I've had a surprisingly difficult time writing today's post, and I didn't think that I would. I love a good love story, and Tolkien excels at them. However, I just got out of a very bad relationship, and I was a bit bitter. The story of Beren and Lúthien is a love story of epic proportions. It is also the story of J.R.R. Tolkien and
his wife, Edith. On their tombstone,
Beren is engraved under J.R.R. Tolkien’s name, and Lúthien under Edith Tolkien’s. Christopher Tolkien, their son, recently published Beren and Lúthien, which he describes as the most complete progression of the tale.
The story itself is beautiful, and it harkens to a familiar tale, if you've watched or read (!) The Lord of the Rings. Let me refresh your memory of the tale of Arwen Undómiel and Aragorn, son of Arathorn. Arwen is the Half-Elven daughter of Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, and his Lady, Celebrían. Being Half-Elven, she had the right to chose mortality or immortality. She spent her life split between Rivendell and Lothlórien. On one of her stays with her father in Rivendell, she met the orphaned heir to the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor, Aragorn. For his own safety, Aragorn was being raised by Elrond with no real knowledge of his past. Aragorn was twenty, Arwen, 2700. Aragorn fell instantly in love with Arwen, even believing that he had fallen into a dream and seen Lúthien. Arwen felt the same. Years later, they met again and the "plighted their troth," or became betrothed. Arwen gave up her immortality and any chance to sail to the blessed lands to stay with Aragorn, uniting man and elf for a period of peace and prosperity. Well, it wasn't quite that simple. It took years for them to actually marry, and Aragorn went through many trials, most of which we see in the movies, more of which are in the books. Elrond, upon hearing, declared that Arwen would not marry Aragorn until he was king of Arnor and Gondor both--he had to claim his crowns. But she never lost faith in him. After the War of the Ring, the couple married. Arwen granted her place on the ships to the West to Frodo, the Ringbearer, and lived happily with Aragorn as Queen of the Reunited Kingdom. They had one son, Eldarion, and a bunch of daughters. When Aragorn died, she left Minas Tirith, their capital, and wandered before laying down under a tree at Cirith Amroth in Lórien and died of a broken heart.That's the short version, and the tale that brings Beren and Lúthien full circle. Now for the book I actually read.
In the "Beren and Lúthien" story, Lúthien is dancing in the woods while her brother, Dairon, plays. Beren comes across them and is enchanted by the Elven girl. He tries to speak to her but she and her brother are frightened and run. Still, they go out on later occasions and Beren sees them, eventually following them home. He claims to Lúthien's father that he wishes to marry his daughter, and Thingol demands an impossible task, one that is sure to kill Beren: Thingol wants a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth (the current incarnation of the Dark Lord we all know as Sauron.) Beren goes off on his quest, but is captured and, hiding his identity, ends up as the servant of one of Morgoth's allies. Lúthien learns of this fate and tells her brother that she must help him. Dairon tells their father. Thingol thinks that this is an appropriate time to lock his daughter in a tree house far above the forest floor. Great parenting there. Lúthien then heads off to save Beren, and is sucessful. Beren wants to continue on his task alone, but eventually agrees to accept Lúthien's help. They get attacked and Beren is mortally wounded, but Lúthien heals him. Then they shift into mythical animals and fly to Morgoth's land. There, Lúthien sings a song that lulls the Dark Lord to sleep, allowing Beren to cut a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown. They face a giant werewolf (from that earlier battle that Beren was wounded in earlier), and the werewolf bites Beren's hand off--the hand holding the Silmaril. Beren and Lúthien escape to go back to Lúthien's father. Thingol's heart is softened by the tales of their deeds and allows them to marry. Then Beren gets together a hunting party for the werewolf. Beren is fatally wounded, but kills the werewolf. His last action before dying is to give Thingol the Silmaril. Lúthien is devastated. Grieving, she goes to the hall of Mandos, the god of Death and Justice, and sings her tale. Mandos is moved to pity and brings Beren back to life. Lúthien is granted a mortal life, and they go off to live and die together.It sounds eerily similar to the tale of Arwen and Aragorn, no? That's intentional. They are meant to be bookend tales to each other. Lúthien was half-Elven, but her other half was Maia, a form of lower goddess or angel. Arwen was half-Elven, half-man. Beren, once settled, was a man who was given an impossible task. So was Aragorn, although, as a descendant of Beren and Lúthien, he had a longer life than mortal men (it was normal for men of Aragorn's line to live for hundreds of years.), faced with a seemingly impossible task. Both men are aided in their tasks by Elves. Beren and Lúthien lived at the beginning of the First Age of Middle Earth, and Aragorn and Arwen at the end of the Third Age, before a golden age of peace and prosperity. It is the beginning of a story and the end..
The book itself is a progression of the tale, with different versions that show changes. It starts with "The Tale of Tinúviel", which was Lúthien's original name. In this version, Beren is another type of Elf called a Gnome. Lúthien's name is changed, as are her parents'. Thingol's name was Tinwelint, and Lúthien's mother was Gwendeling rather than Melian the Maia. The story is essentially the same, but different elements are changed. Next, we get a few paragraphs from "Sketch of the Mythology", which Christopher Tolkien describes as the piece that shows the continuity between the early "The Tale of Tinúviel" and "Beren and Lúthien." It's a brief summary of the tale, and then end of it basically says "For the long version, read The Lay of Leithian." Shockingly, a piece of the Lay of Leithian is what appears next, but this is an early part of the tale, the part where Beren's father was betrayed to Morgoth and killed. The book continues as such, showing the changes, until you get to the end. The last part of the book is actually about the children and grandchildren of Beren and Lúthien. Importantly, what happened to the Silmaril that Beren took. It went to their grandchildren, eventually, Eärendil and Elwing, the parents of Elrond, Arwen's father, and his brother, Elros, the father of Aragorn's line. Heartbroken at their inability to protect their sons, they sail for Valinor, in the West. The Silmaril is on Eärendil's brow, a bright, shining light. In Valinar, there is called a judgement. Eventually, it is decided that the half-Elven will have to chose between mortality and immortality. Eärendil and Elwing chose immortality (Eärendil following Elwing's choice), and Eärendil the Mariner set sail among the stars. The light of the Silmaril is what Galadriel gives to Frodo as the Light of Eärendil in The Fellowship of the Ring. With that final piece, the whole story is complete.
I liked this book a lot. It filled in a lot of the gaps of the mythology, and it was written, Christopher Tolkien's inputs exclueded, in J.R.R. Tolkien's expressive writing. However, the book started with a fairly lengthy preface and notes section, where Christopher Tolkien talks about the evolution of the story, his parents, and how the names were changed over time to have the "final" version that appears in The Lost Tales section of The Silmillarion. While informative, and helpful as you get to different revisions of the story, I would have preferred it not to be the whole first 39 pages of the book. The rest of Tolkien is full of appendices. The notes section could have easily been an appendix. This was a bit annoying.
If you like Tolkien, I highly reccomend adding Beren and Lúthien to your reading list. It's a remarkable addition to the volumes already produced by Tolkien.
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