Ghost of a flea

Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may

Éowyn fell forward upon her fallen foe. But lo! the mantle and hauberk were empty. Shapeless they lay now on the ground, torn and tumbled; and a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King: "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields" (emphasis added)

One of the most important expressions of Tolkien's theology is evident in the defeat of the Lord of the Nazgûl.* The Black Captain does not perish at the Pelennor Fields but, as with Sauron at the hand of Isildur, is merely banished for a (long) while to an entirely disembodied state. The light never finds an absolute triumph over the darkness; from almost the very beginning, discord was sounded in the celestial choir. Something in Creation requires opposition for the operation of time itself, for history to unfold. We cannot utterly defeat the darkness, the power to do so lies in greater hands than ours. Yet if darkness triumphs, the whole of the world may be stifled and a great nothingness ensue. It is no accident that entropy and darkness are allied as they are expressed in human affairs. A creative impulse, a will to beauty, cannot be contained; merely extinguished. Think of the foe. For all his boasting of past glory he has not written a word worth reading in a thousand years, made no science, contributed no industry, made nothing of the geological or archeaological treasures that lay hidden in the sands of the lands he conquered long ago. He took the flower of the ancient world, the bread basket of the greatest empire in history, and made of it a desert, a nothing. His sole accomplishment is in the work of desecration but, so poor is he even at this mean task, he must rely on others - on us - to identify that which is beautiful and useful and full of promise so he may learn what to scar.

It bears repeating: Your dark science may learn learn to drive a plane into a tower but your dark science will never build the plane, will never build the tower.

Our love and our light means that even in his defeat we must hope for the Witch King to repent and come back to the world. We cannot cast him into the outer darkness, the decision lies with another. But the Witch King in his triumph would kill and torture and maim and defile until nothing is left except the sterile and the corrupt. Our victory lies in remaining true to what we are. But the enemy, having no authentic being, is only victorious in killing us or - worse - twisting what we are into something monstrous. This pattern is not a myth but may be seen in our every present debate. One side wants to win an argument, the other wants to win by banning all debate. This latter logic always starts with the little things, with our guilty Hobbit pleasures. But surrender the pipe weed and you are surrendering the field.

I am not joking. And I am not exaggerating.

As we near the end of the Fourth Age of the Children of Ilúvatar, the enemy forges iron and rings, seeking to use our craft against us with ever more devilish improvisation. He awaits the return of his witch king from some unholy well and revels in thoughts of rape and slaughter. If we allow his agents to silence us in our homes and in our streets there will be no warning as his hosts rally to the sound of idiot piping and black banners snap in the wind.

We cannot allow ourselves to be silenced.** This is a war aim.

* Also known as the Witch-king of Angmar, the Black Captain, the Morgul-lord and other well hard, metal sounding honorifics. Tolkien never reveals his true name though presumably it sounded like "Brian Warner" in Númenórean.
** Via Five Feet of Fury.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at April 25, 2008 06:47 AM

Comments

Posted by: Damian at April 25, 2008 02:04 PM

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at April 25, 2008 03:08 PM