Comments | fictualities: Re-reading Tolkien: Timeless

fictualities

Re-reading Tolkien: Timeless

Jan 26, 2007 11:01

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 ( Read more... )

tolkien

Comments 54

altariel January 26 2007, 17:45:05 UTC

Beautiful, rich post, thank you. Always autumn and never spring.

She can help people understand, and then . . . and then nothing. That's it.

I think this is what the Ring would have supplied: the power to compel people to act on her understanding of what's best for them.

A drabble I once wrote about Sam and Galadriel.

fictualities January 27 2007, 16:36:24 UTC

What an amazing drabble! I love the play on "tree," and the gentle implication that Sam will see Galadriel again. Just gorgeous. Sam says to Frodo at one point that the Lórien elves are more like hobbits than the Elves of Rivendell, and in part that's sheer Sammish presumption, but in part Sam is recognizing that the Lórien elves are bound to the land in a way that's deeply familiar to him. I love the thought that Sam would continue to feel this connection later on.

I think this is what the Ring would have supplied: the power to compel people to act on her understanding of what's best for them.

Oh, that's a great point. Galadriel didn't always persuade people, did she; she supported Gandalf as the head of the White Council but apparently her word didn't carry as much weight as Saruman's. That must have been a very interesting little episode, and one that would leave her hungry for the power to compel. It says so much about her that she DID pass the test, particularly given that history.

altariel February 2 2007, 11:56:07 UTC

That must have been a very interesting little episode, and one that would leave her hungry for the power to compel.

Ooh yes, good point. That's a scene crying out to be written, I think.

Very glad you liked the drabble :-)

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fictualities January 27 2007, 16:49:07 UTC

I don't know, was that really in the text all along?

Galadriel is such an amazing (and subtle) character portrayal that she comes across to me very strongly as an individual, one who has made mistakes and who does not, frankly, always get everything that she wants. So I think that comparisons to any woman looking back on long experience are fruitful and interesting. Tolkien didn't write about women much, and that's something I regret, mostly because when he did it, he did it very well. There's some interesting by-play between Celeborn and Galadriel that shows pretty clearly that Galadriel is the smarter of the two but that she's worked out a way to live peacefully with a husband she loves. It's an interesting little scene from a marriage and could come from Fay Weldon novel, really, if you took out the wizards and dwarves ( ... )

anghara January 26 2007, 18:05:46 UTC

This was utterly beautiful, and I read it with complete absorption. It is a profound understanding of Galadriel and who and what she is. It serves to take the sting of the poiosnous CGI monster that she was turned into in the movies; of all the things that went awry in those films, this potent and willful misunderstanding of Galadriel and her meaning and signifnicance stands as the worst infraction to me...

Thank you for this post. I may go back and re-read Lord of the Rings now, just because of this, because you made me remember Lorien.

jcberk January 27 2007, 01:42:03 UTC

On the other hand, there was one thing the movies got far more right than my head: the tinge of surprise in Galadriel's voice as she says "I pass the test". I had never imagined that, but it struck me as entirely right. Her test was sudden - and yet she had an answer, and it was the answer she had wanted to be able to give. That seems worthy of astonishment, even wonder.

fictualities January 27 2007, 17:03:39 UTC

the tinge of surprise in Galadriel's voice as she says "I pass the test"

Oh, YES, I thought that was a fantastic line reading from Cate Blanchett. She made it clear that this had been a real temptation for the character, and that she honestly hadn't known until that moment whether she'd have the strength to resist the Ring. She managed to cram years of self-doubt into that single sentence -- I loved it.

fictualities January 27 2007, 17:01:02 UTC

Yay! Any time I make someone consider re-reading, I've had a good day. :D

I'm really glad you liked the post! It was really hard this time to pin down what I love so much about these chapters. As for CGI Galadriel -- yeah, that didn't work for me, either. (On a Tolkien board I used to frequent, one that was on the whole very movie-friendly, we used to call this moment Nuclear!Galadriel.) I liked the CGI in a lot of the movie, but that particular moment wasn't my cuppa -- Cate Blanchett worked for me as Galadriel just by her acting, and I think she could have communicated the nature of Galadriel's interior struggle more effectively if she'd just been allowed to do her thing.

Have you seen the extended edition DVD? They completely re-edited the Lórien scenes, and made them much better, I thought; more of the dreamlike L&oactute;rien that I love. (The CGI Galadriel is still there, though, so if that really bugs you, you might want to stick to the book.)

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celtic4 January 26 2007, 18:10:13 UTC

I love these entries of yours. Thank you.

fictualities January 27 2007, 17:09:04 UTC

Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoy the posts -- they're fun to write! Probably I yammer on too much, but there seems so much to say about Tolkien.

pegkerr January 26 2007, 18:16:06 UTC

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 SilmarillionHis 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 ( ... )

anghara January 26 2007, 18:45:00 UTC

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

pegkerr January 26 2007, 21:08:03 UTC

You are most welcome to them.

fictualities January 27 2007, 17:42:19 UTC

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 ( ... )

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