Quote:
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Originally Posted by davem
What Tolkien is giving us in this moment of ‘vision’ is an equally timeless moment within Middle-earth. An Elf, crowned with stars, stands poised against the coming darkness, & utters a prayer. A moment later he will move, & strike down the symbol of that darkness, but that moment of silent, watching prayer, for me, sums up so much of the Legendarium, its mood & its meaning, & the philosophical vision behind it.
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Indeed; the moment jumped out at me as well, and I thought of the woman crowned with stars in Revelation (Mary <> Elbereth??) and her subsequent conflict with the dragon; a rather odd correlation and one that I still haven't thought through...
Frodo calls the shadow Cold, as opposed to the balrog. That sent me back to Weathertop and other nazgul encounters, and the words cold, chill, icy are pervasive throughout the Nazgul encounters and discussions of Frodo's knife-wound. Still thinking about when evil in M-E is hot, as opposed to cold. The B-W was cold as well so it's not a Nazgul-only thing. Death-cold versus demonic-hot perhaps. Morgoth's servants hot, Sauron's servants cold...?
(it might make more sense in the morning... I may edit then)