Fate and Free Will

  John Ronald Ruel Tolkien

  J.R.R. TOLKIEN

  Fate and Free Will

  [1] These notes date to no earlier than 1968, since they were written on discarded Allen & Unwin publishing notices dated January 1968. Tolkien had already written extensively on the same topic in notes dating to the mid-1960s: see Tolkien’s “Words, Phrases & Passages in The Lord of the Rings,” published in Parma Eldalamberon XVII (in particular 104–10, 123–4, and 163–4). These earlier notes likewise range beyond strictly linguistic discussion into the nature and relations of fate and the created world, and as such have direct bearing on the discussion presented here and should be consulted by the reader.

  [2] The query mark is Tolkien’s own. The symbol “>” is commonly used in linguistics to mean “yielded”, either in form (by phonological development) or meaning (by semantic variation). Here the meaning is that from the basic sense ‘settle, establish’ arose the sense “to erect permanent buildings or dwellings.”

  [3] In keeping with the sense of the rest of this marginal note, Tolkien’s intent here may have been to write “he could not change them into something else,” referring to the preceding objects, which can be altered in form or state (as water to steam) or even analyzed into constituent elements (oxygen and hydrogen), but cannot be changed into another thing entirely.

  [4] Cf. also Gandalf ’s statement, “I did no more than follow the lead of ‘chance’” in “The Quest of Erebor” (Unfinished Tales 322).

  [5] This paragraph, interpolated from the first version of the note, continues with a partial sentence: “Ambar is complex enough, but only Eru who made and designed both Ambar (the processes of Eä).” Tolkien interrupted the sentence at this point to provide an etymological note on Eä, which reads: “Ea ‘it is’ only = the total of Ambar: the given material and its processes of change. Outside Ea is the world/sphere of aware purpose and will.” This was followed at the bottom of the page by an etymological note on the Quenya word for ‘will’ :

  ?DEL: Q. lēle, v[erb] lelya (lelinye). To will with conscious purpose, immediate or remote. To be willing, to assent, consent, agree—quite different, for it partakes of will but is an additional [?accident]. A man may say ‘I [?wish], I agree, I will’ to some proposition of another without special purpose of his own (but he may also have reflected that it fits in with some design of his own and so agree to it as he might not otherwise have done).

  The top of the next page begins the second version of the text.

  WORKS CITED

  Tolkien, J.R.R., Words, Phrases & Passages in “The Lord of the Rings” ed. Christopher Gilson. Mountain View, CA: Parma Eldelamberon, 2007. Parma Eldalamberon no. 17..

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  John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, Fate and Free Will

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