Sidecast - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Book 2 Chapter 7

00:05 - Julia Golding (Host) Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, and this is one of our Sidecasts where we take an author's look, reading our way through the Lord of the Rings. And today we have reached chapter seven of book two, which many of you will know is the chapter called the Mirror of Galadriel. It's not one of the longer chapters, but it certainly packs a punch. So, looking at it, it falls into three parts. We first of all have the meeting where the Fellowship encounter Celeborn and Galadriel for the first time, and then there is an interlude, which is the sort of time passing moment, but it also gives a chance for the members of the Fellowship to reflect on the loss of Gandalf. And then the final part is the mirror of the title, where Frodo and Sam go and talk with Galadriel and see some elf magic. Well, let's start back at the first of those sections. We actually arrive. We're still in the company of Haldir, making our way down to the film. They gave the speech about it being the heart of Elvendom on earth here, when actually that was referring to a place the film doesn't visit, which is Cairn Amroth. Cairn Amroth, the place where the flowers, cairn Amroth, the place where the flowers Eleanor and Nimrophil were spotted, that is the spring-like green place. And, by contrast, we arrive at Cairn, we arrive at Caris. Galathon got to get my Elven cities right in the twilight. In the twilight, and this is significant, because that little movement Tolkien is very deftly gesturing to the fact that we've passed the spring of the elves and we are now in the twilight, and that is a theme that Galadriel herself will pick up later on in this chapter. So the elves are in their twilight, the fellowship arrive at that time of day. What I like about the approach to Caras Galathon is its very specific entrance. Have a look at the chapter again. You'll see that Haldir says why they can't walk straight in. It is a fortified place, unlike the more open hilltop of Cairn Amroth, so there is a sense of the elves having retreated and they have these grass banks which defend the city. There are quite a few fortifications like this, not as beautiful, but there is earthworks left over from previous civilizations in English countryside, iron Age hill forts, for example and they are fortified by grassy banks. So it's not hard to sort of imagine it as a forest version of one of those. Imagine it as a forest version of one of those. 03:51 When I was reviewing this, I was thinking about how this struck me. When I read it as a very first time, or a first few times of reading, I remember finding myself really drawn to Lothlorien. I wanted to go there, I wanted to be there. It cast a spell over me, which I've been looking for to see how Tolkien does it, and I'm finding it a bit like catching a glimpse of something I can't quite see out the corner of my eye. I can't put my finger on how the spell is cast over the reader. I think it's probably an accumulative effect. Of course, I also now, being a bit older, I'm less interested in having my holiday in Lothlorien, wonderful though that would be. I think I'd prefer Rivendell these days. Maybe I'm getting a bit like Bilbo, but anyway, I think North Lorrain is a place that changes in your mind as you come back to it, and I'll be interested to hear from any of you if you still find the power as strong as when you first read it. And thinking about that sort of glimpses that add up to a powerful spell about a place I think that in this chapter, we can think of Tolkien painting in watercolours rather than in oils. 05:15 Let me explain what I mean by that. It's partly because there are colours that run into each other, muted colours. Look at the number of times the colors are described as silver, gray and white in this chapter. It's as though there's a wash of color in this twilight of these particular colors. And as they climb up to the talan, which is the wooden described as like a deck of a ship, we get a little bit of colour, which is the green background. But what we've actually been the watercolour is there to set off is the two jewels at its heart Celeborn with his silver hair and Galadriel with her famous golden blonde hair. And if you sort of know anything about digging into the backstory about her hair, we'll talk about this in the next chapter, in the gift giving. But her hair has a history all the way back through the Silmarillion or the earlier ages, and both of them are described as grave and beautiful. 06:33 I think it's worth mentioning here that Tolkien is very deliberately rewriting your expectation of elves. He was coming out of a high, high tide of victorian fairy tales of the little people, diminutive, the kind of flower fairy, beautiful children's pictures, but of tiny creatures more like the fairies not the main characters, but the fairy helpers in a midsummer night's dream moth peas bottom those ones. And so he is trying to reclaim as grandeur and a seriousness about elves, and this is where he does it. In these kind of descriptions there is a change of pace when the elves start speaking they have a stately cadence and a beautiful biblical resonance to what they say, which we'll look at in a minute. But first of all let's think about Celeborn. Who is he? He's given more weight in this passage than he is in the film. Of course the film version had to make choices about how much they were going to include and Celeborn only very briefly appears. He gets a little bit more time in the extended version but he's outacted, outperformed by Cate Blanchett, as Galadriel of course, and I suppose that is also true here he is the prince consort to the queen because of his history that he is not one of the elves who came over from the Undying Lands like his partner wife that seems the wrong term for an elf but anyway his partner in life. So he is playing second fiddle to her in some ways. But he is more interesting when you dig back into his past. 08:43 Tolkien wrote the story of Celeborn and Galadriel a couple of times and took a couple of directions with it, and it's not clear what the final version of that would have been. I know the Rings of Power are struggling with this, that interpretation of the story, because they've sort of dropped Celeborn entirely in order to have Galadriel as a free agent. Technically she was already married by then, or already his partner by then, in most versions of this story. But perhaps he's going to pop up again later on in that narrative We'll have to see. But he is a king in his own right, right a bit like Thranduil is with the woodland elves and he's been leading the peoples of Lothlorien for many, many centuries. But he is silver to the gold and, just like in the Olympics, the gold medal is Galadriel. 09:42 And it's notable that she starts in silence and thinking about how you project power. If you're thinking about your characterization, the person who can remain silent often is the one with the greatest power. If you think about it, it's not an enforced silence, it's a chosen one and she waits for the right moment to speak. So there's sort of a dignity awaiting for the, the big act after the warm-up with kellerborn. Kellerborn's greetings form a very useful perform, a very useful perform, a very useful function, and that is he is describing the arrivals, as people successively get up off the ladder without needing any sort of narrative description to tell us who is coming. So it's a great way, an economical way of setting the scene. And it is interesting that the first thing Galadriel really says is about the limits of her knowledge. She's not claiming, she's not explaining all the limits that she has been given to remain. 11:06 Galadriel is actually the keynote of this chapter, so it's clever that it's dropped in here in reference to. She can't see Gandalf. There's a limit to what she knows about going on in the world outside her borders, her borders. And the announcement that Gandalf has fallen into shadow, which Aragorn makes as the leader of the company, doesn't go down well, to say the least. And Celeborn is so stung by it or so shocked that he lapses into Elvish, which is not a polite thing to do in a room where you have strangers. And it's notable here that legolas is the one who interrupts to bring it back into the common speech and and there's like a sort of interesting passing it down the line of the fellowship. They're taking responsibility together for breaking this news. Frodo gives a summary and Gimli also admits that it was Durin's bane, and Aragorn does the heavy lifting of actually explaining what happened to Gandalf. So you get a sense of the fellowship working together there when they're breaking this news. 12:31 Now have you thought how few married couples there are outside of the Shire in Lord of the Rings, married couple as in, committed to each other, couple as in, committed to each other? We've got, of course, tom Bombadil and Goldberry, who are actually strange echoes of the Celeborn and Galadriel. There's something about Goldberry and Galadriel like the way they're described, but anyway, that's one successful, equal partnership. And here we've got another with Celeborn and Galadriel, and I don't think we see another married couple until the very end when you get the wedding bells and everybody else is either widowed or well, yes, there's lots of widowers, in fact, in fact or the parents have already died, so they were all been sent away. So it's rare. So let's see what Tolkien does with his married couple. He lets them argue in a very dignified way, but Galadriel actually gently reprimands her partner for his not understanding of the grief of the company before them. And Celeborn is in fact, you know, made not made encouraged, shall we say to apologize. 14:08 And we see Galadriel's greatness here in this speech, giving the dwarven names for the places which no doubt have their own elvish names Keled, zaram, kasardum. And it's that, coming over to Gimli's side, the empathy for the other, which marks out the good people in this story. Good people can imagine what it's like to be the other. Evil can only imagine itself. And Celeborn also, by accepting and admitting he was wrong, also shows that he has greatness. It's even harder to admit you're wrong, isn't it? That's probably one of the most challenging things in a marriage. So we get a sense that their partnership has worn itself into a not boring but equal give and take. 15:01 There's a wonderful line break here, where Gimli bows to Galadriel after her courteous answer and says yet more fair is the living land of Lorien and the lady Galadriel is above all the jewels that lie beneath the earth. Now, that's being polite in the home of your host, but it's also really significant that a dwarf will think the most valuable thing are not jewels but a person, galadriel herself. And that is really a massive turning point for Gimli, because jewels and riches don't have a grip on him. In fact, the ones who escape the grip of the desire to possess are the ones who come through this quest the best. And this is the moment where Gimli presents that about himself. And significantly, there is a line break here which encourages you, as the reader, to appreciate that moment, because there isn't a scene change, it's just a pause in the narrative, in fact it's a silence even. And so Celeborn admits that he hadn't thought about the feelings of Gimli, and he makes up for it by being very courteous and offering hospitality, particularly to Frodo, the one of the little folk who bears the burden. 16:41 Okay, notice that Galadriel in her speech is putting the spotlight on Celeborn. She says for the Lord of the Galathrim is accounted the wisest of the elves of Middle-earth I suppose Elrond is half elven and she came. Maybe she isn't counting herself in that. Anyway, it's very nice of her to say that about her husband and a giver of gifts beyond the power of kings. He has dwelt in the west since the days of dawn and I have dwelt with him years uncounted, for ere the fall of Nargothrond and Gondolin, I passed over the mountains and together, through the ages of the world, we have fought the long defeat. There's a lot packed into that one speech. 17:21 These names, which you can look up in the appendices or in the Silmarillion, are the glimpses of the vistas which Tolkien doesn't explain, that sense of depth in his world. But also significant is that she presents their existence in Middle-earth as fighting the Long Defeat. This is the northern air of the story. The Ragnarok, the Long Defeat, the Twilight of the Gods, it's all those things that Tolkien loved, which he is putting into his elven culture, his elven culture. And I would say that if you were thinking of what is the mood music for middle earth, it is elegiac, it is melancholy and so even somewhere as beautiful as lothlorien has that about it. The shire, by contrast, actually seems a bit more upbeat and hopeful, but that's possibly because that is part of a particular part of the world of men. But this world of the elves is passing. 18:28 She also uses this moment to set out the stakes. As a writer, it's good to keep reminding, if you're going to have a pause like this in a, in a place which is a respite, a haven, keep reminding that the drumbeat of urgency is running underneath. And she does this by very vividly telling them that the quest stands upon the edge of a knife stray, but a little and it will fail to the ruin of all. The stakes couldn't be higher. But yet she also says hope remains while all the company is true, and she searches their hearts by holding them in her gaze, and this is where we get the sense of her quiet power that sees into the heart of things. And then that particular encounter and that scene comes to an end with a very biblical cadence, if you. In fact everything they say has a sort of stately pace about it. It's like sung, almost like song. It's got a beautiful, beautiful rhythm, but the refrain do not let your hearts be troubled, which Galadriel says versions of that several times, is of course echoing things like what angels say in the Bible do not be afraid, mary. There's a sense of they are these, these creatures of command and able to grant peace, which gives them a sort of higher stature and is part of creating the spell of rest and peace that is Lothlorien. So that's the first section. 20:21 The company don't get to see Celeborn and Galadriel very much. They then spend the next part on their own, resting, and here there's some lovely details to sort of highlight in this section. First of all they discuss what it was like to be under the gaze of Galadriel and this is a way of taking the temperature of all the characters, reminding us of their own character, asks Sam, of course, is the Frankist. He felt like he didn't have any clothes on. But he's also the most innocent, because he will just blurt that out. Mary says I felt like that too, but he's also guarded. He stopped speaking. There is a sort of maturity arising in Mary that he isn't so ready to give everything away. He's sort of between Sam and Frodo on the Hobbit scale. 21:25 And we've got Boromir who gives himself away, despite himself, because he says it's almost as if she was offering and he's suspicious about her purposes. So obviously it's hard to remember what it felt like to read this the first time. But there's a sense here that he's got this fixation, this desire, this thirst for something. Obviously the ring that is taking a grip of his heart and notably Frodo keeps his counsel. He is beginning to remove himself. He knows that he is set apart by his quest and he makes decisions on his own and increasingly, including the one that comes at the end of this book. And it's notable here in terms of character arcs and taking the temperature of what's going on in the fellowship that yet again we see Aragorn top the words of Boromir or exert his control. The king versus the steward's son. He says speak no evil of the lady galadriel, so he gets the final word in in the balance of power between boromir and aragon. 22:51 It is an interesting thought experiment to work out what would have happened, as somebody actually raises later in the book, if Boromir had lived and both Aragorn and he were in Minas Tirith. What would have happened? He's very unlikely to be as accommodating as Faramir, is he? So as we hear about the rest time in Lothlorien, we also get the surprising news that Gimli has become Legolas' companion as they go about the country which has been brewing. But I think there's been a number of things that have pushed it this way. First of all there was Gandalf's appeal to them to be friends or to help each other. But clearly Gimli's astounding response to Galadriel has also changed things with Legolas, and this is the moment at which their friendship, they become an inseparable duo which is rather beautiful and lovely. We've lost Gandalf and all of us, readers and the fellowship, are grieving his loss. When you read it the first time, you may well think he has gone for good, and so it's good that there's a pause here and a chance for a reflection on what it means. 24:24 And this is done, as it so often is in Tolkien, in poetry, and unusually it is Frodo who composes the poem. He is Bilbo's nephew, so we know he knows a thing or two about poetry. But it's said that he normally uses the words of others, and what he actually composes here is a quite simple ballad style poem, simple meter, alternate rhymes, and it has some fine touches in it. In the BBC audio version you might be interested to hear how they do this, because Bilbo, played by Ian Holm, sort of chants it very quickly and almost embarrassedly, as if he's ashamed of the standard of his verses, not living up to his grief. That's an interesting interpretation of it, but I think there's something quite fine about it. A deadly sword, a healing hand, a back that bent beneath its load, a trumpet voice, a burning brand, a weary pilgrim on the road, that sort of sketching out of the different aspects on the road. That sort of sketching out of the different aspects of Gandalf, the old man in a battered hat, lovely. And of course Sam, still being open and honest, comes up with his own little verse off the cuff about Gandalf's fireworks. And what this tells us about Sam is his mind always goes back to the Shire, because Gandalf is synonymous with fireworks in the Shire, despite the experience of what's happened on the road. That's where Sam's mind goes, which is rather sweet, and it prepares us for what he is going to see in Galadriel's mirror, because of course he is the one who sees the vision of the Shire. 26:20 And now we reach the final third of this chapter, which is about Galadriel's mirror. It starts with a conversation between Frodo and Sam, where we get a sense of Sam's growing perception of the world around him, because he's thinking about the different natures of magic and he makes a very interesting observation that they're elves, and elves of course there are. Whether they've made the land or the lands made them, it's hard to say. It's wonderfully quiet here. Nothing seems to be going on and nobody seems to want it to. If there's any magic about it, it's right deep down. So he's feeling his way to understand this mysterious place and he says that the elves belong here even more than the hobbits do in the shire. That's a very interesting perception from him because of course many people lived in the shire before the hobbits. Now galadriel approaches them at this point when they've just been talking about elves and their magic, and she takes them to her dell. This is done. Another twilight scene in a dark down, going down into a darker place, a quiet place, on their own. 27:39 The film chose to drop Sam out of this, which you can see why. They did it for dramatic purposes. But I think it really fits that Sam is party to this, because Sam, of course, is arguably co-hero in this tale and what he sees here is an important part of him committing himself to the quest. Again, the mirror, which Galadriel refuses. Well, she finds it hard to describe what elven magic is for her. It's just what she does, it's natural to her, but she describes it like prophecy. 28:21 Tolkien, as a Catholic, would have been aware of the number of ways the Old Testament prophecies are applied to the New Testament and it seems a bit like that when you listen to the description of Elven magic. He says cryptically that the mirror shows things that were, things that are and things that yet may be, but which it is he sees. Even the wisest cannot always tell. It's not an easy thing looking into the mirror of Galadriel. Anyway, sam is always up for a challenge and he wants to use it to look at what's going on at home. And of course it gives him his heart's desire, but not with the result he wants. 29:05 It's clearer on the second reading what he's seeing. We can see through the riddles, but reading it for the first time we don't know at what point these things are happening in the Shire, if they're happening at all. It's dreamlike, it's fretful, it's not comfortable. Everything Sam sees is like a very bad dream of disjointed going upstairs, finding Frodo cold and pale on the ground and so on. And he gets angrier and angrier, particularly as he sees what is going on in the Shire. And it culminates the page break with him declaring that when he gets back someday, if it turns out to be true, someone is going to catch it hot. There's a line break. 29:59 But what's important here is that it follows on from his testing at the first meeting where he was offered to go home. And here is the moment where he speaks out loud his resolution that he has to go on. He's got something he has to do. I'm going home by the long road with Mr Frodo, or not at all, and of course that's very heroic of him and very, very brave. When Sam first says I must go home, galadriel says if you do that, those things may come true. You can't avoid, you can't change what you do on the strength of what you think is being prophesied. And anyone with an understanding of classical myths knows that's the kind of thing that Oedipus tried to do. He tried to avoid triggering the curse on his family, but that very action of leaving is what made it all happen. So that's like a classical trope there which Tolkien is dropping in. You can't avoid what's coming, even if you can sort of see that it might be coming down the line for you. 31:13 Now turning to Frodo. What's interesting about Frodo in this chapter in particular is he often turns it back on Galadriel because he asks her do you advise me to do this? He asked the same of Gildor back in the Shire when he met the elves for the first time and was told then go not to the elves for counsel. They don't give a straight answer. But here he actually manages to get something approaching of a straight answer, which is that Galadriel says I think you have the courage and wisdom enough for the venture, but it's your choice. Do as you will. 32:00 And his vision is different from Sam's, of course, and if you're going to do a repeated spell like this, it's good to make sure they're very distinct. Whereas Sam's was fretful and dreamlike and frustrated, frodo's is more like a vast pageant of history, glimpses of parts of the history, but it has a sort of almost elegiac end, because we see the very end of the story. Oddly enough, in the middle of this the sun went down in a burning red that faded into a grey mist, and into the mist a small ship passed away twinkling with lights. So that's the end of the story, just dropped in here subtly, and then, of course, the eye takes over over. So we've gone through this pageant of history and then it's all in this big black void with the slit pupiled eye of sauron. 33:08 Look for a chance to bring in your villain. Tolkien is doing something quite unusual in this tale, because his villain isn't present. It is sauron, doesn't come out of barad-ur. His presence is felt like this, in visions, in dreams, in confrontations, in the palantir, through the action of his uh, his minions. So it's always good to have the moments where you can to bring the evil into the story, to remind us what we're fighting against. 33:47 And note too that Galadriel calmly has the power to resist, that she's able to block Sauron seeing any further. So you get the sense of who is ranged against who, though she does say that that is only a temporary thing while the rings remain hidden, and she talks about how, even if they destroy the ring, talks about how, even if they destroy the ring, that she will have the choice then either to dwindle or depart middle earth again this twilight theme. But then comes the absolute crunch of this chapter, which is clever old frodo. Turning it back on galadriel again, she tests. She tested them on first meeting. He now tests her in the deepest way that he could. He offers her the ring freely. 34:48 Temptation and how people respond to temptation of the ring is absolutely key to lord of the Rings. It's how we know what's in the hearts of everybody, and the way she responds is wonderfully dramatic, because she can imagine herself as that person. She has the understanding to project what would happen if she took the ring and we get a glimpse of it. It's done in this wonderful, soaring language in place of the dark lord, you will set up a queen, and I shall not be dark but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night. Fair as the sea and the sun and the snow upon the mountain. Dreadful as the storm and the sun and the snow upon the mountain. Dreadful as the storm and the lightning, stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair. A wonderful declamatory stuff, and for a moment we glimpsed that. But her greatness is that she knows that's the wrong choice, just as Gandalf knew it was the wrong choice, just as Aragorn knows it's the wrong choice. And she passes the test. And she has this wonderful, sad but triumphant line I pass the test. I will diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel. 36:24 That could have been the end of the chapter, but there's a little coda. I think it's how it works as a reader is. It lets it, lets us decompress. Emerge from this key moment. And part of the decompression is the slight glint of humor which sam often provides. Because rodo asks why he can't see the thoughts of the others wearing the rings and galad says you can't because you haven't tried. But also the ring gives power according to the stature of the wearer. But already Frodo's perceptions are sharper than before and Sam couldn't see what was going on. 37:12 And then Sam gives a little bit of his own hobbit sense. He says to tell you the truth, I wondered what you were talking about. I saw a star through your finger, if you pardon me, speaking out. I think my master was right. I wish you'd take his ring, you'd put things to right, you'd stop them digging up the gaffer and turning him adrift, you'd make some folk pay for their dirty work. And this is where it lands, this chapter. I would. She said that is how it would begin, but it would not stop with that. Alas, we will not speak of it more. Let us go. So it's a little refrain, a reprise of the main elements of this last third the things going wrong in the Shire, the desire to put it right. But also that's not how it's going to get put right. There isn't a quick fix to the problems of Middle-earth. They've got to go the long route to Mount Doom to fix things, and to do that they have to leave Lothlorien. 38:23 - Speaker 2 (None) Thanks for listening to Mythmakers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. 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