Quote:
Originally Posted by monks
Tolkien-right-A (alef)-Literature-Space-Bombadil-oak-Ursa Minor-Thor-Sword-Silver-2-....
Edith- left- B (bet)-Language-Time-Goldberry-birch-Ursa Major-Odin-Shield-Gold-6-....
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There is an interesting problem with this which I'd like to know if you can address. It is as follows: by making long enough lists, you can eventually split
any arbitrary pair to the two sides.
Example 1: Manwe and Varda. Easy - they're Tolkien and Edith, male and female.
Example 2: Legolas and Gimli. Not male and female, obviously. They probably stand next to each other at some point, so we can predict that they are described using at least one of the words "left" and "right". Simple! Or, if we don't like that: Legolas is ancient (TIME), and Gimli eventually goes somewhere no other dwarf has (SPACE).
Example 3: Calmacil (King of Gondor) and
rhosc (Noldorin word for 'brown'). Well, the latter is obviously a word in a LANGUAGE, so perhaps Calmacil symbolises LITERATURE? His Gateway article says he was lazy and indolent, and aha! I remember that there's a poem in
Songs for the Philologists called "Lit' and Lang'". Sure enough, Lit' is "lazy till she died", amply demonstrating that this is a deep and meaningful pair.
... except it's not, obviously; it's the first two random pages on Tolkien Gateway. But it was trivially easy to conjure up that pairing. If I can do it for two unrelated concepts, how can I claim it's intentional symbolism when I do it for two
related concepts?
hS