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Tolkien's Poetry
As I get older, I find that I appreciate different things about the books. One of the big differences is the poetry. I didn't use to take a lot of notice of it when I was younger - though some of it still stuck in my long-term memory. However, now, I find that I get far more from the poetry and I'm far more aware of how Tolkien uses it.
For instance, the Rohirrim, in keeping with the cultures Tolkien based them on, use alliterative poetry with a metre very different to the bouncy iambs that are more common in modern English.
Read it out loud and hear the way the stresses fall on the alliterative words. Dark, dim; thane, Thengel; Mark-wardens, mist-enshrouded.
Lament for Theoden
From dark Dunharrow in the dim morning
with thane and captain rode Thengel’s son:
to Edoras he came, the ancient halls
of the Mark-wardens mist-enshrouded;
golden timbers were in gloom mantled.
Farewell he bade to his free people,
hearth and high-seat, and the hallowed places,
where long he had feasted ere the light faded.
Forth rode the king, fear behind him,
fate before him. Fealty kept he;
oaths he had taken, all fulfilled them.
Forth rode Théoden. Five nights and days
east and onward rode the Eorlingas
through Folde and Fenmarch and the Firienwood,
six thousand spears to Sunlending,
Mundburg the mighty under Mindolluin,
Sea-kings’ city in the South-kingdom
foe-beleaguered, fire-encircled.
Doom drove them on. Darkness took them,
Horse and horseman; hoofbeats afar
sank into silence: so the songs tell us.
Look at this bit:
Forth rode the king, fear behind him,
fate before him. Fealty kept he;
oaths he had taken, all fulfilled them.
I'm not good enough at technical poetry to tell you what he's doing here (though someone on my flist may be), but the first two lines drive at you with each 'F' word, then the rhythm becomes slower and more sombre to make you feel the weight of those oaths and what their result was.
I love it.
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http://watervole.dreamwidth.org/485568.html#comments
Thanks for this as well!
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Yes, indeed. I love it too.
I deliberately tried to imitate that style when I wrote "Butterfly Effect: Folk Telling"...
Lost leagues northerly
lie the lands of our longfathers
Wonders wrought they
with powers perilous
Knowledge wrested
from the dark shadows
lore unnatural whispered secrets
Life they mastered with their magics
In their grasping, into folly fell
Old and new ways
their people sundering
Hommik and Seska
implacably warring.
Death loosed they, dire weaponry
fighting and fastness
ruin and ravishing
strife unending, the people dwindling.
So fell our forebears
mother and fatherless.
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Ten years later there were huge passages I'd read aloud so often I could also recite them by heart. They've gone, though.
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Fearless they were, family, fjord-dwellers
Sculptors of metal, makers of masterpieces
Blood-kin of Tyrfing, tenders of straw-harm
Children of Ymir, All-father's chosen
Youth-dull they were, Jotun-born earth-forgers
Sif's hair beguiled them, sullied their senses
Drawn through the ferry-road, down to the cold edge
Found their doom-bringer, death of the forest
The one thing Tolkien's verse doesn't have is kennings. I used lots of them to make it harder for the players to understand. Now I have to look up 'blood-kin of Tyrfing' to remind myself what I was talking about.
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The players translated it something like this:
A family of fearless blacksmith dwarfs lived by a fjord. They were probably the ones who made the cursed sword Tyrfing, and they tended a fire. They were the children of Ymir the frost giant, and chosen by Odin. They were young and stupid, and beguiled by gold. They took a canal/ford/other water crossing of some kind down to the island of Svalbard where they met their deaths in some way that involved fire.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfAEmLxjGT0
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