deliceblog

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éowyn is your favourite lotr character when you’re ten because she’s a young woman who gets to FIGHT with a cool sword! and then éowyn is your favourite lotr character again when you’re in your twenties because she’s a young woman who is bitter and angry and deeply depressed but who learns to HEAL and find hope. and also she gets to fight with a cool sword.

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"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

-Gandalf

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

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Idk if I’ve expressed this already but I love Faramir with the entirety of my soul

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Thinking about Tolkien, and how he was an orphan, and came of age just in time to be traumatized for life by the unprecedented horrors of WWI, where he watched most of his friends die, and then returned to a home indelibly changed, and lived to watch it all happen again to his children.

And still he believed in (and taught, and vehemently argued for) eucatastrophe: a sudden and favorable resolution of events in a story; a happy ending.

His stories are full of darkness and danger, fear and sorrow sharp as swords, sacrifice, desperate heroism, loss, hurt.

Theses things are real. He felt them. We all feel them.

But you know what follows those things? Healing, hope, and the sweet dawn that follows the darkest hour. Bonds forged in fire. Fellowship. Learning. Wisdom to overcome. Love that outlasts death and destruction.

This wasn’t wishful thinking or mere escapism. He lived it. He fought for it. He kept on writing for the sake of his friends who didn’t live long enough to write their own stories. He knew death wasn’t the end.

He considered it a sacred duty to tell others. (Do you like C. S. Lewis? Yeah, thank Tolkien.)

And here his stories stand today, waving their banners, rallying the troops, more popular and beloved than ever. Tolkien belonged to what we call the lost generation. Do you realize how many writers WWI produced? Do you realize how countercultural Tolkien was, creating legends of light in the darkness of the trenches, penning the words not all those who wander are lost that we now slap on bumper stickers and emboss on journals and stitch on hoodies and tattoo on our bodies? (Even Lewis was still writing sad, bad poetry at this point.)

This is the power of faith. And Tolkien had it.

So, in summary, I guess… To all the modern nihilist storytellers who’ve never missed a meal and are getting filthy rich by selling their sad and unsatisfying “endings” as somehow truer and braver and more enlightened: You are cowards, everyone can see and sense it, and I sincerely hope you don’t take a single soul with you into that abyss. I pray you take the hand that’s offered you if and when you decide to climb out of the hole you’ve created with your muddled and meaningless worldview. There is warmth and hope and even laughter waiting for you in the light.

And to anyone struggling to keep up the fight today, remember Tolkien.

“There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet.”

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"Con lei foss'io da che si parte il sole,

e non ci vedess'altri che le stelle,

sol una notte, e mai non fosse l'alba."

- Canzoniere, Francesco Petrarca

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"To the end of his day Bilbo could never remember how he found himself outside, without a hat, a walking-stick or any money, or anything that he usually took when he went out; leaving his second breakfast half-finished and quiete unwashed-up, pushing his keys into Gandalf's hands, and running as fast as his furry feet could carry him down the lane, past the great Mill, across The Water, and then on for a mile or more."

-The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

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Ok boomer

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Finally ❤

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"Il fatto è che tu eri stanco della buona educazione, della deferenza, delle premure e dei riguardi. Ti eri ormai seccato delle donne che parlavano, guardavano e pensavano solo per ottenere la tua approvazione. Io ti attrassi e ti interessai proprio perché ero diversa da loro. Se non fossi stato una persona generosissima, mi avresti odiato per quel mio comportamento, ma nonostante gli sforzi che facevi per dissimulare i tuoi sentimenti, questi furono sempre nobili e giusti. In fondo al tuo cuore, hai sempre disprezzato profondamente le persone che ti corteggiavano con tanta assiduità. Ecco, vedi, ti ho risparmiato la noia di raccontare tutto: ed effettivamente, tutto considerato, comincio a pensare che la tua reazione sia stata perfettamente ragionevole. Certo, non conoscevi una mia sola virtù: ma nessuno pensa alle virtù quando si innamora."

-Orgoglio e Pregiudizio, Jane Austen

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Madonna con il bambino, Sandro Botticelli

(Gemaldegalerie Kulturforum, Berlino)

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"I had never spoke to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was a summons to all my foolish blood"

-Dubliners, James Joyce

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Hansi Kürsch is love, Hansi Kürsch is life.

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Blind Guardian cleared my skin, watered my crops, and cured my depression

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"Parliamo troppo. Gli amanti non parlano"

-Narciso e Boccadoro, Herman Hesse