Few chapters in
The Lord of the Rings exist as completely in their own world as "Treebeard"--including the Bombadil chapters, the Lórien chapters, the Mordor chapters. It's a gift of Tolkien that his most distinctly "otherworldly" setting (i.e. the most fantastical place we visit) is the most earthy: maybe some of us live in places like Arizona or Egypt (or Saskatchewan
) where trees are rare, but most of us live with trees as part of our daily landscape, even if forests are not, and Tolkien takes this element of daily backdrop and makes it magical.
It's not a major passage, but it is one commented on a few times in this thread that caught my imagination this time through:
Quote:
|
‘Aye, aye. something like, but much worse. I do not doubt there is some shadow of the Great Darkness lying there still away north; and bad memories are handed down. But there are hollow dales in this land where the Darkness has never been lifted, and the trees are older than I am."
|
"The Great Darkness."
"The Darkness."
Moreso than in previous reads, this brought the Silmarillion to mind: the first great growth of trees in the darkness of Middle-earth before the rise of the Sun and Moon. Treebeard is talking of a figurative darkness too: a darkness in the hearts of the trees, but he's also talking about literal darkness. It's an evocative image of the ancientry of parts of the forest: by the time the Sun and Moon rose, the canopy of some glades was already so thick that when they rose, their light did not pierce through--"the Darkness has never lifted."
The thread actually ended before on a related note:
Quote:
Originally Posted by drigel
Nice! Its a wonderfully subtle reference to Yavanna, is it not? The ents being the counterpoint to Aules dwarves, if Im not mistaken.
|
"It" in this case is the two jars of lights, green and golden, that Treebeard seems to use to nourish the trees of Wellinghall. Given that there was no light but starlight before the rise of the Sun and Moon and yet there was the massive growth of ancient forests, is this the "artificial sunlight" that nourished the primordial trees? It certainly nourishes the trees of Wellinghall--and the visiting hobbits--and a tie to Yavanna is quite appropriate, though I do suspect that the origin story of the Ents in Silmarillion as creatures of Yavanna had not been quite worked out when this chapter was written.
Is it any wonder that Legolas (a Sylvan/Sindarian Elf) wanted to visit Fangorn? The desire of the Elves (especially the non-High Eldar) in
The Lord of the Rings is represented with their use of the Rings, especially in Lórien, to try and preserve the Elder Days--and for the Eldar of Middle-earth, there is a special poignancy of the Elder Days before the Rise of the Sun. To visit those dark dells in Fangorn is not even like going to Lórien, where Cerin Amroth is likened to stepping into the living Elder Days--a kind of time-travelling trick almost--but of finding a survival of the Elder Days. Maybe it is not everything an Elf's heart could want, but that it would hold deep fascination is not surprising--remember that it is to Legolas what the Glittering Caves is to Gimli.