Quote:
Originally Posted by Gwathagor
"Classic" is a hard one. I guess it works if you apply it to the characters...Gandalf, Elendil, Galadriel, and Samwise.
But the Void?
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I would actually see this the other way around... How could you call persons like Elendil, Galadriel, or Samwise classics? Yes they could be classics in the more superficial sense that they have become "classics" by the works of Tolkien, but which are the real classics? I mean those that are what they are through the ages?
The Void fits perfectly as so many creation myths from the Babylonians to the Vikings tell about the primordial abyss or void that was conquered by the Gods to make order and the Middle-Earth for men to live. Like what was the Ainulindalė: creating life and order from chaos by the power of the Gods.
Or to take another example: Hades was both the name of the god and the place where the spirits dwelled in ancient mythology - and it was neither evil or good but it just was. And Hades was one of the most important in the pantheon, and he has a wife dwelling there, Persephone, "the formidable, venerable majestic queen of the shades, who carries into effect the curses of men upon the souls of the dead" - sounds like Vairė? Aka Mandos fits perfectly into the classics as he / it is just a continuation of a more general, classic myth.
The Last Alliance? The Armageddon, the primordial fight between the Good and the Evil - and one which then historically was not the Apocalypse but only a sequence in the historical time, a changing into a different world? It is such a classical feature in the literature - and always kind of not standing to it's name - like it doesn't in the Tolkien Universe (so a classical way of interpreting it!).
Well, giving in with one character as well; Gandalf then... the resurrected, the one who comes through death to save the others? That is soo classic from Osiris, Baal, Jesus... A true classic as well.