Quote:
Originally Posted by Galin
I read the quote differently. My will is knit to my sinews for instance, and I will my sinews or limbs to move about, to do stuff. In me, at least, these things are not knit together with a literal "spell" but perhaps a metaphorical one.
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I wondered a lot about why Tolkien pursued his ideas about human Will and its place to living and life over the years. I've imagined that his wartime experiences and having seen how minds change in wartime situations would have had something to do with that. Having seen his dying fellows and his sense of the passage ofnlife/spirit, and his inferences about the Black Breath seem to speak about 'Will to live' and, possibly depression, when will to live falters.
I had an experience of unstoppable outpouring of grief once where I sensed the Will abandoning my body or of it not being sustaining of my body, for a short while as I wondered if I was just going to simply drop dead as my heart stopped or something. Have you ever heard of those couples where one dies of cancer and then the second, for example, shortly afterwards. Stories about twins and those moments where one feels the illness, or passage of the other. There are some mysteries of will that Tolkien, I think, sought to explore in the mythology, and variations of those with the Nazgul and the Sauronic side of the world of the living.
......cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.
In adding in how Eowyn's strike, done by an ordinary blade completed the annihilation, I sensed something important in the quote,
"Doubtless the Orcs despoiled them, but feared to keep the knives, knowing them for what they are: work of Westernesse, wound about with spells for the bane of Mordor."
and
"So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will."
Seems that the Men of the Westernesse had a certain realm of magical/lore capacity (e.g. Orthanc stone untouched by Ent). The blade opened a vulnerability, and one seemingly both at the local wound site, and also systemic, affecting will and body --knitting-- or at the global level. A physical blow to body, by a magical blade--a small wound--that severed will to body-undead, globally.
Though struck behind the knee, from the cut, it must have been systemic about 'Will-undead sinew'.