Tag: galadriel
Cate Blanchett though.
get yourself someone who can do both
There are lots of passages in LOTR that I love, but my uncontested favorite is this sentence by Galadriel:
‘Dark are the waters of Khaled-zaram and cold are the springs of Kibil-Nala and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dum in elder days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone.’
This is the moment Gimli gets her, or at least he gets that she gets him. In this one sentence,
- She acknowledges that Gandalf (and Gimli) was not wrong to pass through Moria.
- She shows empathy for Gimli’s wish to see Moria again, even if it is ruined or unsafe.
- She deliberately uses the Dwarven names of places – endonyms instead of exonyms, Khazad-Dum instead of Moria, Dwarrowdelf instead of Black Pit.
- She doesn’t only show respect and understanding, she shows knowledge – in addition to knowing dwarven names, she seems to know dwarven culture, since the descriptions she uses are very similar to the ones in Gimli’s song.
- Knowing Galadriel’s past, it seems like her understanding of Gimli’s grief for Khazad-Dum stems from her experiences with losing… well, she lost a lot of people and places over the eras. She stood witness to the losses of various paradises, she gets it. But the fall of Gondolin is the most obvious parallel, or maybe Doriath, and the knowledge that Lothlórien can only be a faint echo of its glories.
- Knowing Galadriel’s future, it seems like her grief for losing Middle-Earth forever also shines through the sentence. The world is changing and beautiful things fade or die or must be left behind, and she knows this probably best of everyone on Middle-Earth.
- And in this one utterance of knowledge and compassion, where she acknowledges the beauty of dwarven lands and the grief of their loss, she uses one-syllable adjectives, which, as @thearrogantemu pointed out, are Tolkien’s favorite mode of signaling beauty, age and gravitas. Dark. Cold. Fair.
the respect and understanding she shows for the lost glory and lost beauty of the Dwarvish kingdoms #I think for Gimli that’s like the moment where you realize someone has read the same book and loves it like you do #not just a willingness to be generous #but the mutual recognition of shared values #and especially coming from someone whose people have historically been dismissive or antagonistic (thearrogantemu)
The Mirror of Galadriel.
“`Many things I can command the Mirror to reveal,’ she answered, `and to some I can show what they desire to see. But the Mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often stranger and more profitable than things which we wish to behold. What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, things that yet may be. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell. Do you wish to look? ‘” (J.R.R, Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2). “The Mirror of Galadriel”.
She lifted up her white arms, and spread out her hands towards the East in a gesture of rejection and denial.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown
There are lots of passages in LOTR that I love, but my uncontested favorite is this sentence by Galadriel:
‘Dark are the waters of Khaled-zaram and cold are the springs of Kibil-Nala and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dum in elder days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone.’
This is the moment Gimli gets her, or at least he gets that she gets him. In this one sentence,
- She acknowledges that Gandalf (and Gimli) was not wrong to pass through Moria.
- She shows empathy for Gimli’s wish to see Moria again, even if it is ruined or unsafe.
- She deliberately uses the Dwarven names of places – endonyms instead of exonyms, Khazad-Dum instead of Moria, Dwarrowdelf instead of Black Pit.
- She doesn’t only show respect and understanding, she shows knowledge – in addition to knowing dwarven names, she seems to know dwarven culture, since the descriptions she uses are very similar to the ones in Gimli’s song.
- Knowing Galadriel’s past, it seems like her understanding of Gimli’s grief for Khazad-Dum stems from her experiences with losing… well, she lost a lot of people and places over the eras. She stood witness to the losses of various paradises, she gets it. But the fall of Gondolin is the most obvious parallel, or maybe Doriath, and the knowledge that Lothlórien can only be a faint echo of its glories.
- Knowing Galadriel’s future, it seems like her grief for losing Middle-Earth forever also shines through the sentence. The world is changing and beautiful things fade or die or must be left behind, and she knows this probably best of everyone on Middle-Earth.
- And in this one utterance of knowledge and compassion, where she acknowledges the beauty of dwarven lands and the grief of their loss, she uses one-syllable adjectives, which, as @thearrogantemu pointed out, are Tolkien’s favorite mode of signaling beauty, age and gravitas. Dark. Cold. Fair.
the respect and understanding she shows for the lost glory and lost beauty of the Dwarvish kingdoms #I think for Gimli that’s like the moment where you realize someone has read the same book and loves it like you do #not just a willingness to be generous #but the mutual recognition of shared values #and especially coming from someone whose people have historically been dismissive or antagonistic (thearrogantemu)
The Lord of the Rings Meme | ten scenes (2/10)
Farewell to Lórien.
This is my favorite fucking scene.
If you’ve read the Silmarillion, you know who Fëanor was. If you don’t, Fëanor was the dickhead who created the Silmarils: three indescribably beautiful and magical jewels that contained the light and essence of the world before it became flawed. They were the catalyst for basically every important thing that happened in the First Age of Middle Earth.
It is thought that the inspiration for the Silmarils came to Fëanor from the sight of Galadriel’s shining, silver-gold hair.
He begged her three times for single strand of her beautiful hair. And every time, Galadriel refused him. Even when she was young, Galadriel’s ability to see into other’s hearts was very strong, and she knew that Fëanor was filled with nothing but fire and greed.
Fast forward to the end of the Third Age.
Gimli, visiting Lorien, is also struck by Galadriel’s beauty. During the scene where she’s passing out her parting gifts to the Fellowship, Galadriel stops empty-handed in front of Gimli, because she doesn’t know what to offer a Dwarf. Gimli tells her: no gold, no treasure… just a single strand of hair to remember her beauty by.
She gives him three. Three.
And this is why Gimli gets to be an Elf Friend, people. Because Galadriel looks at him and thinks he deserves what she refused the greatest Elf who ever lived—- and then twice that. And because he has no idea of the significance of what she’s just given him, but he’s going to treasure it the rest of his life anyway.
Just look at that smile on Legolas’s face in the last panel. He gets it. He knows the backstory. And I’m pretty sure this is the moment he reconsiders whether Elves and Dwarves can’t be friends after all.
Everyone look at this great fucking post
There are posts and then there are posts
maybe if he put a “please” on that…
willowfoot 