Who are the
wizards?
At times people refer to the wizards as demigods and others see them as similar to archangels sent in human form.
This of course is just a way of comparing them to other such beings in the mythology of the real world. I see them similar to archangels, because my own culture had them in its mythology, not demigods like Orion or Orpheus.
They of course are NOT wizards, not in the sense of Merlin the Magician or other such wizards.
Tolkien's conventions include the fact that this entire epic has been translated from long-dead
languages.
The
elves are not elves and have nothing to do with the elves that make cookies or steal babies in Ireland or whatever. The long-lost (and ficitional) translator used the terms
elf and elves because it is a reference modern humans can at least understand. But it was not meant to be taken literally.
The Common Speech is nothing like the words used in the novel. Example:
Samwise Gamgee is an English-ifcation of the
Westron name Banazir Galpsi (or Galbasi.)
Same with "
dwarves", who actually had another name and have nothing to do with the seven dwarves who helped Snow White and Rose Red, or
the one named Rumpelstiltskin - no connection whatsoever.
Durin's folk - or whatever his real name was - could in some ways be comparable to the folktale beings that came down to us as "dwarves", and therefore that name was used.
Just as the language of
Rohan is not what you read when place names or character names are mentioned or when we hear characters speaking in the book. That is in fact Old English. The fictional translator uses the language of the Anglo-Saxons to represent the now lost tongue of that more-ancient
peoples, who, as the
bard tells us, had no letters and made no
books. So we know less about their actual language than the speech of the ancient Picts.
And wizard, well we all have ideas of what a wizard is and so the translator uses that term since it could be said the
Istari share certain characteristics with wizards of folklore and legends. When they actually are something much more exotic than mere wizards.
When it comes to what happened to the other wizards, it is most likely the author never got around to sketching them out much.
I do not find much weight in Tolkien's quick answers to fans writing him about such things, often years after he was writing the books. He is trying to appease their desire to know as much as possible about the "back story" and at times he seems to answer without thinking things through, giving them enough to satisfy the query.
For example, he famously said in just such a response that
Treebeard was not one of
the Wise, when implying the ent was mistaken when he said the
Dark Lord "made"
trolls, which is later contradicted by
Frodo, who said the Dark Lord cannot make he can only mar, even though Frodo's language in that paragraph makes it clear he is offering his opinion, saying something to the effect of "Or so I think that is the case."
Yet at no point in the novel - ever - is there another instance of a non-evil character making an utterly false statement. It just does not happen. And if Treebeard, the eldest living being in all the world is not a member of the Wise, little
hobbit Frodo isn't even in the running. Treebeard, in the novel, is held in obvious reverence as a person of great wisdom and worthy counsel by no less than
Celeborn and
Galadriel, not to mention
Gandalf of the Istari.
Tolkien, in his letter to the fan asking him to split hairs about who is right, Treebeard or Frodo, is just an author who didn't want to say "Look, Mate, I wrote the two passages seven years apart and when I went back to shore up edits I didn't notice the contradiction. I do hope you realize I made it all up out of thin air!"
It is likely he never got around to thinking about such things as what happened to the other wizards mentioned in that one, little sentence, until someone sent him such a letter asking about it.
Tolkien, at least, got a life.
But we? We millions who have loved his world and wished we could see what lies behind that locked door on the Paths of the Dead, we have thought about such things far longer than Professor Tolkien.
