Dragons - How did they come to be?

[thelotrfreak1]

In the Silmarillion, it is clearly shown that only God could create beings with life. Aule attempted to create the dwarves, but only made "puppets." SO how did Morgoth create the dragons? Did he control them the same way Aule controlled the dwarves, but then what happened after he was defeated?

[Aganzir]

We discussed this to a little extent here recently.

The dragons were some kind of fell spirits, maiar corrupted by Melkor I'd think. He didn't create them (as they already existed), only contributed to them having the kind of bodies they had (whether this means that he made them bodies or told them to choose a dragon-like appearance). Thus they weren't dependent on him, and eg. Smaug lived long after Melkor was thrust out the Doors of Night.

[obloquy]

A decent theory, but one not supported conclusively.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

The dragons were some kind of fell spirits, maiar corrupted by Melkor I'd think. He didn't create them (as they already existed), only contributed to them having the kind of bodies they had (whether this means that he made them bodies or told them to choose a dragon-like appearance). Thus they weren't dependent on him, and eg. Smaug lived long after Melkor was thrust out the Doors of Night.

Which may well be the case - it does fit with Tolkien's general comments on the nature of creation & the way evil works in M-e.

At the same time, Tolkien developed his ideas over his lifetime, altered them, played with them & explored the implications - particularly in writing, & none of that stuff can be called 'final'. A great deal of stuff in HoM-e - particularly the later writings on the nature of Orcs, of evil, & the nature of creation - was in conflict with other stuff & often contradicted it. If you read HoM-e what you find is a very great deal of stuff by JRR Tolkien about the history & inhabitants of his created world. What you don't find is a single, coherent explanation of the nature of Dragons or anything else. Too many Tolkien 'experts' take the same approach to HoM-e that Ned Flanders does with the Bible ("I've done everything the Bible says - even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!") - they take everything in HoM-e as incontrovertible FACT - even the Incontrovertible FACTS that contradict the other incontrovertible FACTS.

Your theory fits, as I say, but whether its the one Tolkien would have given if you'd asked him 'Professor Tolkien, how, in your world, did dragons come to be?' - its impossible to say & certainly the answer would depend on when you'd asked him. You might have got a very different answer in the 1920's to the one you'd have got in the 1960's.

Personally, I feel that the biggest mistake Tolkien made was getting side-tracked into this ultimately futile attempt to create a logically consistent philosophy/science for his secondary world - it could only (as CT pointed out) lead to the complete unravelling of that world, because too much of the earlier stuff could not sustain being forced into such strict constraints.

And yet, as I said, much of the stuff in HoM-e which is used to support these complex theories on the nature of Dragons (& anything else) was Tolkien thinking on paper, & was certainly not meant by him to be seen in the nature of 'official' statements. For one thing this stuff - like his later theorising on the 'true' nature of Orcs has to be rejected on account of the simple fact that it conflicts with what we know of Orcs in LotR - simply will not fit with what we have in the 'canonical' fiction (by which I mean TH, LotR, TS & CoH).

HoM-e is not 'canonical' in that sense - what it is is a collection of writings from a period of 60 odd years, & the intent behind it was to explore the evolving creation of JRRT & the struggle he had to bring it to a final, coherent form. Its certainly not something Tolkien himself would have published in that form. Its not definitive/finished in any sense, & any conclusions drawn from it, any theories (however well they work, or clever they are) are not necessarily what Tolkien himself would have come up with.

Personally I think that the best explanation for dragons Tolkien ever gave was in OFS:

The dragon had the trade-mark Of Faerie written plain upon him. In whatever world he had his being it was an Other-world. Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faerie.

Faerie has its own rules - & one of the major ones is 'There are no rules'. We have no idea what Tolkien's final, definitive, incontrovertible explanation for Dragons was - & neither. probably, did he.

[davem]

Quick addendum, to give you an idea of how Tolkien worked sometimes.

When Pauline Baynes was working on her poster map of M-e she noticed a few gaps - just empty spaces on Tolkien's original - which didn't look too good on a poster. She went to see him. Apparently he was very solicitous & helped her out by simply inventing some new locations/features on the spot.

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by davem

Personally, I feel that the biggest mistake Tolkien made was getting side-tracked into this ultimately futile attempt to create a logically consistent philosophy/science for his secondary world - it could only (as CT pointed out) lead to the complete unravelling of that world, because too much of the earlier stuff could not sustain being forced into such strict constraints.

Now you make a good point there. I'd have to disagree though; although his ambition to make his secondary world consistent to both its own internal logic and to the logics of the real world we live in ultimately proved futile, it was also this very ambition which made his works so rich and wonderful to explore.

[davem]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Now you make a good point there. I'd have to disagree though; although his ambition to make his secondary world consistent to both its own internal logic and to the logics of the real world we live in ultimately proved futile, it was also this very ambition which made his works so rich and wonderful to explore.

Yes, but. My point is he never achieved his ambition. Thus, its hardly possible to take any statement he made about M-e as definitive. One can draw conclusions from statements he did make, but its impossible to be sure that Tolkien himself would have come to the same conclusion - & even if he had there's no way of knowing if he would have changed his mind about it later.

My point is HoM-e is a bad (if not useless) resource for anyone wanting definitive statements, let alone a coherent, internally self-consistent history & physics/metaphysics of M-e. You find the same thing with the letters - people take the letter to Michael about women :

Their gift is to be receptive, stimulated, fertilised (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point - & how they can go no further when they leave his hand... etc

as a definitive statement of his views. However, as David Doughan shows in his article in the latest Mallorn Tolkien's views can be seen to change over the years, & his depiction of Erendis seems to reflect that. And he was certainly very proud that he had a daughter, as well as sons at Oxford - plus, as Doughan points out, one can hardly imagine the writer of a letter like that quoting Simone de Bovoir with such approval as he did in the 'Tolkien in Oxford' documentary. Tolkien changed as an individual. His attitudes changed, & his fiction reflected that.

The real problem, as I indicated earlier, is that later changes both to the overall physics/metaphysics may have worked to an extent, but would have devastated the earlier stories - some of which had not been touched for decades. His later theorising on the nature of Orcs is fascinating - but contradicts what he wrote about them in LotR & elsewhere. The stuff in 'Myths Transformed' would have destroyed the Sil which existed up to that point.

A lot of Tolkien 'fans' have constructed a very complex physics & metaphysics for M-e earth which is all their own work, although based in Tolkien's writings - thing is these writings were produced over a period of 60 odd years & don't all fit together that well. I think the problem is that Tolkien managed to create an illusion of M-e being a 'real' place, which worked according to certain rules, a place of facts & figures which could be proven, confirmed & replicated in a laboratory. It wasn't. It was a work of imagination, which Tolkien was making up, changing & evolving as he went along. Just as you could only achieve a 'complete, self-consistent' Silmarillion by excluding more of Tolkien's writings than you included, so you could only achieve such a 'complete, self-consistent' cosmology, history & physics/metaphysics by doing the same thing - & to attempt either rather misses the point (to my mind, at least).

Bombadil is never explained, but explanations have been offered 'in line' with statements made by Tolkien - in other contexts & in regard to other characters. Same with Ungoliant. Some of the stuff in Osanwe Kenta is fascinating - other stuff, like Tolkien's attempt to explain the behaviour of Manwe, is, frankly, unconvincing & doesn't 'fit'. The fate of Balder as given in Rivers & Beacon Hills of Gondor is creepy, but belongs rather to the worlds of Lovecraft & RE Howard (whose work he had been reading around the time he wrote it) than to Middle earth as we know it. The Athrabeth is clearly an attempt to introduce the central aspect of Christian belief into M-e - not because he wanted to turn the Legendarium into a Christian 'allegory', but because he wanted to tie it into the primary world (same motivation as was behind the 'Myths Transformed' fiasco - which it is in the context of the Legendarium, however beautifully written & inventive in itself). But, as Tolkien himself seems to realised, it collapsed rather into a parody of Christianity, & for all the beauty of its language & the truly moving story of the love between Andreth & Aegnor it's unconvincing & doesn't feel like it belongs in the Legendarium - the Eru presented in the Athrabeth is simply not the Eru we encounter everywhere else he appears in the Legendarium. As a stand-alone work it is interesting - like much of the other speculative writing.

[skip spence]

Well, you did say that Tolkien made a mistake of trying to make his fictional world plausable as a real ancient history of our world. I don't agree that it was a mistake, even though he didn't realise his ambition, or was ever likely to. This ambition, although never fully realised, is a major part of the attraction his works has on many fans.

But I don't think we're in any real disagrement. His fictional world did, as you say, evolve over many years and many parts aren't consistant with each other. It seems you've read much more of the obscure works written by (or related to) JRRT than I have. I've recently read "Morgoth's Ring" however and found it fascinating, especially the fictional theology stuff and the writings about the fea and hroa (sp?). What's Osanwe Kenta by the way?

And besides, even if we did accept JRRTs world as complete and fully realised, we must consider its fictional perspective. The writings are presented as stories or rather translations written down by mortal men or hobbits, with sources often having passed though many hands and renditions and with many long years between when the events took place and their final documented form. This would render the stories uncertain truthwise. Also, not even the high elves or the Valar were present at the creation of orcs or dragons or balrogs, and none save Morgoth and his most trusty servants therefore know the full truth about their conception. What is written about the orgins of these creatures are usually presented as the speculations of the wise.

[davem]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Well, you did say that Tolkien made a mistake of trying to make his fictional world plausable as a real ancient history of our world. I don't agree that it was a mistake, even though he didn't realise his ambition, or was ever likely to. This ambition, although never fully realised, is a major part of the attraction his works has on many fans.

But, as CT stated, the project would have been fatal to the mythology. We'd have lost the story of the Two Trees & the creation of the Sun & Moon, the creation & nature of the Silmarils would have had to be altered. 'Myths Transformed' may have contained some interesting ideas (& some beautiful prose) but it would also have been an absolute disaster. Ultimately it was a dead end.

But I don't think we're in any real disagrement. His fictional world did, as you say, evolve over many years and many parts aren't consistant with each other. It seems you've read much more of the obscure works written by (or related to) JRRT than I have. I've recently read "Morgoth's Ring" however and found it fascinating, especially the fictional theology stuff and the writings about the fea and hroa (sp?). What's Osanwe Kenta by the way?

Osanwe Kenta was an essay Tolkien wrote on thought transference in M-e (there's an example of it in LotR where you have Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel & Celeborn sitting together & communicating 'telepathically'.

Here now for seven days they tarried, for the time was at hand for another parting which they were loth to make. Soon Celeborn and Galadriel and their folk would turn eastward, and so pass by the Redhorn Gate and down the Dimrill Stair to the Silverlode and to their own country. They had journeyed thus far by the west-ways, for they had much to speak of with Elrond and with Gandalf, and here they lingered still in converse with their friends. Often long after the hobbits were wrapped in sleep they would sit together under the stars, recalling the ages that were gone and all their joys and labours in the world, or holding council, concerning the days to come. If any wanderer had chanced to pass, little would he have seen or heard, and it would have seemed to him only that he saw grey figures, carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. For they did not move or speak with mouth, looking from mind to mind; and only their shining eyes stirred and kindled as their thoughts went to and fro.

O.K. basically explains how it operates. For some reason it was excluded from HoM-e but published in the Journal Vinyar Tengwar no 39. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/%C3%93sanwe-kenta

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

My point is HoM-e is a bad (if not useless) resource for anyone wanting definitive statements, let alone a coherent, internally self-consistent history & physics/metaphysics of M-e. You find the same thing with the letters - people take the letter to Michael about women :

Quote:
Their gift is to be receptive, stimulated, fertilised (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point - & how they can go no further when they leave his hand... etc

as a definitive statement of his views. However, as David Doughan shows in his article in the latest Mallorn Tolkien's views can be seen to change over the years, & his depiction of Erendis seems to reflect that. And he was certainly very proud that he had a daughter, as well as sons at Oxford - plus, as Doughan points out, one can hardly imagine the writer of a letter like that quoting Simone de Bovoir with such approval as he did in the 'Tolkien in Oxford' documentary. Tolkien changed as an individual. His attitudes changed, & his fiction reflected that.

It's amazing how many fathers change their minds/attitudes when faced with a daughter's abilities and education.

As always with any writer's letters, it is helpful to keep in mind the recipient of the correspondence. That dynamic differs from the dynamic between writer and audience of a story, of a scholarly article, of a documentary, of an interview. None of those secondary sources really supplant the primary ones, anyway.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Bear in mind not only changes of opinion over the long term, but also specific contexts in which a given opinion was given written form. For example, the notorious letter to Michael was written in an attempt to dissuade him from a marriage his father deemed hasty and ill-considered. His snort about the Nibelungen Ring was made in an angry letter excoriating the odious Ake Ohlmarks; in conversation with say Lewis or an intelligent fan Tolkien would probably have had a lot to say about the parallels and differences.

[Nazgûl-king]

They are probably corrupted maiar like the Balrogs. Can Balrogs assume other forms? If so then perhaps dragons are another form of Balrog.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Nazgûl-king

They are probably corrupted maiar like the Balrogs. Can Balrogs assume other forms? If so then perhaps dragons are another form of Balrog.

I don't think so and I believe everything that is anywhere written contradicts that. Balrogs may have used to be able to change their forms, but not after they were corrupted by Morgoth (like Sauron could no longer appear fair after he created the One Ring). In any case, dragons were not Maiar, and certainly not Balrogs.

[Raynor]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

I don't think so and I believe everything that is anywhere written contradicts that. Balrogs may have used to be able to change their forms, but not after they were corrupted by Morgoth (like Sauron could no longer appear fair after he created the One Ring). In any case, dragons were not Maiar, and certainly not Balrogs.

Bilbo was quite able to talk riddles with a dragon, something I doubt he could have achieved with a balrog - as I would expect a balrog in dragon shape to retain one of his chief weapon - fear.

Furthermore, from the letters:

Originally Posted by Letter #144

[The balrogs] were supposed to have been all destroyed in the overthrow of Thangorodrim, his fortress in the North. But it is here found (there is usually a hang-over especially of evil from one age to another) that one had escaped and taken refuge under the mountains of Hithaeglin (the Misty Mountains). It is observable that only the Elf knows what the thing is - and doubtless Gandalf.

And we know from the Hobbit that in 2770, TA:

Originally Posted by An unexpected party

There were lots of dragons in the North in those days, and gold was probably getting scarce up there, with the dwarves flying south or getting killed, and all the general waste and destruction that dragons make going from bad to worse.