Why Does Melkor Seek Light if He is So Bent on Perpetuating Darkness?
All villains grow “impatient of their own emptiness” – it burns hot within them – and they want to assuage it with the Light.
When reading about Melkor’s craving for the Flame Imperishable I always think of Koschei the Deathless from Russian folklore. They are so different, and yet they have the same basic craving - craving for the Light.
Melkor is bent on perpetuating Darkness, yet he seeks the Light. Why?
It is said:
He had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Ilúvatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness. Yet he found not the Fire, for it is with Ilúvatar.
Melkor craves the Secret Fire because he wants to bring into Being things of his own imagining but cannot. When you stray from the Music – the thought of Iluvatar – you cannot sub-create.
You can only mar what’s already there. Sub-creation is the province of those who are in tune with The Tune.
Melkor deems himself God and wants to create Being. But, having become the prisoner of the “imagining of his own mind,” he cannot create Being – he can only distort what’s already there.
His desire to create Being burns hot in him, but all he sees around him is Void. The emptiness of the Void makes him impatient.
Every heartless villain feels their own emptiness. They are keenly aware that all their attempts at creating Being end up creating more emptiness.
That’s why every villain wants to marry a beauty. Koschei the Deathless in Russian folklore wants to marry a beautiful simple girl. He kidnaps her and keeps her in a dungeon. In some tales, he turns her into a frog.
But all in vain - she won’t marry him. She sees his void and realizes one thing: he needs her to fill his own void. She represents a perfect Being - a perfect vessel of the Flame Imperishable that burns at the heart of the world.
Like Melkor, Koschei the Deathless seeks Life but cannot find it because it is with God.
All villains grow “impatient of their own emptiness” – it burns hot within them – and they want to assuage it with the Light. Wherever they go, they look for the Light but cannot find it because it is with Iluvatar.
Like Ungoliant, Melkor craves and hates Light at the same time.
Ungolint was ever hungry for the Light but no matter how much of it she consumed she remained famished.
In a ravine she lived, and took shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished.
She is Melkor’s mirror, and he is afraid of her. Because he is afraid of his own consuming void. Especially when he sees it face to face, incarnated in a monster.
That’s why he blames Iluvatar for “taking no thought for the Void.”
The Secret Fire is the breath of Iluvatar that makes all things alive. There’s only one way for us to get it – it is given as a gift by Iluvatar himself.
No one can get it through the back door. It’s granted freely to anyone who would tune in to The Great Music.