Fëanor's Autobiography by belegur

The primary task of our existence must be invention.

I know that many of you would like me to address this issue in the broadest possible sense, including in that term 'invention' also the multitude of what I call 'word programs', that is, all manners of stories and poems. However, I cannot do that with a clear conscience. The distinction is easily noticeable between the mechanical and the linguistic, one having a real effect on our immediate environment, and the other having an imaginary effect.

However, as you all well know, in my youth I had myself a strong passion for words and I never missed a chance to show off my memory, quoting many an author on more than a few languages. I also tried to compose my own lyrics but came to the conclusion that to write good poems one must spend more of his time on practicing writing and observation than that occupation deserves. Coming to that conclusion is, I think, what separates those who could, possibly, write well and those who will accomplish nothing, as writing is to them a mere fancy. And realizing that writing is, in the bottom line, a futility, especially if it is good, must be a burden and I can only imagine that a somewhat deluded person could except that conclusion and strive on. However, as an anonymous poet said:

Made of iron is he,

who still loves what others leave.

Even though, I must say I have not regretted my decision since.

But let us return to more cheerful matters.

From the time I have taken invention as my primary occupation, my life has been one of protracted ecstasy. I have felt that finally all my forces were working in harmony and to a lovable end. This period which lasts, I can with certainty say, from that moment till now, I can only describe as blissful. However, I am saddened as I suspect that many in the years to come will not have the resolution or the clarity of purpose that I had in the making of my decision. It might be that they will understand the extraordinary privilege of my occupation only after it becomes to them unattainable, whether through their personal choice, their circumstances, or an easily influenced disposition of the mind. It is indeed a waste, as I suspect that the most capable poets could also be the most capable engineers, as the same precision is required, the same attention to details coupled with a simultaneous keen awareness of the purpose or the wanted effect of the poem/machine.

But, as much as our method of thinking is similar, there are profound differences – in their effect on nature (which we both, poets and engineers, are trying to subdue), poets are more comparable to men who are daydreaming about control, while engineers are successful (most of the time) to enforce that control in reality.

My mother was by all accounts a woman of rare skill and fortitude. From her I have inherited my love of inventing - being surrounded at all times in my childhood with her works. Not only was she an excellent weaver of tales, but also shoved great ability in making some of the home appliances the Noldor even now use, with almost no adjustment to her original designs.

My Father therefore, I think, loved me with a double love – quantitatively as well as qualitatively - not only did the amount of that love try to compensate the lack of one parent, but some of his love has also been adressed to my mother in me, in the purest possible meaning. However, because of this he was for a long time insistent I should become a writer, and took my interest in engineering as of no particular significance. The thought I should write for the rest of my life oppressed me, and in my seventeenth year I fell ill. The severity of this illness was such that they all almost gave up on me – remembering, without a doubt, the strange illness that befell my mother and which was surprisingly similar to my state at that particular moment.

I could barely move and stayed in bed for nine months. In one instance, when my father stood pale and almost desperate at what he undoubtedly thought would be my death bed, he said something in the feeble attempt to cheer me up. To this I said that maybe if he would let me become an engineer, I would feel better. He then solemnly promised to me that I will study engineering from the very best minds engineering has so far produced.

After that it was as if a veil had been lifted, and I gradually felt strong enough to stand and even take a walk outside. My father wanted me to spend the following year (my eighteenth year) in nature so that I regain my strength in full before I begin my official studies. I took his proposal seriously and roamed the mountains for days with no more than a sleeping bag and a bundle of books. Nature often inspired me, especially the haughty coldness of the peaks near my home, but thoughts and plans I concocted in that time proved almost always delusional. I would get a clear vision of my invention, but the details of construction still evaded me. I made reality only a relatively small number of such visions during my lifetime – and that is not necessarily because I couldn't construct them, but because I always had too many of them together in clusters, one after another as if in a chain. It was almost as if the thought of them alone was somehow fulfilling their purpose - that I have actually bothered to construct them was only a bonus.

I was determined to apply myself to the fullest of my possibilities at university, and soon I was getting out of bed at 3 in the morning and worked until 11 at night. However, only a small portion of that time was reserved to strictly school work. I had a bit of an early start, being already fascinated for years by the concepts the professors now only introduced to us. Also, that which I knew, I've already thought through vigorously. With only such “mental work” (construction in the mind) and little practical experimentation, I came, in some things, to precisely opposite conclusions than some, at that time, respected scientists. Later I affirmed my doubts by actual construction and implementation. One of those misconceptions was that we couldn't, with our technology being where it was at that time, replicate artificially the structure of diamonds. I have succeed in creating such conditions and even amplified the refraction rate so many times that my diamonds could be used as energy amplifiers and to electrify whole households with only a little light. However, those first crystals only amplified – they couldn't store energy. My greatest work, the Silmarills, could do even that. A comparison with texts comes into mind – it seems to me that literary texts of high quality amplify the already existent in the world, while texts of the highest quality exist themselves as beings. The Silmarills were beings. I constructed them with a semi-formation damage – the light that came in stayed in forever. The energy potential of a single Silmarill was immeasurable – it could power the whole world indefinitely.

The reader probably smiles now, but it would work. That we will make use of a Silmarill only now, when the Sun had already died, is in part my fault. That I was so easily taken back by that astute business man and our Enemy who out of fanaticism tried tirelessly what he could have avoided with a little of “blasphemous” calculation, is my gravest mistake in life. The Silmarills' real glory would have been to make the world live on only a little of Sun's power, as the world had always lived fully on only a little greatness of a few.

Chapter End Notes

The word text has its origins in Quintilian's book on speeches, with the statement that "after you have chosen your words, they must be weaved together into a fine and delicate fabric", with the Latin for fabric being textum.

The "astute businessman" has here the dual identity of Morgoth/T.A. Edison.