The Gest of Beren and Lúthien

[Thinlómien]

He lay upon the leafy mould,
his face upon earth's bosom cold,
aswoon in overwhelming bliss,
enchanted of an elvish kiss,
seeing within his darkened eyes
the light that for no darkness dies,
the loveliness that doth not fade,
though all in ashes cold be laid.
Then folded in the mists of sleep
he sank into abysses deep,
drowned in an overwhelming grief
for parting after meeting brief;
a shadow and a fragrance fair
lingered, and waned, and was not there.
Forsaken, barren, bare as stone,
the daylight found him cold, alone.

This is what I'm currently reading, and I am - to put it simply - amazed. I always knew Tolkien was a good poet and had a gift with language, but The Gest of Beren and Lúthien in The Lays of Beleriand (part of the History of Middle Earth series) is just incredible.

My experience with English language poetry is undoubtedly more limited than that of many native speakers', but I have seldom if ever read anything as beautiful as The Gest. It just flows perfectly, easily, beautifully and neither telling the story or poetic language dominates or disturbs the other.

Now, my first question is, you who have read The Gest, how do you feel about it? Were you as impressed as me? (Note though that I'm only through to Canto IV.)

My second question is not only related to The Gest itself, but to Tolkien's writing in general. I read a few lines of The Gest aloud to A Little Green and her first comment was: "Why did a person who could write like that bother to write prose?"

I think that is an interesting question to which there might be more answers further in The Lays of Beleriand than I have read, or in the other parts of HoME, but I'd like to hear more answers from you. Why did Tolkien start to focus on prose? Why did he (or did he?) prefer the metre seen in for example The Lay of the Children of Húrin, when at least to someone with my degree of education he seems far more fluent and talented in the kind of metre found in The Gest?

Any discussion concerning The Gest of Beren and Lúthien and the metre he used there (forgive my lack of knowledge on the names of the metres in English poetry) is very welcome.

[Mithalwen]

To put it kindly, I am glad he turned to prose. I don't think poetry was his strongest suit -certainly not this sort. The good stuff in my opinion are the oneshe wrote for the LOTR battles.

Do you really want me to do a full prosodic analysis to explain why I don't think it is great? Or shall I just say that endless rhyming couplets are a bit tiresome

[The Might]

I somehow liked the last two verses from it the most, they somehow transmitted that feeling of coldness very well.

I have to agree with Mithalwen though, I don't think a Lay of the War of the Ring would have been as good.

[Bêthberry]

I'm always impressed and deeply humbled by the writing of our Downers who aren't native speakers of English. Your linguistic abilities puts many native speakers to shame, I think.

I think Tolkien really found his metier in the metre of Old English rather than rhyming couplets. (The best rhyming couplets aren't so repetitive in their beat.) Also, it was his ear for the natural rhythms of English that inspired his prose.

Or maybe he realised that writing like this was no longer a challenge for him.

[Mnemosyne]

I enjoyed the Gest (Lays of Beleriand is one of the most accessible volumes of HoME in my opinion), but if you're only up to Canto IV...

All I can say is that the good stuff is from later, when he undertook to revise the Gest after LotR was published. The writing is much more mature, and there are even some efforts to work LotR material into the text. For me one of the tragedies is that he didn't get very far (that and his purposed revision of Fall of Gondolin, which only got as far as Tuor showing up...)

[Pitchwife]

Great topic, Lommy! It was high time the Lays of Beleriand got their own thread(s); thanks for starting this one!
I totally agree with your admiration of the Gest. One of my own favourite passages comes shortly after the one you quoted:

Thus Lúthien, whom no pursuit,
no snare, no dart that hunters shoot,
might hope to win or hold, she came
at the sweet calling of her name;*
and thus in his her slender hand
was linked in far Beleriand;
in hour enchanted long ago
her arms about his neck did go,
and gently down she drew to rest
his weary head upon her breast.

Heart-melting, isn't it? And I suppose we can all guess what happened next, although he is, of course, discreet enough never to tell us...

Originally Posted by Lommy quoting Greenie

"Why did a person who could write like that bother to write prose?"

Several reasons, I think. Above stated admiration notwithstanding, I have to somewhat agree with Mith about endless rhyming couplets getting tiresome after a while. To be sure, the Gest has its poetic jewels - quite a lot of them - , but it's quite tough to keep up that level of intensity for hundreds and hundreds of verses.
Another aspect: narrative poetry of this kind, whether rhymed or alliterating, already was an anachronism at the time the Lays were written - so much so that, when the Gest was submitted to a publisher, the reader mistook it for a translation of an ancient Celtic original! Even LotR, being the hybrid between novel and romance it is in my eyes, was anachronistic enough in its day, but I don't think a Lay of the War of the Ring (even supposing Tolkien had ever finished it) in, presumably, thousands and thousands of verses would have had any chance of ever being published - and without the tremendous success of LotR in prose, we wouldn't be reading and appreciating the Lays today.
(By the way, it's interesting that the prose Silmarillion as we now know it developped, after BoLT had been aborted, from a compressed sketch meant to provide readers of the Lays with the mythological background - so in a way, Tolkien's recasting of the Legendarium in prose grew from the attempt to explain his poetry.)

Originally Posted by Lommy

Why did he (or did he?) prefer the metre seen in for example The Lay of the Children of Húrin, when at least to someone with my degree of education he seems far more fluent and talented in the kind of metre found in The Gest?

I think it depends on the subject matter, and Tolkien chose the metre for each of the great Lays very wisely. The alliterative form of Children of Húrin, reminiscent of Beowulf and other Norse/Saxon poetry, fits the bleak, tragic heroism of Túrin's tale, just as the rhymed couplets of the Gest are better suited to the more romantic and hopeful tale of Beren and Lúthien. (Which makes me wonder if he had any model for the Gest, comparable to the way CoH can be viewed as being modelled on Beowulf, and what it could have been. Any ideas?)


*It just strikes me how these four lines seem to echo Pwylls first meeting with Rhiannon in the Mabinogion (also a tale of a mortal wooing a Faery bride) - he pursues her on horseback for three days or so without ever being able to overtake her, until he finally comes to his senses and politely asks her to wait for him, which she then does gladly...

[Pitchwife]

PS to my last:

Originally Posted by Mnemosyne

All I can say is that the good stuff is from later, when he undertook to revise the Gest after LotR was published.

Well, yes, in a way - a completely revised Gest would be great to have. Still - and I say this with some reserve, as I haven't re-read either the original Lay or the revision lately - I tend to find that with Tolkien revising earlier stages of his Legendarium, we often lose in freshness, innocence and spontaneous imagination what we gain in depth and complexity *coughMythsTransformedcough*. I'm glad to have both versions, and I wouldn't want to miss the glimpse of the Legendarium in a still liquid state, so to speak, that we get from the early Lays (even the first drafts, where Lúthien, horribile dictu!, still had the same name as Merry Brandybuck's cousin in the Nth degree Melilot!).

And Lommy, be sure to read CS Lewis's comments on the Gest (included in HoME III) - they're almost as entertaining as the Lay itself!

[Mnemosyne]

See, I don't judge Tolkien's works so much in terms of oldness or newness/freshness as in terms of momentum... I find the period up to and directly after the publication of LotR so effective because he still had this momentum, but it was tempered with a certain maturity of style that isn't quite as present in the wild-eyed original.

Of course, one can argue (and probably rightly) that part of why Tolkien lost his momentum was because once he had written something down, it was committed. That became even worse once something was published, because then it was canon--and we can see Tolkien trying to struggle around this both in the manner in which he explained away the differences between the two versions of "Riddles in the Dark" and in the way that he still tried to make changes to Quenya after LotR, but was ultimately very hampered in doing so. That's got to be reflective of life in some way, but I'm blessed if I can think of how.

But, yes, it's best in this case that we have both versions!

[Aiwendil]

I love the Gest. I know a lot of people feel that Tolkien was not at his best with rhyming couplets, or that the form is too repetitive and not suitable for a long narrative, but personally I don't agree with either of these complaints. Certainly some passages are better than others, but even in its weakest moments the Lay seems to me to retain a wonderful lyricism and vivacity.

I agree with Mnemosyne that the post-LotR revision is better than the original. Indeed, I would say that the quality of Tolkien's poetry in general was higher in the period during and after the writing of LotR than before. To my ear, the revision is more sweetly evocative in passages such as:

When sky was clear and stars were keen,
then Dairon with his fingers lean,
as daylight melted into eve,
a trembling music sweet would weave
on flutes of silver, thin and clear
for Luthien, the maiden dear.

And the description of Morgoth and the Dagor Bragollach is more dreadful and powerful:

A king there sat, most dark and fell
of all that under heaven dwell.
Than earth or sea, than moon or star
more ancient was he, mightier far
in mind abysmal than the thought
of Eldar or of Men, and wrought
of strength primeval; ere the stone
was hewn to build the world, alone
he walked in darkness, fierce and dire,
burned, as he wielded it, by fire.

Originally Posted by Thinlomien

My second question is not only related to The Gest itself, but to Tolkien's writing in general. I read a few lines of The Gest aloud to A Little Green and her first comment was: "Why did a person who could write like that bother to write prose?"

In a sense this is sort of like asking "if Beethoven was so good at writing string quartets, why did he ever write symphonies?" Poetry and prose are each valuable in their own way, and the existence of one doesn't obviate the need or desire for the other. Tolkien was good at both, just as Beethoven was a master both of the symphony and the quartet (and just about any other form of music you can name).


It is true, though, that Tolkien's output of poetry declined significantly in quantity over the course of his life. He never gave up poetry completely - the revision of the Gest around 1950 is one indication of that. But I think that the success of LotR gave him an impulse to write more prose (and in particular to complete The Silmarillion) that largely trumped his impulse toward poetry.

[Thinlómien]

Interesting points, people.

I kind of agree with Aiwendil about the repetiteve meter not being boring, but I yield to Mith enough to admit that my opinion might be affected by the fact that I've read the Gest this far only in short pieces, no more than one canto at once and often far less...

Originally Posted by Mith

The good stuff in my opinion are the oneshe wrote for the LOTR battles.

I sort of agree though, actually all the poems in LotR are just brilliant. It's actually weird Tolkien's poetry has been discussed so little here in the 'downs.

Originally Posted by The Might

I have to agree with Mithalwen though, I don't think a Lay of the War of the Ring would have been as good.

Agreed. To sort of continue inAiwendil and Pitchwife's line of thinking, different stories take different means to tell. And as for what I've seen, the story of Beren and Lúthien works the best in poetic form, although it would of course have been (even) much better had Tolkien finished writing and revising it. But even as it stands, it is quite impressive.

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Another aspect: narrative poetry of this kind, whether rhymed or alliterating, already was an anachronism at the time the Lays were written - so much so that, when the Gest was submitted to a publisher, the reader mistook it for a translation of an ancient Celtic original! Even LotR, being the hybrid between novel and romance it is in my eyes, was anachronistic enough in its day, but I don't think a Lay of the War of the Ring (even supposing Tolkien had ever finished it) in, presumably, thousands and thousands of verses would have had any chance of ever being published - and without the tremendous success of LotR in prose, we wouldn't be reading and appreciating the Lays today.

I think it's sort of sad no one writes narrative prose these days. Although it's slightly "outdated" maybe, I'm sure there could be place in the vast literary field for a writer or two. Maybe I have to nudge Greenie to start writing that.

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

The alliterative form of Children of Húrin, reminiscent of Beowulf and other Norse/Saxon poetry, fits the bleak, tragic heroism of Túrin's tale, just as the rhymed couplets of the Gest are better suited to the more romantic and hopeful tale of Beren and Lúthien.

Which really makes me thankful he did the Tale of the Children of Húrin in prose, because excluding the few really cool passages here and there, I must say I find the beowulfian meter (I even took a course in literature from early medieval to romance, so I should know the proper name ) very tiring. I'm also looking for a time to pick up the Children of Húrin in Finnish because the story was inspired by Kalevala so it's interesting to see how it might be seen there (and I assume it would be even in the language because the translator is so good she can't have missed/misused it).

[Dwarven Warrior]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

To put it kindly, I am glad he turned to prose. I don't think poetry was his strongest suit -certainly not this sort. The good stuff in my opinion are the oneshe wrote for the LOTR battles.

As man who spoke over thirteen predominantly "dead" languages, Tolkien was incredibly familiar with cultures whose epics were written in song verse. Your right about the best part of Tolkien's poems being the battles. In epic anglo-saxon myths the battles usually are.

[Lindale]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

I love the Gest. I know a lot of people feel that Tolkien was not at his best with rhyming couplets, or that the form is too repetitive and not suitable for a long narrative, but personally I don't agree with either of these complaints. Certainly some passages are better than others, but even in its weakest moments the Lay seems to me to retain a wonderful lyricism and vivacity.

Most Filipinos say that the Tagalog ear is more accustomed than others of our nationality to verse bordering on the musical, and that perhaps is why I love the Gest. I first read it around five years ago, when I was learning about the Tagalog Awit and Korido, poetic forms which resemble the form of the Gest very much.

I am unable to find any websites in English about the Awit or the Korido. They've nearly died out, but those that survive deal with love and adventure of epic proportions, and are often fantastic or hearkening to some distant past. The meter of the Awit is twelve syllables; Korido has eight.