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04-21-2007, 09:39 AM | #1 |
Elven Warrior
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"Some things in this world are older than Sauron..." = ?
I remember Gandalf mentioning something like this: about powers in Arda that are older than Sauron.
How is that possible? I mean, didn't Sauron exist before the world itself? He was one of the Ainur! |
04-21-2007, 06:23 PM | #2 |
High King at Annuminas Administrator
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I think it can be taken as 'before Sauron came to power / became the Dark Lord'. In other words - some of the dangerous things out there - he didn't put there, and they are not all subject to him. I think that was the point of the quote where Gandalf says that.
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04-21-2007, 06:31 PM | #3 |
Advocatus Diaboli
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What Val said. Plus, there's some speculation that certain beings inhabited Arda before the Ainu (Bombadil, etc.), so they are "older" in Arda-terms.
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04-22-2007, 05:35 PM | #4 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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Yeah, I think BJ's slant on it is the best way to look at it.
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04-24-2007, 01:04 PM | #5 |
The Insufferable
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Plus, even Sauron wasn't always Sauron, was he?
Sauron was originally a servant of Aulë, so it's doubtful that all of his more colorful traits - changing into a giant bat, conducting human sacrifice, ravaging the nations with armies - were there from the beginning. In one sense you could say that Sauron didn't originally exist.
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04-26-2007, 01:53 PM | #6 | |
Elven Warrior
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Quote:
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06-01-2007, 02:31 PM | #7 | |
Leaf-Crowned Lord Of Elvenpath
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Quote:
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Hers. |
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06-01-2007, 06:51 PM | #8 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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'fraid you've seriously misunderstood the Sil, old boy. Sauron was indeed an Ainu, more specifically a Maia. IIRC, he was originally one of Aule's folk, correct?
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
06-02-2007, 10:37 AM | #9 | |
Elven Warrior
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Quote:
I like how Tolkien always stresses the good in everything, that even Sauron was "good" once. Even Melkor himself was probably good too, but suddenly he started envying Ilúvatar and longing for power himself. It's an important lesson to learn, that even the worst criminals and murderers have been innocent babies once. |
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06-02-2007, 02:23 PM | #10 | |
Leaf-Crowned Lord Of Elvenpath
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Hers. |
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06-02-2007, 05:21 PM | #11 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
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Nope; Ainur is a general term encompassing both the Maiar and the Valar (and I believe those spirits who remained outside Arda).
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
06-08-2007, 10:51 AM | #12 | |
Leaf-Crowned Lord Of Elvenpath
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Hers. |
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09-02-2007, 08:51 PM | #13 |
EIDRIORCQWSDAKLMED
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Perhaps this was one of the unresolved inconsistencies [gasp!] that crept into Tolkien's writings from time to time. Perhaps he meant Bombadil, but then again, all of the Ainur were supposedly there with Iluvitar in the original music when Melkor started ad-libbing...
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"...[The Lord of the Rings] is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in 'world politics' of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, fogotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless." Letters of JRR Tolkien, page 160. |
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