SilkWeskit
New Member
New to forum, catching up (121 as of now).
I was waiting until I caught up to even post any questions on the forum, but I'm not catching up as fast as I'd like, so here we are. Hate to drag all the way back to Episode 73, but I've listened to the episode, looked through the forum posts, and didn't see what I thought was (possibly) an important symbolism point in Stanza 5 of the Tale of Tinuviel poem.
Regarding Stanza 4, Corey commented specifically on the sound of the music “underground, In hidden hollows quavering”, ie. unreachable by Beren no matter how well he searched. In counterpoint to that, is Luthien herself similarly “unreachable” by Beren through the winter but in the opposite direction?
First off, as a side note, although Corey mentioned several times in the class Beren espying Tinuviel dancing far off, nowhere in the stanza does it state that he sees her at all. The basic facts listed in this time-frame are that he sought, and she danced.
Am I way off base here, or is Tinuviel as least symbolically removed from Beren’s sphere and in some way remotely “above him” for the season, just as the music was similarly below him in the previous stanza?
I was waiting until I caught up to even post any questions on the forum, but I'm not catching up as fast as I'd like, so here we are. Hate to drag all the way back to Episode 73, but I've listened to the episode, looked through the forum posts, and didn't see what I thought was (possibly) an important symbolism point in Stanza 5 of the Tale of Tinuviel poem.
Regarding Stanza 4, Corey commented specifically on the sound of the music “underground, In hidden hollows quavering”, ie. unreachable by Beren no matter how well he searched. In counterpoint to that, is Luthien herself similarly “unreachable” by Beren through the winter but in the opposite direction?
First off, as a side note, although Corey mentioned several times in the class Beren espying Tinuviel dancing far off, nowhere in the stanza does it state that he sees her at all. The basic facts listed in this time-frame are that he sought, and she danced.
- In the first two lines, Beren looks along the ground for Tinuviel. He is not only “wandering far” on the thickly strewn leaves of years, it’s where he’s searching ever for her. And he doesn’t find her, perhaps because he’s looking in the wrong place.
- Tolkien draws our attention upwards. The leaves of years are indeed illuminated, and we get three nouns in the next two lines: “moon”, “star”, and “heavens”, which all bring the reader’s attention upwards (but not necessarily Beren’s).
- Note that the leaves in the first quatrain are lit “by light of moon”, but now Tinuviel’s mantle is instead glinting “in the moon”, not “by the moon”. Perhaps not a huge distinction, but at this point we are only two chapters removed from the “The Man In The Moon” song, and at the very least we can imagine Tinuviel (and her mantle) dancing, framed by the moon behind her.
- Meaning of “As on a hilltop high and far”. While it’s easy to assume that “as” is used here to mean “at the same time”, looking to convey that Tinuviel is dancing while concurrently Beren is searching among the leaves of years, it is also framed like a simile, asking us to imagine that she is in a place or position that can be compared to a hilltop, as she is similarly high and far (ostensibly from Beren’s position on the floor of the forest).
- Decor for dancing. Tinuviel is stated to be dancing potentially framed by the moon, high and far, and in the last two lines with a “mist of silver” strewn at her feet. It doesn’t take a tremendous leap to envision silver mists as moonlit clouds below the level of her dance, reinforcing the image of her among the stars and therefore beyond Beren’s mortal grasp (for the moment).
Am I way off base here, or is Tinuviel as least symbolically removed from Beren’s sphere and in some way remotely “above him” for the season, just as the music was similarly below him in the previous stanza?
Last edited: