The Silmarillion

The Silmarillion.  To say it is to sing it.  

I found a culled copy at our local library this week while looking for a book for my son that he needed for school.  Two dollars for the yellowed hardback and it was a done deal.  How could I say no?  Christopher Tolkien just passed this week at 95 years of age and there was his name on the title page, “edited by Christoper Tolkien.”  It was as if John Ronald Reuel himself was reaching down through time and eternity to drop it into my lap.

It’s been decades since I first read it but I still have the image cast in my mind of Fingolfin riding in fury to challenge Morgoth in single epic combat, his diminutive figure burning defiantly before the monstrous Dark Lord.  

I was witness to the creation of the world through the Music of the Ainur.  

I remember the heaviness of heart I felt at the tragic love story of Beren and Lúthien.  

And how thrilling it was to discover in its pages that Gandalf was in fact one of the Maiar!  An angelic-like being created to serve the king of the gods, Manwë.  This was no plot twist inserted into a novel or movie.  There was no internet to explain it all to me back then, but simply the fruit of having read the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a teen and then finding it tucked into their histories via the Silmarillion as a young man.

The copy I had back then was a golden paperback edition I found in a used bookstore in DongDuCheon, Korea.  It was one of my first opportunities to leave the Army base after we’d returned from our three month rotation on the DMZ where we’d been sleeping in tents, isolated from the wider world.  We were basically told to stay in the area that surrounded the main entrance to our base which catered to GI’s and was somewhat isolated from the town proper.  

I eagerly explored these streets and alleyways where the majority of shops were for clothing with knock-off designer brands.  Not satisfied with this I kept pushing deeper until I discovered a small shop with books piled in its front windows.  It was dark, dirty, and disorganized with books on shelves, but also many in piles and lined up on the floors.  Books have always been like a comfort food for me and I found myself happily moving through this cluttered space and re-energizing after months of intellectual and material deprivation.

And there it was... The Silmarillion shining forth with its golden cover like treasure left in a musty cave surrounded by pirate detritus.  It was like being a scavenger in a SciFi story that stumbles upon a portal amongst ancient ruins that transports him to an exotic world of beauty and wonder.  Yet it was real and I was that lucky scavenger.