Tolkien essays
Feb. 6th, 2007 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustineTolkien and the Invention of Myth (various).
I have an overwhelming urge to read Beowulf, and the Finnish Kalevala, and the old Norse Eddas and Sagas, and Gawain the Green Knight, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and, you know, everything ever written about any of them. Most of all I am impressed with what one essay in here identified as the specific tone and flavor of Norse mythology- that the gods are mortal, that the inevitability of defeat does not in any way change the moral quality of the fight- and what it said about the Elegiac tone, that very particular emotional tone that seems so very powerful. I just want to devour all of this material. I want that light-headed, crystal-clear, soaring, free, aching feeling brought on by really powerful myth. Apparently there's a lot of it to be had in the Finnish and Norse and Old English, while I've just been putzing about with the classics. Dammit, I want to bottle that feeling. I want to be able to read it all in Finnish and Norse and Anglo-Saxon. I want to be a hell of a lot smarter than I am. That is all.
I have an overwhelming urge to read Beowulf, and the Finnish Kalevala, and the old Norse Eddas and Sagas, and Gawain the Green Knight, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and, you know, everything ever written about any of them. Most of all I am impressed with what one essay in here identified as the specific tone and flavor of Norse mythology- that the gods are mortal, that the inevitability of defeat does not in any way change the moral quality of the fight- and what it said about the Elegiac tone, that very particular emotional tone that seems so very powerful. I just want to devour all of this material. I want that light-headed, crystal-clear, soaring, free, aching feeling brought on by really powerful myth. Apparently there's a lot of it to be had in the Finnish and Norse and Old English, while I've just been putzing about with the classics. Dammit, I want to bottle that feeling. I want to be able to read it all in Finnish and Norse and Anglo-Saxon. I want to be a hell of a lot smarter than I am. That is all.