Unweaving the Rainbow by pandemonium_213

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Fanwork Notes

Thanks to my LJ-droogs at the Bad Clam for feedback and in particular SWG member Moreth for the comment (see the servant of Aulë's response) that inspired me to write this.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

The student of Nienna takes issue with the servant of Aulë's study of light.

MEFA 2009: Second Place - Genres: Ficlets: General 

Major Characters: Gandalf, Saruman

Major Relationships:

Genre: Fixed-Length Ficlet

Challenges:

Rating: General

Warnings:

Chapters: 1 Word Count: 286
Posted on 11 February 2008 Updated on 11 February 2008

This fanwork is complete.

Unweaving the Rainbow

Read Unweaving the Rainbow

Unweaving the Rainbow

The fractured song of the sun’s light, parsed by hundreds of crystals, lashed the stark walls of the workshop. The servant of Nienna, still unaccustomed to the corporeal, squinted at the cacophony of hues thrown forth by suspended geometries.

Sensing his presence, the servant of Aulë turned to his peer. He smiled and beckoned.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Aulë’s man, gesturing to the fragmented light.

“Yes, the colors are lovely, but there is much to be said for the pure light of the sun.”

“That is so, but I wish to understand the light’s order from its spectrum.”

Harmonics from a remote plane entered the discomfited thought of Nienna’s servant, and he recited the words:

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow...

The servant of Aulë immediately countered:

Did ever poet image aught so fair,
Dreaming in whisp'ring groves by the hoarse brook?
Or prophet, to whose rapture heaven descends?
Ev'n now the setting sun and shifting clouds,
Seen, Greenwich, from thy lovely heights, declare
How just, how beauteous the refractive law.

“Your curiosity will be your downfall,” said Nienna’s servant. “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."

"And he who does not seek to discover the order of a thing will never comprehend it."

Aulë’s servant turned away, resuming his measurements of the white light that unraveled into vibrant tones of soprano violet to basso red. Nienna’s devotee reconsidered the uncompromising beauty of the refractive law, his foresight informing him this was only the beginning of the debate.

Chapter End Notes

The title is ripped right off of Richard Dawkins' book, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder and the quoted verses are from John Keats' Lamia (~ verse 230 and on) and A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton by James Thomson.

Readers will no doubt recognize the line "He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom" from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Leave a Comment

I'm thrilled that you noticed the underlying physics!  I'd like to imagine that the Valar and Maiar have a strong orientation toward sound, e.g., the Ainulindalë, so I was going for a combination of the wavelengths of the visual spectrum coupled to sound.

Thanks for the comments - always appreciated! 

Great stuff. That is crux of the argument. You drove me to hit the books and find that reference a few months ago by using the expression "unweaving the rainbow." (I wasn't familiar with the book, although I had read Keats's poem many years ago.) Very nicely done. I really must read Dawkins now and the Thomson poem.

Thanks so much for the comments!  I strongly suspect Tolkien was influenced by the Keats' poem when he wrote the exchange between Gandalf and Saruman.  Thomson, while not as lyrical as Keats, nonetheless extols the beauty of Newton's science and great mind.  I agree with Dawkins that Thomson's work provides a counterpoint to Keats so I applied it right back at Tolkien. :^D

Just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed this.  Professor Tolkien does have rather interesting views on science.  I tend to feel he's rather too harsh, but then I am a biologist by training and will always have a lot of sympathy for curiosity as a motive for anything not evil in result.

I also thought you might like to know that I have just started writing about Celebrimbor and part of the reason is how much I enjoyed your portrayal of him.  It got me thinking. . .

Thanks so much for reading this and the compliments!  It's great to see another scientist engaged with Tolkienian fan fic. I know there are a goodly number of us out there. :^)  JRRT certainly appreciated science in its purer forms (botany, astronomy) and used his knowledge to great effect in his works. However, there's no question he harbored a lot of ambivalence toward applied science (and scientists - he made some pretty tart remarks about our ilk) and really took issue with technology.  My take is that for the good part of any given discovery, there's an application that's potentially detrimental.  It's very difficult to parse these out since it depends on whomever is "wielding the power."  I was just thinking about gunpowder in the context of Tolkien:  Gandalf's fireworks in Hobbiton -- Good!  Saruman's explosives at Helm's Deep -- Bad!  Yet they're the same substance.  A nice bit of ambivalence of JRRT's part!

I'm thrilled to hear that you'll be writing Celebrimbor, and outrageously flattered that my work inspired you to do so, at least in part!  He's an intriguing character, and I'd love to see your interpretation of him.  Btw, "Your Dungeons Are Inadequte" was hilarious!  My dark muse was especially amused and felt it was quite accurate. ;^)

Thanks again!

Yes! I automatically took Saruman's side of the rainbow arguement when I first read LOTR at 11 - probably because I was/am a bit of a peacock/magpie and am very fond of shimmering, iridescent things in general and Saruman's robe sounded, if anything, the prettier of the two. I could also not help but feel that Gandalf's judgement seemed vaguely unfair, though I suppose I didn't think about why at the time ( much less think about Tolkien's motivations as a writer). This was beautifully written, and I'm afraid I will once again side with Saruman - as much for the pretty colours as the reasoning behind it. 

Sooo...I visited your author page to procure The Jinn per your suggestion to my query about Melamirë, and scrolling down I had to revisit this clever work, which I read quite some while back.  I always was rankled by Gandalf's comments about curiosity and colors.  Although I can kind of see where he's coming from and I'm fond of Gandalf, I'm even fonder of Saruman and his response here is delightful.  Saruman had many issues, but to me curiosity was certainly not one of them.

(I am so digressing, but I possess a hopefully amusing anecdote.  Saruman, or rather his Maiarin self, was actually the vector by which my writing invaded the Tolkienverse about four years back.  The whole bloody reason I ended up writing so much about Sauron was because it originally seemed appropriate to place Mairon in Curumo's stor,y given their association with Aulë.  Mairon developed a much stronger and more interesting persona than I intended, and was waltzing around my stories manipulating various events to his liking before I could do anyting about it.   I was therefore amused by your comment in my review of The Prisoner and the Hobbit, when you said Sauron kind of took over your earlier works.  =D)

This is really great, and I loved the quotes...

unraveled into vibrant tones of soprano violet to basso red

...and this bit. :D

Now, I may have an irrational hatred of Saruman, but I've still (reluctantly) got to admit he had a point with his rainbows. And that my darling bb Gandalf is in the wrong here.

Really, how can you truly learn how anything works without taking it apart? Unless you're taking living creatures apart without their express and unforced permission (now I've got weird scenarios unfolding in my mind), you aren't doing anything wrong, either. Also, "curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back", so there! :)

This piece is simply beautiful! As a person who studied phisics I definitely sympatize with Curumo and am simply delighted to find such ficlets since Tolkien has definitely some problems with science (and scientists). 

As for the style it is simple but it armonyzes very well with the poem and the description of Curumo's "workshop" is extremely vivid.

Congratulations again!

Thanks very much, Valentis (and my apologies for the belated reply). 

Re:  Tolkien having some problems with science & technology (and scientists) - yes, indeed.  Although JRRT certainly loved natural history and applied his knowledge of botany, astronomy, and even paleontology to good effect to create a secondary world that feels real, he looked askance at technology and the more applied aspects of science.  The entire Pandë!verse is something of a counterargument to that attitude (although I don't dismiss that technology is a double-edged sword), and "Unweaving the Rainbow" addresses the need of the scientist to understand more deeply.

Very glad to see you liked this, and that it "spoke" to you. :^)