Quote:
Originally Posted by davem
And that's when I fell in love.
It was that moment, looking out across the great desolate expanses of Middle earth that the fairy story spell of the Hobbit was broken for me. I had seen a new world stretched out before me for the first time, & I suddenly loved it absolutely, (& I've never fallen out of love with it). Looking back on my first reading of LotR, 28 years ago, I remember I had drifted through the earlier chapters, enjoying the pleasant escape into a fantasy world, but at this point, like Frodo in Lorien, I seemed to have stepped through a window into another world, a 'real' world.
This scene is, & always will be for me, Middle earth. If for Frodo its the case that:
then when davem, wanderer from this world, has passed back into the outer world, he will still stand on the summit of Weathertop & watch the Old Road winding out of the West towards the Misty Mountains.
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Aye
I wish I could remember the moment I first had the same awakening. I remember reading The Hobbit, and did not grasp that Elves were tall, immortal and of a vast antiquity beyond my ken. I thought they were short, like garden gnomes, and impish. There was an exact moment when discovery occurred, but I cannot recall when. Though, I remember that by the time I saw the silvery Elvish glyphs, afire with Ithildin on the Moria gates according to Celebrimbor's "Mode of Beleriand", there was a sense of something beyond my awareness in an ancient world, as things that were only objects in the mind's eye came alive with vivid beauty, colour, life and love, as though beings I was reading about existed--as if they were alive, somewhere in some dimension.
Then Hollin became the Ost-In-Edhil and place of the Forging of the Three as the vastness of Middle Earth just kept expanding in awe and like grace that stirs embers of an old fire. I sometimes still hear gulls on the seashore when I think of the awakening of the Sea Longing in Legolas as he spoke of his experience of the ocean at Belfalas.
But for the chapter at hand, I keep coming back to the Amon Sul and Fornost, which were but echoes of the strange recollections, like those of the Barrow Wight dream--who were the men of Carn Dum? I read with wonder and awe. The Witch King was back at the ancient battle site, of which Aragorn must have been most keenly aware. Amon Sul, which was 'Weathertop' on my first reading 31 years ago, and a site of ancient ruins. And strand by strand, so much that was implied that was so ancient - the Great East Road, the Greenway, the Palantir of Amon Sul, Arvedui and so much more. And Numenor. Silmarien. A special place of homage for her in my heart.
I just re-read the end of the chapter, as Aragorn took us on a journey into his ancient world so many thousands of years prior to him. As he speaks of it "...is said" that the "Line of Tinuviel shall never fail", where he sat with the Hobbits, in--his Realm. Arnor, where one day he would be wit Arwen, in a long coming of full circle, by Lake Evendim....