b2mem | "Our ships are now without the wind..."

B2MeM Challenge: B2MeM 2013, Day 4: Quote from The Akallabêth, The Silmarillion.
Format: Awkward photo collage
Genre: Commentary
Rating: General
Warnings: Critical look at JRRT's worldview
Characters: Elendil, Herendil
Pairings: What?
Summary: A progressive ape's response to a conversation in The History of Middle-earth, vol V, The Lost Road.

“The sun went down, and there came a great silence. Darkness fell upon the land, and the sea was still, while the world waited for what should betide. Slowly the fleets passed out of the sight of the watchers in the havens, and their lights faded, and night took them; and in the morning they were gone. For a wind arose in the east and it wafted them away; and they broke the Ban of the Valar, and sailed into forbidden seas, going up with war against the Deathless, to wrest from them everlasting life within the Circles of the World.”

The above text is familiar to many of us who have read (and re-read) The Silmarillion. In addition to the text that Christopher Tolkien deemed publishable in The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien wrote an extensive backdrop of the Fall of Númenor, which has been collected and published in The History of Middle-earth, vol. V, The Lost Road and Other Writings. This volume includes a remarkable time-travel story that Tolkien wrote in response to a challenge offered up by The Inklings.

Chapter III of The Lost Road (a wonderfully detailed look at Númenor, or at least Elendil's villa, before the fall) offers a conversation between Elendil and Herendil, the father-son duo who travel through time by the means of visions. In this chapter, Elendil recounts the coming of Sauron to Númenor and gives the reader a glimpse of the nature of the fleet Ar-Pharazôn commanded (see quoted text in the collage). Through Elendil as his mouthpiece, Tolkien laments the ills of technological progress. So, progressive ape that I am (see Tolkien's Mythopoeia), I cannot resist a counterpoint in the form of a mishmash of photos.

Link to large copy here; click to expand.

The RMS Oceanic, the HMS Dreadnought, the Bayard Condict Building (New York City), and the Guaranty Building (Buffalo, NY) are pictured in the collage. I doubt that the engineers who designed those magnificent ships (from Tolkien's era) nor Louis Sullivan, the "father of the modern skyscraper" who designed the buildings pictured, would particularly appreciate Elendil's assessment. After all, beauty, as well as utility, may be found in technology.