Seasonal Symbolism

[Estelyn Telcontar]

As I was out walking today, seeing the trees gradually losing their coloured leaves, I thought about the mallorn-trees in Lothlórien. When the Fellowship arrived there, it was winter. The golden autumn leaves still hung on the trees, since they only fell off in spring when the new leaves grew. It occurred to me that this reference to the season is symbolic of the fading of the Elves. Tolkien shows us their kingdom not in spring or summer, but in that season that makes the end of their time in Middle-earth clear to us.

I think this could well have been intentional, a wonderful literary device – do you agree? Have you seen other references to seasons in LotR that struck you as being meaningful?

[Gandalf_theGrey]

Wonderful topic, Estelyn!

Two obvious seasonal references, nay dates, that come to mind:

December 25 - The Fellowship of the Ring sets forth from Rivendell.

March 25 - The Ring is destroyed at Mt. Doom.

A journey from Christmas to Good Friday, perhaps?

More thoughts on this must wait, as I am sneaking on the net from work ...

* bows out to return later *

Gandalf the Grey

[Arwen1858]

I hadn't thought of that, but I like it. I wonder if he intentionally did that to show their time was drawing to an end, or if just happened that was the season he wanted to use. It's an interesting thought, though!
Arwen

[Bêthberry]

Look back at the Picnic at the Bonfire Glade, towards the end, where I bring out all the equinocial references. LOTR 'begins' as fall arrives. To me, it is an interesting twist, for spring and "April" are the traditional starts for quests.

[Diamond18]

I had this pointed out to me by one of the "making of the movie" specials. They picked up on that, so made sure to include falling leaves in Rivendell and Lothlórien to signify the fading of the Elves. When re-reading LotR after seeing that, I definitely noticed the correlation.

[Sharkû]

Compare "For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold. Not till the spring comes and the new green opens do they fall" (LotR, II, vi), which is Legolas on the Mellyrn of Lothlórien, with "Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent. There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave" (LotR, App. A, V, italics mine).

The unusual fading of nature, that is, the falling of the old leaves before the opening of the new, mark the grave change in the land of Lothlórien. One might even ask whether this may be due to the absence of Nenya then.

Also, consider the first lines of Galadriel's doom-foreboding Namárië: "Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen, / Yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!" (LotR II, viii), which translates to "Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind, long years numberless as the wings of trees!" (ibid.)

Her earlier song deals with the same matter of the dwindling of the Elves set against the image of nature: While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears. / O Lórien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day; / The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away." (ibid.)

This theme goes as far back as the 1915 (and later) poem of Kortirion, which I highly recommend.

[Westerly Wizard]

The correspondence with december 25, Christmas, is interesting, but Good Friday occurrs basically on a different day every year, so not exactly much to go by there.

Also, perhaps I am forgetting something, but Lorien is called the Golden Wood for a reason, its leaves are always gold. If anything, Lorien represents,along with Rivendell, one of the last hopes of the elves to survive their fading. In these two realms decay and passage of time have been thwarted by the use of Vilya and Nenya, hence the inability to distinguish time and the passing of days, because indeed the Rings were made in attempt to create timelessness.

[Gandalf_theGrey]

Hail and Well Met, Westerly Wizard!

* bows an introductory greeting, offers you a bit of Longbottom Leaf * A pleasure to meet you. smilies/smile.gif

Indeed, thank you for questioning me. For having done a brief bit of research in response to your question, I wish to slightly amend my earlier comment.

According to a website called "From Bethlehem to Calvary," I should not have marked March 25th as Good Friday, but rather as Easter. (Though actually, while I am now proposing a connection between March 25th and Easter, I would still like to stand by Good Friday, due to all that Good Friday represents.)

"The Jesus-story, it will now be seen, has a greater number of correspondences with the stories of former Sungods and with the actual career of the Sun through the heavens - so many indeed that they cannot well be attributed to mere coincidence or even to the blasphemous wiles of the Devil! Let us enumerate some of these. There are (1) birth from a Virgin mother; (2) the birth in a stable (cave or underground chamber); and (3) on the 25th December (just after the winter solstice). There is (4) the Star in the East (Sirius) and (5) the arrival of the Magi (the 'Three King's); there is (6) the threatened Massacre of the Innocents, and the consequent flight into a distant country (told also of Krishna and other Sungods). There are the Church festivals of (7) Candlemas (2nd February), with processions of candles to symbolize the growing light; of (8) Lent, or the arrival of Spring; of (9) Easter Day (normally on 25th March) to celebrate the crossing of the Equator by the Sun; and (10) simultaneously the outburst of lights at the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

The above quote comes from the website at the following URL:
http://www.netnews.org/bk/bethlehem/beth1019.html

And of course you speak soothly when you say that the date on which Good Friday is commemorated varies from year to year.

* bows *

Gandalf the Grey

[ October 24, 2002: Message edited by: Gandalf_theGrey ]

[Gandalf_theGrey]

Hail Bethberry! smilies/smile.gif

Verily so, re: your tie-ins to times of equinox. * nods agreement * As stated in the quote I posted for the Westerly Wizard, special care is taken to note that Christmas falls just after the winter solstice. For that matter, March 25 occurs right after spring solstice.

At the risk of sounding like Monty "Python" ... "And now for something completely different."

Here's another take on the fittingness of beginning a quest in "April" vs. in autumn. It strikes me as personally intriguing so I thought I'd mention it just for kicks:

In my readings on the Iroquois, I've come across mentions of autumn being the time when men took to the trail for the major hunting season.

And as for the starting of stories in the fall, according to Iroquois tradition, stories were never told during the summer, it being considered bad luck, for fear that you would attract biting snakes. The coming of cooler weather was deemed more appropriate for the passing on of legend and lore around the campfire.

Gandalf the Grey

[ October 24, 2002: Message edited by: Gandalf_theGrey ]

[Kalimac]

Gandalf - in Catholic tradition (I'm not sure about others, but Tolkien was Catholic so he would have known this) March 25th is Lady Day, or in other words the feast of the Annunciation, when the angel told Mary that she was going to bear Christ, who would redeem the sin of the world. It's not a moveable feast like Easter so I'd be inclined to connect the date the Ring was destroyed with the first day of the rebirth of the world and the beginning of the redemption of the sin of Adam (or Isildur, if you want to put it in ME terms). Much the same symbolism as Easter, of course - just a little earlier (the first day Jesus existed on earth as opposed to rising from the dead - but once he was started the conclusion was foregone). Just a thought.

[Gandalf_theGrey]

Hail and Well Met, Kalimac! smilies/smile.gif

* bows a cordial greeting *

Your name is well known to me, and I admire your posts.

You have my gratitude for so eloquently describing the Feast of the Annunciation in relation to Tolkien and Lord of the Rings. I'd recalled that March 25 is indeed that very feast day, but could not come up with the right words to express my related thoughts. You make an excellent point when you say that the first day Jesus existed on Earth was a prelude to His rising from the dead, and thus a day of victory.

At your Service,

Gandalf the Grey

[Eowyn of Ithilien]

Galadriel herself states that the Fellowship sees Lorien only in her winter; spring will not come again (I don't have the exact quote to hand.) Other references to the seasons are Aragorn's marriage to Evenstar on Midsummer's Day, the period of the most sunshine in the year, and also the Fellowship setting out "just in time for winter". The seasons are part of the strands of light and shadow he captures us all in.

[Bêthberry]

Estelyn, Gandalf the Grey, and All,

My earlier post was abrupt. Perhaps here I can elaborate on the ideas there, and add a new point.

First, Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday falls on September 22; this year, 2002, the fall equinox fell on September 23.

The hobbits spend the night of September 26 and 27 with Tom and Goldberry, their stay extended by Goldberry's "washing day." Here are some lines from D.H. Lawrence's poem "Bavarian Gentian" which might help bring out that significance. (I am not suggesting any direct influence between DHL and JRRT, of course, just the similarity of ideas):

even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and her groom.


Thinking of the Persephone/ Demeter myth and Goldberry might also lead to seeing the Barrow Downs as part of this seasonal link, with Tom rescuing the hobbits from entombment just as Persephone was.

To me, there are two prominent literary allusions to spring quests. The first is found in Chaucer's "General Prologue" to the Cantebury Tales.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote
...
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
...
And especialy, from every shires ende,
Of Engelond,to Caunberbur they wende.

The other is from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire.

Sam 'disappears' on September 22, too.

"Grey Havens Day", the day the Ringbearers departed, is September 29, also the Feast of St. Michael. (This is not a moveable feast, like Easter.) I don't know the cultural history of this feast day, but there could well be specifically seasonal issues with it. Michael is the archangel who leads the battle against the power of Satan, if I am not mistaken.

Another point which might be recalled is that, for Tolkien, the fall or Michaelmas term usually coincided with the start of a new year in terms of his teaching career.

Other seasonally significant dates, unrelated to the importance of fall, is May 1, the date of Sam and Rosie's marriage. Rosie dies on Mid-year's day, which was also the day of Elessar and Arwen's wedding.

Just some musings,
Bethberry

[littlemanpoet]

I apologize for my failure to research, I'm pretty tired - but someone posted something to the effect that Tolkien is unique in starting his story in Fall, it proceeding the Winter, and resolving in Spring. Is this really unique in fantasy? I don't think so. My instincts tell me that this is actually, shall we say, "correct" for fantasy. It feeds into the archetypes, don't you think? Stories start light, get dark, and become light again. Even Weis and Hickman in "Dragonlance" follow this pattern. Not being as well read as I should be, I can't think of many examples for this. It's just instinct, but can anybody name modern or classic fantasy that starts in Spring and ends in Fall or Winter? I can also believe that some fantasy stories begin in Winter and resolve in Spring.... Just curious what y'all think?

[Annii]

Just to add a wrench in the works, upon re-reading the Silmarillion, I noticed this quote:

it is told that even as Varda ended her labours, and they were long, when first Menelmacar strode up the sky and the blue fire of Helluin flickered in the mists above the borders of the world, in that hour the Chilrdren of the Earth awoke, the Firstborn of Iluvatar.

Menelmacar (Orion) is a fall constellation. Therefore fall is associated, in this case anyway, with birth and awakening, quite the opposite of the idea of fading autumn seems to imply in other places.