Beauty

“Suddenly Sam Laughed, For Heart’s Ease Not for Jest.” Frodo and Sam Find Refreshment in Ithilien.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 847-851

You can almost feel the relief in Tolkien’s writing as Frodo and Sam leave the dreadful ash pits of the desolate lands before the Black Gate of Mordor and arrive in the fair land of Ithilien, which, although now under the control of the enemy, has not yet been spoiled.

Frodo and Sam, guided by Gollum, are making their way from the Black Gate down towards the crossing place in the road that runs south towards the sea and east-west from Minas Morgul to Osgiliath, the ancient but ruined capital of Gondor. And as they get further away from the horror of lands that have been utterly ruined by Mordor so their mood begins to change.

Ted Nasmith’s evocation of Ithilien.

Tolkien gives us a rich feast of language so that he can do justice to Ithilien, once the garden of Gondor, far enough from the shadow of the Ephel Death, the mountains of Mordor, to be free of them and yet sheltered by those same mountains from the east wind.

Tolkien was not a meteorologist and so he never discourses in detail about the weather in Middle-earth. His geography, and his meteorology too, is first and foremost mythological and so reflects the way in which the peoples of western Europe saw the world about them in the pre-modern world. The West and the great Atlantic ocean always made that direction one of mystery. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth it is the way to Valinor, the way that the Elves take on their journey to Valinor. It is the way to the Grey Havens, that are themselves a crossroads between worlds. In Europe the wind that comes from the West is warmed by the warm current coming out of the Gulf of Mexico and so it moderates the weather right up into the Arctic Circle in the far north of Norway and brings warm rain to the green lands of western Europe and especially, for Tolkien, to the British Isles that were his native lands.

The East, on the other hand, was always the direction from which danger and threat came. Invading armies always came from the East, whether Saxon, Viking or Norman in the British Isles, or the hordes coming out of the steppes of Central Asia, or the Ottoman Turks coming out of the East up the valley of the River Danube. And the weather that comes out of the East comes out of Siberia and there are no mountain ranges in Europe north of the Alps to provide shelter from the cold east wind or to provide defence from invading armies.

Ithilien is thus a land sheltered from the east and open to the south and west, a land of plenty, and Tolkien’s rich feast of language reflects this.

“Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendents; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjorams and new-sprouting parsleys, and many herbs and scents beyond the garden-lore of Sam.”

Ted Nasmith imagines seeing Ithilien for the first time coming from the north.

Readers will note the sheer length of that sentence with its profusion of semicolons and Tolkien’s pleasure in writing a list. Each shrub and herb is named until we arrive at the limit of Sam, the gardener’s, knowledge, and we are invited into the unknown, not as a place of danger, but a place to be explored so that new pleasures can be experienced and enjoyed. Tolkien sums it all up through a phrase in which, just for a moment, he leaves the language of the north and strays for a moment into the classical Mediterranean world.

“A dishevelled dryad loveliness.”

And Sam laughs, “for heart’s ease not for jest”. Frodo indeed laughed for jest in the ash pit before the Morranon when Sam recited his verse about the oliphaunt, and it lifted his spirit, breaking the spell of despair in which he was held in the long hours of that day. That laughter broke into his darkness but the dark still lay about him. Sam’s laughter is of a different kind. It is an expression of delight, the laughter of heaven. It is as if as Sam breathes in the rich scents of the garden, this is his outbreath.

So we come into the last place of refreshment for the hobbits before they enter the darkness of Mordor, a moment of grace before they are abandoned to the horror that they alone, unaided, must face. They do not know what lies before them but they are able to draw strength from this place because, unlike Gollum, this is how they have trained their hearts.

“Many Ents Were Hurling Themselves Against the Orthanc Rock; But That Defeated Them.” Why Couldn’t The Ents Destroy Orthanc?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 734-744

Last week we thought about how when the Ents destroyed the fortress of Isengard it was if the action of tree roots over a hundred years were “all packed into a few moments.”

But the Tower of Orthanc was different. After Saruman was able to make a hasty retreat into it, only just managing to escape the pursuit of Quickbeam, he got his machinery of war into action and Beechbone was killed by a kind of flamethrower. This threw the Ents into a terrible fury and they launched themselves into an attack upon Orthanc.

“Round and round the rock of Orthanc the Ents were striding and storming like a howling gale, breaking pillars, hurling avalanches of boulders down the shafts, tossing up huge slabs of stone into the air like leaves. The tower was in the middle of a spinning whirlwind. I saw Iron posts and blocks of masonry go rocketing up hundreds of feet, and smash against the windows of Orthanc. But Treebeard kept his head. He had not had any burns, luckily. He did not want his folk to hurt themselves in their fury, and he did not want Saruman to escape out of some hole in the confusion. Many of the Ents were hurling themselves against the Orthanc-rock: but that defeated them. It is very smooth and hard. Some wizardry is in it, perhaps, older and stronger than Saruman”s.”

Ted Nasmith imagines the Ents trying to destroy Orthanc.

But Orthanc was not built by wizards but by the Dunedain at the end of the Second Age when Elendil and his people escaped the destruction of Númenor and established the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle-earth. As the power of these kingdoms began to wane it fell into the hands of the Dunlendings who were later allies of Saruman at the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Eventually Saruman offered to take possession of the fortress and his offer was gratefully received both by the King of Rohan and the Steward of Gondor and for years after he was a valuable ally to them both and Isengard was an important part of the defences of the West against the growing power that first began to arise in Dol Goldur.

Saruman inherited Orthanc but he built the fortress of Isengard; and it was this fortress that the Ents were able to destroy in a single night. But why did Orthanc remain impregnable? It was from a thought in the comments section following last week’s post that this question began to grow in my mind and I want to try to tackle it this week.

I think that there are two main themes in Tolkien’s thought at work here. One is that as a character begins to invest more and more of themselves, of their essence, into the things that they make, so that essence begins to waste away. A kind of entropy is at work. The greatest example of this is, of course, of Sauron and the Ring. Sauron puts so much of himself into the making of the Ring that when it is finally destroyed he falls with it. But the same principle is at work with Saruman and Isengard. When Merry and Pippin speak dismissively of the one who had them captured and who would have tortured them until he found out all they knew, Aragorn replies that “once he was as great as his fame made him. His knowledge was deep, his thought was subtle, and his hands marvellously skilled.”

Andrea Pipano imagines Saruman in his greatness.

The other principle is Tolkien’s sense that when we work in harmony with creation and not seeking mastery over it we are able to make something of real significance and of staying power. So we see the way in which Galadriel makes Lothlórien, a place that Sam Gamgee describes as like being inside a song. And we also listened to Gimli speak of the work that he would do in the glittering caves of Aglarond. Great sculptors speak of finding something within the material that they are working with; something that is essentially present. And in the city of Worcester in England near which I live we could contrast the difference between the gothic beauty of that city’s medieval cathedral and the modernist monstrosity that is the technical college next door to it. The conservative philosopher, Roger Scruton, was once asked to reflect on the unpopularity of new housing developments. His brilliant answer was that if a development were to have the quality of a city like Bath and its beautiful architecture then there would never be an objection to it.

The Royal Crescent in Bath. A beautiful example of Georgian architecture from the 18th century. And the interiors are just as beautiful as the facades.

Scruton, like Tolkien, makes beauty the centre of his thought on the things, and not functionality. When function is subordinate to beauty, in which something is made that is in harmony with the materials that are used and which has a transcendent purpose greater than the agrandisement of the maker then it will last. So Isengard is destroyed in a night and Orthanc is impregnable.

“I Have Never Heard You Speak Like This Before.” Gimli Speaks to Legolas of The Glittering Caves of Aglarond.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 708-715

I once had the privilege of visiting Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper, in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Most visitors are only allowed to remain for fifteen minutes before they have to leave and so I could not spend the time that I would have liked in its presence. And while I was there I learned that the master would sometimes spend an entire day just looking at what he was creating before making a choice of what he should do next.

As I display this I realise how far short this image falls of the wonder of da Vinci’s masterpiece.

Gimli would have understood him. Or at least I might say that it would have been the Gimli who had been in the presence of Galadriel in Lothlórien. Indeed as Gimli speaks to Legolas of what he has seen in the caves at Helm’s Deep he uses but one simile in his description. He speaks of how light glows through marble “translucent as the living hands of Galadriel.” For Gimli her beauty alone in all his life’s experience is sufficient to liken and enhance the wonder that he has just seen.

Gimli and Legolas have just been through a terrible battle and when Gimli first emerges from the caves in company with Éomer and Gamling and their men their first thoughts are to take pleasure in the fact that they are both still alive making light of this as soldiers often do. Then it is time for rest and Gimli makes no mention of the experience that will eventually give him his life’s work until he and Legolas are on their way in Théoden’s company to parley with Saruman in Isengard. Their journey begins their having to pass through the wood of Huorns who surround them and while Gimli is afraid Legolas is filled with wonder and announces to his friend that when the war is over he wishes to visit the remote dales of Fangorn in which the Huorns live.

At this Gimli speaks at last.

“There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dream-like forms; they spring up from from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come.”

The Glittering Caves of Aglarond by Ted Nasmith

Legolas is deeply moved by Gimli’s words. “I have never heard you speak like this before,” he tells him. And he promises his friend that if they come safely through the perils that lie ahead that he will go with Gimli to see the caves. As long as Gimli is willing to go with him into the depths of Fangorn.

There are those who have pondered the Grail myth that had such a hold upon the medieval European imagination and which seems to be speaking to us once more in this time who discern that there are two distinct experiences of the Holy Grail in the hero’s journey. The first that often comes in the first part of life awakens longing but does not transform. The second comes later in life when the hero has been through much suffering and sorrow and is now ready to see the Grail in a way that transforms them. We do not know what experiences Gimli might have had of truth, beauty and goodness in his early years although surely his capacity to perceive the transcendent beauty of the caves must have been formed in part by such early experiences. But we do know that when he arrived in Lothlórien he had just been through Moria, through Khazad-dûm, that had held such meaning for him as for all dwarves, and had found it to be a place of darkness. It was Galadriel’s welcome that reawakened love within him and which prepared him for the caves. Now he is able to see their beauty and, as Galadriel foretold, not wish to possess and exploit them but to work with them as an artist might work with stone, finding within it the form that always dwelt there.

Is it merely coincidence that Tolkien gave what is possibly the most beautiful speech in The Lord of the Rings to a Dwarf, one of the most problematic of all his sub-creations? I would argue not. At their worst dwarves display some of the meanest characteristics of the human soul, only capable of looking at anything with a view to profit from it. Moria was destroyed because of the awakening of the Balrog through greedy delving after mithril. The Caves of Aglarond will not be treated in this fashion. Gimli and his people will tend them as Leonardo da Vinci tended his masterpiece. Perhaps in this manner they point a way to us to be truly human.

“How Shall a Man Judge What to Do in Such Times?” Eomer Ponders The Making of Choices. To Aid or To Thwart Aragorn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 565-571

Eomer dismisses his company in order to speak to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in private, and in order to give himself time to make his choice. Whether to aid or to thwart the hunters in their effort to find Merry and Pippin. He has already taken a risk in leading his men against the orc band that had slain Boromir and taken the hobbits prisoner. Theoden, the king, did not give him permission to go. Now what will he do about these three strangers who walk across the fields of Rohan?

Eomer needs space in order to make his decision. Anke Eissmann depicts the meeting between him and Aragorn.

Eomer needs space to think. He also needs space to reorient himself after all the things that he has just been told.

“It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange. Elf and Dearf in company walk in our daily fields; and folk speak with the Lady of the Wood and yet live; and the Sword comes back to war that was broken in the long ages ere the fathers of our fathers rode into the Mark! How shall a man judge what to do in such times?”

In my last piece on this blog I wrote about a world “grown strange”. I wrote about how hobbits were dismissed as mere “children’s tales out of the North” while Galadriel is feared as one who belongs to “net-weavers and sorcerers”. Tolkien once wrote that if someone comes bearing tales of dragons either he will not be believed and so will be dismissed as a mad man or he will be believed and so will be regarded as dangerous and uncanny. Aragorn and his companions seem to be regarded as both at one and the same time and so Eothain, who speaks for the ordinary person dismisses them as “wild folk” who should be left to their fancies.

Bilbo tells tales of dragons and so is dismissed as mad, even though he gives very good parties.

It was not just because the world would be a more delightful place if it were to be more magical, to be re-enchanted, that Tolkien and the other Inklings wrote their stories. It was because the world would be more true. So the good, the beautiful and the true are really one and in order for something to be true it is not necessary to separate it out from the beautiful.

Nor is it necessary to separate the true from the good. “How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” Aragorn’s answer is both clear and simple.

“As he has ever judged… Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”

Boromir began to make his choice to take the Ring while in the Golden Wood.

So Eomer is left with a choice to make. Aragorn has made it clear to him that he will not abandon Merry and Pippin. He determined to find them when at Tol Brandir even at the cost of his own life. If the wise choice were simply about finding out what was in his own interest and then pursuing it he would certainly not have followed the orc band. The wise choice would probably have been to go on to Minas Tirith. He could have spoken of his promise made to Boromir and expressed genuine regret about the unhappy fate of Merry and Pippin but the principle of self interest would have left him little choice in the matter. Of course by going to Minas Tirith he would have brought himself into conflict with Denethor who would have contested any claim that he might have made, but then politics and the achievement of power is always a matter of navigation through one set of circumstances after another in seeking to achieve the goal. That Aragorn would not have met with Gandalf once again in the Forest of Fangorn nor played his part in the defeat of Saruman and through that to win the loyalty of Rohan not just in the battles that immediately lay ahead but in the future too would simply be unfortunate. After all, it is not possible to achieve everything at any one moment. But Aragorn does not make this choice. He chooses the good in his loyalty to the young hobbits and so wins the respect and the aid of Eomer who chooses to try to do the good also. He gives horses to the three companions to aid them in their task and this choice will cost him his freedom, for some time at least.

“The Danger of Light and Joy”. Gimli Weeps Openly as He Bids Farewell to Galadriel and Lothlórien.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.369-370

As the three small boats that contain the members of the Fellowship are swept down the Great River, the Anduin, Gimli weeps openly as he mourns a loss that he never expected to experience.

In bidding farewell to Galadriel Gimli takes his worst wound.

“Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this Quest? Little did I know where the chief peril lay! Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. Alas for Gimli, son of Glóin!”

Those who know the story will know that for Gimli there will be a torment in the dark that lies ahead for him that will almost cause him to abandon his fellows. They know too that in his finding of the glittering caves of Aglarond Gimli will find a beauty that will delight him, and give him a labour for years to come to satisfy his soul but none of this can diminish the sense of loss that overwhelms him now as the river carries him away from Lothlórien.

Hannah Joy Patterson’s beautiful imagining of the Caves of Aglarond.

For Gimli, in his encounter with Galadriel, has met something far greater than a beautiful person. He has met Beauty itself and now cannot know peace and contentment in anything less than an abiding in its presence. And Gimli has also discovered what it means to have been wounded by Beauty, to be utterly surprised by that wound, and to feel the pain that cannot be satisfied by anything less.

Gimli’s experience was one to which the members of the Inklings paid much attention. C.S Lewis chose as the title of his autobiography words from a poem by William Wordsworth, “Surprised by Joy” in which he speaks of his entire life as being a search for something that came upon him unawares in his childhood. Wordsworth’s poem is a telling forth of the way in which an unexpected encounter with Joy recalls him to the recollection of one that he has lost and back to the experience of that loss with almost the same keenness with which he first knew it. Gimli would understand what Wordsworth was trying to say and what both of them felt. Wordsworth could not understand how he was able to live his life forgetting, even for a moment, his “most grievous loss” but he does and so will Gimli. Perhaps it is a kindness that we are granted not to have to bear such pain constantly but both Wordsworth, and Gimli too, tell us that any kind of life that is smaller than the present moment in which both the joy and the pain are known in their entirety is not really to be alive at all.

For Lewis, the search for Joy led him eventually to Christian faith. Here, it is vitally important to understand that this faith is not in itself a satisfaction of the longing for Joy or for Beauty. For Lewis, and for all who follow this way, faith in Christ is not the end of the journey but a sure way forward that leads at the last to an entire participation in them both. The well known quotation of the 2nd century theologian, Iranaeus of Lyon, that “the glory of God is a human being who is fully alive” continues by saying that to be alive is to have the vision of God, by which he does not mean that we spend eternity staring at an old man with a long white beard but that we contemplate and entirely participate in, as Dante put it, “the love that moves the sun and other stars”.

Those who have been “surprised by joy” or wounded by beauty and by love know that any life that is less than a complete participation is in them is no life at all. Gimli knows this now and knows too that he will not find rest in anything less than that complete participation. There is no comfort for him now but Legolas is right in saying that his friend is blessed in suffering the loss of the Beauty that he has glimpsed of his own free will. The true search for Beauty and for Joy always lies onwards and never back until it finds at last its fulfilment in the divine vision.

“I Feel As If I Was Inside a Song, if You Take My Meaning.” The Fellowship at Cerin Amroth.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 340-343

As so often in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien chooses Sam Gamgee to try to express the inexpressible. The Fellowship have arrived at Cerin Amroth after walking blindfolded all day through Lothlórien. At last messages come from the Lady Galadriel and all the blindfolds are removed. Frodo has had a growing sense that he is journeying back into the Elder Days and that here the ancient world is more than a memory, it still lives.

Alan Lee evokes Elanor and Niphredil on Cerin Amroth

“Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name.”

For Frodo language is no longer adequate for what he is experiencing.

“He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful.”

Eleniel imagines Cerin Amroth

This is the unmediated experience in which the ordinary, here expressed as colours with which we are all familiar, is transfigured. Such an experience is possible in any place and at any moment. It always comes as a surprise, surprised by joy as Wordsworth put it, and which C.S Lewis chose as the title of his autobiography. It is never possible to manufacture such an experience, to somehow create the right conditions for it to happen, but Frodo has developed a capacity better than many do to receive it through long practice of a love of beauty and a deep longing for it.

And so does Sam. Whereas Frodo knows that language is hopelessly inadequate for what he is experiencing and so remains silent Sam has no such inhibitions. He does not have any regard for his own ability to put things into words and so retains a childlike simplicity of speech. Whereas his old adversary, Ted Sandyman, constantly congratulates himself for his own cleverness, his ability to see through things and not be caught out, Sam has no such confidence. At the beginning of the story Sam expresses his desire to go on the journey in two simple ways. He wants to go with Frodo wherever Frodo goes and he wants to see Elves. Ted Sandyman would have laughed at him for this and no doubt he did but though Sam might be a little hurt by the scorn of others he is not deflected from his course by it. He is the truly simple one who wills one thing.

And so he is chosen as the right member of the Fellowship to put into words the experience of Cerin Amroth.

“It’s sunlight and bright day, right enough,” he said. “I thought that the Elves were all for moon and stars; but this is more elvish than anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as if I was inside a song, if you take my meaning.”

A song has words but it is rare that they have the intention to explain things. The language of a song is the language of the heart, sometimes of the gut, but rarely of the head. And the music of a song, whether it is a marching tune to send soldiers into battle, or a gentle ballad to help lovers express how they feel about each other, can never be an explanation of anything. So Haldir does take Sam’s meaning, the meaning of Sam’s heart and he smiles.

“You feel the power of the Lady of the Galadhrim,” he said. And this is most certainly true. But might we say that what Sam feels is not a power that originates in Galadriel but that which flows through her, enabling her to subcreate this earthly paradise in praise of Eru?

In his joyous essay, The Ethics of Elfland, G.K Chesterton tries to put into words what Frodo and Sam experience here and he does rather well! In it Chesterton says that perhaps God, like a child (like Sam Gamgee?) never tires of repetition so that the world can never be monotonous to God. “It may be that God makes each daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.” And that repetition in nature is never “a mere recurrence” but an encore.

And it is in this encore in Cerin Amroth that Frodo and Sam delight and applaud.

Arwen Undómiel at the Feast in Rivendell. A Woman in Whom it Was Said That The Likeness of Lúthien Had Come Again on Earth.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 220-21

There is one more person to whom Frodo pays attention at the table at which he sits in a place of honour and Tolkien devotes more space to her than he does to Elrond, Gandalf and Glorfindel put together. This is the first time that we meet the daughter of Elrond, the Lady Arwen of Rivendell, Arwen Undómiel, the Evenstar of her people, “in whom it was said that the likeness of Lúthien had come on earth again.”

Arwen, as she creates the royal standard of the King of Gondor and Arnor, by Anna Kulisz

Frodo’s attention to his fellow diners is more akin to a visitor to one of the great art galleries of the world than to a guest enjoying the company that he finds himself in. Even Gandalf, who he knows well, is presented to him, and to us, in his symbolic guise. The excellence of the food upon his plate provides him ample excuse for not worrying about his situation. When was the last time that Frodo enjoyed a good meal? Was it at the Prancing Pony almost four weeks before? He need not worry overmuch about other matters, not just yet at any rate.

Frodo has seen great beauty before in the house of Tom Bombadil in the person of Goldberry but there “less keen and lofty was the delight, but deeper and nearer to human heart; marvellous and yet not strange.”

Arwen has an altogether different effect. “Such loveliness in living thing Frodo had never seen before nor imagined in his mind”. Goldberry’s beauty was of an order in which Frodo might feel that he could be close to even as Tom Bombadil was close. Tom might be eldest but he is close to the same soil that nurtures hobbits, the soil that he speaks of approvingly when he speaks of Farmer Maggot. Goldberry belongs to the “little rivers” in which Frodo delights, whose loveliness has nurtured his heart all his life. Arwen is of another order altogether. Frodo may, on reflection, use the word, loveliness in thinking of her, but in gazing upon Arwen he knows that he will never use that word in quite the same way again, or that he will never quite feel that the word could possibly do justice to the one he has tried to describe in this manner. Either he will have to find new words, (and what words might they be?) or he will be reduced to wordless admiration, to silence. He will have to learn how to gaze upon such beauty for a long time in order to be able to appreciate it as it should be. One day, in the Undying Lands, he will have such opportunity.

“Deeper and Nearer to Human Heart”. The Loveliness of Goldberry.

Perhaps there will come a time when he can look upon beauty such as Arwen possesses and not have to gaze, to admire, to delight in, at a distance. For Arwen Undómiel is not only a symbol but a living being with a beating heart. She is a woman in love and the man she loves is not at the feast. It is almost, it would appear, as an afterthought that Tolkien tells us that Frodo “could see no sign of Strider”. I was going to say a few weeks ago when I wrote about Gandalf putting Frodo right about Rangers that we will never refer to Aragorn, Son of Arathorn, as Strider again but here at the feast when we meet Arwen for the first time Tolkien uses the name by which Aragorn first introduced himself to Frodo and his companions in Bree. Of course, this is the name by which Frodo knows him and it is a name that brings a man who himself could be a symbol of greatness and of potency, close to a hobbit of the Shire. It has even allowed Frodo to refer to this man as “only a Ranger”. What is the place where Arwen Undómiel, the Evenstar of her people, and Aragorn, Son of Arathorn, Estel, the hope of his people, can meet and fall in love? Surely it is a place where they are man and woman in total simplicity. And yet maybe none of us are quite permitted to live lives of total simplicity. Elrond has already made it clear to this young man that his daughter “shall not be the bride of any Man less than the King of both Gondor and Arnor”. Our roles will be probably not be quite so exalted but we all have roles to play in which the people that we are are symbols appropriate to those roles as well as being mere flesh and blood.

Where can these two symbols of their people meet and fall in love?

The Marriage of Aragorn and Arwen

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Minas Tirith is invaded and conquered but in a manner that no one could have foreseen although one or two great souls, such as Faramir, might have dreamt of the possibility. But you would have had to have been a very great soul indeed to have foreseen this and a person of exceptional imagination too, for this is an invasion of beauty and few of us anticipate such a possibility breaking into the ordinariness of our lives although we might try to manufacture such a possibility through a vacation of some kind.

I try to imagine how the people of the city reacted to this invasion. Have they begun to forget the threat of the Shadow that lay over them for so many years? Is the freedom that they now enjoy becoming the new normal? Or are they a thankful people who will not forget the mortal danger that once hung over them? The order of the King means that they must make preparation for the coming of the Fair Folk but, with the exception of Legolas, they cannot have ever seen any.

And even those who have been close to Legolas cannot have had any experience that would fully prepare them for what they see at Midsummer in this blessed year. Even Frodo is overwhelmed by what he sees as Arwen enters the city.

“And Frodo when he saw her come glimmering in the evening, with stars on her brow and a sweet fragrance about her, was moved with great wonder, and he said to Gandalf: ‘At last I understand why we have waited! This is the ending. Now not day only shall be beloved, but night too shall be beautiful and blessed and all its fear pass away!'”

Every marriage is a triumph; an overcoming of obstacles and a uniting of difference. And every marriage is a sign of a longed for future in which all that is divided will be made whole and all life burst into a springtime of possibility and fruitfulness that will never die and every marriage is a sign of the uniting of the earthly and the heavenly. In every culture we have found ways, rites and ceremonies with which to celebrate this sign. We unite the personal and private happiness and hopefulness of two people and the public celebration of a whole community. Promises are made, rings may be exchanged, the couple may be garlanded with flowers and crowns placed upon heads. Even in poor communities this is a day when all dress as finely as they can. All eyes turn towards the bride as she enters, delighting in her beauty and wishing her happiness. And the bridegroom waits as he must, as he has made to do, in choosing to make this woman and this woman alone his happiness, and waiting for her to say yes to him too.

This is true for every marriage. No marriage is a matter of insignificance or inconsequence. It carries far too much meaning for that. But this marriage between the heir of Isildur, Elendil, Eärendil and Beren and the daughter of Elrond of Rivendell and the descendant of Lúthien Tinúviel is a consummation and an opening of hope that makes it a symbol for all peoples. Even as the long sojourn in Middle-earth of the Eldar begins to draw to its close so with the uniting of the Hope for Humankind and the Evenstar of the Elves life is rekindled for all.

For a while I have been thinking about the way in which I wanted to reflect on the story of Aragorn and Arwen. I thought that I would turn to the story as Tolkien tells it in the appendices to The Return of the King and that I would do it after the moment when Sam says to Rosie, “Well I’m back.” But the telling of their story seems to belong to this moment in the story as “Aragorn the King Elessar wedded Arwen Undómiel in the City of the Kings upon the day of Midsummer, and the tale of their long waiting and labours was come to fulfilment.” And so I intend to leave the main text of The Lord of the Rings for a little while to speak of their love and their labours.

This week’s artwork is by Hildebrant and comes from councilofelrond.com

Sam Gamgee Sees Something More Real Than the Shadow.

/ stephencwinter / 8 Comments

Whether it is day or night in the ever dark land of Mordor Sam and Frodo hardly know but the darkness seems to be deepening and they are weary and in need of rest. Frodo falls asleep almost immediately but Sam remains wary and stays awake. And it is in this state of exhaustion that he experiences a moment of absolute clarity of vision.

“Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a bright star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.”

As we saw last time “the blind dark” is getting into Frodo’s heart and he can no longer see as Sam can see. The Ring exercises an ever greater hold upon him and so Sam must see for them both. So often we mistakenly believe that we walk alone not realising that at all times we bear one another’s burdens. Frodo must bear the Ring, not just for Sam but for the whole world. This is his destiny and in order to fulfil it he must remain in desolation. We do not blame him for the moments of anger or the growing silence that is taking hold of him. Our hearts go out to him just as Sam’s does.

For even as Frodo falls into “the blind dark” Sam’s heart becomes ever more compassionate and his capacity for the vision of beauty grows. We have reflected on more than one occasion on how Sam’s adventures begin with a desire “to see Elves”, but it is one thing to be able to see, and to long for, beauty in the Shire, it is another thing to be able to see it in Mordor. Sam does see it and sees it as something that is deeper and more real than the “small and passing thing” that is the Shadow.

In the seeing of the beauty of the star Sam is able to carry Frodo through Mordor; in the bearing of the burden of the Ring Frodo carries the hopes and fears of the world.

And there is something more and this is what Sam is able to glimpse for a moment and that is that it is neither Sam’s vision of beauty nor Frodo’s ability to bear the Ring that matters most but that there is “light and high beauty” for ever beyond the reach of the Shadow. That such light and beauty should be matters more even than the success or failure of their mission. It matters even more than whether they live or die. There is a Love that holds and cradles Frodo and Sam of which they are only dimly aware, catching glimpses of it when they find water in the Morgai, attributing their good fortune to the favour of the Lady of Lothlórien but that there should be such a Love for them matters less than the reality that the Love, the Beauty, the Goodness and the Truth simply are.

And Sam does what such a vision always calls those who see to do. He puts away all fear and casts himself into a deep untroubled sleep. It is not that he feels safe in the land of Shadow. It is a still a place of danger as he will soon find out but he has seen something deeper than the danger and that is enough.

Sam Finds Frodo in the Tower of Cirith Ungol

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

I was rather charmed last week when I found that my post on Sam’s song in the Tower of Cirith Ungol was “liked” by some fellow bloggers who write about beauty and fashion. Such affirmation both amuses and, slightly, impresses my daughters (23 and 19) who find it difficult to associate their ageing father with such a world. At first I could noty understand why I was attracting such interest but then I realised that I had tagged my post with the word, beauty, as I reflected on Sam’s spiritual journey, quoting C.S Lewis when he said that we do not wish merely to see beauty but to bathe in it. Just in case any of these bloggers have decided to return this week I offer my prayer for them that they will eventually find the Beauty that transcends all of the beauty that we seek here upon the earth.

Those who know The Lord of the Rings well will know that this is Sam’s journey in the story. It begins with Sam lamenting the passing of the Elves from Middle-earth as Ted Sandyman jeers at him, and when Gandalf tells him that he will go with Frodo when Frodo leaves the Shire part of his joy lies in the possibility that he might see Elves.

Throughout the journey Sam deepens his appreciation of beauty as he first meets the company of Gildor Inglorion within the boundaries of the Shire itself and then stays in Rivendell and Lothlórien. But his most profound encounters with beauty are in the darkest places; the Star Glass of Galadriel in the darkness visible of Shelob’s Lair, the song that he finds within himself in the Tower of Cirith Ungol that is given to him at the moment of despair. And there will be one more on the deathly plains of Mordor that is yet to come.

And one day Sam will see the Beauty that transcends even these moments and will recognise it (and the Beauty will not be an it but a thou) to be what he was always seeking. The thou will be both a homecoming and also an invitation to go deeper and ever deeper.

But Sam has been nourished by another guiding light that does not contradict but deepens his longing for beauty. Sam is guided by his love for Frodo. This transcends the social divide that exists between them and it survives Frodo’s descent into darkness that takes place as he falls under the power of the Ring as they approach Mount Doom, the place of its forging. Nothing can diminish Sam’s love and it is this which has carried him into the orc fortress overcoming all his fear and finally brings him to Frodo’s prison at the very pinnacle of the tower.

And so he finds him at last.

” ‘Frodo! Mr. Frodo, my dear!’ cried Sam, tears almost blinding him. ‘It’s Sam, I’ve come!’ He half lifted his master and hugged him to his breast.”

Sam’s love for Frodo is such that words like master and servant no longer have any meaning for him. If Frodo were to treat him in a demeaning manner Sam would still love Frodo, not out of some slavish desire to somehow gain his approval, but out of an unquenchable desire for Frodo’s wellbeing.

The theologian, Elizabeth Wyschogrod, once wrote that the saint is marked by “a wild desire for the beautitude of the Other”. I do not think that we need to feel any embarrassment in ascribing this quality to Sam. Just as in his longing for beauty Sam will eventually find the Thou that both includes all that he has ever desired and utterly transcends it so too will Sam find in the same Thou all that he has ever loved, and will ever love, without having to make distinction between them. In the Thou there will be but one equal love and yet each of Sam’s loves will be utterly fulfilled and utterly transcended. Sam’s moment of ecstasy in his finding of Frodo will never diminish his love for Rosie Cotton or Elanor or any of his children even though as he grows in love he will for a time find himself torn in two between them.

But just now we will leave him in his ecstasy of joy, free from all growing pains, as he holds Frodo in his arms for a brief moment before the journey has to go on.