Lúthien Tinúviel - Daughter of
elvish King
Thingol of
Doriath, and
Melian of the
Maia. Lúthien is elvish for
enchantress, while Tinúviel means
nightingale.
Luthien is more than the fair
elfish maiden in chapter 19 of the
Silmarillion. She is the pit of
Tolkien's ideas of
love and
pain, a personification of human feelings.
Beren and Luthien's story is eloquent, beautiful, and tragic; it is one
drowned in
misery and among the richest ever -
Romeo and Juliet times ten. The cursed Beren,
wandering,
tortured, and seeking rest, had discovered her
dancing in the forest, and singing with
nature.
''Then all memory of his pain departed from him, and he fell into an enchantment; for Lúthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar. Blue was her raiment as the unclouded heaven, but her eyes were grey as the starlit evening; her mantle was sewn with golden flowers, but her hair was dark as the shadows of twilight.''
Luthien flees at his sight, leaving him
forsaken. He
collapses. It is not until the next spring that they
reunite, and begin their years of
romance and
torment.
Sigh.
It would hardly suffice, and would be completely
wrong, to attempt a summarization of
Tolkien's work. The story of
Luthien encompasses the essence of
love in one chapter. It is after you experience this
book that you realize that each of his
characters has an aura that
haunts you for the rest of your life.
''Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,
for ever blest, since here did lie
and here with lissom limbs did run
beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,
Lúthien Tinúviel
more fair than mortal tongue can tell.
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backwards hurled
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this---
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea---
that Lúthien for a time should be.''