Favourite Parts of the Silmarillion

[danlo]

KICK!

[Trapper]

Turin Turambar at the waters of Ivrin. (I wonder if Tull Bloodguard ever found his way there...he needed them just as direly.)

That was a great post. I'm well over three years late in responding, but that was a nice post.

[Zarathustra]

I have to agree with this:

Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this-
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea-
that Luthien for a time should be.

Now that's a proclamation of love and hope! Wow. Those lines have always been some of my favorite lines of the Silmarillion. It really underscores the entire message of the Silmarillion on through the end of The Lord of the Rings--the fleeting beauty of finite existence. Celebrating life in the face of death. That's what makes it epic.

[Fist and Faith]

I love when Beren said, "Luthi, you've got some splainin' to do!"

[rusmeister]

But as for my favourite part, I can't but agree with most of the others - the tale of Beren and Luthien is the most beautiful and stirring part of the book, and all the more so because it is based on Tolkien's relationship with his wife, and thus it is written with Tolkien's heart, more than everything else he wrote; also, it is the foundation around which he created Middle-Earth.

I do agree that this is central. However, I think that Tolkien's faith was even more foundational, and explains both our feelings that this describes something Real (sorry, SRD!) and in general the relationships and how things work in his own universe.

I always thought that one least explored thoughts of Tolkien in LOTR was the concept of Frodo being 'meant' to have the Ring.

[Mortice Root]

Favorite moments:

The exchange between Feanor and the herald of Manwe after the kinslaying:

"...yet slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be...."

"...but one thing is not said: that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens. Therefore I say that we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda"

The duel between Morgoth and Fingolfin:

"And Morgoth came."

Fantastic stuff.

And Beren:

"Even now, a Silmaril is in my hand."

[Zahir]

The making of the world, in the music of the Ainur.

The final voyage of Earnendil.

[Trapper]

I love when Beren said, "Luthi, you've got thome thplainin' to do!"

[Fist and Faith]

Ah, even better!!

[Montresor]

IMO, The Silmarillion is better than the LOTR. Does anyone esle think this?

Yes. I've always preferred The Silmarillion to LoTR, which is saying a lot.

I couldn't pick a favourite bit, I don't think, though I always really enjoyed the imagery of Morgoth with his head bowed by the weight of the Silmarils. Perhaps that description, or perhaps the whole of Turin Turambar.

The duel between Morgoth and Fingolfin:

"And Morgoth came."

Fantastic stuff.

Hell, yeah! The pits filling with Morgoth's blood . . . the whole damn duel is just fantastic.

[Mr. Broken]

Ungoliant spinning shadows.

[rusmeister]

I have the duel between Finrod Felagund and Sauron committed to memory. The rhythm of the poem has a compulsion that makes me want to recite it faster and faster.

[Cord Hurn]

The duel between Elven-king Fingolfin and the Dark Lord Melkor is nothing short of epic, I MUST agree.