Time Machine

[Chrysophylax Dives]

A DREAM IN TIME

In a wide shadowy place he heard a voice.

‘Elendil!’ it said, ‘Alboin, whither are you wandering?’

‘Who are you?’ he answered. ‘And where are you?’

A tall figure appeared, as if descending an unseen stair towards him. For a moment it flashed through his thought that the face, dimly seen, reminded him of his father.

‘I am with you. I was of Númenor, the father of many fathers before you. I am Elendil, that is in Eressëan “Elf-friend,” and many have been called so since. You may have your desire.’

‘What desire?’

‘The long-hidden and the half-spoken: to go back.’

[Chrysophylax Dives]

This thread is inspired by the lyrical poetry of @Melahny_oftheWoods. The OP quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien's unfinished novel of 1936, 'The Lost Road', from which story we have derived the blueprints for the plaza time machine that I mentioned. Because the novel was unfinished the design that we have derived is incomplete, and to be frank we have not as yet had much luck with our experimental guesses as to the missing parts. So keep stocked up on the blueberry tea, at least for the meanwhile.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

We did have one working model, but it turned out to work only one-way, so that primordial creatures of the ancient plaza might cross a bridge into our own time; but we ourselves could not step on to the bridge. This model was deemed unsafe, and it is not clear that all the guests who walked that bridge have been accounted for. Best not to talk about all that.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

From our TM archives, some cellar deep in a hole in the heart of the Shire. We hooked up a few Hobbits, a Dwarf, one possible Elf, and several Goblins. The results were on occasion spectacular, but alas, not once a working time machine. (These experiments were later discovered to be in contravention of certain nuplaza rules, and again, are best not talked about.)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I still maintain that if we could plug in a genuine, bona fide Elf the above device might have a chance of working. I maintain that hypothetically, of course.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hi @Melahny_oftheWoods, I'm going to level with you. We do actually have a good notion of the design of the 'Lost Road' Time Machine, but it is not what any of us are searching for. While the 'Lost Road' was unfinished the basic ideas were worked up in The Lord of the Rings, and by careful comparison we have identified most of the missing parts - sufficient, at any rate, to get the machine working.

Here is the basic design (credit: ScottDPenman on DeviantArt). The design was realized in Undertowers in the Shire, taking the form of the western-most of the three Elf-towers of the Tower Hills. We called our working Time Machine The Library, and were lucky enough to recruit @Saranna as the Adamanta Chubb Librarian. Saranna was warden of the door and one of her primary duties was to disarm all visitors before granting entry.

Unfortunately, following the visit of a heavily armed stranger, the Librarian has vanished. Both doors of our Time-Machine-Tower are now permanently locked, and I have heard a rumour that the administration is considering demolishing the Library.

But the fate of the Library is neither here nor there, because the problem with Tolkien's Time Machine is that it allows you to travel back into the past with your eye, but not to touch it!

Climbing one of the two spiral staircases of the Library, one reaches a hallway with two doors either side. One room contains a ladder, which when set up in the hallway gives access to the highest chamber, which is reached by a trap-door. Contained within the high chamber is a special window, and this window gives a view on the vanished past. From out of this window one may look back all the way to the very first days of the old plaza, when all was mythical and all was wonderful, or merely glance back a couple of days to review some recent feud between warring members.

But one cannot not step into this view! We did experiment with a few Goblins, and even a couple of Hobbit volunteers. But every attempt to step into the view encountered the undeniable force of gravity, and the invariable result of such a brave step was that the rest of us were left with the job of cleaning up the ground below the window.

Speaking for myself, travelling back in time and watching this or that catastrophe hit all over again, reliving the pain, the misperceptions, and the self-righteous indignation, but unable to intervene so that things worked out how they were meant to, was a terrible experience. The human mind is blessed with an ability to forget, or at least to remake memory so that our own sordid actions are air-brushed a little. But Tolkien's Time Machine is merciless. Who wants to know what really happened when what really happened was, once again, essentially a mess of our own making - a fact that we had conveniently hidden from ourselves?

So my own sympathies are perhaps with the heavily armed stranger, and demolition might be a kindness to the community.

Now you are up to date. You can do Tolkien's Time Machine if you can find the Librarian (who holds the keys), but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. In the meanwhile, we continue working busily to realize the Time Machine that we all actually want, namely one where you can step through the window and enter - and so change - the view.

Once again, I think we need (hypothetical) Elvish help. Or at least, we need some agent working on the ground who might raise a ladder up from the outisde. But it is very difficult to recruit volunteers from the past because one cannot talk to them due to their existing in another time.

[Arnyn]

How would you use the Time Machine to change the view?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

That is a good question! Especially because, so far as I can make out, by Tolkien's reckoning any attempt to change the view constitutes an act of necromancy, or at the very least touches necromancy. So possibly, this being the fanatics plaza, even if it is an Elvish ladder that those inside the view raise from the ground to our high window, the descent into the view is liable to be perilous in the extreme, whatever we attempt to change. Also, now I think on it, engaging in necromancy might be prohibited according to some plaza rule or regulation. So if we actually make the attempt, perhaps it should be done on discord?

On the other hand, the question is about the best prompt for a story one could offer. So maybe we could argue that creativity outweighs any ethical concerns about necromancy?

Also, the question is about the best prompt for a Lore discussion one could hope for. And taking the long view, I'd say that the question ultimately meets up with our discussion of Orcs. But I'll start off with the biblical long view, if that is OK.

The Garden of Eden. Would you step up and say 'No! Don't eat that fruit!' By my lights, such intervention, if successful, would make us all Elves. Personal preference. For myself, I'd play the part of the serpent if that is what it took to get the parents of us all take a bite and so wake up to the difference between good and evil (with knowledge of nakedness an extraordinarily welcome bonus).

Cain and Abel. This seems pretty straightforward. Brother murders brother. Who could argue that the time travellor should not intervene and attempt to make peace between the two brothers? So here many stories open up, because intervention is sure to go wrong, in one way or another. But let's just say that it works. What is the result? Well here I follow the Anglo-Saxon author of Beowulf, as I believe did Tolkien.

Here is what no longer happens once Cain has made peace with Abel. Cain is not banished by God, nor does he receive the mark of Cain. Now roaming the shadowy lands of Biblical exile, Cain does not make sport with the evil spirits of the waste and father all the races of monsters. The ages that follow know no giants, trolls, goblins, orcs, barrow-wights, nor any other haunting night-stalker out of hell.

That would seem to be a good intervention, right? Hard to argue. Unless you are an Orc, whose genealogy begins with unspeakable coupling in the waste lands, a bastard race who bear the mark of Cain. If one was an Orc who had come to terms with their family history, who wore the mark of Cain as a badge of pride, and deemed those who looked to the West before eating genocidal Tarks, then Cain's kin-slaying was a perhaps regrettable necessity to get the first son of Eve and Adam out onto the blasted heath for a tryst with great-great-great-great-grandmother.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Your question also reminds me of the answer of how to get the Time Machine working so that we can step into the view - we need an Elvish Ring.

Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world.
(Fellowship of the Ring, Lothlórien.)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Actually, if the Elves sort out the Ring then we don't even need a tower. The tower with the high chamber and view becomes just a metaphor because we can cross a bridge of Time just by walking over some rope-bridge over a river.

Yes!

But I have my doubts that the Elves will come through for us.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

How would you use the Time Machine to change the view?

Right, all of the above was obviously a smoke screen because I did not wish to answer your question. But given this is a plaza Time Machine and the view is internal to the plaza, and I could go back and change the view...

I would travel back in time to the mid-Covid years, to the Shire of Mon Mar 21, 2022 9:35 am. That is 3 minutes before I posted the greatest riddle I will ever invent. I would then persuade my innocent self of those days to delete the following words: You will find my name in Tolkien's essay 'On Fairy-stories'.

Nobody ever got their hands into the crevices of the riddle. The Dwarf of course guessed the answer. But only by sitting down with 'On Fairy-stories' and guessing each name that she read, eventually hitting the right answer.

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

Hey @Chrysophylax Dives, still reading through the thread, sorry I didn't have tine to reply earlier!

What is a Dream in Time from? It sounds so intriguing, I'd like to read the rest of it.

I've never heard of The Lost Road, so I didn't intentionally quote from it Which line in my poem was similar to it? Is A Dream in Time from the Lost Road? Where can I read it?

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

Hi @Melahny_oftheWoods, I'm going to level with you. We do actually have a good notion of the design of the 'Lost Road' Time Machine, but it is not what any of us are searching for. While the 'Lost Road' was unfinished the basic ideas were worked up in The Lord of the Rings, and by careful comparison we have identified most of the missing parts - sufficient, at any rate, to get the machine working.

Wow it looks amazing!!! I can't wait to ascend those dangerously spiraled staircases and to achieve the long-hidden and half-spoken desire -- to go back.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hello @Melahny_oftheWoods,

'A Dream in Time' is from the second chapter of 'The Lost Road'.



'The Lost Road' is a story of time travel, in which a father and son of the present (well, the 1930s, when the story was composed) are to step back in a series of tales of ocean voyages, each set in a more ancient past, all the way back to Númenor. If you sign up to archive.org you can read for free here.

But as I said, the story was left unfinished - basically because Tolkien began The Lord of the Rings in 1937. So what we have is two introductory chapters about the father and son academics of the present and some of the Númenor stuff, one inbetween tale ('King Sheave'), and some plans and notes.

The story is in some way an embryonic version of LotR, though on the surface it looks completely different. As he was planning and composing the story Tolkien penned 'The Fall of Númenor', which is where he introduced the idea of the cosmic cataclysm when the flat world was made round.

The idea of time travel in the story seems partly based on notions of ancestral memory accessed through dream. The two academics appear to be descended from Elendil. But it is also bound up with the strange idea of the flat-world made into a sphere, leaving Valinor outside the sphere so that the Elves and others of Valinor look on historical Time (the days of the spherical world) sort of as a whole, or something like that. They kind of have a perspective reminscent of Galadriel's Mirror. (This paragraph of this post is my reading of what we find in 'The Lost Road' - quite a lot must be inferred because the relationship between the chapters of 'The Lost Road' and what is presented as the final Silmarillion story, the last myth told by the Elves, is not obvious.)

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

Great, thanks Chrys. I look forward to reading it. Sounds like a unique and different depiction of time travel. I like the idea of the two academics being descended from Elendil. Sailing through the sea of time. How eerie and fascinating.

I like your riddle btw. I would not have guessed the answer though.

If I could travel back in the plaza, it would be to my old Poetry of the Woods thread and I'd save or archive it. I still have all the poems on there saved to some word document or other, but all the comments and conversations on the thread are lost. Though it might be kicking around somewhere in the archives. Also I'd finish that epic Mirkwood RP of which I took part.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Angelus Novus (New Angel), Paul Klee, 1920

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though she is about to move away from something she is fixedly contemplating. Her eyes are staring, her mouth is open, her wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. Her face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, she sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of her feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in her wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels her into the future to which her back is turned, while the pile of debris before her grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
Walter Benjamin, 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'

I think Benjamin understood Time in a similar way as did Tolkien. I think people have utterly lost sight of the acute sense of history that arose between the wars because after WWII our cultures fled from any sense of their own history and the obligations that we owe to the dead.

Necromancy, as I understand from my reading of Tolkien, is the wrong way to talk with the dead. But the moral obligation that Tolkien feels, and lays upon us, is to try to talk with the dead - and Benjamin says something similar, suggesting that it is our duty to redeem the past. The Stone in the Elf-tower that looks only out to sea, which is subtly alluded to but never seen in the narrative of LotR, frames the right relationship with the past.

Benjamin writes: "The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply."

Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit,
ich kehrte gern zurück,
denn blieb ich auch lebendige Zeit,
ich hätte wenig Glück.

My wing is ready for flight,
I would like to turn back.
If I stayed timeless time,
I would have little luck.

Gershom Scholem, ‘Gruss vom Angelus’

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I've never heard of The Lost Road, so I didn't intentionally quote from it Which line in my poem was similar to it? Is A Dream in Time from the Lost Road? Where can I read it?

Melahny_oftheWoods, I never answered the key part of your question - sorry! (Too caught up in the practicalities of time travel.)

Better For You

A Lyrical Poem
I wanted to sing it
But the words sounded stupid aloud
Now I'm still stuck here, dreaming
Of a better past.

It's impossible to attain
Impossible to fix...

You know what it's like--
... until you get tired and sink into a daydream
where you have a time machine
and you can make it better.

But you got stuck in those pointless thought experiments
Dwelling, dwelling, dwelling on it
Like you're not supposed to...

I feel like you hit all the same notes as does Tolkien in how he really thinks of what the past is for us. The 'Dream in Time' dialogue from 'The Lost Road' is a bit misleading in and of itself. I think the real thing to take from this unfinished novel of time travel is that it is unfinished. Tolkien desperately wished he could make a time machine. And he snorted at H.G. Wells, who built a time machine and used it to go into the future! Tolkien heard the call of the past, he turned to it with all his heart. But he also knew that the not supposed to bit is correct on some deep level, that dwelling and dwelling and dwelling is a road to a wrong place. So he left the novel unfinished and turned to The Lord of the Rings and transmuted the thought experiment.

Now we can walk with some Hobbits, all the way from the Shire into the Golden Wood, crossing a bridge of Time, stepping into a realm where all is mythical. In terms of design, it is like Tolkien hit on a way to have Sauron and the Elves go into partnership, doing the bit of the thought experiment that he could not allow himself to do. If that makes sense.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

The Three Rings of the Elves are Tolkien's Time Machine (the good one, where you can step into the view). The story arises because nothing can be that good without a price: With the Three comes the One.

The Hobbit who holds the One gets to walk into a mythical, vanished past. But then has to carry on, all the way to Mount Doom.

Swings and roundabouts.

As a dragon, I'd accept the terms - to gaze into the Mirror of Galadriel in the hollow in Lothlórien for the price of imprisonment in the topmost chamber of Cirith Ungol, high up on the Ephel Dúath. As a Hobbit, I wish to read the adventures of some other Hobbit who accepts the terms. As an Ent, I am so ancient that I am kind of a walking time machine, and so don't really see what all the fuss is about. What concerns me are the missing Entwives.

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

@Chrysophylax Dives Ah, thanks for explaining. I definitely relate to Tolkien on that one and understand the call of the past. Many people don't get it, as they are caught up in "presentisim", believing that everything in their own time period is superior. In reality, every time has pros and cons, negatives and positives. But we are so accustomed to our time that we're raised in, we are comfortable here and so are scared of the past, always thinking that the future will hold better promise. In fact, it doesn't. There will be dark and light times in all ages, but which one we'd like to live in is a matter of personal preference. I would rather enjoy the planet before industrialisation, without all the toxins that we are exposed to everyday. I think Tolkien looked back on that more natural world too, when there were more forests and less cities, less pollution and a healthier environment to live in.

I assume he's also talking about going into his personal past... it is problematic to say the least, but how many could resist the temptation to alter something? Hmm, would Frodo change his journey and choose not to take the Ring to Mordor? I think he wouldn't change that, because he knew how important it was, though it cost him everything.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I agree about Frodo's choice. Also the desirability of living in a world with less noise and more green. To be honest, I think a significant chunk of that desire has been learned from reading Tolkien from a young age.

In this thread I've fudged between personal past and history of the world. 'The Lost Road' is all about stepping through the ages back through the most ancient history to the days of Myth (when the world was flat). I may be wrong on this, but I've come to the conclusion that conceptually the issues are the same, and that Tolkien understood this. I mean, what I think I've learned (it is hard to be sure on these things) is that the past - one second or one million years ago - is as to us dead. So to look into the past in any way - one's own memories or the ancient history of the world - is in some basic way to turn one's face to look into the realm of the dead. And this is actually a good thing to do, but one must be careful.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

There is an old hoard in a dark rock,
forgotten behind doors none can unlock;
that grim gate no man can pass.
On the mound grows the green grass;
there sheep feed and the larks soar,
and the wind blows from the sea-shore.
The old hoard the Night shall keep,
while earth waits and the Elves sleep.

J.R.R. Tolkien

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

Well put! I like your interpretation.

Also, where is that quote from? The Lost Road also? I love it.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Well put! I like your interpretation.

Also, where is that quote from? The Lost Road also? I love it.

:)

The poem above, you mean? This is The Hoard, and you can hear Tolkien recite it here.

Since I last posted on this thread I've made some headway on the design of the time machine. Let me know if you wish for an account of the current state of play.

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

Thanks! I love Tolkien's poetry.

Yes do tell. :)

Apologies, I've been so busy lately I haven't had time to check the Plaza often.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Thanks! I love Tolkien's poetry.

Yes do tell. :)

Apologies, I've been so busy lately I haven't had time to check the Plaza often.

On your last, I reckon that on a quest to build our own Time Machine from plans discovered in Tolkien's writing, not only is haste a mistake but in general we should not fight against nor apologize for gaps in time - unless, of course, apologizing for delays in time proves a way to travel back in time; but of that I am not hopeful.

Unfortunately, the optimism of my last post has since been dashed on the harsh reality of practice. At least so far. What I worked out is this:

We have a tower that is a Time Machine. Inside the tower is the mechanism of time-travel - a spiral staircase. Each full circle of the spiral = one generation, from birth to death (the second half of the spiral can be descended very rapidly, on occasion). Hence the staircase as a whole is Elvish, and shows them the contrast between their own going on down the road that goes ever on and our own journey down that road by generations, each of which are born and die.

For our purposes, the key point is that by descending the staircase one travels forard in time .The spiral staircase provides the model of a story of a life, and the stories of a people in history, and we observe Tolkien's tendency to assume heirs to carry the story onwards (the heir of Bilbo Baggins meets up with the heir of Elendil to end the Third Age). A story (especially those of Tolkien) is like life in moving forward in time, and the artistic use of this tower to tell a story does not in itself offer a way to travel back in time but merely replicates the experience of life as moving forward in time.

But if an author can begin a story in the past, and if readers can so step back into that past, then it is demonstrably possible to travel back in time!

That was what I was excited about a while ago. However, since then I have resolutely failed to explain how one climbs the stairs of such a tower. Descent is easy, but ascent - which is what we are seeking - hard to fathom.

But this makes no sense. Staircases can be climbed up as well as down. Whoever heard of a one-way staircase? The spiral staircase of the tower must be amenable to ascent. But atm it is back to the drawing board.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Time to return to The Lost Road. The first chapter is titled 'A Step Forward: Young Alboin' and introduces Alboin as a boy together with his father, Oswin Errol. The second chapter is 'Alboin and Audoin': Errol is dead and Albion grown-up and a Professor of History. Early in chapter II, Alboin reflects (Lost Road p. 49)

Surveying the last thirty years, he felt he could say that his most permanent mood, though often overlaid or suppressed, had been since childhood the desire to go back. To walk in Time, perhaps, as men walk on long roads; or to survey it, as men may see the world from a mountain, or the earth as a living map beneath an airship. But in any case to see with eyes and to hear with ears: to see the lie of old and even forgotten lands, to behold ancient men walking, and hear their languages as they spoke them, in the days before the days, when tongues of forgotten lineage were heard in kingdoms long fallen by the shores of the Atlantic.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

‘I wish there was a “Time-machine”,’ [Alboin] said aloud. ‘But Time is not to be conquered by machines. And I should go back, not forward; and I think backwards would be more possible.’

The clouds overcame the sky, and the wind rose and blew; and in his ears, as he fell asleep at last, there was a roaring in the leaves of many trees, and a roaring of long waves upon the shore. ‘The storm is coming upon Númenor!’ he said, and passed out of the waking world. (Lost Road, p. 52.)

Now Elendil descends the unseen stair and tells Alboin that his wish to go back may be granted (quoted in OP).

‘I do not counsel, yes or no. I am not a counsellor. I am a messenger, a permitted voice. The wishing and the choosing are for you.’ (p.53)

(Compare Galadriel to Frodo at her Mirror.) Once Elendil has explained that Alboin must make his choice he vanishes again.

The figure [of Elendil] ascended and receded. There was a roaring as of seas falling from a great height.(54)

So Elendil is stepping up to leave just as he stepped down to arrive. The next evening, Alboin falls asleep in his chair.

He was climbing steps, up, up on to a high mountain. He felt, and thought he could hear, Audoin following him, climbing behind him. He halted, for it seemed somehow that he was again in the same place as on the previous night; though no figure could be seen.
‘I have chosen,’ he said. ‘I will go back...’

======

In The Lost Road the stairs of a tower are not the Time-machine. Towers built by the exiles of Númenor and looking back to Valinor appear in the contemporary 'Fall of Númenor', but as Tolkien first turned from the background Elvish myth to the related story of mortal time travel, these towers were left for the moment unexplored. Alboin as a child sits on the wall of his garden to look at the sea. His story before the time-travel adventure begins is full of the sea, but there is no tower.

An invisible stair is descended and then ascended by Elendil, and Alboin climbs steps up a mountain to make his choice. But Elendil declares that he is a messenger, and actually he is a dead mortal. So the invisible stairway seems to be a ladder of angels and prophets to talk to God, or some representative. This is not at all a stairway of time-travel.

For the 'machiner' of time-travel we should better look to the distinct dreams of this father-son pair of academic time-travelers.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Chapter II of The Lost Road, 'Albion and Audoin'.

We hear a fair amount of the young Albion's linguistic dreams in the first chapter, and this intensifies in the second, which steps down the ladder of descent with Albion now the father and Audoin now the son (and again, a dead mother). Now we have reports of 'Atlantis-haunting'. This chapter gives us some of the younger Albion's dreams:

Westra lage wegas rehtas, nu isti sa wraithas; 'a straight road lay westward, now it is bent.'

And in Anglo-Saxon:

Thus cwæth Ælfwine Wídlást:
Fela bith on Westwegum werum uncúthra
wundra and wihta, wlitescéne land,
eardgeard elfa, and ésa bliss.
Lýt ǽnig wát hwylc his longath síe
thám the eftsíthes eldo getwǽfeth.

Thus said Ælfwine the far-travelled: "There is many a thing in the West-regions unknown to men, marvels and strange beings, a land fair and lovely, the homeland of the Elves, and the bliss of the Gods. Little doth any man know what longing is his whom old age cutteth off from return."

Of Alboin's dreams in general:

And the Dreams. They came and went. But lately they had been getting more frequent, and more—absorbing. But still tantalizingly linguistic. No tale, no remembered pictures; only the feeling that he had seen things and heard things that he wanted to see, very much, and would give much to see and hear again—and these fragments of words, sentences, verses.

Eressëan... was getting pretty complete. He had a lot of Beleriandic, too, and was beginning to understand it, and its relation to Eressëan. And he had a lot of unclassifiable fragments, the meaning of which in many cases he did not know, through forgetting to jot it down while he knew it. And odd bits in recognizable languages.

"The real thing was the feeling the Dreams brought more and more insistently" - the desire to go back, to walk in Time as one walks a long road - to hear the ancient languages as they were spoken "in the days before the days, when tongues of forgotten lineage were heard in kingdoms long fallen by the shores of the Atlantic."

As the story proper begins, Alboin is receiving some message that he can only partially read and cannot properly understand, where we read the name of Sauron, of war made on Powers, of the Lords of the West and Ilúvatar, of the seas and the chasm and the falling of Númenor. Now all roads are bent and the shadow of death is heavy on us.

Alboin goes to the window and stands a long while looking out to sea; a wind comes up from the west and the clouds loom, lifting huge heads and wings north and south: "They look like the eagles of the Lord of the West over Númenor," he says aloud.

In his dream this night, Elendil comes to Alboin. The next day he recalls the 'vision' as different from his usual dreams: "it was (for him) curiously unlinguistic—though plainly related, by the name Númenor, to his language dreams. He could not say whether he had conversed with Elendil in Eressëan or English."

=====

As for the son, Audoin, who is 16 when the tale begins, "unlike his father he could draw, but was not good at ‘verses’." When Elendil speaks to Alboin he explains that he must travel back in time with "Audoin, your son; for you are the ears and he is the eyes."

When the story begins, Audoin has been having vivid pictorial dreams of Númenor (note the towers on the shore):

‘Dreams,’ he thought. ‘But not the usual sort, quite different: very vivid; and though never quite repeated, all gradually fitting into a story. But a sort of phantom story with no explanations. Just pictures, but not a sound, not a word. Ships coming to land. Towers on the shore. Battles, with swords glinting but silent. And there is that ominous picture: the great temple on the mountain, smoking like a volcano. And that awful vision of the chasm in the seas, a whole land slipping sideways, mountains rolling over; dark ships fleeing into the dark.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Right, apologies for the detour into 'The Lost Road'. These chapters were composed in 1936. But I think now that the idea of climbing the stairs of this tower, of ascending the stair, which while absent in these chapters becomes the ellusive method of time travel that we are seeking, is found already albeit on a different plane in the story of Bilbo Baggins, which was composed between 1930 and 1933. Bilbo's is a story of there and back again, and I am suspecting that the journey back again is the mysterious step that we are after, only conducted on the horizontal as opposed to the vertical.

Turning to the sequel, Frodo Baggins does not merely go back again, he carries on into the west - all the way to Valinor, and takes Bilbo with him. So while all our attention is given to the journeys there, it is actually the carrying on after the trip back home again that is really mysterious.

It is possible that returning home, arriving back again, is no less difficult to achieve as is our desire of time travel. But if return were realized then possibly the dream of time travel would await us just around the corner.

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

It is possible that returning home, arriving back again, is no less difficult to achieve as is our desire of time travel. But if return were realized then possibly the dream of time travel would await us just around the corner.

Interesting. Yes, I think the arriving back again, in LOTR is as difficlt as the time travel into the past. We see both Bilbo and Frodo return back after life-changing events. But they both become restless and are unable to stay back at home after a period of time. Bilbo leaves again, stays with the elves and eventually sails out. Frodo tries to readjust to the Shire but he sails away as well. They cannot go back completely to their origin/starting point.

Is it because he's no longer the same person? Is it because his perception has changed so much that home no longer feels the same to him? It's like watching a kid's movie as an adult that you haven't seen since you were a child. The film seems so stange and different--but you know the film is not different. It's the same film. It hasn't changed. You have changed. It's you that's different, not the film. Isn't that strange?

However, we see Merry and Pippin return to life in the Shire, and thrive. But they were not spiritually damaged as Frodo was... and Bilbo. They did not go on the same type of journey, perhaps?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hoi @Melahny_oftheWoods. I tried to get you points for the post above but I don't think the NFP was having any of it.

I am arriving at the worrying conclusion that we should get off this thread. What seemed an innocent staircase to another time now appears before my eyes a dark road to necromancy.

All the ideas of time-travel above come from the unfinished novel of 1936, 'The Lost Road', which begins with Elendil appearing in the dream of a distant descendant in the 20th century. Elendil appears as if descending an invisible stair, and when he departs he ascends and the great roar of the sea is heard. Sea is a good sign, and puts us with the Elf-tower, Elostirion, in the Westmarch of what becomes the Shire in the 4th Age.

But the fact is that in dream he may be but this is a meeting of the 20th-century descendant with a distant ancestor who is dead. At the foundation of this tale of time travel is an image of necromancy, of communicating with the dead; or so it seems. Quite possibly, recognition of this was one reason why the novel remained unfinished?

Elendil travels in time from out of his mythical past by descending a staircase, and at the turning-point of his story, having crashed out of myth on a big wave, high towers are built near the Sea of Middle-earth so the exiles of Númenor can look back over the straight road; after they are built Elendil marches into the East to join his mortal army with that of the Elves to march on Mordor.

So all this time I've been thinking that Elendil on the stair in the dream at the start of this story gives an image of the staircase of the Elf-tower, Elostirion.

Now I'm wondering if on commencing a new Hobbit story and early in 1938 introducing the Dark Tower of the Necromancer at its shadowy center Tolkien did not recognise Elendil's stair as the staircase of the Dark Tower.

That would seem to mean that our time-travel construction of an internal staircase is the building of a Dark Tower. If this is the case we will be in trouble with more Powers than just the NPF.

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

Ahoy @Chrysophylax Dives! Alas, I did not receive the blessing of 5,000 points but I have accumulated enough to become a Knight of Rohan (see my lovely black horse?).

Necromancy?! Oh my... but Elendil is not dead, he simply travelled to another time while he was alive. I think it's okay. :P
But that's interesting. Maybe Elendil's staircase did become the Dark Tower. But what does the Dark Tower have to do with time travel?

Funny, all this talk of time travel, and I've been rewatching Dr Who. The more you watch it, the less it makes sense. Hahah. What a wonderful show though, despite all its flaws. I see you've included a Dr Who photo near the beginning of this thread.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hello @Melahny_oftheWoods,

Congratulations on the new icon!

The two British TV shows from my childhood that I have introduced my kids to are Dr Who and Red Dwarf. For a while Dr Who worked as a family show but we all got bored with it a few doctors ago. As you say, it does not quite make sense. Personally, I also got bored with the BBC trying to educate me all the time. But hey, patronizing condescension is a British characteristic. Even today, though, they are still watching Red Dwarf.

On all the Elendil and time-travel and necromancy business, I must apologize for writing in short-hand. In terms of my own project, which is to work out how LotR was imagined, my last post above seems to me a vital insight. I'll try and explain in another post in the not too distant future.

Let's keep prodding the NPF with requests for points. I am on a mission to get the fairy to give some points for Lore posts. All she ever does is give posts for RP. Your poetry is a good bet for points, though. (But we have to ask for each other, and also not annoy the fairy too much - as might have happened on the last attempt.)

[Melahny_oftheWoods]

@Chrysophylax Dives LOL I love British humour. Have you seen Black's Books? Hilarious sitcom. I loved it.

I'm reading through The Lost Road now... haven't finished it yet, but will let you know my thoughts when I do. I would prefer to read it in paper, but I'll have to search through the libraries nearby.

Where do you ask for points? I don't know how that works.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Melahny_oftheWoods. Never heard of Black's Books - will look it up. On the points, there is a thread (which you have already posted on) in Admin messages called You have a point. You just go there and request some points for someone for some particular post. The NPF is then supposed to reply, not with a new post but with an admin edit in red on your post.

However, the red ink of the Fairy has not been seen for around 6 months and the present administration (whose sense of humour is not always very British) appear to have done away with her. A perfect crime, when you think on it, for the Fairy was always all voice and no body and without a body it is hard to make the charges stick. However, I do not wish to speculate further on this matter as the Dwarf with the hammer is already annoyed with me while I had a massive fight with the Goose a year ago. My policy with the admins atm is to be as nice to them as possible and only say good things about them. Accusations of murder most fowl (pun intended), however well grounded, are therefore off limits.

[VelvetineZone]

You should know better than to fight with geese, @Chrysophylax Dives. My kids have a video game where you just run around as a goose being naughty, I quite like it.

@Melahny_oftheWoods I LOVE Black Books, so good! Especially Dylan Moran as the dry sarcastic bookshop owner. And Bill Bailey of course. Superb.

[VelvetineZone]

Dylan Moran in Black Books.

https://youtu.be/B5a5vBzwLkM?si=HZ7g6ffIxw_AA3gD

[VelvetineZone]

And throwing people out the bookshop.

https://youtu.be/7Dk1hnVFpt4?si=AUGh6PjCMWjSMZ7C

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Edited due to badgering by a squirrel.

[VelvetineZone]

Actually, the links are from the 90s, so I was thinking they were entirely in keeping with the Time Machine theme. Last time Dr Who (the David Tennant version) stopped by, he and I went to the 90s, I wore stripy tights.

What an uncanny coincidence re the untitled goose game.

[VelvetineZone]

Also, I can totally see you as a dryly sarcastic bookshop owner who throws everyone out of his bookshop, @Chrysophylax Dives. I've never previously thought of the resemblance until this morning.

As you haven't got a bookshop, you can throw me out of your time travel only thread, and I'll come back as a Badly Behaved Goose. Unless @Silky Gooseness has the goose monopoly here, in which case I could be, erm, a Naughty Squirrel.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I was wondering how much I had offended you, @VelvetineZone. If it is any consolation, I have felt a little bad about calling in the admins for youtube links that I have already opened and do plan to watch. But the admins don't post much atm and so I thought it would nice to invite them into the thread.

I would love to be a grumpy bookshop owner and throw people out of my shop.

There are two geese in that coincidentally discovered game. But honestly, in real life one is (more than) enough.

I would certainly ban geese - actually, all birds - from my bookshop.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

And throwing people out the bookshop.

https://youtu.be/7Dk1hnVFpt4?si=AUGh6PjCMWjSMZ7C

Yeah! That one is great. It appeals to something very deep in me.

I am as yet undecided as to my thread/bookshop policy with squirrels.

[VelvetineZone]

I think it's really thoughtful and considerate of you to invite the admins to throw me out of a thread to make sure they feel useful and important, @Chrysophylax Dives, I completely appreciate that you are only mortally wounding me in order to be kind to other people. And I'm so grateful to have a forum where I can both discuss Tolkien and also be regularly thrown out for my lawlessness and lack of rule abiding behaviour.

See, you'd be a perfect grumpy bookshop owner.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@VelvetineZone.

Before you posted I had already realized that if I offend you then I will have only @Melahny_oftheWoods to talk to, having already offended two of the three admins and a host of their friends. So I edited my post above and offer my apologies.

Let me say this clearly: I'd rather have your random babbling than the silence that is the alternative. (Possibly I should just bite the bullet and go on Fb.)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Watched the first episode of Black's Books. That bookshop owner is a bit like me.

@VelvetineZone, you have won. I formally declare that I give up any attempt to keep this thread on track, or any other for that matter.

[VelvetineZone]

Ha ha ha. Sorry for slow reply @Chrysophylax Dives but we have been out forcing poor unfortunate people to socialise with us.

I actually missed one of your posts, how can a squirrel badger? Can a badger squirrel?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I'm too tired to think of a reply. Been working on a crucial chapter that ties my Part I on Beowulf to the imagination of the One Ring in the early drafts of LotR. If this bit works then the whole book is good - but if it does not then everything falls apart. I've spent the last week building up to tackling it today and possibly it is now done and dusted. But I will not be sure till I read over tomorrow.

Good to know you have a social life! More than can be said for us over here.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

PS. You did not miss the post. The badgering squirrel was new - it was what I put instead of the admin appeal when I edited the post. As for your question, it was a reference to the badger conversations of a few months back (which generated half a sentence in the present chapter; it is insane how much work goes into a single paragraph).

[VelvetineZone]

Good luck with the chapter, really hope you succeed. The Silmarillion is sitting next to me, I will dive back in soon.

I don't really have a social life, hence being online babbling a lot. But sometimes I get to chat to people when taking the kids to have a social life. We can be a bit unhinged to socialise with, so it's a select few. But then you've met me in real life so you can probably guess I'd pass on bonkers genes.

Glad chapter is possibly done and dusted, hope read through confirms this.