Sorrowful Love, Hopeful Love (Tolkien Reading Day 2022)

“For long years he (Amroth) had loved her, and taken no wife, since she would not wed with him. She loved him indeed, for he was beautiful even for one of the Eldar, and valiant and wise; but she was of the Silvan elves, and regretted the incoming of the Elves from the West, who (as she said) brought wars and destroyed the peace of old. She would speak only the Silvan tongue, even after it had fallen into disuse among the folk of Lorien; and she dwelt alone beside the falls of the river Nimrodel to which she gave her name.”
Unfinished Tales Part 2, Ch. 4: The History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lorien

Great love stories are tinged with sorrow. That’s one thing to notice when you read about the stories of lovers in Middle-earth legendarium. Even the legendary love tales, like between Beren and Lúthien, have this bittersweet quality that seeps into your heart, long after the story is supposed to end at the blissful “happily ever after”. Dig deeper into Tolkien’s “love stories”, and you will see characters languishing because of the lack of love, displaying the twisted form of “love”, or losing their loved ones. Many couples had their love unrequited, nipped at the bud, turned sour, or doomed.

The story of Amroth and Nimrodel that I quoted above, mentioned in The Lord of the Rings and described in detail in Unfinished Tales, is an example of such love that I read for the first time, many years ago, when I read the translated book of The Lord of the Rings. Even without knowing the full detail of their story, it was easy to note the tender melancholy behind Legolas’ voice as he sang the song of Nimrodel to the Fellowship; a stark contrast to the river’s cool, refreshing water, said to be able to heal the weary.

The First and Second Age were rife with such sorrowful and tragic stories between couples. Indis harbored unrequited love toward Finwë, who married Miriel, but when Finwë lost Miriel after childbirth, the grieving widower noticed and finally married Indis, causing resentment from Miriel’s son Fëanor, creating a fall-out that made up the huge chunk of the story in The Silmarillion. Fëanor seemed to have a good start with Nerdanel, but they became estranged when Nerdanel refused to follow Fëanor in his rebellious path, causing Fëanor to call her “an untrue wife” (she later lost all her children and husband in the paths of war, murder, and kinslaying). Eöl used enchantment to lure Aredhel into his dwelling in the woods, where he took her as a wife (earlier writing more blatantly described that he used “wicked deeds”), and he ended her life unwittingly when he threw a javelin toward Maeglin, his own child, who Aredhel protected. Afterward, Maeglin’s unrequited love to his cousin Idril led to betrayal and destruction of Gondolin.

The Mortals are not exempted in these doomed, unrequited, and sorrowful love stories. The marriage of Aldarion and Erendis drifted apart because Aldarion’s love to the Sea was bigger, and Erendis turned bitter toward him, to the point of calling Uinen (a Maia known as the “Lady of the Seas”, revered by sailors) as her foe because Aldarion’s Guild of Venturers was called Uinendili. Their rift even caused a bigger generational impact as Ancalimë, their daughter, ended up in a loveless political marriage to keep her hold in the throne as the first Ruling Queen of Númenor. Her own view of marriage was soured by her parents, to the point that she did not allow her serving-women to marry. She grew apart from her husband Hallacar, who spited her by holding wedding parties for his wife’s serving-women and made her attend. She also rejected her father’s policies in Middle-earth, to the point of refusing to send help to Gil-galad in Lindon. The tales of loveless or soured marriages are also rife among the tales of kings and queens, although we probably could count the realities of political marriages as one of the main causes.

The Children of Húrin is basically the home of unrequited, doomed, and tragic love. From Húrin’s separation from his wife thanks to the curse of Morgoth, to Finduilas losing love toward her betrothed Gwindor because of her unrequited love toward Túrin, to Brandir’s unrequited love toward Túrin’s sister Niniel, all resulted in the tragic deaths of Finduilas and Brandir. Finally, as the cherry on top, Morgoth’s curse made Túrin and Niniel fell in love and entered an incestuous marriage, before the realization about each other’s identities made both of them died tragically.

Tolkien even did not spare the side characters. Gorlim, one of the followers of Barahir, betrayed his master by telling Sauron and his hunters their locations, with Sauron promising that he would be reunited with his captured wife Eilinel in exchange. It turned out to be a cruel lie: they had killed Eilinel long before they captured Gorlim, and “reuniting with her” means Sauron put Gorlim to death once he lasted his usefulness. The betrayal, done out of love, resulted in the slaughter of Barahir and his remaining followers except for his son, Beren.

In On Fairy-Stories, an essay based on his lecture at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews on 8 March 1939, Tolkien coined the term eucatastrophe, a sudden joyous turn in a story that prevents the universal defeat, reflecting the optimistic outlook of the story (therefore separating it from deus ex machina). However, these sorrowful and tragic love tales did not bring any eucatastrophe for the characters mentioned, only grim realization. Any positive outlook they had about love in their mind resulted in separation, tragedy, rift, and betrayal. Some of these sorrowful love stories even brought bigger impact; from the the loss of protective shroud around Doriath when Melian mourned the sudden death of Thingol, to the destruction of Gondolin.

The “Seed” of Sorrowful Love

Tolkien seemed to refuse the notion of romantic chivalry in his tales, a kind of subversion that is also apparent in many ways, from subverting the classic image of a princess in fairy-tale quest in Lúthien’s tale, to making the fate of the entire world hang in two little Hobbits instead of more imposing knightly figures. His own love story with his wife Edith, while said to inspire the tale of star-crossed lovers Beren and Lúthien, was far from flowery: they had to face dissenting voices from their guardians, Edith returned the engagement ring to her previous betrothed (who was understandably upset), and they married when Tolkien was still a young man whose only prospect seemed to, according to his 1941 correspondence with his son Michael, “being killed in the Great War”. All real-life concerns and sources of worries that probably affected the way Tolkien viewed love.

This tendency to describe grim and tragic love is not surprising when we look at the seed of Middle-earth legendarium. The Story of Kullervo, Tolkien’s early attempt to create a legend that fits his created languages, was a prose taken from Elias Lönnrot’s epic poem Kalevala. This story, which later became the seed of Túrin Turambar’s story in The Silmarillion, was composed around 1912 to 1914, the “unsettled” period for Tolkien as he was trying to find his feet in inventing his own mythology and the world where his languages are used. The Hapless Kullervo was a tragic character, and his story was relentlessly dark, involving murder, abuse, blood feud, death, and a doomed love story that revealed to be an incestuous relationship. In the Introduction chapter of Kullervo, Verlyn Flieger described the story’s conformity with the Aristotelian specifics for tragedy: the catastrophe (change of fortune), peripeteia (the reversal in which a character inadvertently produces an effect opposite to what is intended), and anagnoresis (recognition, in which a character moves from ignorance to self-knowledge), something that is apparent in the story of Túrin Turambar.

Tolkien’s further inspiration for Túrin Turambar even involved more tragic characters who had the history of sorrowful and doomed love. In the Scandinavian version of the tale of dragon-killing hero Sigurd, he was loved by a valkyrie (some say shield-maiden) named Brynhild. However, when she found out that he tricked her into marrying other person while he himself married a princess called Gudrun, Brynhild arranged for him to be killed, something that led to her following him in regret. There was also the trace of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, where the main character was exiled over his father’s fear of prophecy that the son would someday kill him. A Delphic oracle even told Oedipus that he was destined to kill his father and mated with his own mother, but his effort to avoid this prophecy resulted in it becoming a reality.

Tolkien definitely did not subject ALL couples under sorrowful and doomed love stories. However, we can safely say that the seed of his Middle-earth legendarium contained elements of tragedy, and it is something that color the relationships in many characters. Considering the widespread sense of chaos and anxieties when the world entering modern era, and Europe was plagued with war, it was perhaps not a surprise that Tolkien translated these tumultuous moods into his early seeds for Middle-earth legendarium, noting the realities many couples faced when they were confronted with such situations in their lifetime, both in his legendarium and his own world.

This situation is described in Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, a chapter that Tolkien intended to be an appendix in The Silmarillion, containing basically a philosophical discussion about the metaphysical differences between Elves and Men, represented by the dialogue between Finrod, an Elven king, and Andreth, known as a wise woman among her mortal kin. The discussion happened some time during the 400-year Siege of Angband, and ended with a revelation that Andreth once fell in love with Finrod’s brother, Aegnor, when she was a young maiden. However, the gap of differences between them were too wide; she would age fast and died while Aegnor stayed young in feature and lived beyond her years, and their union understandably would end with pity. A fitting exploration, perhaps, on the nature of unrequited love in Tolkien’s created world, during the time of war and anxieties.

Hope in Love

Just like how the realities of life turned many love stories into something sad, bitter, horrifying, and tragic, Tolkien put the tales of great love as central of his legendarium. The Fall of Gondolin and Children of Túrin might have “sorrowful/doomed love” element, but The Tale of Beren and Lúthien was the one that Tolkien called in his 165 letter to Houghton Mifflin publisher as “the kernel of mythology.” They combined the elements of sorrowful love, from Beren’s father’s death due to the betrayal of Gorlim (who did it to save his wife) to Daeron’s unrequited love for Lúthien that ended with him reporting it to her father, Thingol, kickstarting the whole dangerous quest by Beren to acquire a Silmaril jewel from Morgoth in return of being with Lúthien. Knowing that her lover was in danger, Lúthien decided to start her own journey, encountering friends and foes and using wit and bravery to reach Beren safely.

The couple did not get their “happily ever after” that easily. Beren lost a hand and later died after killing giant wolf Carcharoth, and Lúthien moved Mandos, the Lord of Doom, with song of woe and suffering of both Elves and Men, the greatest ever sung; so touching that Mandos was moved to pity for the only time, making him grant her mortality so she and Beren could finally bridge the metaphysical gap that had separated Aegnor and Andreth. Knowing that the elements of the story were inspired by Tolkien’s real love story with Edith, from seeing her dancing in the forest among beautiful flowers to facing dissenting voices from many directions and being faced with the possibility of death at World War One, making this love story a joyful one, albeit with a tinge of melancholy. (Particularly affecting for Tolkien was Edith’s conversion to the Catholic Church from the Church of England for his sake upon their marriage; a difficult decision for her that caused her much hardship).

Tolkien, of course, did not stop at the “happy end.” After their union, more sorrows and tragedies followed. Thingol was murdered by the Dwarves, his treasures plundered, Melian left in sorrow, and Doriath was sacked and destroyed once her protective power left with her. Their descendant, Dior, and his wife, Nimloth was killed by the Sons of Fëanor, who also left their twin children in the forest to starve to death. However, their daughter Elwing managed to escape with the jewel. She later fell in love and married to Eärendil the Mariner, and their union would be crucial in determining the course of history in Middle-earth legendarium.

As the first “sad” love story that I read many years ago in the Indonesian version of LotR, the tale of Nimrodel and Amroth deserved a mention as a bridge between the “sorrowful” and the “hopeful”, in a way. The tales of many couples in The Silmarillion were dark, but The Lord of the Rings, something “less dark” that Tolkien wrote as a response to his publisher who wanted the sequel of The Hobbit, have both elegiac and hopeful tones. Nimrodel was a Silvan Elf maiden who longed for peaceful life, and lamenting the coming of the Sindar and Noldor Elves to Middle-earth, since she thought they only brought war and destruction. When Amroth, the king of Sindar, fell in love with her, she rejected at first, but later accepted as long as Amroth found her a peaceful place to live. The old song Legolas sung in the book described how Amroth’s ship was swept away by a storm while he was waiting for Nimrodel at the port. He was drowned by the Bay of Belfalas after leaping from the ship and tried to swim to the shore. No one knew where Nimrodel ended, but her name ended up becoming the name of a small river where the Fellowship rested. Despite the seemingly tragic end, one could see this tale with a folkloric sense; since the stream of Nimrodel River ended at the Bay of Belfalas, it could be said that the couple had finally “reunited in spirit”, as the water of Nimrodel met the Bay of Belfalas where Amroth drowned.

The tale of Aragorn and Arwen was included in detail in the Appendix, and of course we got the story of Faramir and Eowyn. However, after all the tragic love tales marred by war, destruction, betrayal, and even the world-shifting divine intervention, Tolkien had apparently decided to end The Lord of the Rings with the scene of Sam, having a gentle conversation with Rosie while reminiscing about his past adventure; an epilogue that was apparently criticized and is not included in LotR. In return, we got a scene where Sam, walking to his home where Rosie waiting, declaring, “Well, I am home.”

But in the end, like how there is no true “happily ever after” for Tolkien’s couples because how life goes on and many courses of life change, it seems like Tolkien’s unpublished epilogue still carried the familiar sentiment about love stories tinged with melancholy, for the domestic scene between Sam and Rosie ended with Sam’s longing for the Sea, where Frodo departed:

“They went in, and Sam shut the door. But even as he did so, he heard suddenly, deep and unstilled, the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.”

Still, despite his non-rosy view of love between his many characters, it was the great tale of Beren and Lúthien that shaped the later spirit of his legendarium. It was their story that transcended the Primary World and Secondary World, seeping into Tolkien’s life and the other way around. His and his wife’s gravestone, engraved with the names “Beren” and “Lúthien”, forever demonstrates how the sorrowful love could turn hopeful, etched in their final resting place together.