Reflections on Finishing LOTR for the Fourth Time

[klsiegel320]

Actually, I just finished them for the fifth time; but I stumbled across this passage from twelve years ago, the last time I embarked on that journey; and the sentiments are still sound...

I'm thinking that I'll use this journal more as a forum for writing that turns out really well (from just about anywhen I find it), as opposed to simply drafting raw online. Just so you know...

Serious Spoiler Warning: I do not pull punches. If you have not read the books, and want to; if you don't know what's coming in the third movie: stop NOW and read this some other time.

Friday, August 30, 1991

Sigh...such good stuff, indeed. They're all gone, now - Merry and Pippin lie beside Aragorn in the Houses of the King in Minas Tirith; and Frodo and Bilbo and Gandalf and Galadriel and Elrond, and Sam and Legolas and Gimli, too, if rumor is to be believed, have all gone oversea to Valinor at last, to the Uttermost West; and Arwen's grave grows green on Cerin Amroth.

So deep are the emotions, and so high, that this great tale stirs, that I cannot write them, or put them in words. Not that there are not flaws - there are moments when it does seem that all the world is either glowing with good and thus like to the Eldar, or wholly evil, and like to Sauron and Morgoth that was Melkor; and in some ways the ending is too long for the tale, while in other ways it is too swift and brief.

The worst wrench is to try to turn my mind and heart elsewhere, for like Frodo and his Ring, at the last I find the deed so very hard to do. And yet I must have what to occupy me, during slow days, or I shall go mad, and writing I can do, but not forever, and not all day. But the mark of these people with whom I have shared so many joys and sorrows and perils is deep, even as deep as the mark of the folk of Beleriand's kingdoms that are drowned, and I cannot so lightly abandon them....

Certainly my next attempt should be lighter, and not in any way comparable, lest the comparison be unfavorable. I would read good tales and love them for themselves, as good tales, and not feel I must at the last press sigh and say, "Good perhaps, but Aragorn - ah, now there was a king!" or "Now Gandalf was a truly great wizard!"....

Sigh...such good tales. Not that there are not other good tales, even other Real tales in the way that these are. But in some way, these are deeper, richer...I cannot explain....Somehow, it is always the tales of which you say, "It might have happened, you know, once upon a time. It might well have happened," that you return to over and again, timelessly and tirelessly. At intervals, some part of you says, "It's time to go back for another draught of that Entish stuff, don't you think?" And off you go, down the road and through the wood and over the mountains, to find a Ring and rescue the whole world from ruin....

...I love Middle-earth and would not lose it, and yet the moment I take up the histories of its creation and the long labour of he who wrought the tales, I know that more travel in this land is not for me, not now. If I somehow had the heart to begin all over again at the beginning, and travel that long road through Darkness to Light again, I would, or I would perhaps that I had the heart for it. But there is a labour in reading the tale as there is in writing it, and like a heady wine it cannot be drunk too often, nor too quickly. There is, too, a desperate need for rest, at the end of it all, a need to seek the Havens and the West, and leave deeds and songs and hard thought even to others.

I think partly that comes of the great perils and labours the reader is drawn in to share. The sheer horror and pain and grief and worry are draining, as if it were your own land threatened, your own kin slain, your own ride to glory and death. And once you have finally climbed the last hill, slain the last Orc, laid the last turf on the grave, righted the last wrong (to the best of your ability), you must at last just rest. You cannot stir yourself to deeds or songs, but simply sit and think....

...I can't even write about something as mundane as a job as a secretary without ascending into highflown language as was spoken of old in Gondor and Arnor.

That, I suppose, is one of the chief things for which I can only go to Tolkien: his beautiful and powerful use of language. Few can even emulate it at a far remove; fewer still can hope to match it. Like the poetry and song of the Eldar in the Days of the Two Trees which they beheld unstained, it is now a memory only, though a beautiful one which neither fades nor dies. But like others' voices speaking after Saruman's (which was fair still to hear though he who commanded it was become foul), others' language after Tolkien's is harsh and unpleasing to the ear, and only by reading the works of those with no intent to follow in his footsteps can one hope to find that which does not offend either eye or ear by its coarseness.

And I can only write diaries or letters or other such odes to praise the praiseworthy, for long days on end after I have drunk the draught with him anew - for all shaping of tales I may do seems to me small and petty and of little worth beside his great tales and labour of making. I cannot command fire so hot nor hammer so strong, to forge tales anew in his likeness. But no, I should say 'to forge tales anew in these latter days,' for I would not tell more of his tales, but rather tales of my own, of their own loftiness of thought and deed and purpose, yet like to his in height and breadth and depth, like to his in belovedness of wood and field, river and sea, rock and hill, and in belovedness too of folk of all kinds, and of their beasts.

And I cannot do it. I haven't the wit or strength or whatever it is that it takes - vision, maybe; I know not for certain. I know only that I cannot - or at least, I cannot yet. It is my hope that one day I shall find within myself that vision I seek.... Others may find it if I do not, but then it will be uniquely theirs instead, and I shall go voiceless into the Great Dark, having never found voice on this side of the Sundering Seas.

...At least I shall not be in torment tonight, for there are deeds to do within my small circle of the world, small deeds for small ends, but great enough perhaps to lift the bereavement for a space....I must also return the borrowed copy of The Atlas of Middle-Earth to the library, since I have no further need of it. One needs no map for lands one shall not see again for many long ages of the world...by then, perhaps, shall all the maps be changed, or the lands so changed that maps are of no use.