Faramir, Smooth Operator, Shows His Quality

I just noticed this a little while ago. I was reading Faramir’s declaration of love to Éowyn in “The Steward and the King.” One word jumped out at me — sorrowless (RK 6.v.964). I recognized it from another context. Many of you will, too. Then I wondered how often it showed up. In The Lord of the Rings the word occurs only twice, once here and once in Strider’s song about Beren and Lúthien back in “A Knife in the Dark” (FR 1.xi.193). With sorrowless in mind, a couple of other phrases in Faramir’s declaration suddenly stood out.

Let’s start with his words. I’ll highlight the words and phrases I noticed:

… you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Éowyn, do you not love me?’ Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.

To the first highlighted passage compare two verses uttered by Beren, found in both The Lay of Leithian and the Silmarillion (Lays 277; S 178).

Lúthien Tinúviel

more fair than mortal tongue can tell.

To the second compare the words of Strider’s song:

And long ago they passed away

In the forest singing sorrowless.

And for the third there is again Strider’s song (FR 1.xi.192):

When winter passed, she came again,

And her song released the sudden spring,

Clearly, Faramir, the younger brother, put his time in the library at Minas Tirith to good use. He woos Éowyn by subtly, very subtly comparing her to Lúthien. How well versed in Elvish poetry she might have been is uncertain. To judge by her brother’s initial attitude towards Lothlórien, not much. But the most likely place in Rohan to find people knowledgeable about Elvish poetry would be in the ruling family.

If I see anymore connections, I’ll let you know. This one seems pretty cool, though.

Houses of Mirth and Lamentation

Copyright Donato Giancola

A cold voice answered: 'Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.' 

A sword rang as it was drawn. 'Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.' 

'Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!' 

Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. 

 (RK 5.vi.841)

(Okay, this post is going to be nowhere near as charming as Jerry Burns' Mathom-House post from a couple of days ago.)

The houses of lamentation just sound so KJV, and Dernhelm's laughter is like something out of a Viking saga. (See Tom Shippey's marvelous new book, Laughing Shall I Die: The Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings.) But it's the juxtaposition of the two, and the Witch-king's calling her a fool that has long made me wonder if there was something else Tolkien was playing off in this scene besides Macbeth. 

The notion struck me when I first read one of my other favorite books, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, the title of which comes from Ecclesiastes 7.4. The KJV renders this verse:

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

If Tolkien is recalling the Bible here, he is using it expertly and ironically to undercut the Witch-king. For of course he is the fool here, not Éowyn who will have the last laugh when she finds happiness in the Houses of Healing.

________________________________________________

Works Consulted

________________________________________________

The Problem with Tauriel

Unlike many fans of Tolkien I had no problem with Tauriel as a new character developed for the Hobbit films. My opinion of Jacksons' achievement with her is in general much higher than my opinion of his success overall. It was a series of films with moments I loved -- the unexpected party and riddles in the dark scenes in particular -- and one performance I thought was splendid -- Martin Freeman as Bilbo --  but which I thought wasted the assembled talent and the possibilities in the story.  Stephen Fry, a longtime favorite of mine, was dreadfully disappointing, and the scene with the goblins beneath the Misty Mountains was as ridiculous as the scene in the mines in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In fact my reaction to these three bloated movies is aptly summed up in the words of Dáin Ironfoot, as portrayed by Billy Connolly. When the were-worms burst out of the earth before the climactic battle, he cries out in exasperation: 'Oh, come on.'

From the start, however, Tauriel seemed competent, smart, and tough in herself regardless of others. Even in that cringing scene in which the contents of Kili's trousers (now there's a word Tolkien would have chosen to use) are the subject, if not the object, of banter, the goal seemed to be to portray that kind of cagey toughness and wit which Lauren Bacall played so well in To Have and Have Not. Sexy, poised, unafraid.

But she is more than that, too. She looks beyond the borders of her land to see the troubles of the larger world, just as the real Galadriel did before she diminished and went into New Zealand* and turned blue.  Tauriel grasps things that the inward looking males of Mirkwood do not wish to acknowledge. She see that her people may be able to fence themselves in, but cannot forever fence the world out. Like Éowyn she fights well and bravely and fearlessly, but unlike her she already knows how to heal. She understands her own heart.

Even so, despite Jackson's success with her character per se, her story went off the rails like an express train. The idea that she had to have some kind of love interest was a flaw from the beginning. It profoundly, almost contemptuously, underestimated the intelligence of the fans in general and women in particular. Still, an underplayed ending to her story might have approached success (faint praise, I know). Yet her preposterous exchange with Thranduil over Kili's body --- 'Why does it hurt so much?' 'Because it was real' -- exploded the credibility of her character, sacrificing all the good of it for one of the clumsiest weepy endings I can recall seeing. One need only compare Bilbo's scene with Thorin, and the silent witness he bears to the toll of the battle, to know how much better it could have been handled. But Bilbo's response to the losses around him has its origin in the pen of Tolkien, who could write and knew death on the battlefield too well.

So the problem with Tauriel is that creating a good character is not the same as writing a good story for her. Consider how much more firmly the makers of Wonder Woman reined in this aspect of her story, so that there even the banter about the needfulness of men to women subserves the larger tale of Diana's realization of her own heroic stature in a world both larger and lesser than her home, a world which the women of Themiscyra have long fenced out. Had Jackson resisted the temptation to follow the traditional cinematic playbook that requires female characters to have a love interest -- had he even asked himself what Tolkien would have done with her -- Tauriel's story might have proved meaningful instead of maudlin. 

__________________________

*No offense to the good folk of New Zealand, which seems a wonderful place. I very nearly moved there long ago.

Stephen C. Winter -- Three Posts on The Houses of Healing

I just love how in these three posts Stephen C. Winter notes the difference of the fragrance of the athelas for each of the characters and builds upon it.  Well done.

The King and the Healing of Faramir

The King and the Healing of Éowyn

The King and the Healing of Merry