tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post8315721225570909917..comments2024-03-11T16:29:13.619-05:00Comments on Lingwë - Musings of a Fish: Dictionaries and “darkling doors”Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-61154979456164289492009-08-24T12:47:06.549-05:002009-08-24T12:47:06.549-05:00Marc, great comment! Yes, you’re right: “door” and...Marc, great comment! Yes, you’re right: “door” and “darkling” again in proximity! It would seem the image held a prominent place in Tolkien’s imagination.<br /><br />As for the “hidden door”, yes, it probably was the West Gate of Moria. This would naturally have been fresh in Frodo’s mind. Or could it have been Dol Guldur? As Gandalf says, “Some here will remember that many years ago I myself dared to pass the <b>doors</b> of the Necromancer in Dol Guldur, and <b>secretly</b> explored his ways [...]” (emphasis added). Then, “hidden door / and darkling woods” could represent Dol Guldur and Mirkwood, in close propinquity as they are.Jason Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-34165191109127914752009-08-24T11:44:58.155-05:002009-08-24T11:44:58.155-05:00Nice discussion of darkling door! For what it'...Nice discussion of <b>darkling door</b>! For what it's worth, I've always found Tolkien's use of <b>darkling woods</b> in Frodo's lament for Gandalf particularly evocative. Here's the second stanza (<i>LotR</i>, Bk2, Ch7, ‘The Mirror of Galadriel’):<br /><br /> <i>From Wilderland to Western shore,<br /> from northern waste to southern hill,<br /> through dragon-lair and <b>hidden door</b><br /> and <b>darkling woods</b> he walked at will.</i><br /><br />Of course, this is just one of some twelve occurrences of <b>darkling</b> you mentioned were in <i>LotR</i>, but isn't it interesting that <b>door</b> and <b>darkling</b> are associated again? Surely the ‘hidden door’ in question was the West Gate of Moria, which could hardly have been more ‘darkling,’ but perhaps Tolkien (or Frodo!) felt the Mirkwood reference more deserving of the adjective in this setting.Marc Zenderhttp://isites.harvard.edu/k56621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-62589976103523776702009-03-04T10:01:00.000-06:002009-03-04T10:01:00.000-06:00Yes, that passage certainly has the right flavor. ...Yes, that passage certainly has the right flavor. I don’t know of any reason to suppose Tolkien ever read it, though he could have done. Tolkien did attend a lecture given by the son, Robert Graves, which he called “the most ludicrously bad lecture I have ever heard.” Tolkien described Graves himself as “[a] remarkable creature, entertaining, likeable, odd, bonnet full of wild bees, half-German, half-Irish, very tall, must have looked like Siegfried/Sigurd in his youth, <I>but</I> an Ass” (<I>Letters</I> #267, p. 353). This lecture was the same occasion where Tolkien was introduced to Ava Gardner and had no idea whom she was. :)Jason Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-6274595781114090732009-03-04T09:43:00.000-06:002009-03-04T09:43:00.000-06:00Here's one I (or rather, the all-knowing Google) f...Here's one I (or rather, the all-knowing Google) found: "To earth he starts a weapon wildly snatches / Hies through the hall, the <B>darkling door</B> unlatches". It is apparently from <A HREF="http://www.archive.org/stream/poemsirish00gravrich/poemsirish00gravrich_djvu.txt" REL="nofollow">"The Irish Poems of Alfred Perceval Graves"</A> (Robert Graves' father). What is curious about the reference is that it is from a poem about Orpheus and Eurydice, in whose legend critics have long found parallels with Tolkien's story of Beren and Luthien.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com