Ainulindalë
the Music of the Ainur; the first of the Books of the Silmarillion
Nature
Ainulindalë — “The Music of the Ainur” — the first and most ancient of the “Books” of the published Silmarillion: the cosmogony by which Eru Ilúvatar and the Ainur made the world through the great Music. It is the creation-myth of the legendarium — shorter than the Quenta but theologically the root of all things: the Ainur, their themes, the discord of Melkor, the utterance of “Eä!”, the shaping of the world, and the promise of its healing.
Contents
The being of Eru and the Secret Fire; the making of the Ainur. The Great Music and its three themes; the discord of Melkor, “re-ordered” by the One. The vision of the world, the word “Eä!”, and the entrada of the Valar into the world’s shaping. The marring and the hope: — the doctrine that Ilúvatar’s will prospers through all discords.
Composition and Versions
The Ainulindalë is one of Tolkien’s oldest texts (first drafted c. 1918, with the conception of the “Music” and “Eä” developing through the 1920s-30s). Its early forms appear in The Book of Lost Tales (HoME 1) — a rambling, romantic “Cottage of Lost Play”-related account — and it was revised and tightened for the 1977 Silmarillion by Christopher Tolkien from late drafts. The variants (including the developed theodic statement in Morgoth’s Ring’s appendix) are examined in Christopher Tolkien’s commentary in * I*, The Shaping of Middle-earth, and Morgoth’s Ring.