Indestructible - Part II
Indestructible - Part II
”May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”
So says Galadriel of her gift to Frodo, upon the Fellowship's departure from Lorien. (No, I haven't forgotten which book series I'm meant to be writing about. Humor me for a moment.) The beautiful and wise elf queen gives each member of the party a token upon parting, something meant to aid them and remember the fading Lorien to them as they continue their quest. Or rather, in their help to Frodo on his quest. His quest to save them all.
She saved the final gift for the Ring-Bearer himself - surely the most important gift of the lot, if any was. For Frodo bore the greatest burden and faced the greatest tests of them all, in a quest that, in her words, stood even then upon the edge of a knife. And recall that, in extremis at the last moment, Frodo failed.
People forget that. That Frodo failed at the last, most important moment. It was only his own earlier mercy - at a moment when it did not seem so very important as it would later prove to be, to a being that did not even fully comprehend it, much less return it - that ultimately saved him and everyone else. (Tolkien really did see far better what to do with this sort of thing than JKR, whatever the flaws of the book and the man.)
Galadriel herself knew first-hand the power and temptation, and so the burden, of the Ring, having only just recently herself passed the test it posed, when Frodo offered it to her freely. She knew, perhaps better than anyone else possibly could, the nature and gravity of the immense peril Frodo would be facing. Both physical peril and moral, spiritual, peril, and grave indeed - and Frodo, for all his courage and goodness of heart, could not see, could have never seen, the task through with only his own strength. (Bless you, dear Samwise Gamgee.) Yet what was the nature of her gift to him?
Nothing more than a phial of clear water, in which the light of a star had been caught while it played in her fountain.
Or, more precisely, the light of Eärendil’s star - that is, the light of the Two Trees of Valinor of old, caught in a Silmaril to be carried forward through the ages by Eärendil in his ship, a beacon of light from the blessed realm to those still caught in the tree-tangled thickets of Middle-Earth, as Tolkien's mythology has it.
I won't make this essay longer by going into detail about Eärendil the half-elven and the nitty-gritty of Middle-Earth mythology. But reading the wiki entry on his story if you care to might be illuminating.
I'll restrict myself to pointing out that it is Galadriel's phial that does indeed safeguard Frodo in the darkest moments of his approach to Mordor - strengthening his resolve and helping him fight off the power of the Ring when he touches it, driving away the monstrous and devouring ancient spider Shelob, helping him past the Watchers of Cirith Ungol. But even its power is not quite enough at the very heart of Sauron's realm, when Sam tries to use the light when he and Frodo enter the Crack of Doom; even Eärendil's light fails to be strong enough to pierce the very heart of that darkness.
At that point, the only thing that can, and does, make it through to save them is Frodo's own mercy, in hidden and seemingly contemptible form in the personage of Gollum, who - by virtue merely of living still, being still now the same tortured and Ring-obsessed creature he was when Frodo (and Bilbo before him) spared him, nothing more - transfers that earlier act of mercy for another into an unexpected salvation for Frodo and Sam themselves, and thereby for everyone.
No overt creature of light, nothing clear and openly shining, could have followed Sam and Frodo through the heart of Mordor and survived long enough to be there at the moment they most needed aid. A light would have been seen; a declared friend would have tried too soon to take the burden from them, a morally-warping burden that nobody could bear indefinitely. It is a testament to Sam's strength of character that he bore it as long as he did for Frodo, and to his instinctive understanding of what is needed that when he knew he could not carry the Ring itself safely any longer, he chose, neither to flee nor to give in to the Ring’s temptation, but to bear Frodo along instead. However little he understood Frodo’s act of mercy, he understood, loved, and trusted Frodo. Which is what got them to the rift, and to the final point of Frodo’s own struggle.
But another friend would not have made it with them.
Nor, however, would a thoroughly selfish creature. Someone with no inkling of human connection or restraint in the face of the memory of mercy would not have followed them so long without merely attacking them for the Ring long before they reached the final pass.
It was Gollum’s inward struggle that preserved them. Unknown to all of them, even - especially - Gollum himself, until the final moment itself. (And poor Gollum never did understand.)
This is one of those things that Tolkien grasped better than JKR, and so was able to put to use in LotR more consciously and effectively than JKR did in Harry Potter: sometimes you can’t look to the light for help. Sometimes the only way to save anything is go through the heart of the darkness, because only there will the help you need be able to come forth, unlooked for, in a guise you do not expect, in a form you could not predict and would not ever recognize until it reveals itself at the moment of aid itself. Aid whose source and nature you can only understand afterward, upon reflection.
If you care to so reflect and understand, of course.
Grace, if you want a simple word, though there are many you could use.
*
From another angle: it’s not simply the final result of the struggle - any struggle - between the pull to evil, or selfishness, or what have you, and that towards goodness, selflessness, etc. that matters. The fact and nature of the struggle itself matter too. Because this isn’t - fantasy wars between armies of Light and Darkness notwithstanding - a struggle that gets won once and forever after, a stronghold taken, a weapon destroyed. That’s just a metaphor. A staging ground.
The real struggle is ever ongoing, and as Solzhenitsyn recognized in The Gulag Archipelago, occurs not outwardly but inwardly, for everyone:
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
In his view, even if you want to you can’t finish the battle off for ever, yourself: even in the most corrupted hearts, he writes, some sliver of capacity for something better remains, and even in the most selfless and good, a corner of hate and rage and capacity for evil. It’s not cutting out the evil, in the end, that determines the course of the struggle. It’s recognizing it and keeping it in check, choosing again and again to act from the better part of one’s nature and so to strengthen it, without losing awareness that one is also still capable of acting from the worse. If one chooses to allow oneself to.
*
”It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Show, he said. Not determine. Show. An unintentionally revealing choice of words, as I am far from the first to point out.
Albus Dumbledore fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the struggle, and so the nature of his own failings.
He thought he had understood the problem, understood his error, after the death of Ariana, and so he turned away from the outward forms that embodied that error to him, while remaining unseeing of its persistence in his heart and his actions ever after. He thought he had won the struggle, at least in essence. And so every time he was confronted again with a renewal of his error, he struggled to understand what was happening and what to do. To understand his own fault, and how to correct it, when he even recognized that the fault was his to begin with. Which was not all that often, given how fundamentally he misunderstood the struggle itself both from the beginning and every time he faced it anew.
Severus Snape did not so misunderstand.
"The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible. Your defences must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the Arts you seek to undo."
Forget the chaotic nonsense about dark magic in these books for a moment. Forget about trying to piece it all together in some sort of logical fashion regarding the nature of spells and what have you. The difference between the Cruciatus and Scourgify, when both are equally useful for torturing your enemies, or that between Confundus and Imperius, between a jinx and a curse, and so on.
That’s not what Severus is ultimately talking about here, at root. Whatever its applicability to the theory of magic may be.
This is a moral lesson, delivered to his students in the way that was most available to him, by a man in the midst of a profound spiritual struggle that he has recognized for what it is.
And it went right over Harry’s head, completely.
Did it go so completely over Draco’s, I wonder? We’ll come back to that question another time.
For now, consider this passage in the light of what Severus has been and done, what he’s tried to do and be, and what he’s lately been asked - and soon will be asked further - to be and do. Remember that he is a master of mental magics who has successfully deceived the wizarding world’s greatest legilimens, repeatedly and most probably at times under torture. And remember that as a spy since before the books opened, his truth and his semblance (as other have noted) have always been to some degree at odds.
But that he has, unshakeably, demonstrated a commitment to serving, protecting, and saving others when he can, at cost to himself and in the name of love. And that he did so in secret, without external glory.
Demanded this, in fact.
”Never tell!”
Well. I suppose at least we can’t accuse Albus Dumbledore of telling, now can we? That’s one promise he kept.
*
I don’t like - I really don’t like - the notion of Albus Dumbledore as Severus’ moral guide or mentor whatsoever, for all that Severus himself seems to have regarded him so for a time. I don’t think he had nearly the requisite moral wisdom, courage, or honesty to be so in truth, or at least only in the rarest and most surprising brief moments and ways, and never in the way he regarded himself as being, or would have if he ever did consciously see himself as such to Severus (rather than, say, as a man making good use of a flawed tool). And he was shamelessly manipulative of and emotionally abusive to the man, whatever his vision or intent.
(And I do mean shameless. “Poor Severus.” The utter, appalling, self-centered gall of the man!)
But.
I remind myself here of Gollum, and of the fact that the help we need does sometimes appear - especially when we are in the depths of the dark night of the soul and old guideposts have given way - in surprising forms. We but need to allow ourselves to accept it, and turn, however unseeing, however uncomprehending, toward it.
Gollum reminds us that the agents of grace need not themselves be spiritually high, or fully aware of what they truly do.
Only willing, in whatever dim way they can, even if just for a moment, to honor whatever shred of moral feeling or connection they can recognize.
As Gollum did long enough to follow the hobbits to the rift, rather than attacking them at once, whenever they paused for rest.
As Albus did - even in the very midst of setting up his long final betrayal of Severus, indeed at the very moment he laid the cornerstone of it - during that post-Halloween conversation. In recognizing that the deepest core of Severus’ being, the best handle on him, as it were, to use - what would best “work,” in terri’s word - was his inclination to love and to protect and heal. Regardless of the prospect of reciprocation, and regardless of the cost to himself. Selfless responsibility and care for another, unwanted but accepted, in recognition of and in amends for that previous wrongdoing he was at that moment so torturously aware of.
And in offering that good vision of himself, that possibility, back to Severus. As an alternative to death, in all its forms.
However false Albus’ ultimate intent.
And however weak Albus’ own understanding of and willingness to face that vision himself.
It is entirely to Severus’ own credit, not Albus’, that Severus took that vision of a man and molded himself faithfully into it.
But Albus did give it to him to begin with, however minimally Albus himself consciously credited its later reality, and however much Albus refused to reflect upon it for himself.
I’ll give Albus that. The bastard.
It is a reflection of the paradox and aching difficulty of Severus’ life - and a reflection of the depths of Albus Dumbledore’s callous iniquity - that the clearest moment of transforming grace that he was offered, and that he courageously accepted, came at the moment of one the greatest betrayals he ever experienced. Indeed, that its very offering was the act of betrayal itself.
The implied promise that he could be a good man, if he set himself to the work of it. And trusted Albus Dumbledore.
He did. Both things, to the best of his ability, given the circumstances. In service to the hope of that vision. Faithfully.
And fifteen years later Albus Dumbledore, as faithless then as he ever was, snatched the very foundation of that vision away. And told him it was for the greater good, even. Mocked him and condescended to him, for caring, while expecting him still to obey.
I’d have had a look of hatred and rage on my face too, on that tower a little while later. Sometimes I do, most sincerely, hate Albus Dumbledore. But Severus is a better person than I am.
He only killed the man, like he'd asked.
I’d have burned the damn portrait, too.
”May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”
So says Galadriel of her gift to Frodo, upon the Fellowship's departure from Lorien. (No, I haven't forgotten which book series I'm meant to be writing about. Humor me for a moment.) The beautiful and wise elf queen gives each member of the party a token upon parting, something meant to aid them and remember the fading Lorien to them as they continue their quest. Or rather, in their help to Frodo on his quest. His quest to save them all.
She saved the final gift for the Ring-Bearer himself - surely the most important gift of the lot, if any was. For Frodo bore the greatest burden and faced the greatest tests of them all, in a quest that, in her words, stood even then upon the edge of a knife. And recall that, in extremis at the last moment, Frodo failed.
People forget that. That Frodo failed at the last, most important moment. It was only his own earlier mercy - at a moment when it did not seem so very important as it would later prove to be, to a being that did not even fully comprehend it, much less return it - that ultimately saved him and everyone else. (Tolkien really did see far better what to do with this sort of thing than JKR, whatever the flaws of the book and the man.)
Galadriel herself knew first-hand the power and temptation, and so the burden, of the Ring, having only just recently herself passed the test it posed, when Frodo offered it to her freely. She knew, perhaps better than anyone else possibly could, the nature and gravity of the immense peril Frodo would be facing. Both physical peril and moral, spiritual, peril, and grave indeed - and Frodo, for all his courage and goodness of heart, could not see, could have never seen, the task through with only his own strength. (Bless you, dear Samwise Gamgee.) Yet what was the nature of her gift to him?
Nothing more than a phial of clear water, in which the light of a star had been caught while it played in her fountain.
Or, more precisely, the light of Eärendil’s star - that is, the light of the Two Trees of Valinor of old, caught in a Silmaril to be carried forward through the ages by Eärendil in his ship, a beacon of light from the blessed realm to those still caught in the tree-tangled thickets of Middle-Earth, as Tolkien's mythology has it.
I won't make this essay longer by going into detail about Eärendil the half-elven and the nitty-gritty of Middle-Earth mythology. But reading the wiki entry on his story if you care to might be illuminating.
I'll restrict myself to pointing out that it is Galadriel's phial that does indeed safeguard Frodo in the darkest moments of his approach to Mordor - strengthening his resolve and helping him fight off the power of the Ring when he touches it, driving away the monstrous and devouring ancient spider Shelob, helping him past the Watchers of Cirith Ungol. But even its power is not quite enough at the very heart of Sauron's realm, when Sam tries to use the light when he and Frodo enter the Crack of Doom; even Eärendil's light fails to be strong enough to pierce the very heart of that darkness.
At that point, the only thing that can, and does, make it through to save them is Frodo's own mercy, in hidden and seemingly contemptible form in the personage of Gollum, who - by virtue merely of living still, being still now the same tortured and Ring-obsessed creature he was when Frodo (and Bilbo before him) spared him, nothing more - transfers that earlier act of mercy for another into an unexpected salvation for Frodo and Sam themselves, and thereby for everyone.
No overt creature of light, nothing clear and openly shining, could have followed Sam and Frodo through the heart of Mordor and survived long enough to be there at the moment they most needed aid. A light would have been seen; a declared friend would have tried too soon to take the burden from them, a morally-warping burden that nobody could bear indefinitely. It is a testament to Sam's strength of character that he bore it as long as he did for Frodo, and to his instinctive understanding of what is needed that when he knew he could not carry the Ring itself safely any longer, he chose, neither to flee nor to give in to the Ring’s temptation, but to bear Frodo along instead. However little he understood Frodo’s act of mercy, he understood, loved, and trusted Frodo. Which is what got them to the rift, and to the final point of Frodo’s own struggle.
But another friend would not have made it with them.
Nor, however, would a thoroughly selfish creature. Someone with no inkling of human connection or restraint in the face of the memory of mercy would not have followed them so long without merely attacking them for the Ring long before they reached the final pass.
It was Gollum’s inward struggle that preserved them. Unknown to all of them, even - especially - Gollum himself, until the final moment itself. (And poor Gollum never did understand.)
This is one of those things that Tolkien grasped better than JKR, and so was able to put to use in LotR more consciously and effectively than JKR did in Harry Potter: sometimes you can’t look to the light for help. Sometimes the only way to save anything is go through the heart of the darkness, because only there will the help you need be able to come forth, unlooked for, in a guise you do not expect, in a form you could not predict and would not ever recognize until it reveals itself at the moment of aid itself. Aid whose source and nature you can only understand afterward, upon reflection.
If you care to so reflect and understand, of course.
Grace, if you want a simple word, though there are many you could use.
*
From another angle: it’s not simply the final result of the struggle - any struggle - between the pull to evil, or selfishness, or what have you, and that towards goodness, selflessness, etc. that matters. The fact and nature of the struggle itself matter too. Because this isn’t - fantasy wars between armies of Light and Darkness notwithstanding - a struggle that gets won once and forever after, a stronghold taken, a weapon destroyed. That’s just a metaphor. A staging ground.
The real struggle is ever ongoing, and as Solzhenitsyn recognized in The Gulag Archipelago, occurs not outwardly but inwardly, for everyone:
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
In his view, even if you want to you can’t finish the battle off for ever, yourself: even in the most corrupted hearts, he writes, some sliver of capacity for something better remains, and even in the most selfless and good, a corner of hate and rage and capacity for evil. It’s not cutting out the evil, in the end, that determines the course of the struggle. It’s recognizing it and keeping it in check, choosing again and again to act from the better part of one’s nature and so to strengthen it, without losing awareness that one is also still capable of acting from the worse. If one chooses to allow oneself to.
*
”It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Show, he said. Not determine. Show. An unintentionally revealing choice of words, as I am far from the first to point out.
Albus Dumbledore fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the struggle, and so the nature of his own failings.
He thought he had understood the problem, understood his error, after the death of Ariana, and so he turned away from the outward forms that embodied that error to him, while remaining unseeing of its persistence in his heart and his actions ever after. He thought he had won the struggle, at least in essence. And so every time he was confronted again with a renewal of his error, he struggled to understand what was happening and what to do. To understand his own fault, and how to correct it, when he even recognized that the fault was his to begin with. Which was not all that often, given how fundamentally he misunderstood the struggle itself both from the beginning and every time he faced it anew.
Severus Snape did not so misunderstand.
"The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible. Your defences must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the Arts you seek to undo."
Forget the chaotic nonsense about dark magic in these books for a moment. Forget about trying to piece it all together in some sort of logical fashion regarding the nature of spells and what have you. The difference between the Cruciatus and Scourgify, when both are equally useful for torturing your enemies, or that between Confundus and Imperius, between a jinx and a curse, and so on.
That’s not what Severus is ultimately talking about here, at root. Whatever its applicability to the theory of magic may be.
This is a moral lesson, delivered to his students in the way that was most available to him, by a man in the midst of a profound spiritual struggle that he has recognized for what it is.
And it went right over Harry’s head, completely.
Did it go so completely over Draco’s, I wonder? We’ll come back to that question another time.
For now, consider this passage in the light of what Severus has been and done, what he’s tried to do and be, and what he’s lately been asked - and soon will be asked further - to be and do. Remember that he is a master of mental magics who has successfully deceived the wizarding world’s greatest legilimens, repeatedly and most probably at times under torture. And remember that as a spy since before the books opened, his truth and his semblance (as other have noted) have always been to some degree at odds.
But that he has, unshakeably, demonstrated a commitment to serving, protecting, and saving others when he can, at cost to himself and in the name of love. And that he did so in secret, without external glory.
Demanded this, in fact.
”Never tell!”
Well. I suppose at least we can’t accuse Albus Dumbledore of telling, now can we? That’s one promise he kept.
*
I don’t like - I really don’t like - the notion of Albus Dumbledore as Severus’ moral guide or mentor whatsoever, for all that Severus himself seems to have regarded him so for a time. I don’t think he had nearly the requisite moral wisdom, courage, or honesty to be so in truth, or at least only in the rarest and most surprising brief moments and ways, and never in the way he regarded himself as being, or would have if he ever did consciously see himself as such to Severus (rather than, say, as a man making good use of a flawed tool). And he was shamelessly manipulative of and emotionally abusive to the man, whatever his vision or intent.
(And I do mean shameless. “Poor Severus.” The utter, appalling, self-centered gall of the man!)
But.
I remind myself here of Gollum, and of the fact that the help we need does sometimes appear - especially when we are in the depths of the dark night of the soul and old guideposts have given way - in surprising forms. We but need to allow ourselves to accept it, and turn, however unseeing, however uncomprehending, toward it.
Gollum reminds us that the agents of grace need not themselves be spiritually high, or fully aware of what they truly do.
Only willing, in whatever dim way they can, even if just for a moment, to honor whatever shred of moral feeling or connection they can recognize.
As Gollum did long enough to follow the hobbits to the rift, rather than attacking them at once, whenever they paused for rest.
As Albus did - even in the very midst of setting up his long final betrayal of Severus, indeed at the very moment he laid the cornerstone of it - during that post-Halloween conversation. In recognizing that the deepest core of Severus’ being, the best handle on him, as it were, to use - what would best “work,” in terri’s word - was his inclination to love and to protect and heal. Regardless of the prospect of reciprocation, and regardless of the cost to himself. Selfless responsibility and care for another, unwanted but accepted, in recognition of and in amends for that previous wrongdoing he was at that moment so torturously aware of.
And in offering that good vision of himself, that possibility, back to Severus. As an alternative to death, in all its forms.
However false Albus’ ultimate intent.
And however weak Albus’ own understanding of and willingness to face that vision himself.
It is entirely to Severus’ own credit, not Albus’, that Severus took that vision of a man and molded himself faithfully into it.
But Albus did give it to him to begin with, however minimally Albus himself consciously credited its later reality, and however much Albus refused to reflect upon it for himself.
I’ll give Albus that. The bastard.
It is a reflection of the paradox and aching difficulty of Severus’ life - and a reflection of the depths of Albus Dumbledore’s callous iniquity - that the clearest moment of transforming grace that he was offered, and that he courageously accepted, came at the moment of one the greatest betrayals he ever experienced. Indeed, that its very offering was the act of betrayal itself.
The implied promise that he could be a good man, if he set himself to the work of it. And trusted Albus Dumbledore.
He did. Both things, to the best of his ability, given the circumstances. In service to the hope of that vision. Faithfully.
And fifteen years later Albus Dumbledore, as faithless then as he ever was, snatched the very foundation of that vision away. And told him it was for the greater good, even. Mocked him and condescended to him, for caring, while expecting him still to obey.
I’d have had a look of hatred and rage on my face too, on that tower a little while later. Sometimes I do, most sincerely, hate Albus Dumbledore. But Severus is a better person than I am.
He only killed the man, like he'd asked.
I’d have burned the damn portrait, too.