Replies

For three hundred years the Mírdain - as the Jewel-smiths of Eregion were known - studied at Annatar's (Sauron's) side, and learned the making of magical rings. In about the year II 1500, the first of the Rings of Power was forged. Over the following decades, with Annatar's help, the Elves made sixteen Rings of Power, each set with a gemstone.

Both the Elves and Annatar had their own secret aims, though, and each forged work of their own. Celebrimbor and the Elves made Three Rings more powerful than the others, Narya, Nenya and Vilya, the Rings of Fire, Water and Air. While Sauron made the "one ring".

Is that from the Silmarillion?

Here are some more comments on the article, from the Letters section of the Asia Times.

"Wagner's immortal gods must fall as a result of the corrupt bargain they have made with the giants who built Valhalla. Tolkien's immortal Elves must leave Middle-earth because of the fatal assistance they took from Sauron. The Elves' power to create a paradise on Middle-earth depends upon the power of the three Elven Rings which they forged with Sauron's help. Thus the virtue of the Elven Rings is inseparably bound up with the one Ring of Sauron. When it is destroyed, the power of the Elves must fade. More than anything else, The Lord of the Rings is the tragedy of the Elves and the story of their renunciation."

The author of The 'Ring' and the remnants of the West, Jan 11, is very confused. The elves were the ones who made the rings first. Celebrimbor made Vilya, Narya and Nenya, the three greatest of all the elven rings. Sauron deceptively disguised himself as a friend to learn their secret craft, and then made for himself a ring greater than any they had made (doubtless he was able to do this only because he is similar to a fallen angel, though with greater power, whereas elves are just inhabitants of the earth that lack the same kinds of power). When Celebrimbor found out about this, he took the rings and fled immediately. The elven rings are the only ones that Sauron didn't get a hold of.

The reason that the elves are leaving Middle-earth is something entirely different. If you read the Silmarillion, this story is explained in full, but the fact is, Middle-earth is exile for elves. A good number of the elves used to live in the Blessed Realm of Valinor (not the same as heaven - this is where the demigods, or Valar, that helped create and care for the earth reside), but then due to events too complicated to explain and the interference of fallen Vala Morgoth (the angelic being Sauron was only one of Morgoth's generals), an elf named Feänor rebelled and took a host of elves with him back to Middle-earth. The Valar then decreed that the elves could not return from Middle-earth if they left because of the evil deeds they had done as they were leaving (mainly the kinslaying at Alqualondë, but that's another story). Morgoth returned to Middle-earth and made war on the elves, and he was so assured of victory that one elf, Eärendil, risked the punishment of the Valar to sail back across the sea and beg for their help. They came, and after they defeated Morgoth and shut him outside of the world, they allowed the exiled elves to return. Not all of them did at first, but one by one they began to sail away to the west to return to Tol Eressëa, the island nearest to Valinor. If you didn't follow all that I'm sorry, but Tolkien takes several hundred pages to explain it, so it's not very easy to sum up in a paragraph. That kind of changes the article, but it's incredibly important not to mangle Tolkien's meaning.
Stephanie Rumpza (Jan 13, '03)

Spengler [The 'Ring' and the remnants of the West, Jan 11] makes some very interesting and well-taken points about Tolkien, Wagner and Western culture, but his comments about the Elves require correction in one area:

Spengler writes, "Tolkien's immortal Elves must leave Middle-earth because of the fatal assistance they took from Sauron. The Elves' power to create a paradise on Middle-earth depends upon the power of the three Elven Rings which they forged with Sauron's help."

I don't have the text in front of me, but Tolkien states many times that the Three Rings were made by the Elves alone, before the One was forged, and "(Sauron's) hand never touched them nor sullied them". That is why, during the Third Age when the One Ring was lost and Sauron slept, the Elves were able to use the Three (as Tolkien, through Elrond, says) for

"understanding, making, healing, to preserve all things unstained". "These things," he continues, "the Elves of Middle-earth have in some measure gained, though with sorrow."

It is true that, had Sauron recovered the One, the Three would have been subject to his will, and after the One was destroyed, the Three were shorn of their power. The fate of the Elves, however, was not due to their relationship with Sauron. For the Noldorin exiles especially (such as Galadriel and Elrond's ancestors), it goes back to their rebellion against the Valar during the First Age, when they forsook the Undying Lands of the West and returned to Middle-earth in pursuit of Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, to regain the Silmarils which he had stolen. This long sad story, which has many Wagnerian elements of its own, is told in "The Silmarillion." A minor point, perhaps, but one that a Tolkien geek like myself feels required to raise.
Lee Agnew
Oklahoma City, US (Jan 13, '03)