Lincoln Alpern
Active Member
While I greatly enjoy the Professor's flippancy and irreverence as a rule, I was surprised to hear him apply it to the Battle of the Dagorlad in the most recent session, characterizing Gandalf's quote about "great valour, and great deeds that were not wholly vain" as "extreme, toned-down praise." I actually find it a very moving (and very Tolkienian) sentiment.
We live in a world whose history is littered with examples of people struggling with great valor and heroism to achieve some great good or avert some great wrong (to avoid this conversation getting derailed into a political debate, I'll forebear from giving specific examples), only to have their struggle end in loss, tragedy, and suffering.
When I contemplate these sorrowful events (and something similar which happened, on a small scale, in my own community), I find comfort in the idea that these heroic struggles "were not wholly vain," that they produced some measure of good even though they did not achieve their end.
It also seems like a good summary of much of the history of Middle-Earth, which makes me think it's a theme Tolkien also put much stock in. (I'd go so far as to suggest the parts of the Silmarillion which are most dismal and disheartening to read are notable for seeing this theme extremely downplayed, or absent entirely - lookin' at you, Turin.)
We live in a world whose history is littered with examples of people struggling with great valor and heroism to achieve some great good or avert some great wrong (to avoid this conversation getting derailed into a political debate, I'll forebear from giving specific examples), only to have their struggle end in loss, tragedy, and suffering.
When I contemplate these sorrowful events (and something similar which happened, on a small scale, in my own community), I find comfort in the idea that these heroic struggles "were not wholly vain," that they produced some measure of good even though they did not achieve their end.
It also seems like a good summary of much of the history of Middle-Earth, which makes me think it's a theme Tolkien also put much stock in. (I'd go so far as to suggest the parts of the Silmarillion which are most dismal and disheartening to read are notable for seeing this theme extremely downplayed, or absent entirely - lookin' at you, Turin.)