Ah, Tyelpe… Remember you the white lilies that grew in Aman? There are none like them in Middle Earth, not now– but someday, when we have built Valinor on earth, they might bloom beneath white towers and bring hope to the exiled. Do you not want to see them again? Do you want to make that future come to pass? With my gifts and your skill, we will build it together.
Wear this clasp, so our dream will be close to your heart.
|| Yesterday lintamande answered a question of mine concerning Feanor learning Valarin (over here). Which prompted a conversation with misbehavingmaiar that ended up with me freaking out about what learning Valarin might mean in terms of creation of the Silmarilli. I already posted about that over here, quite extensively. But what I previously called a simple “power of words” now has become clearer.
Treat this as a headcanon, rather than an actual meta post.
Fëanor learnt a bit of Valarin, according to what is said he knew of it more than anyone else. But he did not share what he knew, according to Pengolodh because of his discontent with the Valar themselves. Lintamande’s post already explains the logical problem in how that timeline bit is framed, but I will now assume that he, in fact, did not share his studies about the language. And what else did he not share? The technique to make the Silmarils itself.
But what is Valarin? It’s the language of deities. The sounds were peculiar, too sharp for the Elves, but many of the words might as well have been not pronounceable, because the Valar’s phonic apparatus is not forced to remain perfectly human-like. The Elves tended to transcribe Valarin words into Quenya ones.
Then misbehavingmaiar advanced the hypothesis that Valar might be not just a “language”, but a way to put music into words. An onomatopoeic tongue, as much as “whisper” or “bark” are onomatopoeic English words. “Bark” describes the sound of a dog, even if you can’t actually reproduce it with your mouth. Valarin, by consequence, could be the Music of the Ainur, the way they sing but brought into a language. Fëanor studided it and never shared what he knew. As doegred told me, exploring it he was looking for a language and found mathematics, because what is music if not a mathematical system?
As doegred put it: “He learnt how to trap light by creating a cage for electromagnetic waves that worked on the basis of interference using a specific math developed on the basis of Valarin”. And he did it through talking as well as crafting. Through the power of words. All elven “magic” is based on music and words. He literally learnt the language of the gods.
There was a lot of screaming in this discussion; that’s how we know it was good. UwU
I should write up some more solid thoughts on Valarin here soon too, because after this discussion I felt like some ideas about that very minimal lexicon finally gelled for me. :3
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 