[Bêthberry]

You know, this reminds me of a discussion over another writer's illustration for his work: William Blake's engraving for the poem "Tyger, Tyger". The ferocious tiger, "burning bright" with dread might etc etc has a winsome smile on its face--and it's not a salacious, vicious, smug smile but a really Tony the Tiger happy smile.

Sometimes you have to face the fact that a writer is not as good at drawing as he is at writing and that visual imagination is a different thing than verbal imagination. Was Tolkien's ability as a visual artist as accomplished as his ability in language? Has he been claimed Artist of the Century?

Really, Tolkien is full of anomalies and changes and "niggling" and we get our kicks here coming up with fun hypotheses explaining them all. If the passage makes sense to readers as a written passage, why get nickers all pulled up because the drawing shows discrepancies? At a certain point, the siren call of the drawing led him to depict the place a certain way: the drawing for him became a primary work of sub-creation and not some hand maiden to the text. After all, his writing demonstrates many attributes of Old English style but his art work shows many affinities not to Anglo Saxon art but to contemporary art. It's one of the eccentricities of his genius--and I mean by that his guardian spirit.

EDIT: lol, cross posted with Ibrin