tarmenel

place name. High Heaven

A term for the “true firmament” where the stars dwelled. It is a compound of tar- “high” and menel “heaven” (properly, “the heavens”).

Conceptual Development: The name ᴹQ. Tarmenel first appeared in Lord of the Rings drafts from the 1940s within Bilbo’s poem at Rivendell (TI/97). This name was retained in the published version of this poem (LotR/235) making it canonical, but its exact cosmological significance is unclear. In Tolkien’s “Unfinished Index” of The Lord of the Rings, he described Tarmenel as the “Region of the Wind” (RC/216).

In one version of Tolkien’s cosmology from the mid-50s, the Tarmenel was distinct from the Nur-menel “✱Under Heaven” (“lesser firmament”) that Varda created as a barrier over Valinor against the depredations of Melkor (MR/388). The idea of a lower heaven (and the terms Tarmenel and Nurmenel) did not survive into the published version of The Silmarillion, but that book did describe the Ilmen, region of the stars through which the Sun and Moon travelled (S/99), which seems conceptually similar to Tarmenel.

In the incomplete Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun prayer from the 1960s (translating the first two lines of Gloria in Excelsis Deo into Quenya), Tolkien used the term Tarmenel to refer to the Christian Heaven, though elsewhere he used the name Eruman for “Heaven”.

Tarmenel

high heaven

Tarmenel place-name "High Heaven" (LotR1:II ch. 1, VT44:34, in the latter source also locative tarmeneldë), Tar-menel "the true firmament", as opposed to Nur-menel (q.v.) (MR:388)

alcar mi tarmenel na erun

Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun

Tolkien’s translation of the Gloria in Excelsis Deo prayer into Quenya, composed sometime in the 1960s (VT44/31), first published in the “Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun” article in Vinyar Tengwar #44. Tolkien only translated the first two lines of the prayer. Tolkien did not provide an English translation of the prayer; following the editor of the “Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun” article, I used a modern English (King James) translation of the prayer (VT43/31).

Tolkien made three translations of the lines; the version presented here is Arden Smith’s “reconstructed” version, which is version II with corrections from the incomplete version III. Note that Arden Smith was uncertain of the order of composition of the versions, suggesting that version I might have followed II and III, but his analysis (and mine) assumes that the versions were created in the order they appeared on the page (VT44/32).

Further discussion can be found in the analysis of the individual phrases. My analysis largely follows that of the “Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun” section (VT44/31-7).

alcar mi tarmenel na erun

glory [be] to God in the highest

The first line of Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun, Tolkien’s translation of the Gloria in Excelsis Deo prayer. The first word is alcar “glory”, followed by mi Tarmenel “in the highest”, more literally “✱in High-heaven”. The fourth na word is the imperative of the verb ná- “to be”. The last word Erun “to God” is the dative form of Eru “God”.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> alcar mi Tar-menel na Eru-n = “✱glory in High-heaven be God-to”

Conceptual Development: In version I, Tolkien first wrote tarmenissen, apparently the locative plural of tarmen “?high place”, perhaps meaning “?in high places”. He revised this into an assimilated locative tarmenelde of Tarmenel.

In version II he first wrote the allative form Erunna “✱towards God” before changing to the dative form Erun “to God”, also used in version II.

In version III he only wrote the word alcar. For this reason, the phrase in this entry is derived from version II.

|  I  |II|III| |alcar| |{tarmenissen >>} tarmenelde|mi tarmenel|...| |na Erun|{Erunna >>} na Erun| |