#Fëanor whose soul burns bright and fiery and who ends up corrupted and dead and not reembodied

[erendur]

Fëanor as a Romantic hero

Images : Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia, Cover art for an unknown edition of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil, Roger Moore as Ivanhoe in the 1958-1959 series of the same name.

I was thinking of Fëanor in terms of Romantic hero this morning - not as in, Fëanor in relation to Nerdanel, but Fëanor as a character who, as per Wikipedia's description of the Romantic hero, "rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has themselves at the centre of their own existence", whose characteristics often include "wanderlust, melancholy, misanthropy, alienation and isolation" - think Heathcliff, Faust, the protagonist of A Hero of Our Time, or Victor Frankenstein (the doctor who makes the monster and is eventually killed by his own creation).

I was thinking of Fëanor in those terms because of :

a. it fits him so well (and we can throw in Nerdanel as well as the very-much suffering partner of the Romantic hero)

b. the parallels between Fëanor and the French romantic poet Gérard de Nerval.

Nerval's most famous poem is called "El Desdichado", meaning in the context "The Dispossessed One" (it has also been translated as "The Unfortunate One", or "The Outcast"), a reference to Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe, in which the main character fights incognito in a tournament under the name "El Desdichado", in reference to the fact that he has been disinherited by his father.

And of course, Fëanor (and his heirs), are, as per Mandos' Doom, "The Dispossessed Ones" as well. "The Unfortunate One" (as in, the one disfavoured by fate) or "The Outcast" fitting quite well too.

One of the main "obsessions" of Nerval is also his dead mother. Nerval's mother had followed her husband, an army surgeon in Napoleon's armies, and died somewhere in Eastern Europe, the exact location of her tomb unknown, when Nerval was a very young child. He has no memories of her, no portraits of her, the closets he gets is a small painting of another woman "that was said to look like her". Of course Fëanor would have portraits of his mother - or wouldn't he ?- but I can see him obsessing over the lack of image or mental picture of his dead mother.

The first line of "El Desdichado goes"

"Je suis le ténébreux, le veuf, l'inconsolé", "I am the shadowed one, the widower, the unconsoled one."

Fëanor is canonically "the shadowed one" : there is a darkness in him, and that's why Galadriel refuses to be pal with him. He is not a widower, but an orphan, and his wife left him ; he is certainly "the unconsoled one", especially after the death of his father.

There is another line in the poem that mentions "the dark sun of Melencolia", a reference to Dürer's engraving of the same title, and if that engraving doesn't give you Fëanor's vibes, I don't know what does. The grumpy face, the crafting instruments, the theme of light and darkness (forget the wings ! -could be very Melkor though). Very Fëanor.

Since I was doing vibe-based associations, Dürer's Knight, Death and the Devil also makes me think of Fëanor. The one who forges weapons in secret. The one who is harassed by the devil, who wants to seduce him, corrupt him, steal his stuff, and kill his father (it really doesn't get more Romantic than that). The one who is haunted, and hunted down, by death (both parents dead - dies himself young - no body left - will never get reembodied but has to stay in Mandos until the end of times).

Fëanor "mad, bad, and dangerous to know".