12/8/2023 0 Comments Undying landsAnd those that sailed far came only to the new lands and found them like to the old lands, and subject to death. Thus it was that great mariners among them would still search the empty seas, hoping to come upon the Isle of Meneltarma, and there to see a vision of things that were. The Dúnedain of Middle-earth later sent out ships searching for a legendary island, the tip of the highest mountain on Númenor: Yet once they were, and therefore they still are in true being and in the whole shape of the world as at first it was devised". The published Silmarillion contains an afterword to Akallabêth (it is double-indented in my copy) in which the following appears:įor even after the ruin the hearts of the Dúnedain were still set westwards and though they knew indeed that the world was changed, they said: "Avallónë is vanished from the Earth and the Land of Aman is taken away, and in the world of this present Darkness they cannot be found. Ilúvatar reshapes the world, drowning Númenor in the process. In short, when Númenor's king Ar-Pharazôn invades the Undying Lands, the Valar call upon Ilúvatar (essentially God) for help. He abandoned the "time travel" aspect, and the part of the story occurring in the past became Akallabêth, or the Downfall of Númenor. He later began a project with C.S Lewis where Tolkien would write a "time travel" story and Lewis would write a "space travel" story, but Tolkien couldn't help but write it in the context of his Silmarillion mythology. Tolkien's original concept of Arda was as a flat world. In the context of the Akallabêth in the published Silmarillion, no. There is nowhere else where Tolkien discusses this idea. The Nature of Middle-earth - "The Númenórean Catastrophe & End of “Physical” Aman" but also the númenórean catastrophe events depicted in the already-published Lord of the Rings: e.g., Frodo’s bodily journey to a seemingly very physical Tol Eressëa. Not only does some of this thinking apparently contradict long-standing “facts” of the then-unpublished mythology. It is evident from the haste of his writing and the fluidity of his conceptions that Tolkien is here thinking on paper (as he often did). When this was republished in The Nature of Middle-earth, editor Carl Hostetter noted in his commentary that this text was just Tolkien "thinking on paper", and that it doesn't fit with the events of the books, namely Frodo's journey. La Feuille de la Compagnie #3 - Fragments on Elvish Reincarnation The flora and fauna (even if different in some from those of Middle-earth) would become ordinary beasts and plants with usual conditions of mortality. It would just become an ordinary land, an addition to Middle-earth, the European-African-Asiatic contiguous landmass. But as Manwë had already said to the Númenóreans: “It is not the land that is hallowed (and free of death), but it is hallowed by the dwellers there” – the Valar. I think now that it is best that it should remain a physical landmass (America!). Therefore it could not be removed, without remaining visible as part of Arda or as a new satellite! It must either remain as a landmass bereft of its former inhabitants or be destroyed. Is Aman “removed” or destroyed at the Catastrophe? This text was first published in 2014, as part of "Fragments on Elvish Reincarnation". In this he explored the idea of Valinor being removed to a spiritual realm and the landmass remaining behind, empty of its inhabitants and becoming America. In c.1959, Tolkien wrote a text which he titled "The Númenórean Catastrophe & End of “Physical” Aman".
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