As if the Story of Túrin Weren't Already Tragic Enough

While analyzing the death scenes of Nienor Níniel and Túrin in the chapter "Turambar and the Foalókë" in The Book of Lost Tales, I noticed that parts of the last words of each character seemed to be iambic verse. 

Before leaping to her death in a waterfall, Níniel addresses the river with a statement that begins and ends with the same sentence: "O waters of the forest whither do ye go?" I believe the text in between also scans as iambic with slight variations like an extra unstressed syllable or a very brief switch to trochees. 

For reference, an iamb or an iambic foot is two syllables long, the first unstressed, the second stressed. In the following example, I have indicated the stressed syllable with an acute accent:

Tomórrow ánd tomórrow ánd tomórrow

A trochee or a trochaic foot, which we'll also be looking at today, is the opposite of an iamb, a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Trochees go fast. The word trochee derives from the Greek verb τρέχω, meaning run. Iambs walk; trochees run. Here's another example from Macbeth, but this time trochees:

Doúble, doúble toíl, and troúble

Fíre búrn and caúldron búbble

The prose text "Turambar and the Foalókë" reads :

“O waters of the forest whither do ye go? Wilt thou take Nienóri, Nienóri daughter of Úrin, child of woe? O ye white foams, would that ye might lave me clean—but deep, deep must be the waters that would wash my memory of this nameless curse. O bear me hence, far far away, where are the waters of the unremembering sea. O waters of the forest whither do ye go?” (LT II.109) 

Recast as verse, it might read: 

"O waters of the forest whither do ye go?
Wilt thou take Nienóri, Nienóri, daughter
of Úrin, child of woe? O ye white foams,
would that ye might lave me clean—but deep, deep must be
the waters that would wash my memory of this (5)
nameless curse. O bear me hence, far far away,
where are the waters of the unrememb'ring sea.
O waters of the forest whither do ye go?”

To begin with, I thought it was just the opening sentence, but the repetition of the same phrase in the closing sentence made me wonder about the words in between. After studying the scansion for a while I noticed that structuring it with six beats per line yielded eight full lines of what we might call iambic hexameter. Now in English we are far more used to iambic pentameter, which is thought to best reproduce the rhythm of the spoken language. The ancient Greeks, however, felt that what they called iambic trimeter accomplished this end. And? So? We count iambic feet differently than the Greeks did. For us it's one iamb per foot, and a line of verse composed of five iambs is iambic pentameter. The Greeks thought of an iambic foot as having two iambs. So a line of Greek iambic trimeter has the same number of beats as a line of English iambic hexameter. 

Iambic trimeter, as Tolkien well knew, is the standard form of verse for dialogue in Greek Tragedy. Since schoolboys were often required to translate English poetry into Greek or Latin verse, Tolkien had very likely translated lines of Shakespeare into Greek and set them in iambic trimeter. The story of Túrin and his family owes much to the story of Oedipus and his family. Tolkien said so himself, and his opinion of Greek Tragedy was clearly quite high (Letters² #131 p. 210; #156 p. 297). In this same section of "Turambar and the Foalókë" the character Tamar (Brandir) reproaches Túrin with the suicide of Nienor Níniel, saying that she died "blind with horror and with woe, desiring never to see thee again" (LT II.111). This very Sophoclean line recalls Oedipus who blinded himself so he would not have to see his children who were also his siblings in this world, or his wife who was also his mother in the next. 

Just because I can make the scansion work does not completely persuade me, however. Certain parts work better than others. What most inclines me to think that Tolkien was consciously mimicking Greek Tragic Trimeters in Nienor Níniel's final words is that Túrin's final words seem to be doing the same thing. First the prose: 

“Thee only have I now—slay me therefore and be swift, for life is a curse, and all my days are creeping foul, and all my deeds are vile, and all I love is dead."

The last twelve beats of this sentence can easily be seen as two lines of iambic trimeter:

"life ís a cúrse, and áll my dáys are creéping foúl,
and áll my deéds are víle, and áll I lóve is deád."

It does not surprise me in the least to think that Tolkien embraced this tragic form to enhance the last words of his most tragic characters. If he can draw inspiration from the tragedy of Oedipus Tyrannos, he can also draw inspiration from one of its most characteristic forms of verse.