Aulë as the anti-Prometheus

In his Birth of Tragedy, sect. 69, Nietzsche writes how “the youthful Goethe was able to reveal to us in the audacious words of his Prometheus:

Here I sit, forming men

in my own image,

a race to be like me,

to suffer, to weep,

to delight and to rejoice,

and to defy you,

as I do.             

Contrast this with Aulë’s very different account of his motives in his attempt at making “men”:

‘I did not desire such lordship. I desired things other than I am, to love and to teach them, so that they too might perceive the beauty of Eä, which thou [Ilúvatar] hast caused to be. For it seemed to me that there is great room in Arda for many things that might rejoice in it, yet it is for the most part empty still, and dumb. And in my impatience I have fallen into folly. Yet the making of things is in my heart from my own making by thee; and the child of little understanding that makes a play of the deeds of his father may do so without thought of mockery, but because he is the son of his father.’ 

In other words, Aulë’s response to Ilúvatar is: “I’m no Prometheus.”