Observing Tumblr, I conclude that Elwing & Maglor Parenting on Tumblr is in 2017 what Balrog Wings were on Usenet in ??1997. Now I’m really wondering what I missed being mostly out of Tolkien fandom in 2007. Though perhaps 2017 has rather more grown-up argument than WINGS! NO WINGS! What will it be in 2027, I wonder? Something strange, brightly coloured and weirdly complex, I hope.
The Balrog wings debate is more famous as a cause of animosity between Tolkien fans than as an actual lore question. It’s simply “known” by everyone that Balrog wing debates always end badly, to the point that many Tolkien fan communities simply disallow discussion of the question. Many lorists and bloggers refuse to answer the question directly, perhaps because it’s seen as played out, or for fear of unleashing the demons of fandom infighting again.
People have been debating Balrogs for as long as there have been Tolkien fans, but the acrimonious wing debate as we know it began in the late 1990s on the Tolkien newsgroups rec.arts.books.tolkien and alt.fan.tolkien (if none of this means anything to you, Wikipedia has a good introduction to Usenet and newsgroups). The debate, both then and in later incarnations in other online communities, was often as much about clashes between personalities as it was about the nominal subject of discussion. It is understandable, then, that many people would prefer to leave this question firmly in the past.
That said, I personally believe that the textual situation regarding Balrogs and wings is actually quite clear, and that the idea that this question belongs in the category of mysteries and genuine unknowns in Tolkien’s work (of which there are plenty) is misguided, if well-intentioned. It’s not simply the wing issue that is subject to confusion, though. To begin with, what does a Balrog look like?
Well, not like this. I’m not trying to pick on the movies here, because the general inaccuracy of artistic depictions of Balrogs goes way beyond the trilogy. Balrogs are described as demons, so it is perhaps natural that artists will incorporate stereotypical demonic attributes into their depictions of Balrogs. But let’s look at what the text itself says:
What it was could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe, yet greater; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and go before it. (FOTR, II 5)
The shadowy aura that surrounds the Balrog is crucial here. Balrogs were “cloaked in darkness, and terror went before them” (HoMe X, The Later Quenta Silmarillion), and they are able to manipulate this shadow, or darkness, that surrounds them. We see this during the main confrontation between Gandalf and the Balrog in “The Bridge of Khazad-dûm” chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring.
The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the thongs whined and cracked. Fire came from its nostrils. But Gandalf stood firm.
‘You cannot pass,’ he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. ‘I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.’
The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.
The two instances of “wings” in those three paragraph are the source of most of the debate. The standard anti-wing interpretation is that the first paragraph uses wings as a simile, indicating that the Balrog’s shadowy aura changes shape to resemble an outstretched pair of wings. The second use of wings, in the third paragraph of the above quote, is merely a furtherance of the simile. Consider also that the “wings spread[ing] from wall to wall” is noted as happening just after the Balrog’s “darkness grew”, suggesting a connection between the two.
Some people argue that if the first use of wings was only a simile, Tolkien would not have referred to wings again later, and that therefore the wings were a part of the Balrog rather than the shape its aura of darkness was taking at that moment. However, we have at least one other example of Tolkien furthering a simile in this same manner.
And out of the west there would come at times a great cloud in the evening, shaped as if it were an eagle … And some of the eagles bore lightning beneath their wings… (TS, Akallabêth)
The first sentence makes it clear that the passage is describing clouds, not actual eagles, but this being established, Tolkien allows himself to refer to the cloud-eagles in a less clumsy fashion by extending the simile. This is the same meaning as in the Balrog wing passage. Christopher Tolkien also supports this interpretation, stating in a letter that “I myself never thought that the second mention of the wings of the Balrog had any different signification from the first” (qtd. in Michael Martinez).
The other quote that gets brought up in these debates sometimes is from Morgoth’s Ring, describing the quarrel between Morgoth and Ungoliant after they escape from Valinor. The Balrogs, hastening to rescue Morgoth, "passed with winged speed over Hithlum, and they came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire” (HoMe X, The Later Quenta Silmarillion). However, this use of “winged” is a way to describe how fast they were moving, not to describe the Balrogs themselves, putting it in the same category as Gandalf telling the Fellowship to “fly, you fools” (among several other examples of wings and flight being used as a metaphor for speed in Tolkien’s writing).
Martinez argues that it is valid to describe the Balrog’s darkness as having wings since that’s what Tolkien himself did, and this is true enough. “Wing” is a versatile word, and can apply to a shadowy cloud in the same way that it can apply to an army or a building. But this is not the same as saying that Balrogs had wings that were part of their bodies, which is usually what is being asked. So in the interest of clarity, I stand by my simple “no” answer to this question.
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