Subject: It's been ages since I've had a good talk about this. ;)
Author:
Posted on: 2013-08-15 14:54:00 UTC
So thank you for giving me an opportunity...
Your re-translation seems to be pretty accurate to the Silmarillion. In your first quote, I can see how that could be read either way - I've always read it as a 'when they're allowed out'. It's 'may' as in 'will be permitted', not 'may' as in 'maybe'. As the book says, no-one but Ilúvatar knows what will happen to the Eldar at the end of the world - and since the Quenta Silmarillion is framed as an Elvish account of their history, they certainly wouldn't have put a 'maybe' in when they didn't know anything. So it's a 'when they're allowed'.
It's interesting - and a bit depressing - that so much of the story of Finwe and Miriel is dropped from the published Silmarillion. The story, in brief, is that after Miriel goes to Lorien and dies, Finwe is quite happy to wait for her to be reembodied (because why shouldn't she?). But time passes and passes, and eventually Finwe goes to the Valar and says 'I still want to have more children, but my wife is refusing to leave Mandos. Can I remarry?'. There's a massive debate over this (and actually still is - the Eldar still argue about whether Finwe's second marriage was the cause of everything that later went wrong), with the result being that Finwe can remarry, provided Miriel confirms that she will never leave Mandos. Which she does. The principle is that an Elf cannot have two spouses on the earth, because that's icky, but if one of them is never coming back...
Still, that was essentially special dispensation for Finwe alone. It's never invoked again. Most of this, since it's not in the Silm, is from The Statute of Finwe and Miriel, somewhere in the Histories of Middle-earth.
Oh, Finrod... Finrod is awesome, he is far and away my favourite character in the Silmarillion. One of the reasons is that 'maybe' in his farewell to Beren.
The thing is, Finrod claimed to have been sent a vision. This is separate to the vision from Ulmo telling him to found Nargothrond (at the same time as Turgon was sent to build Gondolin). At some point, Finrod began to claim that he had been granted a vision of the world after the End of Days. He claimed this:
"Ah, wise lady!" said Finrod. "I am an Elda, and again I was thinking of my own people. But nay, of all the Children of Eru. I was thinking that by the Second Children we might have been delibered from death. For ever as we spoke of death being a division of the united [ie, body and soul], I thought in my heard of a death that is not so: but the ending together of both. For that is what lies before us [elves], so far as our reason could see: the completion of Arda and its end, and therefore also of us children of Arda; the end when all the long lives of the Elves shall be wholly in the past.
"And then suddenly I beheld as a vision Arda Remade; and there the Eldar completed but not ended could abide in the present for ever, and there walk, maybe, with the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting mountain-tops to throb like harps."
Which is a wild departure from Elven orthodoxy, and sets the 'Secondborn', the 'Latecomers', the 'Sickly Ones' - in short, mortal men - up as the deliverers of the Elves. It's a powerful vision, presented with Finrod's uniquely enthusiastic voice - and all that made it into the Silmarillion was 'maybe'!
(That's an excerpt from the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, a conversation between Finrod and a mortal woman on various matters of death and mortality. Also from the Histories)
As to the three things that agents shout:
-"Sex is marriage!"
--Another Histories of Middle-earth reference. This comes from LACE - the Laws and Customs of the Eldar. It outlines the process of the Eldarin betrothal and marriage ceremonies, but goes on to state that all of those are understood to be purely ceremonial and for the families: the actual physical act is what matters, to the point where Elves 'on the run' are able to get married hiding out in the woods. As one of my agents will say when his mission gets finished, "Well, in Quenya, she's definitely your wife."
-"Elves aren’t abusive!"
--This is a flat-out lie. :P Most Elves that we know of aren't abusive, but both Feanor and Eol definitely engaged in (at minimum) emotional abuse of their spouses. However, from reading their characters we do know that Elrond isn't abusive, and neither is Thranduil, which covers about 95% of the cases that show up in missions.
-"There is no forced marriage in Midle-earth!"
--Definitely and canonically untrue amongst Men - Tar-Miriel of Numenor was forced to marry (and give up the Sceptre to) her cousin Ar-Pharazon.
--The marriage of Eol and Aredhel was rather more explicitly a forced marriage in earlier drafts; apparently Tolkien toned it down somewhat to make it more of a 'he kept her in his house and eventually she chose to marry him'. But Eol is The Dark Elf anyway - he's well and truly under the Shadow. The principle we tend to operate on is that he was an isolated incident; the institutional forced, often political marriages that show up so often in fanfic were definitely not a thing among the Eldar.
---Actually, I think there's further comments in LACE to that effect. They point out that the Eldar marry for love, not for political reasons, and that although sometimes people pine over a spouse they didn't get, they don't go in for forced marriages. I'm pulling this from vague memories, though.
--Thingol was... rather messed up. I think he definitely would never have forced Luthien to marry someone, but he was clearly comfortable with forcing her not to. Actually, in various drafts of the tale of Beren and Luthien, either Curufin or Celegorm plans to (presumably forcibly) marry Luthien... so yes, forced marriage is a thing, but only among evil characters, and only in isolated cases. We know which characters are evil; the ones who usually end up doing this aren't them.
---I'm not sure whether locking a child up to stop them doing something (you see as) stupid is abuse per se... I think it just comes under bad parenting. Again, if a character is being locked up by a parent in badfic, it's usually as punishment, not simply as a way to stop them leaving. But I guess this one is debatable. I'm not overly fond of Thingol anyway, so it doesn't bother me either way. ;)
There are really only a handful of people in the PPC who have this in-depth knowledge of the Silmarillion and the Histories. Most people who would call themselves LotR fans don't have it - and that's absolutely fine! If I insisted everyone had to be as obsessive as me, we'd never get anything done...
hS
PS: If you're interested in reading the 'Statute', 'Athrabeth' and 'LACE', they're all in the tenth book of the Histories of Middle-earth: Morgoth's Ring. That's also the book where Christopher collected Tolkien's thoughts on the nature of Orcs. If I were recommending one volume of HoME, it would be that one. ~hS