Of Beren and Luthien

[annathepiper]

So filkertom posted over on his journal asking what parts of Tolkien's work were people's favorites, and I had to jump in with saying that the tale of Beren and Luthien in The Silmarillion, hands down, is my favorite. We got into talking about why on the MurkMUSH, and how the story would make a fabulous movie.

It's got everything you could possibly want in a movie. A grand epic love story. A powerful father hostile to the romance. A challenge to Beren to go and find a Silmaril to prove himself worthy of Luthien's hand. A hero and a heroine putting themselves on the line for each other. Big scary monsters. Big friendly beasts. A hero in dire peril (I STILL wince at the thought of Beren getting his hand bitten off). A heroine going up against the biggest evil in all of Middle-Earth. And ultimately, defiance of death itself.

We are told in The Lord of the Rings that Arwen is supposed to be Luthien reborn, almost, but I never did buy it--partly because I never saw Arwen do anything to prove herself worthy of being compared to Luthien, whereas Luthien getting out there and putting herself in peril to save her man is all about the doing. And that's unique for female characters in Tolkien's work. Eowyn comes close, but I can't think of a single female character in all of Tolkien's books who left so huge an impression on me as Luthien. Tolkien did write other love stories, but this one shines for me because both hero and heroine are actively involved. They win out in the end because of both their actions.

So I would love to see their story filmed. Preferably by Mr. Jackson. ;) I want to see someone bring Beren's first sight of Luthien to life, where her beauty quite literally strikes him dumb and leaves him wandering in the wild for seasons. I want to see a man playing Beren who can look as if her beauty has almost killed him on the spot. And I want to see a woman playing Luthien who has that luminous, supernatural beauty about her, as well as the presence befitting a child of both elven and Maian blood, whose voice can tame Morgoth himself.

Damn, I think I need to read this story again. ^_^ I get a glow in my heart just thinking about it!

Comments

[ii2none59.livejournal.com]

WOW! And I repeat...WOW!!!

The only works of Tolkien's that I've read have been The Hobbit (about 25 years ago), the LOTR trilogy (about 25 years ago), Fellowship (right after the movie came out) and...well...that's it. I'd never even considered The Silmarillion but after reading your comments, I might take a chance sometime in the future. What a great love story, and yes, Luthien seems to be a true rarity in Tolkien works. I've heard people discussing forever and a day that Tolkien just didn't write female characters very well. I know that when I compared Movie Arwen to Book Arwen...well...that really wasn't fair LOL

[annathepiper]

I love, love, LOVE the tale of Beren and Luthien. Aragorn and Arwen are a pale shadow of the greatness of Beren and Luthien, the original Human/Elven love story in Tolkien. ^_^ I read it first in adolescence, and even back then I was blown away by the story. Especially the initial meeting between Beren and Luthien, because it stood out so clearly for me how Beren was so thunderstruck by her beauty that he literally lost his wits for a while.

(It's probably helping my current enthralled state that I can't banish the mental picture of Mr. Crowe playing Beren, either. I can totally see him dropping to his knees at the sight of Luthien, looking like he's just been shot. But you'd really need a Luthien worthy of that kind of reaction. She has to be ageless, luminous, beautiful to the point of divine pain--because Luthien is part Maia.)

Now mind you, The Silmarillion IS IMHO uneven. How much you'll get out of it depends on how much interest you have in the overall broad history of Middle-Earth. There are truly mythic accounts of how Middle-Earth is created, and you get a lot of data about who all the various gods are, including Morgoth. You get some backstory on Sauron, too, as well as the civilization of Numenor. You get a lot about Valinor, the place where all the Elves in the movies are headed when they go West. A lot of those parts are very... dense and hard to get through, just because that's the way Tolkien writes. I found it all really neat backstory that enhanced my appreciation of the world introduced to me in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but anyone who finds Tolkien's prose daunting in general will probably have a time making it through this.

What really helped me was when he pulled in the focus to the stories of individuals, especially Beren and Luthien. There are other similarly focused stories in there as well, some of which are tragic, but Beren and Luthien's story is by far for me the best. And it was also really fun for me to trace their lineage down to Elrond! They're like three or four generations back from Elrond, which is why Arwen gets compared to Luthien; she's descended from her.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

The problem with the Silmarillion is that it was put together from Professor Tolkien's notes after his death. It was essentially source material for his published works, and only a relatively minor chunk of it. Christopher Tolkien cobbled it together into a coherent whole, but if you read the other post-mortem Tolkien works, it's not the only way to put together the vast source material.

The parts of the Silmarillion that shine are those where Tolkien had time to elaborate on the characters and the narrative, rather than simply the raw historical and linguistic details he started from. Beren and Luthien, being a semi-autobiographical tale that channeled Tolkien's love for his own wife, is one of the most polished bits of the Silmarillion, and so also one of the most memorable.

[annathepiper]

Oh wow, I don't think I knew Beren and Luthien's story was semi-autobiographical. Most excellent. :D And it also really kind of makes me go "aww" about ol' J.R.R. if he saw his own wife in such terms.

Thanks for your commentary! If ii2none59 doesn't spot it herself I'll point it out to her!

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BAthien

The most touching bit is that Edith Tolkien's grave is marked "Luthien," and Tolkien's grave is marked "Beren." He adored her.

The elf and immortality bits aren't autobiographical, and Tolkien didn't lose his hand (though he certainly bore emotional scars from the Great War), but their relationship is definitely the inspiration for the story.

[annathepiper]

Re: autobiographical-ness, *giggle* yeah. if Tolkien is any of the beings in his works, he's clearly a Hobbit. >:)

Thanks for the link! I especially like the bit about the possible derivation of Luthien at the bottom. More awwwwww. :)

[ii2none59.livejournal.com]

I was intending to answer this long before now, but every time it looks like I'd start to reply, something would interrupt me. LOL Now here it is my last day before I return to work tonight and I realized maybe I ought to try to say something. *g*

Okay...I might be committing a sacrilage, but is there an abridged edition of The Silmarillion where I could read the major stories, specifically those of Beren and Luthien, without losing the essence of what Tolkien intended. Not a Cliff Notes version (don't want that at all) but say the exact text -- word for word from Tolkien -- in a form for those of us that want an overall understanding, but don't have the time to analyze the entire work on a close level.

You wrote: (It's probably helping my current enthralled state that I can't banish the mental picture of Mr. Crowe playing Beren, either. I can totally see him dropping to his knees at the sight of Luthien, looking like he's just been shot. But you'd really need a Luthien worthy of that kind of reaction. She has to be ageless, luminous, beautiful to the point of divine pain--because Luthien is part Maia.)

Again...WOW! And just from the image you've placed in my head I can definitely see that too!

Thanks for the background on this. I had heard little bits and pieces of the Luthien/Beren story, but this gives me even more info. Much appreciated!

[annathepiper]

I am not currently aware of an abridged version of The Silmarillion, no. I think it's worth getting the whole book if you like Tolkien at all--it's not too huge a paperback, at least not the edition I have. And the way it's written, you can read bits and pieces of it over a long period of time if you want, or read the whole thing straight through.

Looking up on Amazon, I see a paperback edition for $7.99, 480 pages, as well as audio CDs. Maybe you could get a used copy, if you don't want to spare the bucks for a new one?

And you're very welcome. :) I'm delighted that you enjoy the idea of the story so much, and I hope you get to read it soon!

[ii2none59.livejournal.com]

I may give it a shot! Thanks for the info (again LOL -- seems like I say that to you a lot). I'll check on Amazon Marketplace at some point. I admit that my interest in Tolkien has lessened slightly now that the movie series is over, but occasionally I run across some reference that makes me realize I really ought to try to learn more. (Sharon has told me some things that had me doing my usual 'WOW' *g* because I had no idea).

[annathepiper]

Let's put it this way. People in SF/F fandom bitch a lot (even today) about how everybody and their grandmother have copied off of Tolkien, but there are reasons for that. There are reasons he's pretty much the grandfather of modern fantasy, and these reasons are that he's just that good. His world is so richly, beautifully realized that there's material there to enjoy for years on end, even if you're just a fairly casual fan, like me. And his material feels so mythic because, well, he's pulling in inspiration from all over the place out of actual myths. Same deal with his languages. He was a master linguist, and all of that went into the crafting of the myriad tongues of Middle-Earth.

Don't get me wrong, I love every minute of the movies--but they only begin to scratch the surface of what's there!

But by all means, take your time with it. The depth of detail of Tolkien's world can be daunting, and like I said before, his prose can be daunting too if you're not prepared to take on his particular writing style. (Though for reference, I will note that solarbird, who had never read any Tolkien before the movies came out, read Fellowship after the first movie and found that it moved really well for her, even given Tolkien's incredibly dense prose. So it avoided the "describe every blade of grass within a 50-mile radius" syndrome for her. ;) )

But I find that at the very least, The Silmarillion is a valuable supplement to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These are all what I consider to be critical Tolkien works to have, though they are not all that's available.

[ii2none59.livejournal.com]

I couldn't remember if I answered this or not LOL (that's the way the last couple of weeks have been going for me) so I will give The Silmarillion some thought and perhaps consider it for a future read! *g*

[annathepiper]

Yay! ^_^

[leian.livejournal.com]

And now you make me want to read it.... Silmarillion, eh?

[annathepiper]

Indeed. Much goodness in there, though see comments above re: how it is kind of uneven in places. llachglin has good remarks about that, since it was composed out of J.R.R. Tolkien's notes after his death.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

That's my favorite bit of the Silmarillion, too. I like imagining Luthien's dancing as more like Tai Chi than ballet, since she's so obviously working magic while she does it.

The one time I taught an intro to myth class, I rewarded my students for slogging through the hard stuff by giving them Beren and Luthien and the "Season of Mists" volume of Sandman at the end of the semester. They liked B&L far more than the tiny bits of the Valaquenta I gave them for background. Oh, but I loved teaching that class. For instance, I got to write stuff like this on the blackboard:

Quiz Question: The goddess of the stars has five names in the Valaquenta. For every name for her that you remember, you can add one extra credit point to your score for the semester.

Tolkien was way harder than the students expected, but they were genuinely moved by the fact that his gravestone bears, along with all the usual stuff, the name Beren, and that his wife's bears, along with all the usual stuff, Luthien. Everyone, even the reluctant guys, said a big awww about that.

[annathepiper]

*beam* I can remember Varda, Elbereth, and Gilthoniel, but I'm not pulling up the other two names at the moment. I'd have to look 'em up.

llachglin mentioned the gravestones too. I'm all "awwwwwww" now!