Continued from Part 1 of Do Balrogs Have Wings? Do Balrogs Fly?.
NOTE: Once again the forces of inflammatory prose have risen up to make false claims about this essay (Other Minds issue 10). At no point does it argue for corporeal or physical wings on any Balrog. Please treat any claims made by others as the absurdities they are. Clearly, if one cannot get the facts right, one’s essay on Balrog Wings need not be rebutted further than that.
A more recent essay, The Truth About Balrogs (Again), on the Tolkien Studies on the Web blog, explains Michael’s position more concisely. You can also read the very in-depth Flying away on a wing and a hair …, written in response to comments made by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull in their 2005 book, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: A Reader’s Companion at MERP.COM.
Objections to Balrog wings
Here is where many people make their first mistake. They argue that since Tolkien introduces the wings with a simile, saying, “the shadow around it reached out LIKE two vast wings”, the wings cannot be real. But the argument is flawed, because Tolkien also introduces the darkness (the “shadow”) with a simile as well: “what it was could not be seen: it was LIKE a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe yet greater”. If Tolkien’s use of the word “like” here means that there were no wings, then it follows that there was no shadow, and if there was no shadow then it could not possibly have “reached out like two vast wings”.
So, in order for there to be a shadow there must be wings, because later on Tolkien writes “it stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall.” The Company of the Ring clearly saw the wings by this point, and what Tolkien was doing with the two similes (and other parts of the passage) was providing a transition from vagueness to clarity. Nothing more.
Objections to Flying Balrogs
People then ask, “Why didn’t the Balrog fly over Gandalf if it could fly?”
The answer is that the author gives no indication that the Balrog wanted to do anything other than attack Gandalf. It never once tries to go after Frodo and the Ring. Many people assume it wanted the Ring, but there is no basis for making such an assumption. The closest indication we have that anything other than Sauron and Saruman might have been actively pursuing the Ring is when the Watcher in the Water grabs Frodo. But there is no obvious connection between the Watcher and the Balrog.
And if the Balrog COULD have flown with those big cavern-spanning wings, how was it to do so inside the Second Hall of Khazad-dum anyway? There were two rows of HUGE carven pillars, reaching from floor to ceiling, marching down the center of the hall. The Balrog could not have flown toward the Company of the Ring with those wings fully extended.
Then people ask, “Well, why didn’t it try to save itself when it fell into the chasm?”
The answer here begins with another question: “Why should we assume it would want to save itself?” The Balrog had just crawled out from under tons of rock which would have killed Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, and all the rest of the Company. What, exactly, did it have to fear? Why should it have tried to “save” itself when the author has just shown the reader that Balrogs don’t die so easily?
Furthermore, the first thing the Balrog does is lash out at Gandalf and drag him downward. Clearly its foremost thought is to continue the attack on Gandalf. Even if there were room in the chasm for the Balrog to fly out, why should it drag Gandalf down with it if it intends to get out of the chasm anyway? Why not just “save” itself and let him fall with the bridge? Because Tolkien didn’t write it that way. Obviously he envisioned the Balrog as an active creature, not a reactive one.
Gandalf’s description of the battle with the Balrog also makes it clear that they fought all the way down, and that they fell for a long time. So the Balrog was at the very least encumbered with Gandalf and more likely was actively trying to burn him to death (Gandalf does say he was burned).
And then we have to turn to the question of why it took so long for them to reach the water. Some people have argued that it was a LONG way down. Maybe, but if Tolkien knew anything about the rate of falling bodies (and he probably did), then he would understand that Gandalf’s words wouldn’t make any sense if the wizard and the Balrog really fell at a normal speed.
So it seems apparent that their rate of descent was slowed, probably by the Balrog, but clearly these were both beings of great power who, if they wished to, could move through the universe at will. Their existence and ability to affect the universe did not depend on their physical bodies (although it has been noted that late in his life Tolkien decided many of the fallen Maiar probably became trapped in their bodies due to engaging in biological activities).
Hence, there is little reason to ask why the Balrog didn’t fly out of the chasm. It obviously had other things on its mind, and the battle Gandalf describes is not the kind of battle that any normal flesh-and-blood creature would be expected to survive (and he himself was not a normal flesh-and-blood creature). The battle lasted for 11 days, and it culminated with the clash of powers on the mountaintop.
Could a Flying Balrog Save Itself?
There one more objection is raised: “Why didn’t the Balrog save itself when it fell from the mountainside?” The answer is that dead and dying Balrogs, like dead and dying dragons, don’t fly. When Earendil cast Ancalagon from the sky the dragon was finished and it smote Thangorodrim in its ruin just as the Balrog of Moria smote the mountainside in ITS ruin. And when Bard’s arrow pierced Smaug’s breast, the great dragon fell from the sky and hit the ruins of Laketown in HIS ruin.
Gandalf threw down his enemy. That expression is one of Tolkien’s pseudo-archaisms, and clearly refers to Gandalf’s vanquishing the Balrog. It was either too physically exhausted after having been whacked on with an Elvish sword and blasted with lightning bolts for 11 days or it was dead or in the process of dying when it took that fall off the cliff. If the Balrog could have acted to save itself at all by that point, it would at least have taken Gandalf with it, if not actually turn the tables on him. How many times during their 11 days together did either Gandalf or the Balrog NEARLY kill his opponent? Tolkien doesn’t say. He leaves it to the reader to imagine how terrible the battle must have been. But he makes it clear that Gandalf won because the Balrog could no longer attack him.
But Can Balrogs Really fly?
Then we turn to the question of whether Balrogs really CAN fly. The short answer is that they were Maiar and that Maiar can do whatever they please. The long answer is that Tolkien DOES provide one example of flying Balrogs, and that is when they flew over Hithlum to rescue Morgoth from Ungoliant.
Here many people raise objections by dissecting a single sentence and taking specific phrases out of context. “winged speed”, they say, can be used as a metaphor. Yes, it can, but there is no indication in the text that Tolkien used it so. “Arose”, they say, can refer to the act of flying up into the sky or simply climbing out of an underground abode, and the Balrogs were indeed underground when they heard Morgoth scream. Yes, that is so. But there is no indication in the text that this is what Tolkien meant to imply without also implying flight.
“Passed over” doesn’t necessarily mean flight, either, they say. Fingolfin’s horse passed over the plain of Anfauglith after the Dagor Bragollach, and the horse obviously was not flying. True, but “passed over” must be given a context to have any meaning.
What J.R.R. Tolkien actually wrote was “swiftly they arose, and they passed with winged speed over Hithlum, they came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire.” Unfortunately, only part of this text was used by Christopher Tolkien in THE SILMARILLION. What he wrote “and now swiftly they arose, and passing over Hithlum they came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire.”
Why did Christopher change the text? He doesn’t say. It may only have been an error of omission. But it’s not simply a matter of omission, he changed the verbal phrasing completely from “they passed with winged speed over Hithlum” to “passing over Hithlum”.
The key phrase in both versions of the sentence, however, is the metaphor “tempest of fire”. A tempest is a storm. Some people have argued that a tempest can simply refer to a disturbance, but Tolkien doesn’t use “tempest” that way. He uses it to refer to things coming out of the sky. When Morgoth unleashed the winged dragons on the Host of the Valar at the end of the War of Wrath, they erupted like a “tempest of fire”. Clearly the winged dragons were flying and spewing flames.
Tolkien’s “tempest of fire” in Lammoth dates from the 1950s, AFTER Tolkien had reached the conclusion that Balrogs were winged fallen Maiar. Furthermore, it works with “swiftly they arose, and they passed with winged speed over Hithlum” to denote a passage through the sky. There were Elves in Hithlum at the time (Sindar) who noted this passage (that is how Tolkien justifies his histories — either someone witnesses it or infers it). Hithlum itself was not burned, nor suffered any kind of damage from flame and smoke. Tolkien doesn’t say the flaming Balrogs ran through Hithlum, and they in their fiery state could not have ridden through it as in the older stories.
Some people nonetheless argue that these are only words, and that it can be shown they mean something other than flight. However, when I have asked people in many forums to try, no one has succeeded. You must use all four parts of the sentence. You cannot drop any part. It is simply not possible to rewrite the sentence so as to show something other than flight. Hence, there is no ambiguity in the passage concerning the Balrogs’ mode of travel.
Continued in Part 3 of Do Balrogs Have Wings? Do Balrogs Fly?