Episode Transcript:

You’re listening to Tea with Tolkien, a podcast for the Hobbit at Heart.

Pull up a cozy chair and join us as we chat about the works and faith of J.R.R. Tolkien, and strive to carry a little piece of Middle-Earth into our own daily lives.

We are on week twelve of our Silmarillion read-along and this week is quite a special one as we are going to cover chapter nineteen, Of Beren and Lúthien.

In letter 165, he calls this story “the kernel of the mythology”.

In a sense, everything that we’ve read so far has been building up to this story, setting the stage, preparing the reader to understand the gravity and incredible beauty of this story.

If we’ll look back to the Waldman letter, we’ll remember that Tolkien wrote:

“The chief of the stories of the Silmarillion, and the one most fully treated is the Story of Beren and Lúthien the Elfmaiden. Here we meet, among other things, the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that the great policies of world history, ‘the wheels of the world’, are often turned not by Lord and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak — owing to the secret life of creation, and the part unknowable to all wisdom but One, that resides in the intrusion of the Children of God into the Drama. It is Beren the outlawed mortal who succeeds (with the help of Lúthien, a mere maiden even if an elf of royalty) where all the armies and warriors have failed… Thus he wins the hand of Lúthien and the first marriage of mortal and immortal is achieved.
As such the story is (I think a beautiful and powerful) heroic-fairy-romance, receivable in itself with only a very general vague knowledge of the background. But it is also a fundamental link in the cycle, deprived of its full significance out of its place therein. For the capture of a Silmaril, a supreme victory, leads to disaster. The oath of the sons of Feanor becomes operative, and lust for the Silmaril brings all the kingdoms of Elves to ruin.” - Letter 131 to Milton Waldman

Now the story of Beren and Lúthien has an incredible significance within the story of the Silmarillion, of course, but also within Tolkien’s personal life.

Tolkien and Edith are buried together under the epitaphs, Beren and Lúthien.

In letter 332, written in 1972 the year after Edith had passed away, Tolkien told his son Michael about the love he had for Edith and his grief at her passing:

“I met the Lúthien Tinuviel of my own personal ‘romance’ with her long dark hair, fair face and starry eyes, and beautiful voice. And in 1934 she was still with me, and her beautiful children. But now she has gone before Beren, leaving him indeed one-handed, but he has no power to move the inexorable Mandos, and there is no Dor Gyrth i chuinar, the Land of the Dead that Live, in this Fallen Kingdom of Arda, where the servants of Morgoth are worshipped…” - Letter 332

So it’s easy to see the significance of such a chapter! Now let’s begin!

You can read this week’s chapter summary by clicking on the post below: