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19. März 2016

Re-reading the Lord of the Rings, Chapter 19

The Mirror of Galadriel is a chapter about reflection, the welling up of feelings, of quiet and what it does, the melting of hearts, of people, who find themselves together on roads that they didn't previously share, but now do.

Galadriel's little test really isn't much more than a willful saddening, a chance to grief over the fact that one is far from one's luck. But sometimes that helps, when one clings to routines that won't let one come nearer, even when one has the chance to approach it in all one's difficulties, as is often the case with the stout hearted, like Gimli.

A seed is sown here, a seed that will later blossom when Gimli finds the caves in Helm's Deep. It is a very poetic thing, Durin saw the stars in the deep of the Mirrormere, and his confidence in the divinity of this sign was enough for him to create the mines of Khazad-dûm. And now Galadriel is awakening the same kind of belief in Gimli: that there is still undiscovered beauty out there.

Glimpses like these are true magic, the most what man usually perceives of the depth of the world around and the time before him.

It is weird that Frodo didn't ask Galadriel who the wizard in white was, in particular since he dreamed of Gandalf already in Tom Bombadil's house, what a cruel thing for Sauron to do to disrupt Frodo's thoughts so thoroughly - and Galadriel's, it would appear. But there you go, the plot has to move on. It's a nice after-thought though: With a little more observation and a little less doing many things would become clearer much earlier. One of the better reasons for friendship as well.

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