A Sense of History: Straight Road
The next in a series of articles about ships passing to and from the West, Simon uses "The Fall of Númenor" to attempt to arrive at Tolkien's reading of the exordium to "Beowulf."
Prompt: Nan Elmoth - Seduction: “It is not enough to conquer; one must also know how to seduce” - Voltaire
Response: "War and Eros are the two sources of illusion and falsehood among men. Their mixture represents the very greatest impurity" - Simone Weil.
Nan Elmoth: Melkor and the Mountain
Then Eru withdrew and waited, withheld: the Flame Imperishable burned not in the Void, but within One. Bad lover, who must be won – desire distances, is war disguised.
Forth went Melkor to do better by lonely majesty.
“Love me,” he told the mountain, and spirit of fire, neither waited nor withheld. With his own flame he fired it to love him as himself.
It vomited, wept ash-tears and embers, trembled with his heat.
'Tis the image of his beauty. He will enflame Eä with his love, yet vainly: echoes are not answers, but he'll not hear the wailings...