the HoM-E/UT Society ~ following the Legendarium from c.1915 - 1972

[Annunfuiniel]

Let us know what passages strike you
What strangeness perplexes you
What marvels leave you in awe...

I don't know where to begin! I finished the first chapter yesterday but I seriously think that I should well read it again, straight through without checking the notes and such, to get a coherent picture. So much revelation in such a short chapter! Tolkien leaves me in awe...

For me this reading experience has already been a double pleasure: to follow the different trails of JRRT's thoughts during the writing process [especially in the different versions of the 'Trees of Kortirion'] is no less exiting than the stories themselves.
I must admit that I haven't been that great fan of poetry before but I seem to be learning new habits here; Tolkien's poems are simply enchanting!
From the 1937 version of the 'Trees':

(...)Immortal Elves, that singing fair and fey
Of vanished things that were, and could be yet,
Pass like a wind among the rustling trees,
A wave of bowing grass, and we forget
Their tender voices like wind-shaken bells
Of flowers, their gleaming hair like golden asphodels.

And this is from the final poem:

(...)Like lighted tapers in a darkened fane
The funeral candles of the Silver Wain
Now flare above the fallen year.
Winter is come. Beneath the barren sky
The Elves are silent. But they do not die!
Here waiting they endure the winter fell
And silence. Here I too will dwell;
Kortirion, I will meet the winter here.

Just to mention a few...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is a rather common [but to my mind, no less true] esoteric idea that the begining of something contains the essence and [in microcosmic form] the entirety of the pattern to follow [though there are unpredictable hazard points, thank God].

Hear, hear! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
It strikes me how far developed the mythology was in JRRT's mind at so early stage. Although it's interesting to note those ideas that were altered or totally rejected in later phases it's as fascinating to recognise the familiar elements, the backbone of his world.
So many things to say but I think I'll continue some other time. Thank you, lindil, for starting this thread; who knows how long it would otherwise have taken me to begin this reading process! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]