“The Choice Was Just and It Has Been Rewarded”. Why Did Aragorn Choose to Pursue Merry and Pippin?

May 20, 2023 / stephencwinter / 10 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 646-653

When Aragorn chose, with Legolas and Gimli, not to follow Frodo and Sam but to go across Rohan in pursuit of the orc band that had taken Merry and Pippin to Isengard it was a brave choice but also one of despair. When he had set out from Rivendell with the rest of the Fellowship his purpose was to fulfil his destiny. Through all that was to lie ahead of him, whether war in Minas Tirith or a journey with the Ringbearer to the Cracks of Doom, he would claim the throne, both of Gondor and Arnor, and he would claim Arwen, daughter of Elrond, to be his bride. For Elrond had told him that only the king, both of Gondor and Arnor, could marry his daughter.

Aragorn longs for his beloved.

Perhaps it was always a desperate hope but, step by step, he was determined to pursue his hope right to the very end. But then Gandalf fell in battle against the Balrog in Moria and his hope was dashed. Not even when Galadriel gave him the green stone of his ancestors, borne by Eärendil himself was his hope truly rekindled. Not even when she said: “Take the name that was foretold for you, Elessar, the Elfstone of the house of Elendil!”

So it was that when the Company was attacked at Parth Galen and Boromir fell and Merry and Pippin seized by orcs Aragorn chose to pursue them. Until that moment he had felt that he had two choices. Either he would go with Boromir to Minas Tirith and play his part in the defence of the city or he would go with Frodo to Mordor and there to do all he could to try to destroy the Ring. He felt in his heart that it was his duty to go with Frodo, especially after the fall of Gandalf, but that same heart longed to go to Gondor where his destiny lay.

Aragorn choosing at a moment of sorrow and despair. Inger Edelfelt depicts the scene.

All this was taken from him at Parth Galen. Boromir fell in battle seeking to defend Merry and Pippin and Frodo set out for Mordor taking Sam with him. What little hope remained to him that he might yet fulfil his destiny was taken from him. What lay ahead was what he knew was a fruitless task. He would pursue the orc band that had taken the young hobbits across the plains of Rohan and probably die in an attempt to free them. The pursuit took him to the Forest of Fangorn where he even wondered whether he might starve to death alongside the companions that he had tried to rescue.

And then he met Gandalf in the very place in which he expected to die beyond all hope. On the one hand he is filled with joy as hope is rekindled. On the other hand he wonders what the vain pursuit of Merry and Pippin was for.

Gandalf speaks to him.

“Come, Aragorn son of Arathorn!” he said. “Do not regret your choice in the valley of the Emyn Muil, nor call it a vain pursuit. You chose amid doubts the path that seemed right: the choice was just and it has been rewarded. For so we met in time, who otherwise might have met too late.”

Aragorn chose a path that that was utterly alien in nature to the dark forces ranged against him. For they saw all things and all creatures as objects merely to be used for their own purposes. This was true from Sauron and Saruman right down to the meanest of orcs. He chose to lay down his life, his dreams and deepest longings, in the service of two figures that seemed to be of little more value than lost luggage. Gandalf describes the choice as just. Aragorn acted justly in choosing to serve the weak. And he speaks of reward. He speaks of a sense that reality itself rewards such choices. Sauron and Saruman would dismiss such talk as mere sentimental drivel and typical of the weakness of people like Gandalf, a weakness that deserved to be swept away. Gandalf, and Aragorn too, have placed their bets upon an entirely different reality. They believe in a universe that is just; not an impersonal even an implacable thing. And, says Gandalf, the choice is rewarded. The universe approves an act of justice and of mercy.

The universe approves the actor justice and mercy. Aragorn would die for Merry and Pippin. Anke Eismann depicts the young hobbits lost in the forest.

An End to Hope, Maybe, But Not to Toil. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli Pursue the Orcs of Isengard Across the Plains of Rohan.

October 22, 2022October 22, 2022 / stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 547-558)

Three times the sun rises upon the chase of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, the three hunters, as they pursue the orcs of Isengard first through the foothills of the Emyn Muil and then across the plains of Rohan. The hunters have run many miles and yet have come no closer to their enemies and their goal, their longing to find and then rescue Merry and Pippin from their captors. Among Men, Dwarves and Elves they have done a deed that will rightly be accounted mighty but the orcs have hardly rested by day or by night.

Hope, what little hope that they had, is fading.

“For many hours they had marched without rest. They were going slowly now, and Gimli’s back was bent. Stone-hard are the Dwarves in labour or journey, but this endless chase began to tell on him, as all hope failed in his heart.”

*The “hopeless” journey of the three companions across Rohan. Alan Lee depicts the pursuit and those who are pursued.*

There have been moments when faint glimmers of hope have been rekindled in their hearts. The green smell, as Legolas puts it, of the wide grasslands, lifts their spirits for a time. And there is the discovery of hobbit footprints and the broach of an elven-cloak. “Not idly do the leaves of Lórien fall,”says Aragorn. It is a sign that at least one hobbit was still alive when the orc company passed that way. Aragorn thinks it was Pippin. But as the hunters begin to realise that they are coming no closer to their quarry so hope fails.

“Not idly do the leaves of Lórien fall”, as depicted by Dante 2060.

Aragorn never had much hope. He does not even think that what they seek to do has much significance within the great story in which he is a part. At one point he looks southwards across Rohan to the White Mountains that are the northern border of Gondor and in song he yearns to be there.

O Gondor, Gondor! Shall Men behold the Silver Tree,
Or West Wind blow again between the Mountains and the Sea?

And then there is a moment in which Gimli longs for a light such as Frodo bears to guide them in the dark.

“It will be more needed where it is bestowed,” said Aragorn. ‘With him lies the true Quest. Ours is but a small matter in the great deeds of this time. A vain pursuit from its beginning, maybe, which no choice of mine can mar or mend. Well, I have chosen. So let us use this time as best we may.”

So continues Aragorn’s long reflection upon the question of hope that began with the fall of Gandalf in Moria. I say that it began there but perhaps it is more true to say that his whole adult life has been a reflection, a meditation upon this theme. Even the very name, Estel, that was given to him by his mother means Hope. And not hope as in the sense of crossing one’s fingers and trusting to luck but in something that goes much deeper. The Elven king, Finrod Felagund, sought to explain this deeper sense when he says that estel “is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruchin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves.”

Aragorn has sought to embody estel within himself in his long years of service in Gondor, in Rohan, and as the leader of the Rangers of the North. Always he has held before him his longing for personal happiness in his desire to marry Arwen. And he has sought to be the expression of hope for his people, for the fading remnant of Númenor in the North and for the brave but beleaguered defenders of freedom in Gondor. But now he feels that he has been seperated from this hope. The fall of Gandalf has affected him deeply but, so too, has Frodo’s decision to leave the Company and to make the journey to Mordor without them. Aragorn realises that he no longer has any part to play in that journey. He may be determined to rescue the young hobbits or die in the attempt. He may be certain that what he has chosen is right. But he is bitterly aware that he has been pushed, as it would seem, to the margins of the story. For him the loss of hope is not just about whether they will be able to rescue Merry and Pippin but about the sense of destiny that has given him meaning throughout his life. We might say, to use the language of Finrod Felagund, that his sense of hope, of estel, has been founded, not upon a belief that Illuvatar will not leave himself bereft of his children within the world, but upon something much more personal, that he, Aragorn, will be the bearer of that hope. Now, as he begins his pursuit on the third morning after the breaking of the Fellowship that hope is gone and all that remains is toil.

*Aragorn at the Argonath. Can he fulfil the hope of his people?*

“Your Quest Stands Upon The Edge of a Knife.” Galadriel’s Silent Interrogation of Each Member of The Fellowship.

February 19, 2022 / stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 346-349

At one time in her life Galadriel was made to endure an interrogation about events for which she was not responsible but in which she played a part. Melian, Queen of Doriath, and the mother of Lúthien Tinúviel, questioned her long about the reason why the Noldor had returned to Middle-earth from Valinor; long and searchingly until at last she learned the truth, or at least enough of the truth for her to be able fit more of the missing pieces into the puzzle and so make sense of it. Now Galadriel undertakes her own interrogation, in this case of the members of the Fellowship. She has good reason to do this and she declares her reason to them all.

*Galadriel Searches the Hearts of the Fellowship*

“Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.”

And so she begins to hold each one with her eyes. It is the truth of their hearts that she seeks to discern. Her long years of wise perception and her gift of discernment are brought to bear upon each member of the Fellowship. For most of them the experience is excruciating and for some of them it is not so much the motives that they own that are brought into the open but those that they hide from themselves or justify to themselves.

Only Aragorn and Legolas are able to endure her gaze for very long. As we saw when we thought about the words that Aragorn spoke aloud to Arwen at Cerin Amroth, Aragorn no longer has hope beyond the ending of the Quest itself. He no longer has hope that he will win Arwen’s hand. That hope fell into the depths of Moria as Gandalf fell with the Balrog. He said to his fellows, “We must do without hope.” His life has been reduced to a pure simplicity. To take the next step and then the next until the end, doing whatever good he can do at each moment until there is no more that he can do. Legolas has no personal interest to declare in this matter for he has none. Elrond chose him to represent the Elves in the Quest and he will stay true to his calling.

As for the others the search of Galadriel’s eyes is much more disturbing. Sam finds that the possibility of returning to the Shire, to a home and garden, is laid out before him. It is what he will receive eventually but he has the choice, whether to try to grasp it now or to take the long road with Frodo. Later he will receive the same temptation to abandon Frodo but in another form. In the Mirror of Galadriel he will see his father in distress and the temptation will come, not in the form of his desire, which is always present, but as a cry for help. Poor Sam will hear this cry often, just as he did with Bill the pony, and each time with a breaking heart he will have to repeat the same words in his heart. “I had to choose, Mr Frodo. I had to come with you.” Sam’s loyalty to Frodo always comes at a cost.

Alexandra & Sean Astin and Sarah & Maisy McLeod as Elanor, Sam, Rosie, & ‘Baby Gamgee’, Final scene, ROTK. (Sam and Rosie’s second child was a male named Frodo)

That Merry also has a similar temptation is perhaps more of a surprise although we note throughout the story that once the four hobbits left the Shire Merry, who until that point had been the competent organiser until the moment that he fell into the clutches of Old Man Willow in the Old Forest, always and increasingly feels out of his depth, like a piece of luggage that others have to bear.

No-one asks Pippin what he experienced. Pippin is the little boy of the Company. The one that the others do not take with much seriousness. Gimli, and Frodo too, do not speak of what they are offered, or seem to be offered, which leaves us with Boromir.

“Almost I should have said that she was tempting us, and offering what she pretended to have the power to give. It need not be said that I refused to listen. The Men of Minas Tirith are true to their word.”

We do not learn at this point what it was that tempted Boromir. We probably find out at the time that he tries to take the Ring from Frodo and we will think about it then. At this stage it is enough for us to know that while each member of the Fellowship has reason not to be true to the Quest it is not so much the knowledge of that reason that they need to fear but the reasons that they try to hide from themselves. These are the temptations that have real danger both for them and the Quest.

“Arwen Vanimelda, Namarië!” What does Aragorn say to Arwen at Cerin Amroth?

February 5, 2022 / stephencwinter / 2 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (HarperCollins 1991) pp.341-343

In last week’s post we entered Frodo’s inner world of longing, of his heart’s desire, but he is not the only one who, upon this sacred hill of Cerin Amroth, goes deep within his own soul and there for a brief moment becomes that longing, his own sehnsucht. As Frodo descends the hill he finds Aragorn there, “standing still and silent as a tree”. In his hand Aragorn is holding a flower of elanor and he is “wrapped in some fair memory”.

So intensely does Aragorn enter his memory that, for a moment, he becomes the man that he was in this place, so many years before. Frodo, whose own inner sight is now so keen, sees the “grim years” removed from Aragorn’s face and once again he seems “clothed in white, a young lord, tall and fair”. Those who have read the story of Aragorn and Arwen that is told in an appendix at the end of The Return of the King will remember that this is exactly how Aragorn appeared when he and Arwen stood on this very spot and pledged their love to each other.

*“Clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair”. Matthew Stewart depicts the betrothal of Aragorn and Arwen.*

Aragorn is the young lord, tall and fair, standing before Arwen in that moment, but he is also entirely present in this moment within a story whose ending he cannot see. And it is in this moment, as well as that, that he speaks aloud.

“Arwen vanimelda, namarië!”

Tolkien chooses here not to translate the words, spoken in Quenya, the language of the High Elves of the West. Those who really know languages, as he did, know that translation is a dangerous affair. Albert Schweitzer, the great German scholar of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, used to speak to English speaking audiences from time to time but although he could speak English perfectly well he always chose to speak in German and with an English translator because he felt that he needed his first language in order to speak most truly and meaningfully. Aragorn is a true son of Númenor, the heir of Elendil, the elf friend, and lord of the Dunedain, the men of the west who have remained true to this story. He speaks now aloud from the deepest place within his heart to the one who holds that heart forever.

Tolkien does not translate these words here but he does translate one of the words a little later in the story.

Namarië.

His translation there is of Galadriel’s song that the Fellowship hear just before they part from her. We will think about that song on another occasion but here it is enough to say that Tolkien translates the word as farewell. So is Aragorn bidding farewell to his beloved, the fairest beloved that he addresses in the word, vanimelda? Is this a goodbye, an adieu, a last ‘God be with you’? In one sense it is but I want to think about this farewell in a certain way, a way that I think emerges from a reading of Aragorn’s story from the failure to cross the Misty Mountains in the pass below Caradhras and Gandalf’s decision to go through Moria.

At this point there is a sense in which Aragorn loses hope. By this I do not mean that he gives in to despair, that he gives up, but that whatever sense that he had, that Frodo would succeed in his mission and that his deepest longing, his longing for Arwen, would be fulfilled has gone. In the pages ahead we will read of Aragorn and hope on a number of occasions and each time it will be in the sense that he must do without it. He must carry on until the end of his road wherever that leads simply because he must, because he has promised to do so. The German mystic of the middle ages, Meister Eckhart, coined a word (German is a wonderful language for doing such a thing!) that probably translates best as farewelling. For him this meant the purest form of detachment in which the soul chooses to refuse attachment to anything less than God. Aragorn does not have such faith in God, not in Eckhart’s Christian sense anyway, but this most heart rending of passages in all of Tolkien’s works ends by leaving open such a possibility.

“Here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we must still tread, you and I.”

Unless there be a light.

I have not found any artwork about the scene from The Fellowship of the Ring at Cerin Amroth that really satisfies me. This still from the scene in the camp below Weathertop is a beautiful expression of Aragorn’s longing.

Postscript

I have written before about the love story of Aragorn and Arwen and if you wish to read these posts please click on the tags, Aragorn and Arwen, and The Love of Aragorn and Arwen, below this week’s post. And if there are any scholars of Tolkien’s languages reading this please leave a comment below. I would love to learn from you, and others who have been touched by what I have written about this week.

A final thought. My own feeling is that the best translation into English of Aragorn’s words is “Arwen, O fairest beloved, farewell.” Do others agree or would you put it differently?

“Do You Hear the Voice of Nimrodel?” The Fellowship Enter an Enchanted Land.

January 8, 2022 / stephencwinter / 9 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 328-332

A reading of The Lord of the Rings is a journey that runs between enchantment and disenchantment. It begins with Gaffer Gamgee discoursing on how cabbages and potatoes are better for his son than Elves and Dragons and how Sam would be wise to keep out of the affairs of his betters in case he lands in trouble too big for him. These are prophetic words indeed although the Gaffer will never see all that his son will see precisely by getting into trouble. And the Gaffer, for all his homespun wisdom and hobbit good sense, has no notion that one day he and his kind will be as much regarded as a kind of fairy folk as the Elves are in his own time.

Like the Gaffer, Boromir is easily disturbed by anything that is redolent of the uncanny. Although he names Lothlórien, the Golden Wood, his knowledge of it is more closely formed by the name that the Rohirrim have for the land the Company are about to enter, Dwimordene, or the Land of Phantoms. So it is already true that many who live in Tolkien’s world are disenchanted themselves and already fear anything that might exist outside an experience of cabbages, potatoes and things of that are of an easily accessible nature.

*Anna Kulisz is enchanted by light shining through trees in Lothlórien*

Understandably Aragorn is disappointed with Boromir because for him Lothlórien is the place of ultimate enchantment, for it was here that he first met Arwen. Even in our times the experience of falling in love transforms everything. Oscar Hammerstein may not have been making an intentionally philosophical point when he wrote the lyrics of “Some Enchanted Evening” but anyone who has truly fallen in love knows what he means. But Aragorn’s disappointment goes further. “Lore wanes in Gondor, Boromir, if in the city of those who once were wise they now speak evil of Lothlórien.” The heirs of Númenor really ought to know better.

It is Frodo, one whose name, Elf-friend, means much more than a simple disposition to like Elves, who first becomes aware of the nature of the land that the Company have come to. First, in the crossing of Nimrodel, he feels “the stain of travel and all weariness” wash from his limbs. Did all his companions have the same experience? Tolkien does not answer the question but if Boromir had then surely his inclination to fear Lothlórien might have altered even just a little. And I doubt whether the orcs who followed some time later had any experience of healing in crossing the stream.

*Stephen Graham Walsh evokes the healing power of Nimrodel*

Legolas speaks to his companions about Nimrodel and as he does so they hear “the music of the waterfall running sweetly in the shadows”. But it is Frodo who hears “a voice singing, mingled with the sound of the water”.

“Do you hear the voice of Nimrodel?” asks Legolas and he tells them the story of the Silvan princess who once dwelt here long ago and whose memory lingers still in the land that was her home. As with so many songs of the Elves it is a tale of sadness about that which has been lost but it is beautiful yet. And as he sings his hearers are drawn further into Faerie just as Frodo, Sam and Pippin were when they were guests of Gildor Inglorien at the very beginning of their journey in their own familiar land.

*Liga Klavina imagines Nimrodel whose memory enchants the stream that bears her name..*

And that, of course, is what Tolkien is trying to convey to his readers. That it is possible, even in a place that we think we know so well that nothing about it could ever surprise us, to be suddenly drawn into an enchanted land. We have already spoken of how falling in love can do this. We might add moments like the birth of a child or when a ray of the sun suddenly bursts through the clouds illuminating all that lies around us. We might quickly get a hold of ourselves and reduce all experience to the atomic particles that make it up or we might follow the path of wonder and delight and see where it leads us. Frodo and Boromir will experience Lothlórien in very different ways because of the way in which they have nourished their inner lives.

“My Heart Would be Glad if I Were Beneath the Eaves of That Wood, and it Were Springtime.” The Fellowship Draw Near to Lothlórien.

December 24, 2021 / stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.324-326

As Tolkien takes us from the dark of Moria and the terrible events at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm so the language that he uses grows ever richer and more verdant. It is Legolas, the Wood-elf from the green of Mirkwood who first speaks of the land that they approach.

“‘There lie the woods of Lothlórien!’ said Legolas. ‘That is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people. There are no trees like the trees of that land.'”

The history of Lothlórien goes back to the earliest days of the First Age and a settlement there of Silvan, or woodland elves, kindred to Legolas’s own people. When the Valar called the Elves to come to Valinor for fear of Morgoth the Silvan elves had refused the call, choosing to stay east of the Misty Mountains in the vale of Anduin. It was these who were found by Galadriel and Celeborn, fleeing eastward from the war that destroyed the kingdom of Eregion in the Second Age and they became lords of the people who dwelt there. So it was that the two great strongholds of the Elves in Middle-earth were created after the destruction wrought by Sauron, Imladris or Rivendell founded by Elrond and Lothlórien founded by Galadriel and Celeborn.

The Sindarin elves who came with Galadriel named the woodland realm that they settled in Laurelindórenan, or the Valley of Singing Gold, so-called because of the mallorn trees, gifts of Gil-galad, that they had brought with them. It is of these that Legolas speaks in language that becomes ever more poetic.

“For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold. Not till the spring comes, and the new green opens do they fall, and then the boughs are laden with yellow flowers; and the floor of the wood is golden, and golden is the roof, and its pillars are of silver, for the bark of the trees is smooth and grey.”

*(I have not been able to find the name of the artist who has done this beautiful painting. Can anyone help me? )*

You can almost feel Legolas savouring his own words like fine wine, especially the adjectives, golden, golden, and silver. Tolkien himself enjoyed a visceral relationship to language so that he could experience a word both in his senses and in his inner life and in passages like this, even though they are written in the Common Tongue, both for the sake of the Company and for his readers like myself, they are still able to convey a sense of this relationship. We too long to travel to this earthly paradise and to hear and taste the music of the singing gold.

But its name is no longer Laurelindórenan but Lothlórien. It has become the Dreamflower or even just Lórien, or Dream Land. Later Treebeard will speak of this to Merry and Pippin.

“Now they make the name shorter: Lothlórien they call it. Perhaps they are right; maybe it is fading, not growing. Land of the Valley of Singing Gold, that was it, once upon a time. Now it is the Dreamflower.”

The dream that the Fellowship will enter will still be potent, still intoxicating, and perhaps just a little frightening, very frightening for those who bring their peril with them as Sam will later put it to Faramir in Henneth Annûn. But it is a land that is falling asleep, “fading, not growing”. Tolkien skilfully shows a world that is still saturated with the myth of Eden. Like Legolas we cry with yearning, “My heart would be glad if I were beneath the eaves of that wood, and it were springtime!” or with Aragorn, “My heart will be glad, even in the winter”, but as we read The Lord of the Rings we come to realise that there is no return to Eden, that if there is to be a place for us, somewhere, then it lies before and beyond us. As Aragorn will say to Arwen Undómiel at his own ending, “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them there is more than memory.”

*Anna Kulisz imagines the Fellowship in Lothlórien*

“There Was No Laughter, and No Song or Music”. The Fellowship of the Ring Leaves Rivendell.

September 18, 2021 / stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 269-274

In the appendices that conclude the final part of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien outlines the key events in his great tale in strict chronological order, a valuable tool for those who want to know what each member of the Company was doing on each day, especially after the breaking of the Fellowship that takes place at the end of the first volume. And there, on page 1066 in my Harper Collins edition, in a brief sentence of heartbreaking terseness, we read these words:

December 25 The Company of the Ring leaves Rivendell at dusk.

The preceding pages have been autumnal in mood as preparation is made for last farewells. Gradually the days have shortened and leaves have fallen and it is Bilbo’s poem on old age that sets the tone best. But it is not in autumn that the Fellowship finally departs into the wild but at the very dead of winter. On December 25th in fact. And, as in all Tolkien’s writing, this is no mere accident, even as the dating of the Feast of the Nativity of Christ is no mere accident. I will leave it to scholars to write about this but everyone in northern climes, who has participated in the feast that we call Christmas, arriving at church in the hour before midnight to welcome the birth of the Saviour, will know that it falls upon the day on which the sun first begins its long journey northward and the day is just a few seconds longer than it is at the winter solstice.

Not that it feels any longer. If we are brave enough to avoid the temptation to surround ourselves with artificialilty, with warmth and bright light then, like Aragorn at the beginning of the great journey, we might sit with our head bowed to our knees. But Aragorn knows that the great crisis of his life is about to begin, the days that all his adventures have been preparing him for. Only he, and Elrond too, know that it is only as King of Gondor and of Arnor that he can ever wed Arwen. It is one thing to live in a hope whose possible fulfillment seems to lie in the future; it is another matter entirely when that hope comes within your grasp and yet still feels like an impossibility.

Tolkien, like all his generation in England, would have remembered the bands and cheering crowds that sent the young men of every community in the land across the sea to France in the Great War of 1914-18. Is he deliberately contrasting the departure of the Company with those memories of festivity? “No laughter, and no song or music”. There is only one member of the Company who wishes to have his departure marked by music and that is Boromir who carries his great war horn by his side.

‘”Loud and clear it sounds in the valleys of the hills,” he said, “and then let all the foes of Gondor flee!” Putting it to his lips he blew a blast, and the echoes leapt from rock to rock, and all that heard that voice in Rivendell sprang to their feet.”

Perhaps it is Boromir who reminded Tolkien of the young men among his contemporaries who marched forth to battle with smiles upon their faces and brave music sounding in their ears and then died in their thousands and tens of thousands in the mud of Flanders.

Gimli the dwarf, as befits his people, is not given to displays of courage as is Boromir, but he is deadly serious about the taking of oaths. Elrond wisely counsels him against doing this. He cannot know what lies ahead and if he had sworn an oath binding him to Frodo then he could not have gone with Aragorn and Legolas in their pursuit of the orcs who were to take Merry and Pippin and all that was to come of that choice. But Elrond’s words to him contain a hidden prophecy of Gimli’s own moment of crisis, of judgement.

“Let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.”

Did Gimli recall these words when he feared to follow his companions upon the Paths of the Dead at Dunharrow?

“What of The Three Rings of The Elves?” Can They Be Used Against Sauron?

July 17, 2021 / stephencwinter / 6 Comments

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 260-263

When Celebrimbor and Sauron (in his guise of Annatar) studied and then created the Rings of Power during the Second Age of Arda there were three rings made by Celebrimbor alone over which Sauron had no influence. Seven rings were made for the dwarves and nine for humankind. The dwarves proved to be of stubborn stuff and so even when Sauron was wielding the One Ring “to rule them all” these rings and their bearers did not fall under his sway. So began the long unhappy history of Sauron’s search for the rings of the dwarves which ended in Dol Guldur when Sauron took the last of them from Thráin.

The rings given to human lords brought them swiftly under the domination of the Dark Lord. The dwarves were always true to their essential nature, loving the things that they made, implacable both in friendship and enmity, but humankind was always constrained by their mortality in a very particular way. The very brevity of a human life meant that a choice had to be made. It still does. Some would look beyond the confines of their mortality and so live in hope accepting their fate while entrusting themselves to that which lay beyond them. So Aragorn said to Arwen at the end of his life, “We are not bound for ever to the circles of this world, and beyond them there is more than memory”. Or, as in the heroic world of the Rohirrim, they would laugh in the face of despair even as they confronted their own deaths, as did Éomer when it seemed certain to him that he would die in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Or, as with the Dunlendings, there was a dull, grim and embittered spirit, a nation of “Gollums”, ever resentful of perceived slights at the hands of others. Or, as with the people of Bree, the spirit and wisdom of Ecclesiastes, “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your life which you have been given under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun”. The hobbits were perhaps closest in spirit to them.

But for the Númenorians and their descendants, the ones who had come closest to Valinor and the immortality of the Elves, there was for many a growing sense that mortality was a curse that had been imposed upon them and one that they should strive to overcome. It was nine lords from among such as these who seized the opportunity given to them in Sauron’s gift of rings and who learned that immortality as a mere extension of existence is an intolerable burden, a curse rather than a blessing.

The Rings of the Elves were not made by Sauron but by Celebrimbor alone although these rings could not have been made without the craft that they had learned together. Perhaps Celebrimbor had some secret suspicion of Sauron or, more likely, the desire like Fëanor before him to make something that was his and his alone, but they were not made for “strength or domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making and healing, to preserve all things unstained”. As with the Elves themselves, but as an intensification of who the Elves were, they were bound to the earth itself in joy and in sorrow. In the healing of the hurts of the earth and in the preserving of its beauty they brought great joy. If only we could find the earthly paradises of Rivendell or Lothlórien in our world today or even the Shire as Sam Gamgee was to remake it using Galadriel’s gift; or perhaps such places would best be kept hidden from us as we would probably spoil them by turning them into tourist destinations. Could you imagine some kind of “Lothlórien-world”?

*Tim Catherall’s Imagining of Lothlórien*

There is a sense in which the three rings of the Elves were used against Sauron. Elrond’s healing power, Galadriel’s adamantine resistance and, above all, Gandalf’s unresting work in warming hearts in a world ever growing cold, all of these fruits of the Elven Rings meant that Sauron had been kept at bay for long years but now as Sauron bent all of his might and malice in the task of the conquest of Middle-earth the rings of the Elves could no longer resist him nor could the combined strength of its free peoples. At the last there could only be one choice that could be made and that was as Elrond counselled the destruction of the Ring.

All That is Gold Does Not Glitter. Aragorn’s Journey Towards His Crown.

May 14, 2021 / stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.240-243

My feelings about Peter Jackson’s film retelling of The Lord of the Rings have always been mixed but I have never denied that he had the right to make such an attempt. Tolkien always felt that the task that he had been given was to create a mythology for England, one that he felt was lost after the Norman Conquest of 1066. And just as the Arthurian legends have been told and retold by many voices (Chrétien de Troyes, Wolfram Von Eschenbach and Thomas Malory come to mind, as well as T.H White and others in the modern era) so we must surely permit voices other than Tolkien to do the same to his legendarium. This will include film and fanfiction in our era, some of which will stand the test of time as being a true retelling of the myth while others will rapidly disappear into the dark. Of one thing that we can say of Peter Jackson’s films is that they have already lasted 20 years since the first of the three was released and although they have their flaws on the whole they show no sign of ageing.

As I have been thinking about Aragorn and Boromir and the war dance that they do around each other so the way in which Jackson treats the two characters has also come to mind; and if I felt that Jackson’s portrayal of Boromir through Sean Bean’s fine performance is of a character too fully formed, then I think that Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn is much closer to Tolkien’s original conception.

It is really important that when we first meet Aragorn we do not receive him as the fully formed King of Gondor and of Arnor, the heir of Valandil, of Isildur and of Elendil. When we first meet him in The Prancing Pony in Bree, his well formed Strider persona is more than a name given to him by Barliman Butterbur. Although he bears a certain resentment about the name it belongs to the Ranger doing his work in secret and thanklessly. Readers of my blog may remember a piece that I wrote a few months ago about Frodo’s exclamation, “I thought he was only a Ranger.” Even though Frodo always feels that Aragorn is more than he seems even so he fails to perceive the light of Númenor in his companion. Aragorn has grown into his disguise. He is a Ranger.

So it is that in Jackson’s The Return of the King Elrond arrives at Dunharrow just before Aragorn and his companions make the journey through the Paths of the Dead. He brings the sword that was broken with him, reforged and renamed. It is no longer Narsil but Andúril, the flame of the west and Elrond presents it to him with the words, “Become who you were born to be”. Aragorn takes the sword and as he raises it Howard Shore’s magnificent music underlines the significance of the moment. What is significant in Jackson’s retelling is that all this takes place within one short scene. We miss the slow transformation that Tolkien offers to us but whether the transformation takes place in a moment or over many years what is true for Aragorn is that it must take place or he will shrink into diminishment.

Each one of us takes a journey that leads to the same end that Aragorn reaches. While we will not receive the crown of the heir of Elendil each one of us should enter into our archetypal kingliness as a king or queen and it is one of life’s greatest sadnesses that so many achieve only a diminished version of what they could be. The same discipline that Aragorn accepts after Elrond tells him that his daughter will not be “the bride of any Man less than the King of both Gondor or Arnor”, the discipline that takes him through years of struggle, must be undertaken by all us if we are to enter into the royalty that is our birthright. Aragorn’s path will be a lonely one for both his personal happiness as well as his royal destiny are intimately linked. Ultimately he will achieve both together but might he have chosen to shrink into one who was “only a Ranger”? Might he have withered even as Bilbo’s verse speaks about? Might he have withdrawn into the shadows of his own greatness? The answer to that question has to be yes, just as it is for all the characters in the story. As Sam Gamgee says of all heroes as he and Frodo prepare to enter Mordor, “I expect that they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t”.

*Alfred the Great when all that is left of England is an island in the marshes*. *I chose this image to give a historical example of the long hard journey into the kingly archetype.*

The Tale of Beren and Lúthien Tinúviel. Aragorn Brings Aid at a Moment of Deadly Peril from the Unseen World.

October 30, 2020 / stephencwinter / Leave a comment

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 184-191

Aragorn’s telling of the Tale of Tinúviel is a thing of beauty and draws us in so near that we want to lose ourselves in it as, for a brief moment, are its teller and its four hearers.

“As Strider was speaking they watched his strange eager face, dimly lit in the red glow of the wood fire. His eyes shone and his voice was rich and deep. Above him was a black starry sky.”

The travellers are sheltering in a dell below Weathertop and, as well as the shining of Aragorn’s eyes and the sky, aflame with starlight, the moon rises above the hilltop. Three shinings on a night of ever present danger. For close at hand, five of the Nazgûl, led by their lord, are stealthily approaching the camp. Soon they will attack and a Morgul blade will pierce Frodo’s shoulder yet, as we readers of the tale listen to Aragorn, even if we have read it many times, we are as glad to be lost in it for a moment.

In Verlyn Flieger’s wonderful study, The Splintered Light, she begins by reflecting upon two apparently contradictory elements within Tolkien’s mind and in his work. One is the eucatastrophe of the fairy tale. The entirely unexpected and yet longed for happy ending that transforms all the suffering that has gone before. The other is the dyscatastrophe, the final defeat suffered by even the greatest hero. In his wonderful lecture, The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkien expresses this with heartbreaking poignancy.

“The great earth, ringed with… the shoreless sea, beneath the sky’s inaccessible roof, whereon, as a little circle of light about their halls, men with courage as their stay went forward to that battle with the hostile world and the offspring of the dark which ends for all, even the kings and champions, in defeat.”

*Champions With Courage as Their Stay*. Beren and Lúthien by Alan Lee.

“A little circle of light.” Was Tolkien alluding to this when he drew our attention to the shinings in that most fragile of “halls” in the dell below Weathertop? Perhaps, and so we might ask if the ending of the chapter that is so menacingly entitled, A Knife in the Dark, is the dyscatastrophe, the inevitable defeat suffered by all heroes. Frodo himself cries out in despair when he first learns that the Ring itself draws the Nazgûl towards him, “Is there no escape then?… If I move I shall be seen and hunted! If I shall stay, I shall draw them to me!”

But the tale itself is an inbreaking of light, so bright, into the darkness, that shining eyes, stars and moon are at most a pale reflection of it. For it is the tale of Beren and Lùthien, the greatest of all Tolkien’s love stories, one so precious to him that he wanted those names to be inscribed beneath his and his wife’s names upon their gravestone. Aragorn, whose eyes shine with strange eagerness in the telling of it, perceives his own story as a kind of retelling of the tale.

*Edith and John Tolkien. Lúthien and Beren.*

“Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was the daughter of Thingol, a King of Elves upon Middle-earth when the world was young; and she was the fairest maiden that has ever been among all the children of this world. As the stars above the mists of the Northern lands was her loveliness and in her face was a shining light.”

*The Betrothal of Lúthien and Beren by Rasmus*

A theme that recurs throughout the tale is one of the power of word and music. Lúthien is enchanted by hearing the sound of her own name upon the lips of Beren while, first Sauron and then Morgoth himself, of whom Sauron was but a servant, are overcome by Lúthien’s song. Does the chanting of the Lay that tells their tale invoke them at a moment in which “the offspring of the dark” make their attack or, perhaps more importantly even than this, invoke the same powers that aided them in their hopeless struggle with the dark? As Aragorn says to Sam after the attack, “More deadly to him [the Witch-king] was the name of Elbereth.”

The finest minds are those that are able to live with the greatest paradox. Surely at this pivotal moment in The Lord of the Rings the invasion of the desperately fragile “circle of light” and the telling of the tale that invokes a hope that is not broken even by the greatest evil is the coming together of Tolkien’s antitheses of eucatastrophe and dyscatastrophe, of heavenly light and the darkness of hell.

Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings

A weekly blog exploring the wisdom of The Lord of the Rings

Aragorn and Arwen