Interesting, Esty.
Quote:
|
I find that to be a wonderful description of a marriage in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
|
This takes me all the way back to “The One Ring?” thread, in which Sharkey and I teamed up to speculate that in Tolkien’s world, the symbolic marriage of male and female energy, whether in corrupt form (Sauron and his Ring, Melkor and Ungoliant) or in natural form (as in the examples you cite), results in a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts.
Letter 43 features a long and revealing discourse on Tolkien’s thoughts on romantic love, chivalry and its pitfalls, male and female roles, and marriage which anyone interested in this topic should check out. Here’s just a small slice:
Quote:
|
...only the rarest good fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were 'destined' for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life (yet the greatest of these tales do not tell of the happy marriage of such great lovers, but of their tragic separation; as if even in this sphere the truly great and splendid in this fallen world is more nearly achieved by 'failure' and suffering). In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an unfallen world.
|