emyn arnen

I want to take this second, this feeling, and imprison it forever.

This post, from now onwards, will sound ridiculous to those who don't believe that imaginary things can carry the same weight as things in reality do. I will go on anyway, because, for what it's worth, I need to. It will not be a scholarly discussion, nor will it be treated with informality. This is my own way of paying tribute to things I love.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy has, from the moment I encountered it, been easily the best work of high fantasy I've ever experienced—in any medium and any age. It was all a single amazing point in the history of mankind, made up of amazing moments of brilliance strung together, and I in all honesty believe that this is one of the best, if not the best, series in the world—that has ever existed, that exists, that will exist—now and forever. It's no wonder that it has been immortalised—the only fantasy work from the 1950s that is still remembered as dearly as it is.

And the movie, I like to believe against common opinion, did the books justice; in fact, they elicited a greater emotional response in me than did the three novels. (Perhaps it's the result of circumstance, and perhaps because it is fresh in memory, and you can bash me on this point if you want.) And it is the movies I will be referring to primarily here, but that does not in any way exclude discussion of the content of the book.

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Art and its forms are mirrors. It is a mirror of our world, a mirror created within the world of another's mind--with features and components that will carry a story—and a story is a mirror of life. These are worlds and stories that maybe seem very different from ours, but are populated and progressed, ultimately, by the same as ours—beings like us, who think like us, feel like us. Love like us. 

Art is about a moment, a distance, a fragment of time long or short that a human mind has conjured and cannot be crossed twice, made twice—an idea that is there suddenly and strains in the bonds of the creator's mind, and has to take physical form somewhere. Because a single mind isn't enough to contain it. It needs to move, and it needs to take a physical form so another can see.

This is Tolkien's moment, his time, the world and story that came from his mind. He knew it best, and now we know a little of it too. If this is his painting, his story, then he has succeeded beautifully in bringing it to the viewer.

The trilogy made up of many arcs, countless arcs of story, and all of them are amazing to the core. But there's a particular piece that I love in its own way, the precise way that strikes the chord of heaven: a particular story of people who never existed, and yet must exist because I believe it is so. Imagination is as real as reality in that way. They must exist, if my senses can believe it so. Even if they don't.

I feel, now, something so beautiful that my words cannot do it justice.

I need to keep it safe. It will fade, it always fades—but I will record here so that I can find it when it is lost.

Like one of my friends said when we were watching the movies—the less of something you have, the more you treasure it.

There is a tale in the third installment of the series that has brought me to my knees in shame that I didn't discover it earlier. It is, very clearly put, the love story of Eowyn and Faramir. Don't start calling me shallow yet, for snatching and savouring the only romance in this book as if I were desperate for some! I'm here to explain why my love for this particular romance goes beyond the good feeling that comes from reading any other romance—why it is my favourite arc in the story, resolute and persistent beyond the flames and glory of the entire work.

Poignant and silent and unimportant in comparison—and that is what I love most.

It does not stand on its own; it is the extension of previously-started stories, stories that eventually intertwine and create a new story together, making magic as they do. It's hard thus to explain this love without giving some of what has gone behind it—but I'm here to explain it, so I will do this as best I can.

It's hard to explain why you love something, when you love it this much.

(For those who already know the story, please bear with me.)

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In The Lord of the Rings, there is a couple, and there is a love story between them. A story that is woven when they meet. It is a love story like any other love story, but it is bold and rare and beautiful, almost echoing the fairytales and their untouchable endings, calling back those childhood days when we could believe the best.

The tale of love between a shieldmaiden of Rohan, Eowyn—whose heart is wild and entangled in a thirst for glory, glory she has always been denied; and the captain of Gondor, Faramir son of Denethor—who has never been enough to his father for the sake of the one born before him, who has persisted and yet has not been rewarded—who has grown to love the ways of peace more than battle and glory.

Most don't remember who they are. They were barely mentioned in the original movie. Never at all. Before this, I already loved, absolutely loved, their tale—I read it four times over on the night I finished the book. Then the extended movie came, and sealed my utter adoration for it.

It might be because of the characters, but it's not just that. It's the story, the things that the story represents, the echoes of the world that are within the story.

It doesn't do for me to describe either book or movie without talking about the other, but it seems like a sin to combine the two into one. Even so, the fact is that my love comes from this very combination, so I'm doing just that.

I can say for certain that I have never seen anything more beautiful than this, movie especially. Maybe it's because my experience of the scene involves external things; there was a wind in the windows because of the rain, and it smelt a little sweet. It was a pure experience I cannot recount, though I will try.

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The world is ending; the window is flooded with the storm, the sky is the same black as evil. The land hasn't seen real light for days, and hope for its return has almost faded. It's a shadow of a dream. But there must be a little hope, low as the candle gutters.

Isn't the winter coming to its end? The first whisper of spring is dancing in the snow, and there is an unseen flower, blooming on a branch of the dead White Tree. The first of spring, of a world almost dead.

Eowyn and Faramir are no different from each other. They are lying half-dead in a room away from the storm, helpless now, even though they fought and fought true. The war. It hasn't ended for the country, but it has ended for them. They fall on the same day, valorous—both taken for dead and left to be tended in the House of Healing. They have been sent by coincidence—on the same day, to the same place—to be healed from wounds they might never recover from. Orphans, both whom lost their fathers today.

Eowyn lies broken not only by the wound—but broken by hard words, by how she has only watched helpless all her life, how she has never had a hand in her fate, her suffering. And she has the love of the one she believed held the power to release her—or rather, she has never had it. It was always a lost battle. Her life was always a lost battle. She might have come out from the worst of the pain, but she will never be the same again; the sadness of losing everything is beyond herbs and magic.

Faramir's family has ended. The line of stewards lost; he is the only survivor. His father died trying to kill his own son. There was never a chance for reconciliation, never a chance with any of the three he loved more than the rest of the world. All three have vanished, too fast for him. And yet he must take it without a tear, without a frown. He cannot mourn.

They have no one left, already fading. They are in the same room, trying to live, while the winter dies around them.

"With a sigh you turn away
With a deepening heart
No more words to say
You will find that the world has changed

Forever."

There is nothing before this, nothing between them—only their own histories, histories that were shattered, and whose broken edges somehow interlock.

In the pre-dawn, Eowyn cannot sleep; she walks to the window but there is no hope there. The light is grey, like her sorrow at never earning glory, or fame. At being turned down by the one she thought she loved. The dawn is unfinished; she sees the world outside, and the first spring wind is in her hair.

"And the trees are now
Turning from green to gold
And the sun is now fading
I wish I could hold you
Closer."

A story of a fading world forms the backdrop—of the ends of lifetimes, of years moving in a current beyond reach, of a thousand seasons slipping softly into timelessness—and another story unfolds in the foreground, so painfully personal in comparison. So temporary. So insignificant.

Does that matter?

From where he is—resting too but unable to sleep either—Faramir wonders about her. He gazes back, and tries to see into her, to see more—and it might be because she is beautiful, but not only because she is beautiful. He sees her sorrows, deeper than her injury. He is moved to pity as he always is—pity that will be the ground for love.

He watches her, a little curious, a little sad. Still silent. There are shadows all around him. Morning shadows.

Those past autumns and springs, those worlds turning—the same world, but different, never again the same. Seconds that mean universes and centuries that mean nothing. This wind is a herald of the world that moves regardless of them; it comes through the windows, to this place of protection that shies away—wonder, despair, belief on its wings. It remembers to them, the world changes, the lights are shifting. Every light falls to darkness, and every darkness rises back into light—a circle. There can be the sweetness of dewy flowers and butterfly dreams, and suddenly there are no more—the leaves are changing, falling like clockwork, vanishing into the temporal mud.

Another day comes. She sees him at last, he sees her. She wants her freedom, and asks it of him—whether he knows that this request carries more than it sounds, no one knows. There can be no doubt that there is disbelief in her that he can change anything, but still she hopes. Because both have been alone and fearful till today, and the sight of each other's faces is such warmth.

Time passes. Another dawn comes, and this time they begin it together. They watch a distant battle darken—out in the plain, out of reach, just too far beyond them. They are helpless here, in this house of life when everything beneath and beyond is the field of death; they are bound by the cage they both know so well. But side by side.

She fears this will last forever; it's in the greyness of her silhouette against the morning. She fears a cage of darkness, walls that hold her in. But he swears it won't be forever. This violence won't be forever. This storm won't be forever. This prison won't be forever.

If only because he can free her, by sharing this burden. And by his warmth and his honesty and his strength, she comes to taste a little of the warmth that deserted her so long ago.

Finally, she is beginning to understand. If he will be her only freedom—or if he will help her accept this prison—then isn't this meant to be? She realises, suddenly, that without releasing her from this cage, he has brought her her freedom.

Yes, it might be freedom from acceptance that she will never be free.

But there's something about this new, this blooming love that seems better than that freedom ever will be.

He knows this darkness, just as well as she does—he has been hurt just as much, just as badly. He knows this cage well, as well. But there is a burning optimism in him that she doesn't have, that she needs.

He is willing to live this prison together with her, day after day, forever. And she accepts it—his love, his promise, and they turn two paths into one.

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This little story is like the overture of the spring. Against the dark of battle, there must be a spark of light. It is the new life that must come to bless the carcasses of the aftermath, when the cloud has passed, when the world is in decay beneath the snow. It's the life that makes new flowers grow in the mud of death.

Families lost, dreams decimated—no past behind them, only future ahead. Empty. But not really empty. There is a petal of love on the snow, love that began at the window at dawn, love like the flower that was never seen. 

When I first saw the scene, Eowyn at the window, Faramir looking back at her from beside the pillar—when I heard that song, the song of Aragorn and Arwen whose story is a tragedy, an elf once eternal unlike blissful mankind who lost that eternity for love—and I felt their joining, of the words with the story, of forever against now, everything against something so small—it was something wonderful, terribly wonderful.

The work of art that is the Lord of the Rings has, more certainly than anything else, succeeded. Both in book and in movie. The story burns in me, and this story particularly. So tiny, but it reminds me of my own life. So tiny, but worthy of forever in its own strange way.

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I've found screenshots and the script. Oh lucky me. I love the fact that LOTR is so popular.

Éowyn: "The city has fallen silent. There is no warmth left in the sun. It grows so cold."

Faramir: "It's just the damp of the first spring rain. ... I do not believe this darkness will endure."

And...

*SQUEE*