27 January 2010

LOTR, yet again

Rico says making contact with Christopher Montalbano again reminded him that, while he's currently rereading Lord of the Rings (as he did every few years even before losing short-term memory; no one can remember thousands of pages), it was Mister Montalbano who introduced him to JRR Tolkien's classic back in the Sixties.
One paragraph that did stick, however:
...as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns from the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.
Rico says it may not be the best line from the book, but it'll do...

On a side note, it seems that a Swiss company has acquired signed copies of both The Hobbit (for 'over $78,000') and a first edition set of the Trilogy, and they will go on exhibition in 2011. The fact that the movie of The Hobbit is coming out in December of 2011 is purely a coincidence, of course...
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2 comments:

  1. Unknown27.1.10

    ACHTUNG, again...

    I'll never forget the goosebumps I got the first time I read that passage. I still do every time. It is one of the things I cannot read out loud to anyone without breaking down. Kind of like when I try to recite the monster's speech to the sea captain at the end of Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein". Well, I'm a bit of a monster myself.

    But to get the full effect, the full quote is needed:

    "And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.

    "And as if in answer there came another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last."

    I break down just typing this in. I am like Pippin, who "stood listening to the horns, and it seemed to him that they would break his heart with joy. And never in after years could he hear a horn blown in the distance without tears starting in his eyes."

    So I am a romantic. So many people sneer at this as jejune. I am sorry for them. They are mentally and morally crippled. To toss out feeling and imagination as something one grows out of is to cut oneself off from half of life. And for what? To be considered by other fools as a grown-up?

    Stupid. And soulless.

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  2. Unknown27.1.10

    Oh, yeah - and one more thing: If JRRT had "outgrown" his romanticism we would have no Lord of the Rings in the first place.

    Do the words "Duh" meaning anything here?

    ReplyDelete

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