#feeling sad about finrod in this house tonight!

[quixoticanarchy]

yes! it is poetic! and heart-wrenching! god i am dying for Finrod-zong analysis this is excellent

so my favorite of the songs for whatever reason is probably Баллада Финрода к Амариэ (Finrod’s ballad to Amarië), when you get Finrod’s first retrospective tragic look at what became of his love that he left behind - the opposite of what Beren’s doing, of course - and so I read it at least partly as Finrod feeling ashamed for not giving everything the way Beren is dead set on doing. partly his honor is at stake and he’s got his oath to Beren’s father, but there’s also the sense that maybe this is a chance to do better by love itself (we do love some high-stakes dramatics) - if he can’t ever repair things in his own past, at least he can take a stand with Beren, who has more hope and resolve than he did. significantly I think, Баллада Финрода к Амариэ is also when the repeating line “А в том беда, что песня не допета...” appears first (”the grief/trouble is that the song was never finished”). the suffering and the loneliness and the regret are less of a torment than the lack of closure. so Finrod determines that at least Beren won’t end up like him.

and then there’s the moment when that line comes back in its most heartbreaking form (if you ask me): “Не в том беда, что был слишком смел, А в том беда, что ты лишён надежды” (”the grief/trouble is not that you were too brave / the grief/trouble is that you have lost hope”). Finrod who decided that Beren’s commitment to his love was admirable enough to throw caution to the wind and join him, is now seeing that Beren has doubts, has come to regard this quest as doomed. maybe love is not strong enough. maybe Finrod was wrong to take this (wildly reckless in any version of events) chance. although he doesn’t say he has lost hope, he mourns that Beren has; given that Finrod was swayed to this course by Beren’s conviction (and imo as a symbolic redemption for his own lost love), seeing Beren lose hope is still especially hard to bear. (oh and the song where they face each other and both say “прости меня“ (forgive me)... that gets me.)

feel like there’s some way to tie this to Finrod’s final song Истина - or parallels to Galadriel’s closing by naming love as the single law above all, versus Finrod addressing Truth just before he dies... (and for all this is quite the departure from canon, no werewolves anywhere in sight, I forgive it and this rock opera is allowed to live permanently in its own genetically-modified-canon corner of my heart).

I think you might actually be to blame/thank for my finrod rock opera spiral - iirc a post of yours about one of the songs led me to youtube and then the rest is history? in any case it's maybe the best thing that happened to me in 2020 and the spiral is still going strong, I will talk about finrod all the time although most of my thoughts are just *incoherent emotional screaming*

sfshdgsjdgd i remember that, sort of! blame, thank, what’s the difference? do not remember what post it was, but i’m glad that you’re really enjoying it! it really is just instantaneous serotonin.

anyway ohhhhhhh my god this musical makes me so fucking emotional!!!

ok there’s one really specific thing that’s been in my mind all day: parallels. well, specifically one parallel.

so in beren comes to nargothrond, we hear him sing “я хочу любовь защитить свою” (i want to defend my love). then, in in the camp, we hear finrod sing “я сумел любовь погубить свою” (i managed to destroy my love) to the same melody. and it’s haunting: we see two heroes, one who tried to avoid pain, both causing and receiving it, by barring his heart from love (but his love killed him in the end anyway); and one who sees all the battles and losses and heartbreak and says, no, i want this, and i am going to take back and defend what is mine. (отдай мне то, что мне принадлежит...)

maybe beren’s naïve. maybe he’s thoughtless, maybe he’s foolish or even selfish. we can definitely say that he doesn’t quite know what he’s up against. and we can go back and forth for days about whether it’s right of beren to draw finrod’s people into what amounts at the time to a suicide quest, but in this foolish, doomed quest lies the hope of beleriand and also the message that yes, the life of one man who has nothing to his name is worth that of an elf-king in his glorious city with thousands of years of craft and triumph and love behind him.

and i think that maybe finrod looked at beren and saw someone with no plan, no army, and no hope of success but who decided he was going to defend his love or die trying, and thought, maybe this kind of love is worth dying for.

anyway, i just think it’s poetic, and by poetic i mean heart-wrenching, how finrod says that he tried to kill his love, but in the end he let it crucify him instead.