So I’ve been re-reading The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings this summer and they have reminded me of some things that I have encountered in the last year or so. As I just finished book V of LotR, I was particularly reminded of something @ayjay wrote on “makers and making” and what he termed “the Fëanor Temptation.”
According to Jacobs, who here borrows heavily from Tom Shippey’s work (I want to get around to reading Shippey eventually), Fëanor is the patient zero and most extreme case of a vicious moral pestilence that is to infect the race of the elves of Middle Earth: the disordered love of their own devices. This is not, of course, exclusive to the elves, for indeed, the temptation exists first in the Valar (the angelic beings of Tolkien’s legendarium) as all the Valar have a love of the portions of creation for which they are uniquely suited and in which they are called to take part.
This love is not in and of itself problematic, but from what I can tell, the key divide is between, on the one hand, a love of one’s small part for what it contributes to a grander vision than one’s own, and on the other what Shippey describes as “a restless desire to make things which will forever reflect or incarnate their own personality.”
In this fashion did Aulë the smith partially fall victim to this temptation in the making of the dwarves, while his comrade, Melkor, went utterly into ruin by wishing to corrupt all that had been made by Eru Ilúvatar (the one supreme deity) and shaped by the Valar into a perverse mockery of their work that would serve to glorify only Melkor himself. Whereas Aulë repented of his arrogance and impatience, and as a reward saw his work redeemed,* Melkor doubled down on his selfish vanity and became the master of evil, Morgoth.
But this is a tough line to walk, as all virtues are, and not all those who err do so in such an obvious blaze of defiance as Melkor. Hence, the tempting of Fëanor. Fëanor, like most of his kin, looked upon the most glorious creation of his day, the two great trees of Valinor and their mystical light in a world otherwise largely bereft of illumination, and was in awe. He had no hand in creating this light, but he feared its loss with a sense of growing foreboding. Here we could say that he viewed himself as an inheritor of this great gift, a good held in common by all who dwelled in Valinor, and as such, had a vested interest in the maintenance and preservation of this gift. Tolkien writes in The Silmarillion that Fëanor “pondered how the light of the Trees, the glory of the Blessed Realm, might be preserved imperishable.” So far so good, but of course, the tragedy of Fëanor is that the gems (called Silmarils) that he crafts from this light become so dear to him that he binds himself and his kin by a terrible oath to violently oppose anyone who comes between them and the great jewels. Thus, the peace of Valionr is shattered, the unity of the high elves undone, and Middle Earth shaken to its foundations as Melkor and his servants leverage the violence and chaos of Fëanor’s departure for their own evil ends.
Much of the rest of The Silmarillion is a working out of the consequences of this error, and a warning against its repetition. The starkest statement to this effect (in my reading, anyway) is when Ulmo the Vala warns Turgon the elf to “love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart; and remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West and cometh from the Sea” (the Noldor were the elves who followed Fëanor and left Valinor to pursue Morgoth and the Silmarils, and “the Sea” is in reference to the direction of Valinor and the Valar). While Turgon wisely repudiates the wars of the Silmarils and forsakes the quest to reclaim them, his own project, the creation of a secret haven, Gondolin, becomes his personal temptation. Turgon, like Fëanor, was filled with a love of the beauty of Valinor (in Turgon’s case, the great elvish city of Tirion upon Túna which was their home while they dwelled in Valinor) and an unease at the prospect of losing this beauty forever, so he sought a way to preserve its memory amidst the destruction and violence of their self-imposed exile.
Turgon came to a hidden vale that was protected by Ulmo and set to work building the fairest city in Middle Earth. He received Ulmo’s warning, however, on the cusp of his departure to go inhabit this new home he had created. Ulmo predicted that the curse of Turgon’s people would find him even in his bastion of secrecy, and urged him to recall that which he did not make but inherited: the purposes and designs of those greater than himself, namely, the Valar as servants of Eru Ilúvatar. For The Silmarillion tells of all the works of the Valar and the lesser creatures of Middle Earth, and how these things wax and wane and then fall away, but all in service to what Tolkien calls the “Music of the Ainur”–Eru’s mysterious divine will.
So, this is all to say that Jacobs' (and Shippey’s) interpretation jives quite well with my own read of The Silmarillion. But what strikes me now, upon my return to LotR, is how the theme is carried on in this later work and borne out in the non-elvish races, particularly men. I’m particularly interested in how Tolkien works out how the corruption of the love of this inheritance as I am calling it can be avoided. More on this later.
*“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” -Romans 8:28