Helcaraxë posted:
But Tolkien intended his work to be "true" in the sense of adhering to the moral truth of Christianity. The story's most important theme is "God and his sole right to divine power."
Sauron and Melkor, desiring to be creators rather than sub-creators, rebel against the authority of Iluvatar, attempting to gain the Flame Imperishable. None of this is present in the Icelandic sagas, nor in Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelungen," nor in any other souce from which Tolkien seems to have partially drawn his work. How could Tolkien inspirations be fundamental if they had an utterly different underlying theme than Tolkien's works?
Tolkien did not confine himself to any single theme. Many Christians besides Tolkien have been very attracted to pagan myths and legends.
Dante’s
Inferno is as much based on classical conceptions of Hades as on Christian legends of Hell. Milton’s
Paradise Lost is stuffed with metaphors and similes taken from classical myth.
As a boy Tolkien was first attracked to classical mythology. Later his tastes swung more to northern myths.
In the Milton Waldman letter a Tolkien explains one reason for the existance of his Valar:
On the side of mere narrative device, this is, of course, meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the ‘gods’ of higher mythology, which can yet be accepted – well, shall we say baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity.
As Wordsworth wrote:
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
So Tolkien created a legendarium in which in the earliest days there were divine beings in the world who filled somewhat the role of the Hebrew/Christian/Islamic angels but whose iconography and deeds and style draw instead from pagan deities.
But Norse myth does give us Loki who has some parallels to Melkor. Probably the
Elves on hearing tales of Loki would have told Ælfwine that Loki was Melkor as they explained the Manwë was Woden (Icelandic Óðin) and that Tulkas was Thunor (Icelandic Thór). Also Norse myth provides a dualism with the gods on one side and the Giants and other monsters on the other similar to the conflict between God (with his angels) and Satan (with his devils).
Irish mythology provides the monstrous Balor, King of the Fomorions, chief enemy to the Tuatha Dé Danaan who are the gods. Egyptian mythology knows the serpent Apep who oppose the sun-god Re and the evil god Seth responsible for slaying Osiris.
Hindu mythology is replete with stories of demons who come close to obtaining rule over the universe or who do obtain it until brought down, in the earliest tales by the god Indra, in later tales by the god Vishnu or the god Shiva or the goddess Deva/Kali.
Greek myth has little of this. The battle of Zeus against Typhon and of the gods against the Giants occur but are not stressed.
One problem Tolkien had was that his Valar corresponded mythologically with gods but could not, legitimately, be worshipped as the pagan gods were, though they could of course be prayed to and venerated as are saints like St. Michael (who might possibly be equatable with Manwë).
He seems to have had difficulty making use of them and in his earlier works it is strongly suggested that they failed rather badly. Criticism of the Valar mostly disappears in Tolkien’ later writing.