Schlagwort: :-D

argumate:

argumate:

For me the most jarring anachronism in Lord of the Rings is when Sam looks up into the night sky over Mordor and sees a single star and is filled with hope at the idea of beauty that is forever beyond the reach of shadow and wait a second stars? like, are they the same kind of stars we have, big flaming balls of fusing hydrogen and assorted elements how far away are these stars? do they have planets around them? do those planets have elves on them? why can’t Sauron reach the stars with the power of the one ring?

theunitofcaring said:

do you want the answer though

eh, fuck it

Tolkien had two conflicting ideas on the cosmology: one was that Middle-earth’s Sun and Moon were fruit drawn by chariots by Maiar (minor deities: Sauron is one) in the vaguely-Hellenistic tradition that his deities are trying to pretend they aren’t borrowed from

and the stars were set in the sky by Varda Elentári, one of the Valar (less minor deities)

(when he was feeling sufficiently bad about how unCatholic this is he considered them all sort of archangels)

but then he also wanted Middle-earth to be a legendary history of our own world

and he was aware that the Sun-and-Moon as glowing fruits of the long-destroyed Trees of Valinor didn’t work with that, so he made some vague gestures at the end of his life at, like, actual cosmology with stars as flaming balls of gas and stuff.

but haha it gets worse from here because the specific star Sam is looking at is neither a magic Vala-designed star nor a ball of flaming hydrogen it is a Silmaril, which Lúthien and Beren stole from Morgoth’s crown and which passed to their son Dior on their death and his daughter Elwing on his death and to her husband, Eärendil, on her attempted suicide trying to keep it out of Fëanorian hands

he uses the brilliance of the Silmaril to evade the mists and enchanted isles the Valar had set around Valinor to keep refugees of the west from reaching it during the war, and he reaches Valinor

and for his courage he is rewarded, the Valar agree to intervene in the war

but for his hubris he is punished with being never again allowed to set foot on Middle-earth

so he circles the heavens in a flying ship, with the Silmaril on his brow

and that is the star Eärendil which is actually from an old English poem Tolkien found striking and which is a pain to Earendel, the Morning Star

aka the planet Venus, not a star at all

so in the mystical cosmology, the stars are magic and the bright, close, star that follows the orbit of our planet Venus is Eärendil and the Silmaril

and in the non mystical cosmology Sam’s just looking at Venus which still isn’t a star

either way they’re beyond Sauron’s reach because Eärendil has seen some shit and definitely flies out of range of One-Ringing

and the planet Venus is 24million miles away (this is the only fact in this response which I looked up)

other fun facts: Elrond is Eärendil’s son and Arwen, who is called Undomiel, is Eärendil’s granddaughter. Undomiel means “Evening Star”. But, famously, the planet Venus is both the morning star and the evening star – early astronomers didn’t realize they were the same thing

the Silmaril in question is the same one whose diluted light Galadriel captures in the phial she gives Frodo, and even in that form it is powerful enough to repel Shelob because the Silmarils are like a megafucking big deal

Middle-earth actually had stars 8000 years before it had a sun; the Elves awakened beside the waters of lake Cuivienen in total darkness except for the stars

because the Valar hadn’t gotten their shit together and the only place in Middle-earth with lighting was Valinor

the Elves were p chill about this and never really got to liking the sun, while Tolkien notes that Men were v enthused about it

okay I’m done now I’m sorry

you have brought me such joy