Silmarillion - Chapter 19 - Of Beren and Luthien - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Bêthberry · 12-11-2007, 11:11 AM

This chapter deserves much thoughtful discussion yet I am sure that at this season we many Downers are hard pressed to find time for such leisurely pursuits.

Yet Aiwendil's introduction has moved me to reread the chapter. One obviously intriguing question would be why Tolkien produced this story in so many forms, particularly in both verse and prose. Was Doom such an important theme to him?

The Lay I have yet to read--mayhap over the holidays. The opening paragraphs of this chapter have an especially rhythmic style to them which is perhaps owing to its incarnation in verse. But it is a style more rhetorical than the plainer historical summarising style found other chapters. I could be wrong, but I wonder if certain parts of The Silmarillion legend moved Tolkien more readily to verse, as if there were music in his muse.

Not much time to write more now, but I will say that this chapter, as so much of the Legendarium, leaves me always astounded by the cruelty of the elves. All questions of the comitatus and oaths aside, I have always been bemused by their readiness to do each other in. And these are the great and the illustrious? For all their art and love of beauty and alleged intelligence, they are suprisingly prone to violence.

In a world of permutation and change, the elves are lost, fatally constricted by a psychology which cannot accommodate change or freedom of choice in others and by a social and political structure which equally binds them to a response which is unable to be creative and original. How ironic!

-- just some musings prompted by the rereading. I've actually enjoyed the story more this time.

12-11-2007, 11:11 AM	#6
Bêthberry Cryptic Aura Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 6,005	This chapter deserves much thoughtful discussion yet I am sure that at this season we many Downers are hard pressed to find time for such leisurely pursuits. Yet Aiwendil's introduction has moved me to reread the chapter. One obviously intriguing question would be why Tolkien produced this story in so many forms, particularly in both verse and prose. Was Doom such an important theme to him? The Lay I have yet to read--mayhap over the holidays. The opening paragraphs of this chapter have an especially rhythmic style to them which is perhaps owing to its incarnation in verse. But it is a style more rhetorical than the plainer historical summarising style found other chapters. I could be wrong, but I wonder if certain parts of The Silmarillion legend moved Tolkien more readily to verse, as if there were music in his muse. Not much time to write more now, but I will say that this chapter, as so much of the Legendarium, leaves me always astounded by the cruelty of the elves. All questions of the comitatus and oaths aside, I have always been bemused by their readiness to do each other in. And these are the great and the illustrious? For all their art and love of beauty and alleged intelligence, they are suprisingly prone to violence. In a world of permutation and change, the elves are lost, fatally constricted by a psychology which cannot accommodate change or freedom of choice in others and by a social and political structure which equally binds them to a response which is unable to be creative and original. How ironic! -- just some musings prompted by the rereading. I've actually enjoyed the story more this time. __________________ I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. Last edited by Bêthberry; 12-11-2007 at 08:48 PM. Reason: whoops, accidentally hit to edit this post when I meant to edit the latter one.