Light and high beauty

You sometimes come across passages in books, or perhaps some words spoken in a film, which make a deep and abiding impression on you.

Here is one of those book-passages that I've cherished for decades. It's from the The Return of the King, the third book in J R R Tolkien's 1954 trilogy The Lord of the Rings. I don't suppose all that many people bother to read the book version of this amazing story nowadays. It's so much easier - and to be honest, more thrilling - to watch the three films, which I think brilliantly bring to life Tolkien's text, omitting some things of course (no Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, for instance), and making much more of other things (such as the role of women in the story, notably brave Éowyn, the niece of the Rohirrim King, who gets to slay the King of the Ringwraiths), but generally telling Tolkien's tale truly and vividly. Indeed, whatever vague mental picture I might once have had for each character, that has been replaced by the film portrayal: the casting (or CGI) was that good.

But a film cannot do what a book can. A book is able to relate in full the unspoken thoughts and feelings of a character. The film can only hint at this, through facial expressions. Indeed, in every way, the book version of The Lord of the Rings explains so much more of the background, and the reason why things came to pass that should not have. That slows the pace down, of course; so you can't say that Tolkien's prose whizzes along at breakneck speed, as the action in the film can. But then there is room for some very profound pauses in the action.

Take this passage. Frodo and Sam are inside Mordor, free after temporary capture but on the run, full of forboding, their mission (to take the Ring to Mount Doom in the heart of Mordor, and destroy it in the volcanic flames) seemingly beyond their failing powers of endurance, although they must stick at it. They rest up in the dark.

Frodo sighed and was asleep almost before the words were spoken. Sam struggled with his own weariness, and he took Frodo's hand; and there he sat silent till deep night fell. Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sign of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping above the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been a defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep. 

I have put in bold the words that strike a chord with me. I think they are inspirational. Certainly worth remembering in an apparently hopeless situation. The notion that bad things have their limits, and that there are some beautiful things that cannot be defiled or ruined no matter what, is a sustaining idea.

So I have this passage on my phone, to read whenever I need to.