If you have been sleeping under a rock, you may want to roll over and go back to sleep. But if you take notice of the Web and its many issues you may have stumbled across the classic debate between hardened J.R.R. Tolkien fans over the question of “do Balrogs have wings?” While this may not seem like an Earth-shattering issue, some people resort to poison pen campaigns, character assassination, and outright lying in order to win converts to their point of view.
The latest example of these tactics recently emerged when an essay struggling to prove that Balrog wings are metaphorical, written by someone publishing under the pseudonym Elenhir, was dismissed out of hand by renowned Tolkien scholar Michael Martinez. Martinez, a veteran of endless Balrog wing debates, had no wish to be drawn back into a topic which has for all intents and purposes been settled.
In fact it was Martinez himself who finally published the truth about Balrogs when he rebutted a weak attempt to declare Balrogs as wingless metaphors by Wayne Hammond (an equally respected Tolkien scholar). Martinez, whose reputation for detailed and meticulous citation has won him thousands of references across the Web, wrote a lengthy and critically successful review of the Balrog wings war.
Perhaps in an attempt to gain notoreity, Elenhir retaliated against Martinez’ dismissal of the new Balrog essay by launching a series of personal attacks against Martinez. Joined by David Gransby, an Australian who poses under the screen name of halfir, Elenhir has attacked Martinez in recent days in the hope of creating a hostile environment in a forum where Martinez is not permitted to respond and defend himself.
For his part, Martinez pointed out some of the lies posted by Gransby while asking people not to take sides in these flame wars. The fact that Elenhir’s inability to write a coherent argument explaining away Balrog wings as metaphor would normally merit no attention. But the attempt to launch a flame war in response to Martinez’ lack of concern strikes some as a dirty tactic that serves more to discredit Elenhir and halfir. Perhaps if they focused on real scholarship they would be taken more seriously.