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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   5683 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I've been jumping back into Tolkein with all of the ROP talk going around lately. I figured instead of ruining the majesty of Arda through bland, modern, American retellings of what amounts to an appendix of a book I should return to Tolkein's Silmarills and enjoy his beautiful prose. Tolkein's use of language is unmatched, and is something I never fully appreciated when I was younger:

An honest hand and a true heart may hew amiss; and the harm may be harder to bear than the work of a foe

I find his tragedies of Húrin and Túrin, or the themes of eventual fall, to be incredibly powerful. It breaks my heart that so many people are being turned towards his earlier works from the perspective of modern politics, and can't help but feel like all the controversy of the ROP are beneath the majesty of Tolkein's legendarium.

Or perhaps I'm simply pretentious and a nerd. Either way, The Children of Húrin remains one of my favorites, and it feels like a comfortable hug to return back to the tragedy of Túrin Turambar and the fallout from The Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

The Children of Húrin broke my heart, to the extent that I haven't been brave enough to try the newly released version. The part where Húrin finally meets Morwen, after all the years and the tragedies, still kills me.

Anyone who thinks (like a recent video review I saw about the 'golden age' of TV and how we're not getting great characters like Walter White and Tony Soprano with their moral ambiguity and shades of grey anymore) that Tolkien is just simple "good versus evil, good guys wear white and bad guys wear black" should be forced to read this (maybe not with me screaming, as I smush their nose into the text, "is this grey enough for ya now? huh? where's your Walt and Tony now, eh???")

From HoME Volume 11, The War of the Jewels, 'The Wanderings of Húrin':

But Húrin passed on, and at evening of the sixth day he came at last to the place of the burning of Glaurung, and saw the tall stone standing near the brink of Cabed Naeramarth. But Húrin did not look at the stone, for he knew what was written there, and his eyes had seen that he was not alone. Sitting in the shadow of the stone there was a figure bent over its knees. Some homeless wanderer broken with age it seemed, too wayworn to heed his coming; but its rags were the remnants of a woman's garb. At length as Húrin stood there silent she cast back her tattered hood and lifted up her face slowly, haggard and hungry as a long-hunted wolf. Grey she was, sharp-nosed with broken teeth, and with a lean hand she clawed at the cloak upon her breast. But suddenly her eyes looked into his, and then Húrin knew her; for though they were wild now and full of fear, a light still gleamed in them hard to endure: the elven-light that long ago had earned her her name, Edelwen, proudest of mortal women in the days of old.

...He arose and lifted Morwen up; and suddenly he knew that it was beyond his strength to bear her. He was hungry and old, and weary as winter. Slowly he laid her down again beside the standing stone. “Lie there a little longer, Edelwen,” he said, “until I return. Not even a wolf would do you more hurt. But the folk of this hard land shall rue the day that you died here!”

…“Ashamed ye may be. But this is not my charge. I do not ask that any in this land should match the son of Húrin in valour. But if I forgive those griefs, shall I forgive this? Hear me, Men of Brethil! There lies by the Standing Stone that you raised an old beggar-woman. Long she sat in your land, without fire, without food, without pity. Now she is dead. Dead. She was Morwen my wife. Morwen Edelwen, the lady elven-fair who bore Túrin the slayer of Glaurung. She is dead.

“If ye, who have some ruth, cry to me that you are guiltless, then I ask who bears the guilt? By whose command was she thrust out to starve at your doors like an outcast dog?”

Kills me every time. One of the greatest heroes of mortal Men, who fought until overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers by the Orcs, and now he can't even carry the dead body of his wife. And then I think of the muppets scriptwriting "Rings of Power" and dey took er jerbs, and I want to go all Ancalagon the Black on their asses.

I've experienced the same feeling.

I read The Hobbit, LotR, and The Silmarillion when I was a teenager. It was addictive, like being kidnapped into a whole new living world. When I reread LotR about a year ago, the same feelings came back--but this time enriched with an awe of Tolkien's language. I didn't even try watching ROP because I don't think it's possible to capture that magic in the medium of a TV series.

From his newer things, I've read Children of Hurin and loved it. Would you recommend the other "new" works as well?

I would absolutely recommend his other works. My next favorite myth is that of Beren and Lúthien, which is equally as tragic and probably more important to Tolkien's theme of uplifting grace funneled into the inevitable fall. He has a few complete narratives, but those two (Beren and Lúthien and The Children of Húrin) are my favorites outside his story of the rings. I really enjoy his legendarium, but pulling the stories out into dedicated works makes them much more impactful. I think Christopher had a very discerning mind when it came to his father's works, I'd feel comfortable recommending anything he transcribed or put together. I am not really sure about anyone else in the Tolkien estate, but if it has J. R. R. or Christopher on the spine it's probably good.

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