Lay of Leithian
The Lay of Leithian is one of two great unfinished epic poems by the English writer JRR Tolkien . The full title is
"The Gest of Beren son of Barahir and Lúthien the Fay called Tinúviel the Nightingale or the Lay of Leithian Release From Bondage"
"The deeds of Beren, son of Barahir, and Lúthien the Elf, called Tinúviel the nightingale, or the corpse of Leithian, liberation from the fetters"
title
The word "Leithian" occurring in the title is an Elvish word that Tolkien translated as "Release from Bondage", ie "Liberation from the fetters". It also has similarities with the word Leithien (once also Leithian ), the name of England in Tolkien's early stories.
content
Beren , a mortal human , accidentally enters Doriath , a kingdom of the Elves . There he falls madly in love with Lúthien , the daughter of the Elven King Thingol . Thingol, however, is against his daughter's connection with a human and gives Beren an almost impossible task: he should bring him a Silmaril . These luminous gemstones were made by the Elf Feanor , but then stolen by Morgoth , the dark ruler and personified evil, and placed in his crown. Only when Beren procures one of these legendary gemstones can he marry Lúthien. To prevent his daughter from following her lover, Thingol has her locked in a tree house; However, after a while she escapes and goes in search of Beren.
The latter has meanwhile reached the fortress of the Elven King Felagund, who, in order to fulfill an oath that he once swore to Beren's father Barahir, joined Beren with some entourage. Beren and Felagund are ambushed and captured by Morgoth's governor Thû, a character Tolkien will later identify with Sauron , the personified evil of the Third Age of his fantasy world , Middle-earth . After a duel between Thû and Felagund, which is carried out by means of magical chants, the whole community is thrown into the dungeon. There a wolf is supposed to eat one after the other until someone reveals the destination of the journey.
Meanwhile, on her search for Beren, Lúthien meets the two elven princes and sons of Feanor Celegorm and Curufin, who are accompanied by the hunting dog Huan . They take Lúthien prisoner and want to leave Felagund and Beren to their fate in order to appropriate Felagund's kingdom. But Huan, who comes from the divine Valinor , leaves his masters and frees Lúthien. Together the two reach the Thûs fortress, can overcome the magician with united forces and free Beren, but for Beren's companions any help comes too late: They were killed by Thûs Wolf. When in the end only Felagund and Beren were left, the Elf King managed to kill the wolf with his bare hands, but he himself died after this fight. Beren and Lúthien now set off for Doriath. Arriving at the border of the kingdom, Beren wants to separate from Lúthien in order to take up his mission again, but Lúthien insists on accompanying him. The decision is postponed when Celegorm and Curufin reappear and attack. However, with Huan's help they are put to flight, but an arrow from Celegorm seriously wounds Beren - Lúthien can only save him with the help of her love and the Elvish art of healing. During the fight, however, Curufin lost the magical dwarf knife Angrist , which Beren then takes. After Beren's recovery, they decide to embark on the perilous journey to Morgoth's Angband fortress .
They reach their destination in disguise, but the gate to Morgoth's halls is guarded by Carcharoth , the most terrible of all wolves. With the help of Elvish magic, Lúthien succeeds in putting the wolf to sleep so that they can penetrate into Morgoth's throne room. Morgoth sees through the disguise, but Lúthien can even use song and dance to put the dark gentleman to sleep, and with him the entire court. With the dwarf knife Angrist, Beren can easily cut the Silmaril out of Morgoth's crown, but when he tries to take the other two stones, his knife breaks and the blade hits Morgoth. This begins to wake up, so that Beren and Lúthien flee with "only" one Silmaril. At the gate, however, they meet the awakened Carcharoth. Beren holds out the sacred gem and the wolf bites off Beren's hand and the stone. At this point the “lay” ends.
From other prose fragments of the story, the end of the story can at least be guessed at. Beren and Luthien reach Doriath, but at Thingol's request to show the stone, Beren can only show his empty hand and the stump of his arm. Thingol's condition (“a Silmaril in your hand”) is met in the literal sense, even if the hand itself is lost. Thingol agrees to the wedding. Carcharoth, however, cannot bear the burning pain of the holy stone in his bowels, he wanders through Middle-earth, plundering and murdering. So Thingol's great hunters set out to kill the hellhound with Huan at their side. With combined forces, they succeed in doing this, even if Beren and Huan lose their lives in the process. Then they cut the hand together with the Silmaril from Carcharoth's bowels. Thingol receives the stone, on which the curse of its creator Feanor lies: The latter obliges Feanor's sons to reclaim each of the stones. Thingol rejects the request, which ultimately ushers in his own downfall and that of his kingdom. Meanwhile, Beren waits in Mandos ' halls for Luthien, who does not survive the grief over his death and visits him there. Again Luthien succeeds with the magic of her song to beguile one of the Valar: This only time Mandos allows two dead people to go back to Middle-earth. Beren and Luthien lived there as mortal people, for Luthien had chosen the fate of men for himself and abandoned the gift of the Elves, immortality within Middle-earth. Her son Dior, however, the first of half-elves , the father was Elwing , the mother of Elrond .
shape
The Lay of Leithian consists of over 4,200 iambic four-part verses in rhyming pairs, and is divided into 14 chants.
Work history
Tolkien worked on the Lay of Leithian for a total of six years until he ceased work in September 1931. The Lay of Leithian exists in two text versions:
- Text A, a manuscript that is written on the back of examination papers and, atypical for Tolkien, has sporadic dates ranging from April 1, 1928 to September 17, 1931.
- Text B is a clean typewritten text, and contains various changes and improvements over Text A. Tolkien gave this text to his friend CS Lewis for review in 1929 . Lewis was very positive and wrote an extensive commentary, with many of his proposed changes being adopted by Tolkien.
In 1937 he submitted the fragment together with a summary of the missing plot and other work to the publisher George Allen & Unwin, who asked for more stories after the surprise success of the children's book The Hobbit . Stanley Unwin's reaction, however, was devastating. Assuming that Tolkien's summary was an original Celtic material from which someone had tried to make a poem, he judged: "The primitive power has disappeared, the clear colors have disappeared". Tolkien himself, who often reacted violently to criticism, wrote in a letter "despite some virtuoso passages" that the Lay had "profound mistakes". Nonetheless, Tolkien returned to his poem once more: around 1950 he began a revision which soon developed into a completely new poem, which however did not get beyond the stage of a fragment of a few hundred lines.
Christopher Tolkien published parts of the story, especially the prose versions , in his posthumously edited collections, especially in the Silmarillion , the News from Middle-earth or in Beren and Lúthien .
background
In Tolkien's works, the Lay of Leithian is referred to several times as "the most famous and second longest song among the heroic songs of the First Age". (The longest was the song by the children of Hurin.)
It was circulated in many versions and abstracts; Aragorn sang one of these versions to the hobbits in the camp under the weathertop. ( The Lord of the Rings: The Companions )
Classification of the work
The story of Beren and Lúthien has clear autobiographical traits, on the one hand in the description of the dancing and musical talents of Tolkien's wife Edith, on the other hand in the overcoming of obstacles between the two lovers. Tolkien was initially forbidden from contact with Edith by his guardian, which resulted in a long separation period. In the story of Beren and Lúthien, Tolkien depicts the great love between him and his wife Edith. The scene in which Beren saw Lúthien for the first time - dancing in a clearing in the forest - has strong personal references.
On the tombstone of JRR Tolkien and his wife Edith there is the inscription Beren and Lúthien under the names .
More epics from the First Age
literature
- JRR Tolkien: The lays of Beleriand (= Christopher Tolkien (Ed.): The History of Middle-earth. Volume 3). Unwin Paperbacks, London 1987, ISBN 0-04-440018-7 .
- JRR Tolkien: The Silmarillion (Retelling of Entire Mythology of the First Age by Christopher Tolkien) 1977.
- German: The Silmarillion. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-608-95131-8 .
- JRR Tolkien: Unfinished Tales (edited by Christopher Tolkien) 1980.
- German: News from Middle-earth. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-608-95160-1 .
- JRR Tolkien: Beren and Lúthien. Ed .: Christopher Tolkien. HarperCollins, London 2017, ISBN 978-0-00-821419-7 .
- German: Beren and Lúthien. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-608-10888-0 .