First a
and a
at seeing you here ...
Well I made a similar post over on TORC with no response, maybe because it's a bit too vague and metaphysical for that forum; and there was this wonderful Bombadil thread here
.
Tom shows us a way of living in relation to nature.
Yes, that is what I was driving at. But also the inverse, Tom shows how Nature may need *us*. We are still using terms which imply differentiation between Man and Nature, but Tom is a part of "the countryside" (woods and fields), he is not within a wild Nature that can stand apart from human life.
The Sil provides a picture of the "natural" world as arising from the the Music of the Ainur, and Elves and Men as an addition direct from Eru which the Ainur had no hand in - however, the OT perhaps isn't quite so clear on the distinction between what God made on the sixth day, and on the previous five?
What you call control of nature I would call rather a perfect harmony with nature ... though I suppose it could be argued that there are times he "controls".
Anthy beautifully pointed out the harmony between Tom and Goldberry (
they seemed to weave a single dance, neither hindering the other, in and out of the room, and round about the table ...). There is a bit of control there too, in TAOTB at least:
He caught her, held her fast! Water-rats went scuttering
reeds hissed, herons cried, and her heart was fluttering.
Said Tom Bombadil: 'Here's my pretty maiden!
You shall come home with me! The table is all laden:
yellow cream, honeycomb, white bread and butter;
roses at the window-sill and peeping round the shutter.
You shall come under Hill! Never mind your mother
in her deep weedy pool: there you'll find no lover!'
I put control within " ", as it's not quite the right term, "Control and harmony" is indeed better. He is the Master, but he doesn't rule. His latent power derives from his Song, his knowledge of the true language - language being what principally separates "men", including the
Quendi "the speakers", from "nature". At least, that is one way of seeing the difference, I don't think that the lines are quite that clear.