Читать книгу The Shaping of Middle-earth онлайн | страница 50

The change in the celestial plan now takes place because the Gods ‘find it safer to send [the Sun and Moon] in Ylmir’s care through the caverns and grottoes beneath the Earth’. This is wholly different from the old story (I. 215), in which the original plan of the Gods was that the Sun and Moon should be drawn beneath the earth; this plan was changed when they found that the Sun-ship ‘might not safely come beneath the world’ – the very reverse of what is said in S. Though the Moon continued to pass beneath the earth, the Gods now made the Door of Night in the West and the Gates of Morn in the East, through which the Sun passed thenceforward, going into and returning from the Outer Dark (I. 216). The astronomical aspect of the mythology has thus undergone a profound shift, an entire re-making.

The reference to the rekindling of the ‘Magic Sun’ (here with extension to the Moon, not found in the earliest writings) is a noteworthy survival; and the meaning is explicitly the rebirth of the Trees (see II. 286). Very remarkable is Ulmo’s foretelling to the Valar that the rekindling of the Two Trees and the return of ‘the bliss and glory of old’ would only come to pass by the aid of Men. It is possible that this is a reference to his own deep designs laid through Turgon, Tuor, and Eärendel; but it is nowhere suggested that these designs issued or were intended to issue in such a way. Perhaps we should see here rather the continued existence in some form of the old prophecy given in II. 285:

The Elves’ prophecy is that one day they will fare forth from Tol Eressëa and on arriving in the world will gather all their fading kindred who still live in the world and march towards Valinor … This they will only do with the help of Men. If Men aid them, the fairies will take Men to Valinor – those that wish to go – fight a great battle with Melko in Erumáni and open Valinor. Laurelin and Silpion will be rekindled, and the mountain wall being destroyed then soft radiance will spread over all the world, and the Sun and Moon will be recalled.