Re-reading the Lord of the Rings, Chapter 55
Not even Sauron can make a great state from a little city - of Orcs. What a mess it is, three Hobbits stumbling hither and thither and their pursuers kill each other off.
And on top of it, literally, the air-force is mounted by beings, who are virtually blind.
Yet it's not comical, but rather the workings of a greater machine over which one has no control, but which lets one pass through, as in a dream, for reasons unfathomable.
The dreamlike quality of all danger is characteristic for the Lord of the Rings. There's another view on danger, in retrospect, when one realises that something was a close call, leaving a shiver. Tolkien doesn't use that. Instead he relies on the feeling of paralysis that is characteristic for a nightmare. When you're awake, even when you're shocked, you force yourself into action, even though you might panick. But in a dream, you just freeze. And over all of Mordor there's this frozenness.
In everyday life the most important lessons are prudence and not to panick, in Middle-earth the foremost lesson is... not to dream?
It's an indirect lesson, if it is one. A lesson by rejection of the course one is put through. At some point one's life, the will to determine one's experiences, awakens. But how so? Do we not determine ourselves what we dream, at least most of the time? What then do we miss? Another kind of determination, naturally, in a dream we can direct, but not act, in waking it's the other way 'round, and both the direction beyond our control and the influence of our choices constitute what's real for us.
Yet in the Land of Shadow it appears that Sam and Frodo are writing the script, considering their passage through it.
What will man do, if he could control everything, write his own story? Despair of that power, for the world would not seem real? So he might give up The Ring?
Lacking imagination the masses can only be taught that by a sick illusion and they'd wake from it no better than Frodo from his dream in Mount Doom.
And those who count wouldn't even start that sort of dreaming, but seek The Ring ever more.
No, true wakening is the command of the hour, and in it lies not fear of unseen forces, but trust in them, for he wants to control beyond reason is driven by fear of the void and what it might contain, a dreamer, in a way, himself, for he shuts out that he's a part in a whole.
And on top of it, literally, the air-force is mounted by beings, who are virtually blind.
Yet it's not comical, but rather the workings of a greater machine over which one has no control, but which lets one pass through, as in a dream, for reasons unfathomable.
The dreamlike quality of all danger is characteristic for the Lord of the Rings. There's another view on danger, in retrospect, when one realises that something was a close call, leaving a shiver. Tolkien doesn't use that. Instead he relies on the feeling of paralysis that is characteristic for a nightmare. When you're awake, even when you're shocked, you force yourself into action, even though you might panick. But in a dream, you just freeze. And over all of Mordor there's this frozenness.
In everyday life the most important lessons are prudence and not to panick, in Middle-earth the foremost lesson is... not to dream?
It's an indirect lesson, if it is one. A lesson by rejection of the course one is put through. At some point one's life, the will to determine one's experiences, awakens. But how so? Do we not determine ourselves what we dream, at least most of the time? What then do we miss? Another kind of determination, naturally, in a dream we can direct, but not act, in waking it's the other way 'round, and both the direction beyond our control and the influence of our choices constitute what's real for us.
Yet in the Land of Shadow it appears that Sam and Frodo are writing the script, considering their passage through it.
What will man do, if he could control everything, write his own story? Despair of that power, for the world would not seem real? So he might give up The Ring?
Lacking imagination the masses can only be taught that by a sick illusion and they'd wake from it no better than Frodo from his dream in Mount Doom.
And those who count wouldn't even start that sort of dreaming, but seek The Ring ever more.
No, true wakening is the command of the hour, and in it lies not fear of unseen forces, but trust in them, for he wants to control beyond reason is driven by fear of the void and what it might contain, a dreamer, in a way, himself, for he shuts out that he's a part in a whole.
Eingetragen Am/um
11:48
