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Old 10-28-2005, 11:46 AM   #7
Anguirel
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The 1590s
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Actually, tgwbs, I take the opposite view of your poem from you. To me the later and middle sections seem stronger and more moving than the early part, as they get increasingly bound up in powerful, iron concision. Perhaps this is because I have no Quenya, and so, while I can appreciate the beauty of the words, the subtleties of constructions are lost on me, leaving me to lean on the English. And in English, verses like this:

Feanor son of Finwe! O! Feanor!
Greatest yet unwise Noldo.
Morgoth the Enemy slew Finwe
Lost the Silmarils!


seem a bit, well, naff, in comparison with:

The Ring of Doom shall sing of Feanor,
Yea! You shall follow Feanor!”
He laughed.
He left.


with all its hard-hitting doom-laden syllables. But the verse that stood out most for me in original and translation was:

Feanáro Úalmárea
Quente Vére úmea
Ar otso yondorya
Quente Vérerya

Feanor the Unblessed
Spoke an evil Oath
And his seven sons
Spoke his Oath


It has something...really bardic about it, with a capacity to bring on...what, for want of a better term, I shall label the Blood-Tingling effect. It completely transcends my ignorance of the grammar. I think an Inuit seal-hunter without Quenya or English would tremble in awe at this one. Unless a seal happened to pass by at an inopportune moment and distract his attention.

More on the other two when I've read them properly. Can we expect any more poems?
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