LotR -- Book 2 - Chapter 01 - Many Meetings

[Formendacil]

Not an essential chapter, plotwise--perhaps not a likely candidate for "only chapter on a desert island" either--but a beautiful one. Though we visited Rivendell in The Hobbit, though we'll stay here through the beginning of "The Ring Goes South," and though we'll pass through again in "Homeward Bound," this chapter is the definitive up-close look at Rivendell. Reading it through this time, it seems that fifteen years of reading critical Tolkien studies have finally sunk in, because this is the first time my mind immediately recognised Rivendell's kinship with the Cottage of Lost Play (a connection also made much earlier on this thread by davem:

Originally Posted by davem

It seems to me that it was the place [Tolkien] wanted most to exist out of all the places he invented - all the realms & palaces. Its really Mar Vanwa Tyalieva, the Cottage of Lost Play from the Lost Tales in another form.

Once this clicks, it becomes an inescapable comparison, and it's one I find quite affecting, since it means that the beauty, the comfort--indeed, the homeliness--of Rivendell isn't just something that Tolkien inserts as a rest in the plot (here or in The Hobbit) but is an illustration of somewhere near and dear to his heart. The Cottage of Lost Play is the location of the transmission of the Lost Tales to Eriol/Ælfwine. Given that "Translations by Bilbo from Rivendell" supplants "Ælfwine" as the mode of Tolkien's Transmission Conceit, the closeness of their settings is noteworthy--and perhaps Tolkien himself realised this when he eventually abandoned the Ælfwine elements in the Silmarillion (admittedly sometime after writing the LotR)--not only was Bilbo just as serviceable a conduit as Ælfwine, but there was no need for a Cottage of Lost Play when there was already a Last Homely House in the story.

Though, I feel obliged to point out, that mirroring locations is very much a part of Middle-earth: Gondolin is a mirror of Tirion-on-Túna, the Elvenking's Halls a mirror of Menegroth, Kortirion was a mirror of Kor. And, certainly, there's no conceptual reason why, once he crosses the Seas at the end of this tale, that Elrond could not have built a new home in Tol Eressëa like unto his old one--no reason, in other words, that he could not have been the new Master of the Cottage of Lost Play in a later version of Ælfwine's tale. But even if you hold some private headcanon of that sort, it is still unnecesssary--and how should the tales Ælfwine learns cross back over the unBent seas?

Speaking of the transmission of tales in the Hall of Fire, we not only see Rivendell taking on the trappings of the Cottage of Lost Play, but fulfilling its function when Bilbo recites his poem of Eärendil. This poem, believe it or not, is pretty the only complete version of the Mariner's tale that Tolkien ever writes--certainly, it's the last version. It ranks with the Gil-galad and Lúthien poems of "A Knife in the Dark" as a personal favourite, and it's probably the most technically impressive of Tolkien's poems--a poetic form he only mastered once ("Errantry," which features the same scheme, is actually the earlier version of this poem--Tolkien changed it by stages to be about Eärendil.)

Continuing the Lost Tales comparison, and looking specifically at connections to Eärendil, both Rivendell and the Cottage of Lost Play feature a direct connection to the Mariner: the Cottage had Ilfirin "Littleheart" the son of Voronwë, who had been a companion of Eärendil on the great voyage, while Rivendell is, of course, the home of Eärendil's son. I always enjoy the line Bilbo gives us from Aragorn, about him having cheek to make verses about Eärendil in the House of Elrond, because it hasn't been made explicit yet that Elrond is Eärendil's son--and though Elrond tells us this directly in the next chapter, "The Council of Elrond" is so full of details about history and the plot that it is easy to forget (as a 11-year-old version of me did) that the light of Eärendil's Star in the Phial of Galadriel is the light of Elrond's dad's star.