Undertowers - Ar-Pharazon's New Clothes

[Ephtariat]

Then the Hobbits in the Shire were told by Cirdan that a message in a bottle had been found at sea, containing a strange story from Numenor. In Cirdan's words, the story was:

One day Ar-Pharazon was told that the greatest gift was sent by the Elves: new clothes fit for a high king. Ar-Pharazon asked to see them, and the Elves told him that the clothes were so wonderful that a human eye could not see them. Ar-Pharazon was offended and said he could indeed see them, and he actually wore them. Then he went parading through the streets of Armenelos in his new clothes, and nobody could tell him that he was naked because they were afraid that he could kill them. Then a child shouted: "Ar-Pharazon is naked!" and Ar-Pharazon realized what a fool he had been and got angry at the Elves. It was them who had told him that a Vala could wear a body as though it was their raiment, and he wanted to do the same. That was when Ar-Pharazon first conceived the thought of invading Valinor to acquire the secret of wearing a body as clothes. This, needless to say, was the beginning of the Downfall of Numenor.

Now, I'm not sure that this story can be trusted. Numenor sank thousands of years ago, and there is no guarantee that a message in a bottle could last that long. What is the opinion of the Wise on the matter?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Thank you very much for this, @Ephtariat, you are our most active Undertowers poster and, as usual, you give us welcome food for thought. I am afraid I have little to contribute on this one, however, Without doubt, the word whose meaning I seek more than any other, the word the chase of which keeps me returning to this site, is Fanuilos. So I will read discussion eagerly but have little myself to contribute.

Possibly my problems here are related to the attitude to nudity that I have had since my early 20s when, among a variety of badly paid jobs, I would earn some cash as a life model at some of the London arts colleges. Since then I have failed to see the point of clothes, at least in warm weather. So my guess is that your Elves agree with me on that and were trying to point the good mortals of Atlantis in the direction of overcoming their mental blocks and fetishes. But then this might be me once again getting it all wrong on Fanuilos, so I look forward to reading more.

PS. I edited because this is not really the place for my reflections on getting paid for taking off my clothes.

[Ephtariat]

@Hill Somebody reminded me that the Hobbits feel naked before Galadriel. That's to say they feel exposed and ashamed, or was Galadriel peeking under their clothes?

I wrote a fantasy story in my teens where the teenager protagonist lives in a very closeminded village and he realizes their closemindedness when the Elves tell him there's nothing wrong in not wearing clothes. He tells his close friend, a girl, and they try it out and discover they love each other, then they leave the village together. That was supposed to be where the whole big adventure started, but I never went beyond them leaving and now the papers are lost... I would really like to find that in a bottle at sea!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Sam speaks of nakedness after the Company ascend into the great flet up in the tree and Galadriel silently reads their minds, each by turn. Each it seems has been offered what they most desire, and the state of nakedness before Galadriel is a state in which one cannot hide one's innermost desires from her eye (with Boromir the test case of what awakening self-knowledge may mean).

When the two Hobbits descend the staircase to the great scene of the Mirror, both Hobbits and Elf-woman feel naked, and also discombobulated - maybe Frodo least. Sam is knocked for six after seeing the Shire and Galadriel is knocked for six - and her inner desires revealed - when Frodo offers to gift her the Ring.

Once Galadriel and Frodo have each, as it were, seen the other naked, they do not 'fall in love' but nod, one to the other, and continue on their way. That does not mean love is not present in this scene - indeed, Galadriel here earns her return ticket to Valinor by doing the right thing. But the revelation of this mutual vision between immortal Elf and mortal Hobbit is precisely not a bond like marriage (no Ring is exchanged; the Lady already wears one).

Just because you and another see eye to eye with love does not mean you are doomed to live a romance with that person to the end of days. Or so it seems to me. But I don't claim any special wisdom on such matters.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Ephtariat, my friend, we have been talking as friends on the plaza, which is a friendly place. And it is precisely the place to try out ideas that you want to road test before wheeling them out before some formal gathering or another. More importantly, though, here is a place of people who love the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien. So everyone here, or so I would guess, has a deep and passionate connection with some or other or even all of these stories. One of the things that I most love about this place is how, over the years, my eyes have been opened to elements and dimensions of these stories that I have hitherto been quite blind to. And this happens again and again, almost anytime someone is moved to really speak about anything. You open my eyes to the passion of the story of Lúthien, and whatever one might say this way or that about Christianity, it would be a fool who denied that this Elf's choice of death is a key to all of Tolkien's thought.

But I do say to you again that there is a whole dimension of Tolkien's feeling that is not romantic, or at least is romance in the mirror of the terrible. For my own part, at least, I tend to see things precisely in terms of this mutual eye-to-eye gaze, wherein a veil is removed and one feels emotionally vulnerable, naked in the eyes of a Galadriel. True, this may be a gaze of mutual love, and in this case one may wonder about romance (but not assume it). But you might also be looking at Grima Wormtongue disguised as a glamerous fairy mistress. It is so very hard to be sure. But here in the plaza you should not worry too much about the goblins. Even Morgoth is kind of sweet when in a good mood.

[Ephtariat]

@Hill Wow. I was not expecting a serious answer. And one like this, too.
The only thing I disagree with is your impression that I see romance everywhere. You can be sure all too well it is not like that. I see fields in green and I think to myself "What a wonderful world", that's all.

[Ephtariat]

@Hill I'm sure that Galadriel and Frodo did not made passionate love between the lines. Nor does Bilbo get a wife in the final story. But that's only the surface story.
Beyond the surface, deep in Tolkien's mind, there are three stories: a romance, a tragedy, and a sea-travel.
He never even wrote the sea-travel one in full.
The tragedy he wrote, but that's the easy one. You don't need to look for sorrow, everybody gets their fair share of it.
The romance was the story he cherished the most. He put his whole heart in it, and never got to publish it. So, he was compelled to rewrite it through other means, that are not love-stories on paper, but actually are in his mind and heart (even unconsciously, why not? but I think he was all too conscious, if you ask me). That's just what he had in his heart: romance. He could not do but writing it, every time he attempted a major story after not getting his first romance published.
You cannot convince me of the contrary by pointing out that Galadriel and Frodo do not even kiss. I am sure of that. And I am sure that Bilbo's wife is only in a draft. But it's the deep core of the stories that has the form and structure of Beren and Luthien, and nobody can change that, whatever they argue.

Functions:
Unlikely Hero
Supernatural Adversary
Magic Talisman
Supernatural Helper
Supernatural Bride

Stories:
Beren and Luthien
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings

Unlikely Heroes:
Beren
Bilbo
Frodo

Supernatural Adversaries:
Morgoth
Smaug
Sauron

Magic Talismans:
Silmaril
Ring/Arkenstone
Ring

Supernatural Helpers:
Huan/Luthien/Finrod
Gandalf/the Dwarves
the Fellowship

Supernatural Brides:
Luthien
implicit (Bilbo's wife) but mirrored in the wife of the Took ancestor
implicit (Galadriel) but mirrored in Arwen

I think you do not object to my classification of unlikely heroes, adversaries, talismans, and helpers. Well, in folktales a tale that has these characteristics typically also features the supernatural bride as one of the helpers and/or reward to the accomplished quest. Do you see?

[Ephtariat]

Unfortunately I am not an Anglo-Saxon and though shelved (until a year ago), the Silmarillion and all that has refused to be suppressed. It has bubbled up, infiltrated, and probably spoiled everything (that even remotely approached ‘Faery’) which I have tried to write since. It was kept out of Farmer Giles with an effort, but stopped the continuation. Its shadow was deep on the later parts of The Hobbit. It has captured The Lord of the Rings, so that that has become simply its continuation and completion, requiring the Silmarillion to be fully intelligible -without a lot of references and explanations that clutter it in one or two places. (Letters, no. 124)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Stories:
The Hobbit

Unlikely Heroes:
Bilbo

Supernatural Adversaries:
Smaug

Magic Talismans:
Ring/Arkenstone

Supernatural Helpers:
Gandalf/the Dwarves

Supernatural Brides:
implicit (Bilbo's wife) but mirrored in the wife of the Took ancestor

I think you do not object to my classification of unlikely heroes, adversaries, talismans, and helpers. Well, in folktales a tale that has these characteristics typically also features the supernatural bride as one of the helpers and/or reward to the accomplished quest.

Well, I could maybe get my head around this if you qualify (or remove) The Hobbit from the above.

1. Adversaries: Smaug is but the final supernatural adversary (and then there is a real battle); before that Bilbo outwits the Elves, saves the Dwarves from the Mirkwood spiders, wins the magic ring in a game of riddles with Gollum, and is nearly eaten by Trolls.

2. Magic talisman = the magic ring (not the One Ring), with the queer sign on the door of the Hobbit and the Arkenstone in his pocket as he climbs down from the Lonely Mountain, somehow bound up in this talisman.

3. Supernatural helpers. Well Gandalf and the Dwarves are certainly helpful, on occasion. The real story, of course, is about the Hobbit finding his own luck and courage - first when lost in the goblin tunnels, and encountering Gollum, then after Gandalf has left (but now with ring) - from Mirkwood all the way down the tunnel into the great hall where the dragon slumbers.

4. Supernatural Brides: There is no supernatural bride in The Hobbit! What are you talking about? You say that the supernatural bride in this story is "implicit (Bilbo's wife) but mirrored in the wife of the Took ancestor". Bilbo is a bachelor! His only implicit wife is Gollum, whose ring is exchanged! And please note this carefully, in the first edition (the only edition of this story I consider worth discussing) to the notion of a fairy in the Took family tree is added, by the less charitable, a goblin bride!

I am more than happy to continue discussing your ideas but I will not allow The Hobbit to be appropriated. That story is my passion and true love.

[Ephtariat]

4. Supernatural Brides: There is no supernatural bride in The Hobbit! What are you talking about? You say that the supernatural bride in this story is "implicit (Bilbo's wife) but mirrored in the wife of the Took ancestor". Bilbo is a bachelor! His only implicit wife is Gollum, whose ring is exchanged! And please note this carefully, in the first edition (the only edition of this story I consider worth discussing) to the notion of a fairy in the Took family tree is added, by the less charitable, a goblin bride!

In the early drafts of LotR, Frodo (Bingo) is Bilbo's son, not nephew. As a consequence, Bilbo clearly had a wife. That she's removed from The Hobbit (and LotR) is precisely my point. In order to remove something it must first be there.

[Ephtariat]

The other points I will not treat as your objections are clearly circumstantial and you see my point.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

We are talking about The Hobbit. What happens in the sequel, let alone a draft left on the shelf of the sequel, is for sure of great interest, yet for all that a different story!

On our wider historical issue. Yes, from Beowulf we have this idea that the Anglo-Saxons feared and hated the Elves, or at least the memory of the Elves. But their proper names appear to indicate an older and quite different attitude to the Elves. Alfred, to take the Anglo-Saxon name of greatness, is 'Elf-counseled'.

[Ephtariat]

Clearly his views when Tolkien started writing LotR were the same he had when he finished writing The Hobbit.

I know about Aelfwine and I know about Judith and aelfsciene. You don't need to lecture me unless you discovered yourself something new.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Eph: From a literal point a message in a bottle can last as long, there comes no water or moisture in it. If it is airtight, it can be conserved for a very long time, and nothing will decay inside the bottle. There is a certainty to it is written by a person, but if he has not his name as author, we don't know it. About what is in the message? The authenticity of it? The truth can be verified if there are other (unrelated) accounts written about the same topic, and those can be compared. Then yes, there is authenticity to the message in the bottle.

More to the message of Cirdan, yeah there should be other records out there, in Gondor, in Arnor, in the Haradlands about this peculiar event. It can also survive in a modified form as a telltale to children, or a myth or a legend. It works then visa versa in the opposite way, the legend could be true, when the message from the bottle is read out, and that the event actually took place, but in the living memory of the Edain is forgotten.

This is my reply to your opening post, not the rest in this thread and my idea about the matter.

[Ephtariat]

Thanks, Aiks. That's very thoughtful.