There is no such thing as a true end for Tolkien. In fact, every end is naught but a beginning of something new. This applies to all sorts of ends, from the deaths of characters to the end of stories.
The strange thing about character deaths in the Lord of the Rings is that they are often accompanied by song. Today, we might consider singing at a funeral to be disrespectful and not fitting for the solemnity of the occasion. However, odes and evocations are standard in the Lord of the Rings. After the perceived death of Gandalf at Moria, Frodo begins to sing a song about Gandalf and his journeys, his burden, and his courage (bk. II, chp VII). Sam chimes in with his own verse about his fireworks shortly after. While this does not occur immediately after Gandalf’s fall, having been two chapters ago, it remains that the “death” of Gandalf sparked the creation of a song. Out of all the sources it could have come from, it comes from Frodo, who did not sing even in Rivendell. Later on when Boromir dies, Aragorn sings an elegy for him, which Legolas joins in (bk. III, chp I). This does occur during the funeral they hold for him, not so delayed as the previous example. Another case of death inspiring the creation of music.
Music of praise, it should be remembered. All the songs sung are songs of praise, each song an artistic sub-creation. That is to say, something is created and begun in the moments after the end of another. In this act of artistry and creation, the ideas of Boromir and Gandalf - and by this I mean the notion of them, their conception and form - continue even after their physical (and in Gandalf’s case, false) end.
The endings of stories also beget beginnings. At Rivendell, Bilbo tells Frodo that “books ought to have good endings,” but what does he mean by a good ending (bk. II, chp. III)? Some sense of closure, perhaps, but according to Frodo there is something more. Later on when Sam and Frodo are journeying beneath the shadows of Cirith Ungol, Sam asks Frodo what kind of tale they’re in. After some conversation, Sam lands upon an interesting note: that they are in the same tale that Beren, the Silmarils, and Earendil are in. He asks Frodo “don’t the great tales never end?” (bk. IV, chp. VIII). To this Frodo responds, “No, they never end as tales… but the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later - or sooner” (bk. IV, chp. VIII). Here is the meat of the matter: the great tales, the best stories, don’t end: they continue. Even after the last word has been said - or sung - the stories continue afterwards. As Frodo says, the people in them come and go, and they will keep coming and going, creating a cycle of continuation as stories are carried onwards by the people within them.
Stories - and people - live onwards after they end. People sing songs about those who have passed, stories continue past the last page, and we write blog posts about stories with last pages written by the now deceased.
- CLP
2 comments:
Endings and songs—yes. I would have liked to hear more what you thought of the lyrics, whether you "heard" music in the meter of the poems, how the songs struck you as songs. We saw throughout the quarter how Tolkien thought about language musically—in creation, in story-telling, in tradition, in worship. A hidden current—or something always there that we do not hear, like the music of the spheres?! Much to think on! RLFB
I think this was a great post, and like the idea of endings as beginnings, especially when something new is created out of something old, as is the case with the songs about the dead. The thought of death leading to new life is very interesting to me especially when it comes to subcreation. As said in the prompt to the final project, Tolkien imagines lots of subcreation to come out of his subcreation, and not only would that be the beginning of a new story, but it would also keep the old alive. I like the idea of the final project because we are going out and doing what Tolkien wanted others to do with his work. One thing that this post made me think about that would be cool would be if there was some sort of sub-creation that every class did, and the class that followed them built upon it, so the universe would be always expanding, and not only would we keep Tolkien’s ideas alive, but we would keep our own alive as well.
-RL
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