#also i'm mentioning the tolkien translation because it's the only one i've read but i'm sure there are other good ones out there

[grey-wardens]

so i'm looking through the books that i've read on storygraph and it reminded me just how much i loved the j.r.r. tolkien translation of sir gawain and the green knight

i strongly recommend it if you liked the movie! to be honest, reading it made me wish the movie had followed the poem a little more closely (because there is more kissing lol)

normally i'm the last person who'd say this but i also recommend reading it out loud if you can! it's so beautifully constructed 😭

[astronicht]

Okay I'm almost done with Fellowship, here's an incomplete list of shit I noticed and thought was buck fucking wild on my first ever read-thru: medieval edition.

In literally the second line of the book, Tolkien implies that Bilbo Baggins wrote a story which was preserved alongside the in-universe version of the Mabinogion (aka the best-known collection of Welsh myths; I promise this is batshit). This is because The Hobbit has been preserved, in Tolkien's AU version of our world, in a "selection of the Red Book of Westmarch" (Prologue, Concerning Hobbits). If you're a medievalist and you see something called "The Red Book of" or "The Black Book of" etc it's a Thing. In this case, a cheeky reference to the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest). There are a few Red Books, but only Hergest has stories).

not a medieval thing but i did not expect one common theory among hobbits for the death of Frodo's parents to be A RUMORED MURDER-SUICIDE.

At the beginning of the book a few hobbits report seeing a moving elm tree up on the moors, heading west (thru or past the Shire). I mentioned this in another post, but another rule: if you see an elm tree, that's a Girl Tree. In Norse creation myth, the first people were carved from driftwood by the gods. Their names were Askr (Ash, as in the tree), the first man, and Embla (debated, but likely elm tree), the first woman. A lot of ppl have I think guessed that that was an ent-wife, but like. Literally that was a GIRL. TREE.

Medieval thing: I used to read the runes on the covers of The Hobbit and LOTR for fun when I worked in a bookshop. There's a mix of Old Norse (viking) and Old English runes in use, but all the ones I've noticed so far are real and readable if you know runes.

Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you once spent months of your life researching the early medieval art of galdor, which was the use of poems or songs to do a form of word-magic, often incorporating gibberish. If you think maybe Tolkien did not base the entirety of Fellowship so far around learning and using galdor and thus the power of words and stories, that is fine I cannot force you. He did personally translate "galdor" in Beowulf as "spell" (spell, amusingly, used to mean "story"). And also he named an elf Galdor. Like he very much did name an elf Galdor.

Tom Bombadil in fact does galdor from the moment we meet him. He arrives and fights the evil galdor (song) of the willow tree ("old gray willow-man, he's a mighty singer"), which is singing the hobbits to sleep and possibly eating them, with a galdor (song) of his own. Then he wanders off still singing, incorporating gibberish. I think it was at this point that I started clawing my face.

THEN Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you've read the description of the scop's songs in Beowulf (Beowulf again, but hey, Tolkien did famously a. translate it b. write a fanfiction about it called Sellic Spell where he gave Beowulf an arguably homoerotic Best Friend). The scop (pronounched shop) is a poet who sings about deeds on earth, but also by profession must know how to sing the song or tell the story of how the cosmos itself came to be. The wise-singer who knows the deep lore of the early universe is a standard trope in Old English literature, not just Beowulf! Anyway Tom Bombadil takes everyone home and tells them THE ENTIRE STORY OF ALL THE AGES OF THE EARTH BACKWARDS UNTIL JUST BEFORE THE MOMENT OF CREATION, THE BIG BANG ITSELF and then Frodo Baggins falls asleep.

Tom Bombadil knows about plate tectonics

This is sort of a lie, Tom Bombadil describes the oceans of old being in a different place, which works as a standard visual of Old English creation, which being Christian followed vaguely Genesis lines, and vaguely Christian Genesis involves a lot of water. TOLKIEN knew about plate tectonics though.

Actually I just checked whether Tolkien knew about plate tectonics because I know the advent of plate tectonics theory took forever bc people HATED it and Alfred Wegener suffered for like 50 years. So! actually while Tolkien was writing LOTR, the scientific community was literally still not sure plate tectonics existed. Tom Bombadil knew tho.

Remember that next time you (a geologist) are forced to look at the Middle Earth map.

I'm not even done with Tom Bombadil but I'm stopping here tonight. Plate tectonics got me. There's a great early (but almost high!) medieval treatise on cosmology and also volcanoes and i wonder if tolkien read it. oh my god. i'm going to bed.

edit: part II

[sallysavestheday]

20 questions for fic writers

Thanks very much to @nocompromise-noregrets for the tag! This is always an interesting exercise and I haven't done it in a while.

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 182, but a goodly subset of those are collections of very short works (drabbles, my beloveds!).

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 137,372. I average around 700 words per ficlet (counting those that are collections of drabbles). I have only two works over 2,000 words -- one at barely 2,100 and one at 5,600 by dint of TRSB last summer.

3. What fandoms do you write for? Tolkien only. Mostly Silmarillion but occasionally Lord of the Rings, as well.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? I'm splitting this by fandom because the older LoTR stuff has more kudos simply as a function of time.

For LoTR: Deep in the Ancient Forests of the World; Light a Little Fire in Me; I Do Not Grudge You the Game; Rash Words and Bitter Hopes; Sing, O Stone and Air. These are all Legolas/Gimli ficlets.

For Silm: When All Other Lights Go Out (the aforementioned TRSB Feanorian family drama); What We Make, Makes Us (Caranthir and Feanor); What Keeps Us Here (Celeborn and Thranduil); Still Plenty of Good in the World (Sam Gamgee fixes Feanor and Nerdanel); and It Is the Opinion of this Reviewer (Finrod critiques the research of his peers).

No method to the madness here, it seems. Some shippy, most not. Some angsty, some humorous, mostly canon compliant. Range of Silm characters. Interesting to see the variety, actually.

5. Do you respond to comments? Always. Usually within a few days. Comments are a great way to get to know other people in the fandom, and it's always a pleasure to see familiar names pop up. It's nice to know I have a bit of a following. But I also love seeing new people appear, and I welcome everything from a single emoji to a full blown rant. I reply to them all.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Only one? Impossible to choose. I love an angsty ending. Killing Fingon off is always a delight (like this, or this). Sending people off to their dooms (like this, or this) is another. Making them consider might-have-beens, too (like this, or this, or this).

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I do also like happy endings! I write many happy post-canon returns, to tie up all the loose ends. Also happy moments within canon, but you usually have to pretend you don't know what comes next (blame the Professor, not me). For LoTR, These Our Braided Lives has a very happy Gimleaf ending. For Silm, try In These Altered States, Rejoice.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Spitting over my shoulder on this one, but no. Even the people who don't agree with my takes on particular characters have always been polite. Thank you, kind readers!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I don't write anything explicit. I'll read a wide variety but am more restrained in my writing. I've snuck a little bit into the mature range for a few things recently, but I prefer allusion and metaphor, really. It's the spirit of the intimacy that interests me, not so much the mechanics.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Nope. Canon compliant or canon adjacent always.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes, I've had a few requests. My Thranduil seems to be quite popular in other languages.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I haven't but would be happy to explore the possibility.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Can't pick just one. Legolas/Gimli, Glorfindel/Ecthelion, Maedhros/Fingon, Finrod/Edrahil. The much rarer Egalmoth/Rog. And I'm pleased to have originated the tag for Amrod/Aredhel. Spitfire fans, get on that! (thanks to chestnut_pod for the horrible, wonderful ship name)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Not a WIP, even, just an idea that I've mentioned before: an AU in which Fingon, returning from Thangorodrim with Maedhros, can't hold onto him, and he falls from the eagle's back into Lake Mithrim. I won't write it, but I sure hope someone else will.

16. What are your writing strengths? Brevity, ha! Condensing a great deal of emotional development into very few words. Figurative language. Ripping your heart out and stomping on it, tidily.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Dialogue. I don't write much of it, and it takes a long time to get it right.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I'm not likely to do so. I don't like the way it interrupts the flow. I'd rather indicate the language that is being spoken than try to craft compelling dialogue in it. This is especially fraught in the Tolkien fandoms, where the linguists WILL come for you if you get it wrong, lol!

19. First fandom you wrote for? LoTR. I've only been doing this for a couple of years.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Impossible to choose! But my comfort series is The Flower and the Fountain: 16,000 words of Glorfindel and Ecthelion in 32 vignettes. I love those guys.

Thank you so much for the tag! @polutrope @eilinelsghost @melestasflight @tathrin @thelordofgifs @zealouswerewolfcollector, what about you? And anyone else who'd like to share, hop in!

[bluedancingkittykat]

SO tumblr deleted the Ask/Draft, but here you go anon! Hope you see this someday...

I am assuming this is for tolkien, because that IS most of my blog.

1. the character everyone gets wrong

Feänor is an easy one, so we're gonna go with Nolofinwë. 1) Fingolfin translates to Finwënolofinwë. Not addressed in the published Silmarillion, the Shibboleth of Feänor adds great context and character depth. 2) "High princes were Fëanor and Fingolfin, the elder sons of Finwë, honoured by all in Aman; but now they grew proud and jealous each of his rights and his possessions." THEY grew proud and jealous of EACH of his rights!!

Whatever his motivations are, (he thought he was a better choice, he wanted to prove to finwe he was better than feänor, whatever) nolo WANTED that crown, and he wanted it LOUDLY.

ALSO i was going to put this under 10, but figured it fit here better. This is a concept I think lots of people get wrong!

Arda Marred and Arda Healed.

it is NOT post Final Battle Arda un-marred, it doesnt *magically* go away! its Arda HEALED, ok? Arda un-marred is pre-Morgoth singing. Arda Healed is Arda *healed.* listen, I love those "what if post Final Battle, Arda Un-marred deletes people who are considered 'marred'" too, but some people consider Arda Un-Marred to Be Canon, and I'm here to tell you that's incorrect. I know in 10, I'm like "everyone's canon is valid" but a) that was written before this and b) you asked me what character concept i think people get wrong and this is it!!

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

this was the only one I have saved, and yeah, I mention this a lot LOL

I had to track this one down and it is such a bad faith take:

and ops clarification which makes it worse, somehow

and Dior is a Nepo Baby. exactly as it sounds. Dior is a nepo baby because he got the throne when he was like 30 lol

10) worst part of fanon

I saw this one and said "we really are choosing violence" LOL a few things! The inability to see Grey. Elwing is either good or bad. the Valar are either good or evil. ut like, No one is all one or the other. This is also why people saying Nolofinwe was humble and didn't really want the crown bothers me lol like you can like a flawed character. Also, that's why I like the silmarillion; someone is good and righteous from one perspective, but from the other is a total ass. Thingol is a good king...but he not a good ally. [[[]]]. Like, theyre likable for their flaws, and seems lots of folks are like "i like character Y, so they're actually good. but I don't like character A, so they are actually a huge dick." ... which i HATE. especially when they use this to bash another character or make an...not inaccurate comparison, I'm not sure what the word I'm thinking of is, but let's say I've read enough fics where feanor is treated worse than morgoth because they didn't like feanor but liked morgoth

ALSO the attitude "my canon or you get cannoned, and by that I mean a canon ball to the face." Like, don't get me wrong, I think debates about canon are fun! but there is no One True Canon (OTC). The only ones I will agree with as Canon are the published novels and even they can contradict each other. Now that I have my circle of tumblrinas i dont see this as often, but I have seen quite a bit of "[opinion] is canon" but then get aggressive when people would say "no thats your headcanon..." or would ask for a source.

ALSO ALSO the "a TRUE tolkien scholar can back up their headcanon with at LEAST 54 references from HoME and a citation from Letter.s" WHAT the hell is that? Sometimes I just wanna give Green Elves lore, ok? Or I think Aredhel is Aro but not Ace and her favorite color is yellow, actually. I don't NEED a citation. *I* LIKE reading the Lore and making HCs according to that, but no one NEEDS it. And like I said, I think Lore Debates can be fun! Debating what HCs are "true," or which version of Canon is "true" can be fun! (fun fact felixwhetsel and I have a theory that everyones version is correct, because if the LOTR and Hobbit and Silm are all copies of the originals, passed down, things are bound be be changed by time, culture, and language!)

I should clarify that debates are fun, if everyones having fun. If not, then it's just mean. I'm sure I've been guilty of that, and I'm Sorry if we had a debate and I came across as a total Bitch.

19) you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

This is the question that I was stuck on for a WHILE. I try not to be horrified/ashamed of things I like and if it makes me mad, I just don't like it.

So I decided to ask it differently. first I asked, "is there anything I'm quiet about liking because other people will judge me?" and the answer is "yes, but i'm not worried about people judging me." (if you were wondering, the answers are "OC centric fics" and "I think Eöl could be an interesting character") so then I asked: "is there anything I'm like "I can't believe I like that!""

The answer is yes, but it does not make me feel mad, horrified, or ashamed, it makes me feel sad

It's the Orc Bank. I headcanon the Orc Bank. There's this one post that sums it up really well, but I can't find it, so I'll try to sum it up. The theory is that only Eru can create souls. Morgoth can only corrupt them. Given that Orcs exist well into the Third Age, there's a couple options.

1. Modern Orcs have no souls (doubtful)

2. Eru creates Orc souls (also doubtful)

3. Maia have the power to corrupt souls (more believable, but logistically how would that work? Sauron tortures *every* orc? When does an Orc stop being an Orc then?)

4. The Orc souls are Recycled into the Orc Bank.

It's exactly as it sounds. The souls corrupted by Morgoth are re-used throughout the Millenia. There is No End to their suffering. It makes me SAD every time I think about it. That post came across my dash and I went "Holy Shit. It makes so much SENSE. But it's TOO SAD to reblog." which is why I can't find it lol Just about every canon compliant fic i write that has all my lore compliant HCs is AU to me because i'm like "Yes, I HC the Orc Bank, but it's TOO SAD. thats is it's OWN fuckin universe"

ask me -> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/bluedancingkittykat/722302678068248576

[first-of-her-nxme]

Hi! I recently found your theories, I've always liked the books more than the show, so many plot points and fantasy elements were left out of the show... So your theories have been wonderful to read while waiting for the next book. If you'd like to talk about it, what do you think will happen to the dragons by the end of the series? (Both Danny's and the one Aegon might wake) There's so much talk of 'breaking the wheel' in politics, i wonder what it means for the magic in Westeros

Hi! Thank you for reading and for the question. And I apologize for the delay.

I think that breaking the wheel in regard to magic will be the end of winter. I mean, the winter.

This plot was heavily inspired by Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, the book series by Tad Williams. In Williams's story, the magical, lethal winter disappeared when the girl named Marya killed the Storm King. That story was in turn loosely inspired by Tolkien's Eowyn and the Witch-king.

So how does it translate to Martin's books?

In A Song of Ice and Fire, we have a girl named Arya. We also have a god named the Rain God. This god is mentioned in the prologue to A Clash of Kings. Maester Cressen recalled that Renly liked to play the Rain God. Patchface's also mentions him in his riddles. The god is the counterpart of the show Night King but in the books he is a completely different character with a different story. Arya is not going to fight him but she will have a hand in his death.

The information of how the winter will end is hidden in the aforementioned riddle of Patchface:

“Under the sea, it snows up,” said the fool, “and the rain is dry as bone. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.” – the prologue to A Clash of Kings

Under the sea means in the future. All of Patches's riddles foretell the future. We can say that he narrates the story. Sometimes he speaks about something that is just about to happen, sometimes he speaks about distant future. Here, he says that in the future it snows up. Snowing up is the opposite of snowing, the opposite of winter falling over the land. It means the end of winter. The rain here stands for the Rain God. Dry as bone brings to mind the bones of a dead person, a skeleton. It also corresponds with the Westerosi custom of burying the bones of a deceased or the Targaryen ritual of burning bodies after which only bones remain. Then, Patchface's riddle means that the winter will end when the Rain God is dry as bone, meaning when he is dead.

If it also means the disappearance of all the magic then all magical things and creatures must disappear too. Which means all weirwoods, direwolves and dragons must. But I don't think it's going to happen. I believe it's only about the end of the winter. The end of the cycle of recurring magical winter as a form of punishment for the people.

However, I believe that the magical creatures will eventually retreat until they become legends, like it had happened before the winter's return. The remaining weirwoods will continue to grow. They will be vessels for those "marked by the gods" but they won't interfere with human matters. Finally, dragons. I have no doubts that Martin will kill some of them. He likes breaking Daenerys's heart too much. Then, some of them might die for dramatic purposes. Maybe all of them.

I actually think that the one who has a chance to survive is Aegon's dragon and it's because of Aegon's relationship to Arya. If he bonds with a dragon it would be a parallel to Arya's bond with Nymeria. Then, perhaps Martin will let these two magical animals live so they can be vessels for Arya's and Aegon's souls. Though I wouldn't mind Daenerys's soul surviving in Drogon too, I'm not sure if this is her fate.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

My Charles De Gaulle reading so far:

The Army of the Future, an essay/exhortation on the future defense and army of France published in 1934, is a surprisingly engaging read as a historical document. I am relatively surprised that it was so easy to get through because "military strategy" is definitely a topic I have never had a particular interest in.

General information I had found about this book elsewhere ended up being surprisingly accurate. De Gaulle hammers on and on about the importance of armored divisions, the weakness of the north-east border of France compared to the east border where the Maginot line was, the need of a professional army because of mechanization, that France could no longer rely on numbers for its battles, etc, etc.

As I commented on the tags of another post, it shows how false the notion that the nazis conceived the "genius idea" of blitzkrieg; the concept was already clear to De Gaulle at the time, and in his war memoris he mentions a wole list of authors that had been talking about tanks and their key relevance to warfare moving forward since 1917.

I've been very slowly making my way through the war memoirs, partly because this is a busy time of year, but partly because the grief, frustration, and tragedy of the YEARS of events that led to France's surrender in June 1940 and how De Gaulle is still feeling about them 15 years later are more emotionally taxing than I expected them to be.

But I've been having two recurring thoughts connected to them:

One, how Tolkien detested the readings of LotR as allegory, yes, but also, honestly, how easy it is to find their applicability in narratives such as these. De Gaulle presents government, high command, and French people at that point (the 1930s) as mentally aged and tired, traumatized by the Great War into a denial of their situation, desperately holding onto old strategies and violently refusing to consider new views that meant accepting the real danger of Nazi fascism and Hitler, even if it came with the strong hope that it could be met and repelled. There's an intense tragic sadness every time he tells an event or decision taken, and repeats some formulation of 'this made things worse, but there was still hope'. This I found a particularly poignant example: "Sadly, during the course of the Battle of France, this 14 kilometers deep stretch of land was the only one that was reconquered... by May 30th, the battle is virtually lost. On the evening of the day before that, the king and army of Belgium have capitulated. at Dunkirk, the British Army begins its re-embarkation. What remains of the French troops in the north tries to do the same; a retreat, by force, disastrous. Soon the enemy will start south on the second phase of their offensive, against an adversary reduced into a third of its strength, and more than ever lacking the means to answer to the German mechanized forces. At my encampment in Picardy, I have no illusions; but I am determined to keep my hope... we have the Empire, that offers us its resources; we have the navy, that can cover it; we have the people, who, having to suffer the invasion anyways, can be incited by the Republic into resistance, a terrific occasion for unity; there's the world, that can help us with armament, and later on, by joining us. It all depends on this question: will the public powers, at all costs, protect the State, preserve our independence and save the future, or will they abandon everything in the midst of the panic of the collapse?" (Translation mine from the Spanish translation I'm reading; I sadly do not speak any French myself). I'm not going to say, in a trite way THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE THEODEN FIRST AND THEN DENETHOR, but I think you can see the similarities in the narrative and perspective.

This one is a bit sillier, but the brain does what the brain does. I kept remembering that episode of The Simpsons (S15E21) where they escape Alcatraz and are rescued by a French ship, which captain tells them "we hate America too! Come to France, and we will mock the country that saved us twice from the Germans". On this site it is common to clown on edgy shows like Family Guy, but I was thinking how this "hey, it's a comedy, which means we stereotype, and make gross generalizations and are in general irreverent" can hide under the mask of progressive irreverence some rather startling thoughts on the opposite direction (that the French are cowards and idiots and inferior to brave and good Americans who joined both wars just to heroically save the incompetent behinds of everybody else) The irony that the whole plot of the episode hinges on Bart disrespecting the American flag does not escape me. I don't deny you can argue that the whole point is revealing the target audience's hipocrisy, but while The Simpsons were a generally smart show once, I don't think it ever was that deep).

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

In the absolute nicest way possible: how many languages do you speak? I know English, of course, and I have passable Spanish, and I’m simultaneously working on my Italian and French but I don’t even know enough to get by in either of those. And you’ve mentioned quite a few languages that you speak, or at least, that you’ve studied, and as someone who knows the struggles of trying to be multilingual, the amount you know is amazing and very, VERY impressive!

I also happen to love linguistics and language theory in general and I’d love to hear anything you might have to ramble about and discuss when it comes to linguistics in any languages, because it really is such a fascinating area of study.

Speaking of Tolkien linguistics specifically: I’m not someone who has actually really STUDIED a language. I grew up around Spanish speakers and did it for all four years of high school, but I never studied any of it from a scholarly perspective. It was always just learning about how to speak it, how to write it. What sort of linguistic quirks does Tolkien have when it comes to creating his languages? Do you see specific or obvious influences from real life in any of his languages? What are some of your favorite things about his languages, and the EVOLUTION of his languages?

Basically, please talk Tolkien linguistics at me!!

Hi, thank you so much for this ask! :)

Oh no, I don't really speak that many languages fluently! To start with, Latin I certainly don't speak, even though I took it the longest, but it's not a spoken language of course. (Plus when I was studying it in the later years and we were reading the Aeneid and stuff, you have like a page of vocabulary notes next to each page of Latin text to help you with the translations.)

I became reasonably conversational in Japanese after taking it for three years, but I'm definitely not fluent, and my skills are a bit rusty now. And I only took one year each of Russian and German, so that's not much. But I love learning languages and I would really like to polish up my Japanese, and revisit the other languages I've studied, plus study other ones :) I took at least one language each year of college, sometimes two at once, and I really miss it.

Yes yes yesssssssss let's talk about Tolkien languages. So, the obvious inspirations are clearly Finnish > Quenya and Welsh > Sindarin. But it's not a case of simple borrowing. Tolkien was too creative for that. Most people would struggle to create even one invented language. Tolkien, as you know, created multiple languages AND histories of how they all related to each other! I LOVE HIM! THIS MAN WAS INSANE! Exhibit A:

WHO DOES THIS? Also, he had beautiful handwriting.

Anyway. I don't even know where to START I have so many thoughts about Tolkien's languages. This will be very haphazard.

Okay, here's one that I think about a lot. Aegnor's name in Quenya was Aikanáro, which means "fell fire". The aika part means "fell, dire, terrible." Which is descended from an Eldarin root word gaya, "awe, dread". That same root word is the origin of part of the Sindarin word Belegaer. Beleg means great, and aer means sea. But aer is derived from that same word gaya, "awe, dread".

I just find this really cool because this is how etymology works in the real world! It's not a simple case of an ancient word for the sea turning into a modern word for the sea. It's a case of a word that means one thing being applied to another thing until it comes to mean something completely different than before. And I love that! And I especially love that you can trace root words from Eldarin into both Sindarin and Quenya!!!!!!!!!!!!! HE CREATED AN ACTUAL, FUNCTIONAL LANGUAGE TREE. I'M SCREAMING

Like, if you know enough words in Quenya, it's not hard to translate them into Sindarin, and vice versa, because they're actually, functionally related. IT'S GENIUS. IT'S AMAZING.

Not ONLY can you trace Eldarin root words into both Sindarin and Quenya, I also think it's so cool that Tolkien came up with multiple etymologies for things sometimes (party because he kept changing his mind!). For instance, he came up with both an Elvish etymology and a Valarin etymology for Taniquetil. In Quenya, it means "high snow peak". But another theory (yes... Tolkien came up with a theory for a word he created) is that it is simply the Elvish pronunciation of the Valarin word Dâhan-igwiš-telgûn. He came up with multiple (and conflicting) etymologies for the name Felagund too, among other things.

It will NEVER cease to amaze me that Tolkien not only made up etymologies for his invented words, he also sometimes went back and forth on which etymology was "right"! I remember reading a note in one of the volumes of the History of Middle-earth that said something along the lines of, "One of these etymologies for Balrog is correct, but I don't know which one." YOU MADE UP THE LANGUAGES, TOLKIEN! But I honestly love that he thought of himself more as a recorder of what was already there than the person making the decisions.

For example, there's that video of Tolkien writing in tengwar where he says, "My writing is very inferior to the Elves..." !!!!!!!!!! TOLKIEN, SIR. YOU INVENTED THIS ALPHABET. I love it so much. You have to watch it if you haven't seen it already! It's wonderful:

The way he talks about languages here is so quintessentially Tolkien... the delight connected with discovering a new language like a "new wine or some new sweetmeat or something". It reminds me of what he had to say about "cellar door"—and I'm sure this is not new to you, but for those who don't know, it was a phrase that he considered to have a beautiful sound independent from its meaning. He said in one of his lectures,

"Most English-speaking people...will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant."

Hence, the influence of Welsh on Sindarin. In creating his Elvish languages, Tolkien wanted to create beautiful languages, but not in the sense that they would be frivolous or flowery, he wanted them to be beautiful in the sense that they would be very pleasing to the ear, like "cellar door". Well, I'm extremely biased, but I think he succeeded. He DEFINITELY succeeded.

Oh, and back to the inspiration for Tolkien's languages for a second, there's been more discussion of the phonetic/grammatical influence on his languages but less discussion on what influenced his alphabets. I want to know how he came up with tengwar! And sarati! I would think that Japanese and Chinese would have had some influence, not on the sound or grammar of the languages themselves, but on the script. Tolkien sometimes wrote the sarati (the alphabet that preceded tengwar) vertically, like Chinese and Japanese, and his visual art drew some inspiration from Chinese and Japanese paintings, so I wonder if there is a connection there. Some people have also noticed similarities between Chinese characters and Tolkien's symbol that represents his initials:

One thing that I find really amazing about Tolkien's languages is that they were so fully formed and so interconnected that there are some cases where there are probably connections that he just didn't spell out, leaving Tolkien scholars and linguists to come up with their own theories. For example the potential relation between Valarin and the language of Mordor! Basically, the Ring of Doom in Valinor was called the Máhanaxar, the first part of which is derived from Máhan, "chief Vala", a loan word from Valarin māchanāz. Máhanaxar is the Quenya pronunciation of the Valarin word Māchananaškad. Here's what's so cool... David Salo, a Tolkien linguist who worked on the LOTR movies, theorized that the second part of this word may mean "ring"—it is the name for the Ring of Doom, after all—meaning that the Valarin word naškad could be the root of nazg, as in Ash nazg durbatuluk and Nazgûl. It would make so much sense for the language of Mordor, which was created by Sauron, to have similarities to Valarin.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's very late so this post has no rhyme or reason, but when asked to talk about Tolkien's languages I will HAPPILY do so! :) Thank you for the ask!!!!!

[cjs-booknook]

Classic Novels That Just Hit Different

I'm not really one for reading classic novels because the language used is really hard for my small brain to fully comprehend. So, I'll be reading a paragraph or two with no understanding of what I'm reading. It's just a constant "wait, what?" in my head.

HOWEVER, that being said, I actually really liked the classics I'm about to list. Yes, I read most of them for school. But, I really liked the plot and characters and just general vibes of each story. Well, all except for one cause I have yet to read it. But I have glowing reviews from people I trust so thought I'd put it out there.

Without further ado, I give you:

Classic Literature Book Recs

Demian by Hermann Hesse (I know that I've recommended this before but I need to do it again because this book has been one of my favorites for like 6 years.)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Have I also recommended this book before too? Yes, but this book was such a mind melt when I read it back in highschool and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Also, a 6 year time span.)

Richard III by Shakespeare (This is my favorite play by him. I have only read the side by side SparkNotes translations but I died of laughter and was genuinely shocked and, because it was a marked up translation, I actually understood the puns from that time period. And let me just say, they were hilarious. Can't recommend it enough.)

While we're here: Hamlet and King Lear by Shakespeare (I feel like these are classics that a lot of us had to read in high school. I loved King Lear then, Hamlet not so much. But after rereading both of them (again with SparkNotes translations) I fell in love. Just like with all of these books, I can't recommend them enough.)

The Hobbit by Tolkien (This is really not my genre, but there's something about a high fantasy classic that just screams fall to me and tis the season! It just had to make this list, especially because it's this time of the year. I haven't personally read it but my best friend is in love with this book and the Lord of the Rings series. If the amount of times they talk about how good this franchise is, I think I should mention it for those fantasy lovers.)

[widthofmytongue]

who is your favorite poet?

I'm not entirely sure I've got favourites in that way. The first two names that came to mind were Eliot and Dante, but I mean...

Like okay, I do think The Waste Land is the greatest poem, perhaps the greatest work of literature, to emerge from the Twentieth Century. But we all know that Eliot is an absolute piece of shit and doesn't deserve any reverence, right.

And as for Dante, I feel like I ought to discount any poetry I’ve only read in translation, because English is the only language I've ever spoken fluently enough to really appreciate the poetry thereof. I did have a facing copy of the Inferno as a teen, and I did actually read large swathes of the Florentine, and I've also read bits of Verlaine or Schiller or Virgil or what have you in their original, but did I ever really get it? (I did, actually, yes.)

Another name that springs to mind (not least because I was discussing his genius the other day, but I daresay I'd have thought of him regardless) is Derek Walcott. In many ways, maybe, he's like the Eliot we really deserve.

If I'm honest, someone like Spencer Krug or Dan Bejar would probably rank pretty highly for me, to say nothing of the likes of Leonard Cohen or Peter Sinfield or I don't know Bruce Springsteen or Chuck D. And after all why should we remove pop from the canon??

And on a similar note, I actually quite like Tolkien's poetry. It's not exactly profound or moving, but I really appreciate how it updates Old and Middle English conventions to Modern English, and I've spent too much time grappling with the form of the Perle Poet for this not to resonate with me on some level.

In those technical terms, I have always been impressed by the Romantics, especially Byron, whom I appreciate for his fusion of punk rock fuck you thrust and legit sublime classicism. Even Wordsworth (whom I kinda hate) is kinda chef's kiss when it comes to foot and rhyme and metre. That old school shit really self-harmonises in ways that I think no one even recognises since like Larkin or even Yeats.

ALL THAT SAID: something which I've mentioned now and then is that when I've recently reread Gramsci or Mao or Fanon especially, but also like Adorno or Deleuze or Haraway (all but the last of which in translation), I realise how much they really speak to me, touch me, move me, more than, you know, Carol Ann Duffy or Mary Oliver.

Pourquoi tout simplement ne pas essayer de toucher l'autre, de sentir l'autre, de me révéler l'autre? Ma liberté ne m'est-elle donc pas donnée pour édifier le monde du Toi?

Just try to tell me that's not poetry, and I will show you, mon semblable, mon frère, a reader who cannot read. Or this:

This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.

In the immortal words of Nigel Tufnel: That's poetry that is.