Now we come to the Last Debate, and the adoption of Gandalf’s strategy, the most foolhardy of gambles, the choice that is made because however unlikely, it is the only one that seems to promise some hope of avoiding utter failure and destruction. And, as is my wont, I want to talk about something else. For here we hear Legolas, for the first time, seeing the Sea. And the sea-longing that is in so many of us is awakened.
I once saw a statistic that said that all of England is within sixty miles of tidal water.
“The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits …”
So many times before this the Sea is foreshadowed, in Frodo’s dream, in Faramir’s dream, in Galadriel’s prophecy to Legolas. But what is the Sea?
Some say we were born inside the Sea, inside the watery womb that recapitulates our development, our collective unconscious, our primordial myth.
“In the beauty of the lilies
He was born beside the sea …”
I grew up beside the sea, in a house next to a small cove off Long Island Sound. I spent vacations in a house in Martha’s Vineyard, next to the water. With the wailing of the gulls. With the salt-encrusted languor after a lazy swim. With the soft, slow roar of the waves against the beach to lull me to sleep through the screens with a soft breeze blowing at night. With the blustery gray days of autumn and the crash of the waves against the seawrack. With my autistic son chasing the gulls along the beach, flapping his hands to imitate the way they flapped their wings, and calling to them. With the pounding roar of the hurricane sweeping across the marsh grass and flattening it. With the shiny sparkle of the small waves on a summer mid-morning as the small boats danced on their leashes.
“Nous étions deux amis et Fanette m'aimait
La plage est déserte et pleure sous juillet
Et le soir quelquefois
Quand les vagues s'arrêtent
J'entends comme une voix
C’est la Fanette.”
And I think that the sea-longing is not about the Sea; it is about the shore. It is about the other shore, the one at the end of all voyages, the one where our friends rest, all the passion of the sea-voyage of dying spent.
“And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.”
And so Legolas, like me, hears the wailing of the gulls:
“In the wind from the sea
The white lilies sway.”
And:
“Grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling?
The voices of my people that have gone before me, …
Sweet are the voices in the Lost Isle calling.”
And so he, and Frodo, and I, or so I dream, will set sail towards death, and one night the curtain of the world will be drawn back, and we will behold white shores and a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Because the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Earth have sunk deep into our hearts.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
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