Frodo finally learns why Gandalf never came as promised: Saruman the (Until Recently) White has turned to the dark side! The betrayal sinks in as the wizard tells the tale of his imprisonment at Orthanc and his rescue by Gwaihir, swiftest of the Great Eagles. With the Council finally caught up, they turn to the real question: what to do with the Ring? (And no, Gwaihir isn’t taking it anywhere.) We celebrate an important Tolkien birthday, go on tour with the Dreadful Nine, and wonder what lucky person in Rivendell got picked to hang the Ring on Frodo’s neck.
Recommended Reading:
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, paperback) pp. 251-258, “The Council of Elrond”
Tolkien, J. R. R. (Christopher Tolkien, ed.) The Silmarillion (Mariner Books, paperback)
Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, paperback)
Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (Houghton Mifflin, paperback)
Shippey, Tom. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Mariner Books, paperback)
22:07 “I liked white better…”
Brain dump coming.
The context of the exchange is Plato’s theory of Ideals, Platonism for short. The giveaway is the stress on “is”. Gandalf:
“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”
There is a similar remark in ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ by CS Lewis.
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.
Aristotle, in the Metaphysics, described the Platonic Ideal as the “what it is” of a thing: the way in which it partakes of its Ideal. To convey this Cicero coined the word “essentia”, essence, from Latin esse: to be. “Is-ness”, for short.
I feel nonetheless that Tolkien kept his distance from Platonism. “I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers” — ‘On Fairy-stories’
It’s a war of words. Saruman has revealed his new branding, Saruman of Many Colours. Gandalf is taking him down. Saruman has quite the comeback:
“You need not speak to me as to one of the fools that you take for friends.”
One doesn’t need to take any of it too seriously.