To the original question: "
I respond: "Of course he could" if one wants him to be, and puts together a corresponding 'explanation.'
He can be whatever anyone decides in their opinion he may represent. (Except
Melkor high on the suds or something equally preposterous.)
I think if we read all
Tolkien himself said about
Bombadil and what he represents, we get closer to 'the truth'.
What is "the truth" ??
We don't know. Intentionally so..! Why? Tolkien said so.
Thus, Huorn has forever relegated
Tom to the Great
Halls of Speculation... forever there to remain.
This is uncomfortable for many, as the human species craves 'answers'...'finalizations'... 'no loose ends'. But Huorn has no problems with such things.
Huorn personally would 'reject' this particular idea, as from all we know from Tolkien's works, the Music has not yet "ever been sung aright." And if he's not mistaken, it is written at the end the
race of
men will also join in the singing when all is redone as it should be.
Since, therefore, the only "music" currently existing is tainted by Melkor's discord and that discord cannot be excised until all is sung aright (i.e. "made anew" or possilby "renewed") by
Eru Himself through the new song, Bombadil CANNOT represent the music sung, as (it seems) Bombadil is not 'tainted'. (unless unabashed and unrestrained silliness is a form of 'tainting'.)
Bombadil MAY represent a forshadowing of what the 'creation' will look like in future, as close as tainted music can get... (which is why he will fail in the end, though that is spoken as 'speculation' not fact)...
But he cannot represent "perfected music" Huorn fears.
Encouraging wise post... plurals & their mortal enemy, the never-ending hole of singularisation and it's appeal, rears it's hideous face here perhaps also - why "the" ... in a similar vein, when it comes to manifestations of the music? or perhaps to progress in-time what the music USED to? be? before the creation of the world,.. what it beCAME?
I see no reason why the
Ainur's? the err... original
spirits under whatshisname Anu? , music, could not have ECHOES throughout time, or in a cyclical sense inbetween re-creation as-of the start of the narrative and of alluded to end, per melkor's eventual gifts ruining the world and the Ainur abandoning it entirely?
So SHOULD the western lands also be defeated in the presumption that ME would be eventually defeated by
Morgoth/
Orcs/corrupted men, per the
elves predictions.
Having said that, of course as we know that by the end of the LOTR, Aragorn-Ellesar reunites the Numernorian lines and so not only rekindles
westernesse ppl's hope/faith in the Elven bloodlines that returned-TO ME, but to a lessor degree Elves broader potentials of persistence-against Melkor/
Sauron in terms of the inferred potential for either RESULT, in the 4th and subsequent
ages, compared to what is in the elves lore / Simarillion, meant to be predicted TRUE, of the Avari's folly /
Noldor?'s limited commitment re
Feanor's also-limited agenda.
Sooo, i guess i'm saying that although literally were we to take the Simarillion's base description of the elves limited? access to memories-of-creation, that the music was the first sort of ( I took it as anyway ) coALESCENCE of primordial materialisations or out-of-nothing only SLOWly differentiating, diversifying roles amongst each other, so say incredibly deep dynamics... stillness=cold ... creating it's counterpart warmth, which indirectly creates movement, rather than in a YET physical world, there BEING no matter, no physical earth or anything else... to be ABLE to move, anywhere, at any speed,.. nothing,.. but only-FROM stillness's inevitable MINIMUM-inevitability, can then warmth, by COMPARISON, be created,.. etc etc...
( like the Sithis 'heresy' in Elder Scrolls - that only in 'anticipation' of what can be created as a by-product of inevitable minimus,.. can LESS inevitable
realms be created, in contrast to the more inevitable, hence why Daedra exist/originate in Oblivion - ouch! a tought gig! )
... and so while at that TIME ... the music would've been that-deeply ... almost-non-existent ... and only then through a bit like chain reactions ... becoming more complicated AS it split, and diversified ...
... by contrast, by the time most of the world as we know it in all it's complications already-is BY the time we're introduced to famliar faces,
places, whatever,.. with a distributed-FORM of their music, or a DISPERSED form...
... the music is not gone, nor-over,.. but FRAGMENTED,..
or... split into myriad microscopic echoes of it's original singular form!!
whoooaaaa ... good time for a smoke ... brb ... *cough cough*
aaah yeah, perfect time to...
... continuing on...
... and-so although in a simple sense i agree, of course Bombadil cannot BE, singularLY,
the music,
he could be a kind of manifestation of a unusually LARGE re-coalescence of what in-time, is by now, usually microscopic,.. of those echoes.
i.e. what is normally distributed in the microscopic, sometimes harmoniSES ... into larger coalescenCES,..
and Bombadil might not even realize,.. that that is what he IS,..
---
or IMO, the music was a PART of what CREATED him, hence ;
1 his mortal-manifestory focus on music / use of it as a source of evocation of magic, or the WAY in which he casts it about,
2 that could explain part of why he is SEDENTRY, if a local whirlpool, so to speak, or river-bend, in-WHICH, or at-which, that coalescence can facilitate a MARCO rather than a micro manifestation of the music, or the myriad echoes or smaller continuations of it ... (unlike say, in particularly musical fey )
... then it stands to reason, that he would need things like a astral wind or something, to move around, so say, if he had one, he could've accompanied whathis name in the
Valinor ship, although where the elven creation-story ends and inferred PHYSICAL reality begins, is anyone's guess
Even
Celebrimbor in Amazon's portrayal seems to think that the sun was physically created as a result of err... whatsit... that fire? Ainur? the combination of that and
the golden tree or something?
Point is,.. if we're to assume that the elves limited-extent of knowledge is fundamentally no more reliable than anyone else's , and-so likely a MIXTURE of allegory/metaphor and hints at what if we do accept the
Valar / Aniur have allowed us to see, then not-ALL of it should be taken at face value, and so ironies like even Celebrimbor's potential for being caught up in a child's feelgood concept / story is perhaps itelsf, just a portrayal of a 'story-within-a-story' ... of which one has to see through, if wanting to try to tell the difference between what is meant to be physical and historical reality in Tolkein's universe,.. OR,.. what is meant to be a part OF ... stories-within-the-story.
Given THAT,..
whew!..
There is a LOT that should not IMO, be taken as Canon-lore as of what is actually meant to have physically happened, in reality, amongst the depths of history in Tolkein's universe.
So say i do believe that that the base creation story of the elves being created out of starlight and until guided by
Orome in reaction/alarm re Melkor,.. were at that time still only a sort of curiosity rather than thought reliable in any way / to any degree, while Yvanna was still strong / highly active, etc, and still highly concentrated powers were still directly in the hands of the Valar/Ainu, so i sort of draw the line there,.. if they do have some sort of inferred common dream, such as
Galadriel probably could confirm in her later life, what is possibly-rememberABLE, before that, would be of memories of very few beings before that, mostly? only? Valar and Ainu, not including whathisname, Anu?, himself.
So i guess i'm saying, that while some concentrate on what is meant to've been disrupted by Melkor, or slowly broke up becuase of him, in previously harmony-of-creation ... mmm ... cycles, patterns, dynamics, eternal-balances, etc...
some might also MISS, that creation-music does not have to be linear and then-end,.. if it's echoes have limitless oblivion, to go bounce-back... from-within.
whoa.... deep again. Smoke 2...
cough!..
OK, so what am i getting at,.. OK ;
well i'm trying to say that Bombadil could be a kind of by-product, which is an idea already according to the Wiki on him,..
but what i noticed was not quite what i'd of that potential,
was yeah, neither had to be singular,
nor, from a one-directional start, or end, of their music, WERE it like our music,
which ofc one has to admit, is already a 'best-word-for-it' approximation of what the elves have been gracious enough to describe of the limits of even their, deepest perceptions.
So if you think of it as only some kind of one-off, -gasm / -gism of primodial astral jizzyness all gooing together and bang! the she-universe is happy all of a sudden and gives birth to the earth in a one-off, dries it off, sends it off to school and then says ... "you'll be right mate, i'm off to have a smoke and read a glossy mag" ... and the world's just left sitting there with a look on it's face,. like ... wtf? gee thanks mum!!
Theeeeen i think i have to say niiiiioo sorry, the music is meant to represent not some astral grindly coming-together, it's meant to be describing concordance, synchronisation,.. stuff like that,.. of the only 1 or maybe a few role-fullfilling DUTIES, of the Valar/Ainu, so that whathisname... Anu or whatever it is,.. doesn't have to occupy all his mind/attention,.. whatever,.. on all the little stuff.
Delegation, basically.
As i took it, that harmony or synchro ... itself causes FRICTION, is the best word i can come up with, and Melkor is then a kind of natural by-product, of too MUCH order, too MUCH synchro,.. and thereby repetition, or homogeny, or boring, repetitive resonant-risk ( think Dune series resonance-risks ).
So while he wasn't content with beign the kooky one, smooth, fluid, chaotic, bendy, twisty, perhaps a kind of wind and water and lava, or something, elemantal,.. he LEARNT? from his experience in perceiving that resonant-risk, or repetition, despite the harmonic bliss of the dream,..
... and that created the hunger for the opposite of the more Bland pro-life / pro-harmony blissful types,
but i dunno... at that point i'm starting to think that's starting to be limits of the Elven imagination, and is already starting to get on wobbly ground there, so i dunno... it could also be things like
plants revenge!
plants don't like getting nibbled / eaten,... and that has to manifest or else builds-up sort of negative mana wise,.. negative plane wise,.. to borrow something from DnD, something like that.
I know, I know, i'm porting in things from outside LOTR / Tolkein Canon, beyond explicit descriptions,
BUT ; if Bombadil is meant to be a once-off creation,
why did he talk about
Frodo's hand, in a way that suggests he is dimensinoally slipped, or part-removed?
That raised an eyebrow when i read about an hour ago, as soon as i read it, seeing as though that i think, portrays quite clearly, that he is only PARTIALLY here, only partially manifest,
and that led me to think that perhaps he's a sort of missing-piece or surrogate,
for original paternal 1/2s ... of what Yvanna HAD no father,.. WITH,.. when she created what she did.
i.e. a kind of combination echo ... of ;
1 some (but not all) Valar/Ainu's PARTS amongst the music ... and
2 a kind of manifestation of the surrogate mmm ... the abscence of what normally would already exist of cotinuations of male-generations,.. to Yvanna's fem ... part,.. in creating what she did.
Sort of like... hmm... this is awful to say,
but the Dany De Vito chr out of Twins ;
"so i'm like ... what ... the waste-product" (sic)
sort of like that, but not as bad / not fundamentally OF-waste,..
but a kind of echo, OF ... the music ... now personified as a sort of blend of favored mortals by the remaining Valar/Ainu united against Morgoth - hence ALSO, why he is neither
elf nor
dwarf, nor human, nor
hobbit.
So to clarify,
Yvanna did not NEED a counterpart at the time,
but IN-time,
the lack OF a male counterpart,
had to be balanced with some kind of manifestation,
a DELAYED manifestation,
and THAT delayed-manifestation, of the 'missing' male counterpart,
is-what he is.
OK... 3rd smoke. yeeeeeah, that was the tweak on the idea, i wanted.
If that resonates, much of it is already in other ppl's ideas,
i just refocused it.
Whaddaya think?