[Bêthberry]

Estelyn wrote:

This chapter is the account of one single day, told completely from Frodo's point of view.

davem wrote:

its difficult to even stay awake - one is constantly drifting into dreams.

Aiwendil wrote:

What comes across very strongly here is milieu - the feeling of Rivendell (that is, the feeling of Faerie) is perfectly captured.

Fordim wrote:

This chapter is full of moments in which the nature of things is revealed.

These ideas all dance around a particularly elvish object in this chapter. Point of view, dreaming, Faerie, apprehension/revelation--these observations all come together, it seems to me, in the final subject of this chapter, Bilbo's song of Eärendil. We have spoken here of the "objective facts" of the poem--its metre and rhyme scheme, its derivation and publishing history, its imperfect form (as reproduced here)--but we have not considered what the poem or its rendition by Bilbo tells us about experiencing this piece of literature. There is a small tale here about interpretation.

What is it that Sam tells Frodo about Rivendell, this place of Faerie? He says, and he speaks of the house, but house is often a metaphor for literature:

"It's a big house this, and very peculiar. Always a bit more to discover, and no knowing what you'll find round a corner."

Like good gothic art, Rivendell seems to provide the experience of the unexpected rather than the fulfillment of what is expected. Frodo's vision of Bilbo as seen through the Ring is one example, as is Frodo's shockingly violent response to the gollem-like vision. And powerful this vision is too, for it halts the music around them, which resumes once Frodo puts the Ring away, "leaving hardly a shred of memory." Not all perceptions stay with us, some are lost, our apprehensions are neither linear nor cummulative.

Bilbo, however, understands. To Frodo he says,

Don't adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.

This remark seems to me to suggest the very nature of Tolkien's art, still to sing on. The remark is all the more remarkable for the event which intrudes upon the storytelling which ensues. Sam. Frodo and Bilbo are interrupted in their reveries about the Four Farthings by the arrival, at first unnoticed, of The Dúnadan, yet another name for Strider.

And what does Strider do upon this entrance? Bilbo calls to him for help finishing his song. At the very moment (or time) when the two are collaborating over the song, though, Frodo's apprehension moves away from them. We are never given the scene of their discussions; what does follow is an extraordinary description of the effect of elven music upon Frodo. The actual composition itself is represented in the text by a gap, an absence. And it is reported on only in retrospect.

Bilbo speaks

"I want your help in something urgent. Elrond says this song of mine is to be finished before the end of the evening, and I am stuck. Let's go off into a corner and polish it up!"

Strider smiled. "Come then!" he said. "Let me hear it."

Frodo was left to himself for a while, for Sam had fallen asleep. He was alone and felt rather forlorn, although all about him the folk of Rivendell were gathered. But those near him were silent, intent upon the music of the voices and the instruments, and they gave no heed to anything else. Frodo began to listen.

At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. Swiftly he sank under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep.

There he wandered long in a dream of music that turned into running water, and then suddenly into a voice. It seemed to be the voice of Bilbo chanting verse.

I cannot think of anything else in Middle earth which evokes so magically the experience of imagination. Dream, water and voice. It is the slowly returning recognition of something known and remembered which draws Frodo out of the dream into awareness of the song. And when Bilbo finishes, we are in the midst of an elven audience. Bear with a longish quotation again, my friends.

"Now we had better have it again," said an Elf.

Bilbo got up and bowed. "I am flattered, Lindir," he said. "But it would be too tiring to repeat it all."

"Not too tiring for you," the Elves answered laughing. "You know you are never tired of reciting your own verses. But really we cannot answer your question at one hearing."

Now, the attentive reader might be caught up short and sharp. What question had Bilbo asked? Turn back the several pages, past the song itself, and we cannot find Bilbo's question to the elves. We, the reader, have been lost, as it were, with Frodo in his dreaming sleep. Yet what an extraodinary way to show that other things were occuring.

And what are those other things? A question of authorship, if you please.

"What!" cried Bilbo. "You can't tell which parts were mine, and which were the Dúnadan's?"

"It is not easy for us to tell the difference between two mortals,' said the Elf.

And thence ensues the jokes about the elven disinterest in other things: "But Mortals have not been our study. We have other business."

Bilbo leaves the elves to guess and turns with his question to Frodo, who declines. Bilbo explains the authorship as follows:

As a matter of fact it was all mne. Except that Aragorn insisted on my putting in a green stone. He seemed to think it important. I don't know why. Otherwise he obviously thought the whole thing above my head....

"I don't know," said Frodo. "It seemed to me to fit somehow, toughI can't explain. I was half asleep when you began, and it seemed to follow on from something that I was dreaming about. I didn't understand that it was really you speaking until near the end.

And here my long post about the delightful play on authorship and art ends as well. I find the passage intriguing for its sense of the multiplicity of sensations which it ascribes to the experience of the Hall of Fire. There is nothing linear here or necessarily objective or empirical. Rather, it evokes the experience of art--or at least elven art, assuming we will grant to Bilbo the accolade of calling his song elven. Or perhaps we are meant to think that polyphonous experience applies to Mortal art as well.

Aside: Encaitare, my 'thesis' here did not allow for any mention of your point on the colour green, which I think was a helpful reservation about interpreting colour symbolism, although davem's wonderful examples provide an astonishing wealth to contemplate.