Well, gee, gosh, golly.
I've been chomping at the bit to discuss this work for over three years, and now, when the opportunity comes along, I'm feeling all tongue-tied (finger-locked???). It seems that I, like you, Sassy and Voronwë, have been trying to keep on top of an avalanche of ideas that seems bent on burying me, so to find a little haven of safety (for the moment, anyway), I’m going to begin with what is in my heart.
First and foremost, I love the
Athrabeth. I love it for its language. I love it for its structure. And I love it for its evocation of hope and fellowship. I loved it before I read the author’s commentary, and before I read the notes on the author’s commentary, and before I read the notes on the notes on the author’s commentary
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. These detailed and scholarly writings somehow remain quite apart from the emotional bond I feel for the work itself, and while they are indeed fascinating and most worthy of long discussion here (in which, hopefully, I'll have more to say), they are not what comes first to mind when I think of the
Athrabeth. What comes to mind is two people reaching out to each other with words from the heart, and discovering, each in the other, a new hope unlooked for and a new understanding that has been hidden in the shadow of despair.
“Now it chanced that on a time of spring.....” I love how the discussion between these two wholly sympathetic characters is based on a “chance” meeting during the season that heralds the reawakening of life long dormant, and the rising of light over darkness. It is so apt a setting, as is the place where Finrod and Andreth sit together: next to a fire that casts its warmth and light upon them…..I can almost see it reflected in their eyes, touching their faces with a golden glow, chasing off the shadows. Of course I have no idea if Tolkien purposed all this symbolism that speaks to me of personal illumination, of one idea’s “spark” igniting another, of the promise of hope and understanding being born after a cold, dark winter.
The structure of the piece is really quite extraordinary: twenty pages of running dialogue between two stationary speakers that is exquisitely balanced. I think that there’s no doubt that much of its power is derived from Tolkien’s use of the singular opposites of male and female to represent the collective opposites of the two kindreds, and the text itself allows each to “move forward” in speech, and then seamlessly recede so that the other can take the lead. It’s almost like reading a dance.
It is a dance of words which I actually appreciated first for the skill and beauty of their form, and then for the power of the ideas they revealed. I think I often read Tolkien that way……first with my “reader’s ear” open to the unmistakable rhythm and melody of his language, and second with my “analytical eye” open to the thoughts that flow from his words – sometimes in torrents, but more often in the guise of deep and subtle wells. Here, I think, is a fine example of the “dance” ('snipped' for some needed brevity):
Andreth"Otherwise it is with us: dying we die, and we go out to no return. Death is an uttermost end, a loss irremediable. And it is abominable; for it is also a wrong that is done to us . . . but there is another difference also . . . One is but a wound in the chances of the world, which the brave, or the strong, or the fortunate, may hope to avoid. The other is death ineluctable; death the hunter who cannot in the end be escaped. Be a Man strong, or swift, or bold; be he wise or a fool; be he evil, or be he in all the deeds of his days just and merciful, let him love the world or loathe it, he must die and must leave it . . .”
Finrod: “And being thus pursued, have Men no hope?
Andreth: “They have no certainty and no knowledge . . . Hope, that is another matter, of which even the Wise seldom speak . . .”
Finrod:”. . . You see us, the Quendi, still in the first ages of our being, and the end is far off. As maybe among you death may seem to a young man in his strength; save that we have long years of life and thought already behind us. But the end will come. That we all know. And then we must die; we must perish utterly, it seems, for we belong to Arda . . . And beyond that what? ‘The going out to no return,’ as you say; ‘the uttermost end, the irremediable loss?’ . . .Our hunter is slow-footed, but he never loses the trail. Beyond the day when he shall blow the mort, we have no certainty, no knowledge. And no one speaks to us of hope.”
The sheer precision of balance between Andreth’s and Finrod’s words - the repeated rhythm, the echoed melody, the harmony of thoughts – this is what first spoke to my heart
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. This......and also, I think, how Finrod seems to absorb all the bitterness and despair and anger flowing from Andreth and reflect it back towards her, changed, as understanding and hope and love. Her sorrow he does not, cannot, alter, perhaps because he too, knows, that “all tears are not an evil” and that he carries much the same burden himself. Sorrow and hope, love and loss; these are the bridge that spans the gulf between the two kindreds, built with words meant for the other and strengthened when recognized that they are also meant for oneself.
Well, there. I got that off my chest. At least most of it
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. Now I’ll prepare to jump back into the midst of that avalanche of ideas and start digging my way through to the light along with the rest of you. But not tonight. Tonight I’m going to read the last few pages of the
Athrabeth yet again, and weep a little, yet again, and know that tomorrow, those “notes on the notes” will be waiting for me to reconsider, and other ideas will be waiting to become written words, and friends will be waiting, to build together a few bridges of our own.
I'm now trying for the third time to submit this.......
Thank heaven I'm finally remembering to "copy" before I'm ready to click.....It's beginning to look like I'll have a better line of communication from Mexico in a few days...Ah well.