Wings & Ears: Why Bother?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

In the Elves’ Ears thread, radagastly asked:

So, what's the point behind these polls? I've read enough of your posts to know that you wouldn't bother with such questions unless you had something in mind. So, what is it?

Well, at the time I set up the Ears poll and re-ignited the debate over balrog wings I was just playing around with the poll function. But in reading over the responses in those threads I’ve begun to see that perhaps there is more going on here than I at first supposed, and that there are issues being raised in each thread that bear closer scrutiny.

Imagine, if you will, that a letter from Professor Tolkien to his editor is suddenly uncovered in an attic somewhere. Imagine that in this letter, the Professor offers a more full description of the fight with the balrog, and that this description is the precise opposite of how you are sure it is supposed to be. For example, in my case the rewritten version of the coming of the balrog would be something like:

It rose up before them, a vast shape, wingless and unable to do anything but run at them with a speed that might metaphorically be described as flight. Legolas, his golden yellow hair streaming about his pointy-ears, cried out, ‘Ai ai! A balrog has come!’

Were such a letter to emerge, I am afraid that it would do little to change my opinions on any of these matters: for me, a winged balrog would still rush at a dark haired, round eared Legolas. This would not be just stubbornness on my part, for such a letter – while clearly expressing the opinion of the author – would not do anything to change the text of The Lord of the Rings, based upon and according to which I have formulated (quite justifiably, I think) a particular view of this incident.

So this brings me to my question. A number of people in both threads have already stated that they don’t think it really matters whether balrogs have wings or what the shape of Elves’ ears may be. They point out, quite rightly, that the written texts – whether on purpose or not – leave such issues debatable, and thus we can, as readers, make up our own minds to a certain extent (I’m just not convinced by the arguments for balrog capes, or ears the shape of oak leaves ). At the same time, a number of people have said that if they could find a letter or something like the one I imagine above, then the issue for them would be ‘settled’ – but why, for heavens’ sake? If, on the one hand, such questions don’t matter because the text is ambiguous or unclear (the reader can make up his or her mind), then why would the opinion of the author, expressed somewhere other than in the text, which he left ambiguous or unclear, be the only one worth anything (the reader is not allowed to make up his or her mind)?