the Lord of the Rings is no longer, as in the Silmarillion, in a heroic and sublime register, but in a mixture of registers associating the sublime and the idyllic, by means of Hobbits and the Shire, as well as because of miscellaneous "hospitable houses", such as Rivendell or Lórien. The Third age is a time of erasure for the Elves, who do not expect anything and live in the memory of the past; it appears as a twilight between the Former Days and the After World , which marks the domination of the Men from the Fourth Age.

All the dynamic of the Third age revolves around the

quest of the One Ring by Sauron and the efforts, at the instigation of Gandalf, to destroy it by throwing it in the furnace of Mount Doom (Orodruin), at the heart of Mordor. Whereas the One Ring is lost after the death of Isildur and disappears in the streams of Anduin, the Three Rings of the Elves-Vilya, Nenya, Narya, respectively preserved by Elrond, by Galadriel and by Cirdan who transmits it to Gandalf - preserve the memory of the beauty of former days. During almost 3000 years, Mordor remains deserted and the Dark Tower is empty, whereas Sauron hides into the forest of Greewood-the-Great which becomes Mirkwood where he lives under the title of "Necromancer". During this time, the Elves gather around secret shelders : Cirdan in Grey Havens, Elrond to Rivendell, Galadriel in Lórien. According to the chronology of the former annals, Deagol finds the Ring approximately 1100 years after the death of Isildur, so that Gollum holds it for approximately 1900 years; but the chronology of the Appendix B of the Lord of the Rings

decreases strongly this time. The first third of the Third age, of which it is said to be little known, is occupied, as for the western lands, by the vicissitudes of the kingdoms of Arnor (in the North) and Gondor (in the South), whereas in the South and in the East multiply kingdoms populated with wild or malefic men, united by their hatred of the West inspired by Sauron. The kingdom of Arnor is the first one to decline. Having known the reign of eight big kings, successors of Elendil and Isildur, the kingdom is divided into three (Arthedain, Rhudaur and Cardolan); Rhudaur and Cardolan precipitate, by their confrontations, the forfeiture of Dúnedain. Besides, the Witch-King of Angmar, in fact leader of the Spectres of the Ring, puts a constant pressure on Arthedain from the North, and ends, shortly before the year 2000, by seizing Fornost and chase away most of the surviving Dúnedain. After the reign of Arvedui, the Kingdom of the North goes out. There will remain, in the North, only a secret and wandering lineage of the descendants of Isildur, known only by the House of Elrond, and from where will arise Aragorn.


In the South, on the contrary, Gondor’s power and wealth grow steadily, from the IXth century to XIIth century. A lineage of 31 kings succeeds Anárion, growing in power, on land and sea, until the glorious reign of Atanatar II, where Gondor reaches the peak of its magnificence (1149-1226 ). The Decline of Gondor is the consequence of its success, the ease and the carelessness, as well as love of the luxury and the wealth,leading to intestine civil wars and the jealousy of neighbors on the watch. The kingdom of Gondor thus enters in its turn into a slow decline, which Tolkien compares with the fate of Byzantium, "proud, respectable, but gradually powerless". It finally loses in the South the Umbar which, in the hands of Privateers, became a permanent threat. Disasters succeed, as Greenwood-the-Great darks and as multiply the signs of the return of Sauron: Later a devastating plague comes the invasion of Wainriders, a confederacy of peoples native of the East, particularly belligerent. In 2050, the royal lineage of Gondor goes out with Eärnur, who had taken away a resounding victory on Witch-King-of the Angmar to Fornost in 1975, but dies without heir. Begin then the lineage of the Stewards, whose first one is Mardil: if they exercise all the powers of Kings, numerous are still in Gondor to wait for the return of King stemming from the former royal lineage of the North. After Mardil follows 24 Ruling Stewards until Denethor II, in the time of War of the Ring. After the period called the Watchful Peace, during which Sauron continues to be in hiding, Gondor is again assailed by all sides towards the end of the XXVth century. Thanks to the unexpected help of the Rohirrim, came as additional help from the North, the victory of the Field of Celebrant ( 2510 ) saves Gondor, from which Eorl established the kingdom of Rohan, bound(connected) from now on by an iunfailing alliance.

Minas Tirith (Ted Nasmith)


New actors, not present in Former Days, make their appearance in Middle-Earth during the Third

age, and are going to contribute to give to the War of the ring a new tone with regard to the previous conflicts led against the dark powers, against Morgoth or Sauron. First of all, near the year 1000, the Istari appeared, Wizards sent as envoys of the Valar not to act directly, but to advise the Elves and the Human beings of willingness and help them to face the black intentions of the Dark Lord. Two of them fail in their mission: the one by renunciation (Radagast, fond of animals and birds and avoiding the company of the Elves and the Men), the other one by the pride and the bait of the power which finally subjects him to Sauron whom he pretended to evict ( Saruman); Only the third (Gandalf the Grey, named Mithrandir by the Elves) remains faithful and contributes more than any other to the definitive victory over Sauron. The opposite strengths are set up with, on one hand, the creation, on the initiative of Galadriel, of the White Council of the Wise (2463), at the head of which is placed Saruman the White; but Saruman settles down to Orthanc, in Isengard (2759) and goes in search of the Ring for its own account. Opposite, Sauron makes a strong comeback in Mordor (2951) and soon throws his Black Riders in search of the holder of the Ring.

The other novelty of the Third age lies in the

emergence of Hobbits. Fleeing the Shadow of the Black Forest over which reigns the Necromancer, they settle down around Bree (c. 1300) then in The Shire (on 1601 = the Year 1 of The Shire), with the permission of the king of Fornost. The arrangement of the Shire so presents a gap from 1600 years with that of Dúnedain. If the Hobbits know the plague (1637) or the famine (2758), except some confrontations with the Orcs, they escape the war and, because of their little belligerent character, they do not know either the ravages of civil war. But the well-being and the peace do not prevent them from remaining hard-

wearing and brave, as will be seen in Bilbo’s Erebor expedition (2940), then the four heroes committed in the war of the Ring (Frodo, Sam Gamegee, Merry and Pippin).

Gandalf et Gripoil (Ted Nasmith)

La Comté (Ted Nasmith)


The commitment of these new actors - Istari, Hobbits - gives to the War of the Ring (3019) its own tone with regard to the previous conflicts. The former alliances between Elves and Men are widened (from the Battle of Five Armies at the end of Bilbo the Hobbit) to other races ( the Dwarves) as well as to animals (the Eagles) and to other beings (the Ents), symbolizing the commitment of all the human beings in a confrontation which hires the fates of the Middle-Earth. The presence of the Messengers of the Valar testifies to a great consciousness of their responsibility towards the Children of' Ilúvatar and towards the underlying competition of a providential help which is not imperative but which allows the fulfillment of companies led by the strengths of light (for example, the final action of Gollum which, on the Mountain of Destiny, ends up restoring the Ring to its original Fire). The determining action of the Hobbits, in particular the sacrifice granted by Frodo (whose Christic connotations are obvious), emphasizes a heroism of a particular nature, made by courage and by endurance, but also by humility and by condolence. Finally, the War of the Ring ends in the final fall of Sauron, but this one does not entail, unlike the disastrous purposes of the first two Ages, an upheaval and a deep reshaping of the physical world.

In the arangement of the Gondor, the end of the Third age is dated

the day of the fall of Barad-dûr (in March 25th 3019), followed by the crowning of Aragorn under the name of Elessar; but the real end is rather situated at the time of the departure of the holders of Three Rings of the Elves (Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf), accompanied by the two Ring Bearers (Bilbo and Frodo).

FOURTH AGE

The Fourth Age begins with master Elrond's departure from the Grey Havens, on September 29th 3021 (the year 1421 of the Shire), together with the other holders of the Elvish Rings (Galadriel, Gandalf) and the two Ring Bearers (Bilbo and Frodo). However, in the new calendar of the Kingdom of Gondor, the year 1 begins March 25th 3021, former style. The main characteristic of the Fourth Age, is to present a world where from the Elves disappeared and where from the Men dominate from now on. The annals concerning the Fourth Age evoke essentially the dates of disappearance of the diverse protagonists

of the War of the Ring. In 61, it is the departure for the West of Sam Gamegee, after having transmitted to his daughter Elanor the Red Book which contains the narrative of the adventures of Bilbo during the expedition of Erebor as well as the history of the War of the Ring and the end of the Third age presented according to the point of view of the Hobbits. Kept by the Fairbairns the Red Book the original of which is lost, was the object of many copies, the last one of which was made in the year 172 by Findegil. In 63, after the death of Eomer, king of Rohan, Merry and Pippin leave the Shire to settle in the Gondor. Faramir, became Prince of Ithilien, died in 82, at the age of 120. After a reign of 122 years and 210-year-old, King Elessar leaves of the life in the year 120 and his son Eldarion succeeds him, whereas, the following year, Arwen will die on the hill of Cerin Amroth, where she was engaged to Aragorn. The Fellowship of the Ring comes to an end with the departure of Legolas and Gimli for Overseas, in a ship where were gathered the mortuary beds of the Great King, Meriadoc and Peregrin.

Départ des Havres Gris (Ted Nasmith)


The Fourth Age, it is also a world where the Evil, if it is not any more embodied as at the previous Ages, did not disappear, as shown by the main narrative island dedicated to this time, The New Shadow. This confirms the law of the cyclic involution at work in the Legendarium, with the revival of a movement of degradation and corruption, at work already about a century after the crowning of King Elessar . Borlas, son of Beregond, Faramir’s Guard Captain, reprimands a young man who stole apples from his orchard. It is hinted at secret societies practising dark cults. In his correspondence, Tolkien speaks of a "resurgence of revolutionary plots around the center of a secret satanic religion " and about teenagers of the Gondor playing Orcs. The discovery and the destruction of this plot could have given a good "thriller", but Tolkien did not pursue this story which seemed to him at the same time "sinister and depressing". This brief narrative illustrates in any case an idea dear to the author, worth namely the fast satisfaction of the Men towards the Good. Beyond this time, the vagueness seems voluntarily maintained as to the continuation of Ages susceptible to connect our world.with the ancient Ages of the Legendarium.

Charles Ridoux

Amfroipret, June 2008

Les Havres Gris (John Howe)

jbm 1-1 - the legendarium from age to age - zridoux.net/spip/img/pdf/-245.pdf · example, the...

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