Illuminations by Dawn Felagund

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Fanwork Notes

For my B2MeM project this year, I am doing small scenes and character studies of Pengolodh, one of the imaginary loremasters in Tolkien's story and, quite likely, the primary contributor to The Silmarillion. Pengolodh has always fascinated me as a character: one who feels omnipresent in the books yet about whom we know very little. In 2007, I authored Stars of the Lesser for Pandemonium and wrote Pengolodh for the first time. He's been quietly begging me for more attention since, so I am using this year's B2MeM as an opportunity to learn more about his character.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

For Back to Middle-earth Month 2009: scenes from the life of young Pengolodh, the loremaster of Gondolin whose writings brought us The Silmarillion.

Updated:
Truth for Day Eight: Beauty/Ugliness
The Mountains and the Sea, for Day Nine: Anti-Heroes

Major Characters: Celebrimbor, Original Character(s), Pengolodh

Major Relationships:

Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre: Experimental, General, Poetry

Challenges: B2MeM 2009

Rating: Teens

Warnings:

Chapters: 9 Word Count: 8, 971
Posted on 2 March 2009 Updated on 28 March 2009

This fanwork is a work in progress.

Table of Contents

Learning to Make a Fire

Day One: Margaret Atwood once wrote: "We are learning to make a fire." Create your own story, poem or piece of art around this.

On the Rocks

Day 2 IconDay Two: Think of the most dangerous situation you can face. Have you ever been in such serious danger? What is the greatest danger that you have experienced? Think or write briefly about your experiences (or lack of experiences!) with danger.

Write a story, poem or create an artwork where the characters face a great danger
or
where characters reflect on their reaction to a great danger.

Snow Day

Day 3 IconDay Three: In two or three sentences, write about the happiest moment you've experienced in the past two days.

Create a story, poem, or artwork based on the circumstances, experiences, or feelings associated with that moment.

"A Poem for My Father" and "Creator"

Day 4 IconDay Four: What is a role model to you? Do role models require certain qualities for you? How should people relate to their role models?

Write a story, poem or create an artwork based on characters who are role models for their people.

This is a rather strange project: It is an illuminated page that Pengolodh started, messed up, and changed to something completely different. Visitors on dial-up should be aware that there is a rather large image.

The List

Day 5 IconDay Five: Consider something that you regret: something that you did and wish you could undo, something you didn't do and wish that you had. Think or write briefly about what you would do if you had a second chance and how you think your life might be different without that regret.

If your character would have a chance to start anew and with a clean slate, what would he or she do with such a chance? Write a story, poem or create an artwork where this is offered to them or how they execute such a chance.

This story doesn't exactly fit the prompt. But it begged to be written, so I complied.

Song of Creation Denied and Thwarted

Day 6 IconDay Six: "Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable."
-Leonard Bernstein, American composer

Write a story, poem or create an artwork where this quote is validated.

Please be forewarned that this vignette includes a brief mention of miscarriage. If you are sensitive to such subjects, please use care.

This story is deeply informed by the short story The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Look

Day 7 IconDay Seven: Imagine this! You are walking in the woods and sudden a tree whispers to you ...

What does it say? What is your reaction?

Capture this moment in a story, poem or piece of art.

This story is set shortly after Stars of the Lesser, although one need not be familiar with "Stars" in order to read this. Curufin and Maedhros are visiting Nevrast to meet with Turgon and have brought Celebrimbor, who is close in age to--though a bit older than--Pengolodh.

Truth

Day 8 IconBeauty is in the eye of the beholder. Is it? And ugliness? Is it also relative? Write a story, poem or create an artwork where the contrast beauty/ugliness plays a central role.

The Mountains and the Sea

Day 9 IconThink of a person that you admire. The person can be someone from history, from fiction, or someone that you know--anyone!

Write down three to five adjectives that describe why you find that person admirable.

Now write the opposites of those three to five adjectives.

Write or draw something from the point-of-view of a character who displays some or all of the "negative" adjectives on your second list.

I chose as my three positive traits honesty, empathy, and selflessness. For their foils, I chose dishonesty, indifference, and greed.

Comments

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I really, really like Celebrimbor in this one, but I am not sure I like Pengolodh at all or have an ounce of sympathy for him. I am afraid I am bringing too much of myself and my own prejudices to the story and not able to place myself in Pengolodh's head. But I think I am supposed to feel his pain and fear. It certainly held my attention.

Pengolodh is a difficult character for me because, when faced with that old Noldorin dilemma--obedience! no! rebellion!--he pretty much always chooses the opposite of what I would choose. :) I hope to write many more vignettes with him and Celebrimbor; being as they are close in age (in Felakverse) and come from basically opposing philosophies, it seems too good a chance to pass up. My sympathies, of course, lie more with Celebrimbor, but part of my reason for writing this series is to write someone very different from me.

I didn\'t intend one or the other to come across as sympathetic, although I hope I did at least hint at Pengolodh\'s subtle longing to actually learn what Celebrimbor would tell him. This and \"Stars of the Lesser\" (which precedes this one) are really the point where he begins to question things. Of course, we know what road he chooses in the end, but I at least plan to enjoy the journey, if not the destination. :)

As you very well know by now, any mention of the Fëanorians in a Dawn Felagund story gets me excited.  (OK, maybe not just in a Dawn Felagund fic.) 

Kidding aside, I really liked the lines you wrote for Tyelpo here.  Both he and Pengolodh were young but they already have this "invisible boundary" in mimicry of the adults's.  It makes me think that they did talk many times after this and that some may have found their way into Pengolodh's lore.

Yes, I think you embody the term \"Feanatic\"! :D

And, once again, you\'re spot-on as to what I\'m hoping to do with these stories! :) The mystery, to me, has always been: how did Pengolodh know about things that happened before he was born or, later, outside of Gondolin? *Especially* among the Feanorians (because, presumably, he would have heard news and tales of Fingolfin and Fingon\'s people): how did he learn what he did of them? I thought that connecting him with Celebrimbor (besides being fun for me and good for both of them) was a lot better than the alternative of writing his histories based solely on hearsay or, worse, invention.

Thanks again for the review, Jenny! :D

This is my absolute favorite in this series so far. I suppose you might think my reasons are shallow. Celebrimbor simply appeals to me so much here. He seems so principled and attractive, even to your young protagonist. I wondered when I read it, if any of Tolkien’s notes on Losgar are so negative toward Maedhros as the ones in the book Celebrimbor is perusing. I didn’t remember that, but I don’t have time to do the research on it this weekend. One could easily imagine, however, that there would have been those among Turgon's followers who told the story in its darkest form--otherwise why found Gondolin? (Never mind, that's a whole other argument; there are probably at least a dozen scenarios written by good writers, which defend that tactic.) In this story, I liked Celebrimbor’s ability to admire the work of art, despite the lack of truth in the history, and to be able to separate the two while noting that he considers it a betrayal to use one’s gifts in the service of a lie.

Beautifully described and set up. Loved the hand activity and their worrying about how to handle the book. The thing about the shoes killed me also! Adored that.

Thank you so much, Oshun! And you\'re no shallower than I, who cannot keep Feanorians from her story no matter what she tries. ;) I don\'t think JRRT had any negative notes on Maedhros at Losgar; afaIk, he always stood aside and was always one of the more sympathetic Feanorians. (I think, in BoLT, he may have been a bit of a jerk, but BoLT barely even counts! Or I could be misremembering completely!) Since JRRT seems to have settled on Pengolodh as the primary author of the histories of the First Age, I figure that Sailuheru\'s book got lost in the fall of Gondolin ... or more likely influenced Pengolodh, tempered by what he learned of Celebrimbor. I have *never* been able to believe that Turgon or his followers would have been particularly inclined to give impartial treatment to the Feanorians in their histories. The question for me, then, is how Pengolodh came to write the stories as he did, which is how Celebrimbor ended up involved. :)

On the shoes ... Celebrimbor has recurring clothing problems in my stories about him! :D Thanks again for reading and reviewing!

One would think that the job of Elvish historians should have been easier or at least, less controversial: they don't forget and they can always try to find witnesses to events, even hundreds of years later. As this story shows this is not the case since the past  is still a tool to justify the present. The last lines of the story strongly  reminded me of the refrain of a song by a Spanish poet and singer that goes "Nunca es triste la verdad, lo que no tiene es remedio" (roughly: truth is never sad only it can't be changed). Will Pengolodh learn?

As always, teenCelebrimbor is a delight, full of telling details like the tunic that's too big for him and the soaked boots and the emotions that he can hardly control.

Good points about the role of history and historians to people who live forever ... but also the fact that they remain *human* and wont to see things how they want to see them. :) Somewhere in the HoMe, it is said that the Elves in Aman didn\'t use books because they possess a perfect memory. I\'ve always doubted that point for a lot of reasons, not least of all because they\'re still human, and I find it very hard to belief that \"perfect memory\" means \"without bias or desire to see the truth one wants to see.\" And I agree with you that the past--especially captured in books--would have been a tool to justify the present. I think Turgon represents one of the best examples of this. (Thingol too.)

As for whether Pengolodh learns ...? I\'m not sure. I think the Silm proves that he doesn\'t learn entirely, but maybe a little bit. I hope. :)

Celebrimbor is such fun to write! However, I\'m afraid he\'s stealing the show! *stern look at Feanor, who answers with a smirk* Muses! ;)

Thanks for reading and reviewing, Angelica! :)

Oh this is just... yes I read it despite the warnings, but the last paragraph says so much, so immensely much.

Especially this bit:

There was an emotion in the song, but it was an emotion for which no word had ever been uttered, an emotion known only to those whose imaginations reeled and blood surged and felt that they would burst but for an act of creation; it was the emotion of that creation denied and thwarted. 

And later she might understand that even that is part of the art of creation and Eru's music.

 Even though Pengholodh perhaps never was able to look at his mother as his mother (more as a teacher, an outsider well it feels like that to me), I do hope he understands her a tad better. Perfectionism has failed, and the guilt will eat at her and then even that bloody harp is not cooperating. Even though a lot is not being said about the loss by his dad (I get the impression that they are all an introverted bunch), his pain is immensely tangible. Ah and the healer, he might have studied it, but who is he to speak like that if he never experienced such a thing.

Dawn, you treated this topic with in a gentle manner, it speaks to the heart and also for me, I need a tissue.

 

Thank you for your kind words about this vignette, Rhapsy. :) I absolutely agree with you about his mother: She is not much of a mother to him. Nor is his father much of a father ... not in the sense that Nerdanel and Feanor (for example) were parents to their children and put their children above their work ... at least, until the Silmarils. I get the feeling from Pengolodh that he is *part* of their work almost, and it is hard for them to see him beyond that. They are also all very introverted, and I don\'t think they\'re likely to share much in the way of emotions. All of this comes together (in my version of events anyway) to create a character who understands the world chiefly through history and story, who cannot touch the emotions that underlie those stories/histories within himself yet who longs for something and so is open to influence, despite his moral/ethical obligation toward truth ... here, Celebrimbor; later, Turgon (and others).

Thanks again, Rhapsy, for reading and reviewing. :)

Oh I love your take on this prompt! I can so see the young lad sitting there, looking up for a bit and then figuring out where that voice did come from.

What a mixture of how he's brought up, his own rebellion/teenager behaviour, struggle between what he as a loremaster should do and what they all expect of a loremaster (I had to think of our discussion about the press, how they should have reported it all, but did not) in Nevrast (there is one truth and it ain't the Fëanorian one). Pengholodh even fights it that much that he doesn't pick up on Celebrimbor's first revelation regarding his uncle, the not mentioning of his own father shows how much Celebrimbor wants to make amends to those who suffered from the burning at Losgar.

 

Thanks again, Rhapsy! :D Yes, I\'d say our discussion on the media\'s responsibilities to report the unpleasant truth is very apt (and there is probably a bit of me coming through in this!) And, actually, I think it\'s a tough question. If one believes (as Turgon and many of his people doubtlessly do) that one side represents Evil ... is it morally sound to show Evil truthfully if it makes them sympathetic? And it might endear one\'s people to them, to those peoples\' detriment? Or to be flexible with the truth for a good cause? I have my answer on this subject (though I know it\'s not always easy to be particularly convinced that I\'m correct ... :^/), but it is still a legitimate question, I think. And one which Pengolodh will wrangle with for his life.

And I\'m glad you picked up on Celebrimbor\'s eagerness to move past the \"sins of the fathers,\" so to speak. I think that\'s true of both boys, although Pengolodh is less willing to reach out ... but both desire the healing of their people, certainly.

Thanks so much for reading and reviewing, Rhapsy! *hugs*

I would love to see it too! :D We were talking on another Tolkien list about how, sometimes, it would almost be more fun to see the wondrous objects and art that our characters create than to meet the characters themselves. (Because Feanor and I? So would not get along in real life! :D)

Thank you for reading and reviewing, and especially for your kind words. :)

Haha, Dawn!  If there's one thing that ties all children together, it's the love of snowdays.  Sindar, Noldor of all factions, Dwarves, Men, Orcs, nothing beats waking up to find school's canceled.

Nice to see a Pengolodh story too.  And nice touch with the "Valinorean" lamp - helps show how P came by his biases.  I like the idea that he was born in Nevrast rather than Aman - makes a lot of sense!

I live in northern Maryland, probably one of the best places for snow days in the world! Just far enough north that we get snow every year; not far enough north that it is worth investing in the infrastructure to ensure that life doesn't shut down when we get more than a few inches. :)

Pengolodh's birth in Nevrast isn't my idea actually--it is JRRT's, from "Quendi and Eldar." But it situates him in a unique position to have missed firsthand experience of a lot of the history of the First Age and to have some pretty significant biases.

Thanks for reading and commenting! :)