Re-reading Tolkien: Timeless

[fictualities]

Where I live, there's a particularly lovely time every autumn when the leaves have turned completely and just begun to fall. The world is full of color: golden leaves overhead, golden leaves underfoot. Possibly I'm about to make an embarrassing fannish confession that will exclude me from polite company forever, but in those few days I find

Comments

[pegkerr]

Oh, what a lovely essay!

You might also consider what a huge part of Tolkien's mythology was rooted in deep thinking he did about the Fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden. The Elves were, in a way, his vision of what perfect men in harmony with God might have been like before the Fall--skilled in singing and story and healing arts and beauty. Tolkien's Elves (I cannot remember which commentator said) always had their faces turned back, mournfully contemplating the beautiful past, the time before the Fall, which is fading from memory. Although, of course, the Elves themselves suffered their own fall in The Silmarillion.

His depiction of Galadriel was also steeped in his Catholicism (carried on in his veneration of the Virgin Mary) and a memory-echo of the mother he loved and lost at such a young age.

The choices, then, that Galadriel offers the Fellowship, then, are akin to the choices made in the Garden of Eden. Will they grasp for what they should not have and fall, as Boromir did? Or will they resist temptation, as Frodo did, and Aragorn, and Sam?

Beautiful essay, thank you. In return, here are some Galadriel icons for you, either things that she said or things people said to her, in Lorien, which are you are welcome to use in any way you please:

[anghara]

I've always loved those icons of yours. I've snaffled a few, if you don't mind.

[pegkerr]

You are most welcome to them.

[fictualities]

Oh, yes, great point about the mythic resonances of the Lórien chapters. For me there's definitely an Eden-like feel to the sheltered, beautiful gardens, but if it is an Eden, it is, hmmmmm, how shall I put this: an Eden maintained by an artful, beautiful, and reformed Serpent (Galadriel). L&ocute;rien is named after the gardens of Irmo, so it seems meant to self-consciously evoke the closest thing Middle-earth had to an Eden. As for Galadriel, her place in the long backstory of the Elves was something Tolkien kept changing his mind about, but in some versions of her story she didn't go back across the Sea at the end of the First Age because she was forbidden to return after the events of the Silmarillion (the Elvish Fall, just as you say). So if you think about it, there's room in the Galadriel story, or at least in some versions of it, to look at her as a very much fallen being who is now playing the part of the tempter in the Eden story.

It's as if Tolkien is giving us a version of Genesis where Eve says, "no thanks, I don't want the apple, but would you like it?" and the Serpent thinks for a minute and says, "actually, come to think of it, no; I don't want the apple either." Then we're left with a world that isn't exactly unfallen, but that dodged a metaphysical bullet at least.

I'm so glad you enjoyed the post, and it was kind of you to mention it in your journal. And thank you for the icons! I'm snagging the Gimli quote and the one about the footsteps of doom; they're wonderful!

[strangerian]

I'm picking up one of these, with thanks. The green-on-green is very appropriate.