Seamstress
Mar. 22nd, 2014 07:50 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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b2memTitle: Seamstress
Author Name: Zopyrus
Prompt: "He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams." (Fellowship of the Ring, "The Shadow of the Past")
Summary: They won’t meet until the end of the world, but Maglor and Míriel manage to swap stories anyway.
Rating: General
Author's Notes: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
suzll for the beta!
~~~
Maglor was very young when his father first put an arched Telerin harp into his hands. He loved it before he played a note, for it was the most perfect object he had ever seen.
The body of the harp curved like boat, with a sharp, pointed prow; and when Maglor’s father tightened the thirteen silken strings, he seemed to be raising a sail.
After such a beautiful beginning, Maglor’s first lesson was a disappointment. It was hard for him to remember the names of the notes, let alone a whole song; and he hurt his fingers when he tried to pluck the strings with the force his father demanded.
“You will get used to it,” said Fëanor. His voice was as tense as wound silk. “There is no point in my teaching you, if you are not going to do it right.”
Maglor did his best to please his father. After a few weeks of careful practicing, his fingertips stopped aching, and the names of the notes began to come as easily as the alphabet.
Soon he was able to play songs all the way through, with no mistakes.
Fëanor was pleased that he had been the first to recognize his son’s gift, which would have come to nothing if he had not insisted on perfection and hard work from the very beginning. Maglor’s music gave him joy for another reason, too.
“Your talent comes from your grandmother,” he said; and from his tone, Maglor knew his father didn’t mean Istarnië, mother of Nerdanel.
“She had nimble fingers, just like you, and a quick tongue. Did I ever tell you the story of how she invented the metal needle?”
Maglor shook his head, and cradled the harp in his lap while his father’s voice wove its spell: not in sung poetry, but in prose so beautiful that images rose, unbidden, before Maglor’s eyes.
After that, Maglor thought often about his grandmother Míriel. He daydreamed about her when he was practicing his scales. Míriel had worked with silk, too, although it had been to a different purpose. One afternoon, before he quite knew what he was doing, his fingers began to pick out a melody he had never heard before. He made a song about a silver-haired woman, with a slash of silver shining between her fingers.
When he sang the song to their family, Fëanor wept, and called him a true son.
~~~
Míriel’s name, once rare and revered, became common in their house. When Maglor was a little older, Fëanor brought out one of the tapestries his mother had embroidered. She had been a loremaster, as well as an embroideress; and she had combined both her arts into record keeping long before her friend Rúmil created the art of writing with alphabets.
“Our people have long memories,” Fëanor told his son. “We flatter ourselves that those memories are perfect: that nothing is misremembered, or forgotten. But my mother knew better.”
The cloth unrolled in Fëanor’s hands like a scroll.
“What do you see here?”
Míriel had embroidered the same image, over and over. There were stars, and tall dark trees, and a glimmering lake—and little people on the grass.
“It’s Cuiviénen,” Maglor said, recognizing it instantly.
“Tell me more,” Fëanor pressed.
Maglor studied the images carefully before he spoke again. If this was a test, as his conversations with his father often were, he was determined to pass.
He pointed to the first panel.
“This one is the Awakening. I see Imin, Tata, and Enel, standing in the foreground—and Iminyë, Tatië, and Enelyë, sleeping beside them.”
“Yes,” said his father. “And how many sleepers do you see in the background?”
Míriel had stitched too many figures to count—all of them in little pairs, wives lying beside their husbands—but Maglor knew the story well enough to do some quick math in his head.
“One hundred thirty-eight,” he said, glancing sidelong at his father.
Fëanor smirked approvingly.
“What about the second panel?”
It looked like a copy of the first—almost.
“It’s the same scene,” said Maglor. “Except that Imin and Enel have gone back to sleep, and Tatië is standing with her husband. And some of the people in the background are waking up, too.”
“Almost right,” said Fëanor. “But it’s not a continuation—it’s a different version. Look again.”
In the third panel, all six foreground figures slept; behind them, a dark-haired woman woke, alone. She had no husband; and as Maglor looked closer he saw that although the sleeping figures were still clustered in groups, almost none of them were part of a pair.
In the fourth panel, there were only twelve elves; in the fifth, there seemed to be thousands. In the sixth, some slept in a desert, not a forest.
“Middle-earth was a dangerous place,” said Fëanor. “Most of the Unbegotten elves perished, long before our people heard the horns of Oromë. And not all of those who remained consented to the Great Journey, or survived it.”
Maglor nodded. It was familiar history, preserved in epic poetry, nursery rhymes, and everything in between.
“Míriel Þerindë was not satisfied with the tales she was told as a child. Before she settled in Tirion with my father, she travelled in search of people who could tell her more about our history. At first she believed that, through her research, she might arrive at the truth.
“But even when she spoke directly with the Unbegotten, and not merely with people who claimed to have known them, my mother learned very different stories. People had forgotten—or, in some cases, perhaps they even lied. But she could not discover which stories were false, and which true.”
“Couldn’t she ask the Valar?” asked Maglor.
His father laughed, a little unkindly.
“They were not there, any more than you were.”
“But what about the Song?”
“You know many songs, Kanafinwë. You sing them as they were meant to be sung, with the most beautiful voice I have ever heard: but does that mean you understand the stories better than those who experienced them?”
Some of Maglor’s musician friends believed just that: but Maglor shook his head, chastened by the admonishment behind his father’s praise.
“The Valar cannot tell us our history,” said his father, firmly. “It is not theirs to tell, no matter how much they think they know.”
Fëanor unrolled the tapestry to the very end. The final edge was snarled with knots and dangling threads; there was even an ancient needle stuck haphazardly into the cloth of the last, incomplete scene.
“People claim my mother rarely finished her work,” said Fëanor. “They think it a failing: but much of what she made could never have been finished, even if she had lived. She was too ambitious to tame her ideas, or to claim she had found an answer when there was none.”
“She could not talk to everyone who was there,” said Maglor. “Is that why she didn’t finish it?”
“Yes,” said Fëanor. “But she began it so that people would better understand the truth. She didn’t want the stories she found to be forgotten, or changed again. She knew that if she didn’t set them down, they would be lost.”
“Why isn’t it on display?” asked Maglor. “If she wanted people to know—”
“Most people don’t care,” said his father, harshly. “They prefer finished art. They prefer the symmetry of the counting fable, where twelve times twelve elves awake next to their eternal soulmates—whether or not they really believe it.”
“I care,” said Maglor. “Art shouldn’t be simplified.”
“Neither should the truth,” said his father. “I am glad you understand that, despite your youth.”
~~~
Maglor’s songs became longer and more complicated. At last, his father refused to teach him any longer.
“We will still read lore together,” said Fëanor. “But you must study performance and music theory with Rúmil the Sage. He understands music as I do not; and you should ask him to teach you sarati, too. If you are going to be a poet, you ought to be able to read our earliest histories for yourself: and they have not all been copied over.”
Fëanor was right, as usual. With Rúmil for his critic, Maglor’s composition skills improved in leaps and bounds; and the singing exercises Rúmil assigned him helped his diction, too. Reluctantly, Maglor set aside his small arched harp to learn about its musical cousins: the Vanyarin pedal harp, and the Noldorin hook harp.
“Those are only the new names, of course,” said Rúmil, with undisguised disapproval. “The hook harp and the arched harp were invented long before we came to Aman, and divided ourselves up. Plenty of people play all three; and the pedal harp is only for formal occasions, since it is very hard to travel with.”
When they were not playing music, they spoke much of lore: linguistics and history, mostly. When Maglor asked to learn sarati, Rúmil didn’t restrict them to working with his old, obsolete alphabet. He also taught Maglor a newer, different system to preserve his melodies in writing, so that even someone who had never heard them would know what notes to sing.
“I expect your father will come up with a superior method eventually,” he said, affectionately. “But until then, my neumes will serve you well enough.”
To Maglor’s surprise, such jests were frequent, and they did not seem to be self-deprecating. Rúmil was clearly fond, not jealous, of Fëanor.
“Why should I not be fond of your father?” he asked Maglor, once. “He was my student, and understood my work as few ever have. Otherwise he would never have been able to better it. Moreover, I was friends with Míriel Serindë of old, and rejoice to see her child succeed so brilliantly. Your father’s triumphs are hers, too.”
It was a heart-warming speech, and kindly meant: but Maglor frowned in confusion.
“Her name was not Serindë.”
Loyalty made him pronounce the sibilant the way his father always did: as though it were about to bite and poison someone.
“I move with the times,” said Rúmil, unfazed. “Just as I do not mind writing with your father’s newfangled alphabet, I accept that pronunciation will change with the centuries. Your grandmother disagreed with me on that point, but if she could not sway me, you certainly will not.”
“My father freely admits she was stubborn,” protested Maglor. “But she did not resist change to our language out of stubbornness alone, but in remembrance of the friends and kin she left behind in Middle-earth. She foresaw a day when, even if we reunited with them, our changed way of speaking would make us strangers—perhaps even enemies.”
“And you?” asked Rúmil. “Do you, too, dream of reunion with long-lost kin?”
“Yes,” said Maglor, vehemently—although in truth, he had not given it much thought until now.
“Then it is well you are a poet,” said Rúmil. “The difference of a few consonants will not stop you. Your songs will move strangers to tears.”
“I don’t want to make strangers cry,” said Maglor. “I want them to understand me.”
“Just like your grandmother,” said Rúmil. “Arguing with a compliment!”
~~~
Míriel trimmed the dangling threads from her latest tapestry and stepped back to study her work. Vairë’s dyes came in every hue imaginable, but Míriel still refused all but the shades that had been available to her in life. Madder and sappenwood, woad and nettle: that was enough to make the sun red and the sea blue. Anything more would be magic, not art.
“These stories are about my family, not yours,” she reminded Vairë, who favored dyes that glistened with wetness, or glowed with their own light. “Why shouldn’t I tell them in my own way?”
It was a rhetorical question, for, Valië though she was, Vairë rarely questioned her artistic choices. Indeed, Míriel sometimes missed her elvish rivals in Tirion. They had been fools, praising her worst work and ignoring her best innovations; but even their wrongheaded criticisms had spurred her on to greater heights. It was hard to make art alone.
“You will find that out soon,” Míriel whispered to the crouching figure at the bottom of her tapestry. He plucked the strings of his little harp, despite the blisters on his hands. For better or worse, he had never let pain keep him from his work.
Once, Míriel had harbored hopes of meeting her grandson. He would visit her in Mandos, or perhaps they would both finally get around to going home.
Now, a meeting seemed more unlikely than ever. But although the story of Maglor’s life seemed to be over, Míriel swore she would never stop putting him into her tapestries.
She hoped, too, that he would keep singing of her.
~~~
NOTES:
1. If you are curious, the visual model for Maglor’s arched harp was this gorgeous instrument.
2. There is a footnote in Shibboleth of Fëanor that claims none of Fëanor’s sons shared his interest in linguistics, “save Maglor who was a poet, and Curufin, his fourth and favourite son.” The same essay describes Míriel as a musician in all but name: “She had a beautiful voice and a delicate and clear enunciation, though she spoke swiftly and took pride in this skill.” (If she had lived, I’m sure Maglor would have written patter songs for her to sing.)
Author Name: Zopyrus
Prompt: "He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams." (Fellowship of the Ring, "The Shadow of the Past")
Summary: They won’t meet until the end of the world, but Maglor and Míriel manage to swap stories anyway.
Rating: General
Author's Notes: Thanks to
suzll for the beta!~~~
Maglor was very young when his father first put an arched Telerin harp into his hands. He loved it before he played a note, for it was the most perfect object he had ever seen.
The body of the harp curved like boat, with a sharp, pointed prow; and when Maglor’s father tightened the thirteen silken strings, he seemed to be raising a sail.
After such a beautiful beginning, Maglor’s first lesson was a disappointment. It was hard for him to remember the names of the notes, let alone a whole song; and he hurt his fingers when he tried to pluck the strings with the force his father demanded.
“You will get used to it,” said Fëanor. His voice was as tense as wound silk. “There is no point in my teaching you, if you are not going to do it right.”
Maglor did his best to please his father. After a few weeks of careful practicing, his fingertips stopped aching, and the names of the notes began to come as easily as the alphabet.
Soon he was able to play songs all the way through, with no mistakes.
Fëanor was pleased that he had been the first to recognize his son’s gift, which would have come to nothing if he had not insisted on perfection and hard work from the very beginning. Maglor’s music gave him joy for another reason, too.
“Your talent comes from your grandmother,” he said; and from his tone, Maglor knew his father didn’t mean Istarnië, mother of Nerdanel.
“She had nimble fingers, just like you, and a quick tongue. Did I ever tell you the story of how she invented the metal needle?”
Maglor shook his head, and cradled the harp in his lap while his father’s voice wove its spell: not in sung poetry, but in prose so beautiful that images rose, unbidden, before Maglor’s eyes.
After that, Maglor thought often about his grandmother Míriel. He daydreamed about her when he was practicing his scales. Míriel had worked with silk, too, although it had been to a different purpose. One afternoon, before he quite knew what he was doing, his fingers began to pick out a melody he had never heard before. He made a song about a silver-haired woman, with a slash of silver shining between her fingers.
When he sang the song to their family, Fëanor wept, and called him a true son.
~~~
Míriel’s name, once rare and revered, became common in their house. When Maglor was a little older, Fëanor brought out one of the tapestries his mother had embroidered. She had been a loremaster, as well as an embroideress; and she had combined both her arts into record keeping long before her friend Rúmil created the art of writing with alphabets.
“Our people have long memories,” Fëanor told his son. “We flatter ourselves that those memories are perfect: that nothing is misremembered, or forgotten. But my mother knew better.”
The cloth unrolled in Fëanor’s hands like a scroll.
“What do you see here?”
Míriel had embroidered the same image, over and over. There were stars, and tall dark trees, and a glimmering lake—and little people on the grass.
“It’s Cuiviénen,” Maglor said, recognizing it instantly.
“Tell me more,” Fëanor pressed.
Maglor studied the images carefully before he spoke again. If this was a test, as his conversations with his father often were, he was determined to pass.
He pointed to the first panel.
“This one is the Awakening. I see Imin, Tata, and Enel, standing in the foreground—and Iminyë, Tatië, and Enelyë, sleeping beside them.”
“Yes,” said his father. “And how many sleepers do you see in the background?”
Míriel had stitched too many figures to count—all of them in little pairs, wives lying beside their husbands—but Maglor knew the story well enough to do some quick math in his head.
“One hundred thirty-eight,” he said, glancing sidelong at his father.
Fëanor smirked approvingly.
“What about the second panel?”
It looked like a copy of the first—almost.
“It’s the same scene,” said Maglor. “Except that Imin and Enel have gone back to sleep, and Tatië is standing with her husband. And some of the people in the background are waking up, too.”
“Almost right,” said Fëanor. “But it’s not a continuation—it’s a different version. Look again.”
In the third panel, all six foreground figures slept; behind them, a dark-haired woman woke, alone. She had no husband; and as Maglor looked closer he saw that although the sleeping figures were still clustered in groups, almost none of them were part of a pair.
In the fourth panel, there were only twelve elves; in the fifth, there seemed to be thousands. In the sixth, some slept in a desert, not a forest.
“Middle-earth was a dangerous place,” said Fëanor. “Most of the Unbegotten elves perished, long before our people heard the horns of Oromë. And not all of those who remained consented to the Great Journey, or survived it.”
Maglor nodded. It was familiar history, preserved in epic poetry, nursery rhymes, and everything in between.
“Míriel Þerindë was not satisfied with the tales she was told as a child. Before she settled in Tirion with my father, she travelled in search of people who could tell her more about our history. At first she believed that, through her research, she might arrive at the truth.
“But even when she spoke directly with the Unbegotten, and not merely with people who claimed to have known them, my mother learned very different stories. People had forgotten—or, in some cases, perhaps they even lied. But she could not discover which stories were false, and which true.”
“Couldn’t she ask the Valar?” asked Maglor.
His father laughed, a little unkindly.
“They were not there, any more than you were.”
“But what about the Song?”
“You know many songs, Kanafinwë. You sing them as they were meant to be sung, with the most beautiful voice I have ever heard: but does that mean you understand the stories better than those who experienced them?”
Some of Maglor’s musician friends believed just that: but Maglor shook his head, chastened by the admonishment behind his father’s praise.
“The Valar cannot tell us our history,” said his father, firmly. “It is not theirs to tell, no matter how much they think they know.”
Fëanor unrolled the tapestry to the very end. The final edge was snarled with knots and dangling threads; there was even an ancient needle stuck haphazardly into the cloth of the last, incomplete scene.
“People claim my mother rarely finished her work,” said Fëanor. “They think it a failing: but much of what she made could never have been finished, even if she had lived. She was too ambitious to tame her ideas, or to claim she had found an answer when there was none.”
“She could not talk to everyone who was there,” said Maglor. “Is that why she didn’t finish it?”
“Yes,” said Fëanor. “But she began it so that people would better understand the truth. She didn’t want the stories she found to be forgotten, or changed again. She knew that if she didn’t set them down, they would be lost.”
“Why isn’t it on display?” asked Maglor. “If she wanted people to know—”
“Most people don’t care,” said his father, harshly. “They prefer finished art. They prefer the symmetry of the counting fable, where twelve times twelve elves awake next to their eternal soulmates—whether or not they really believe it.”
“I care,” said Maglor. “Art shouldn’t be simplified.”
“Neither should the truth,” said his father. “I am glad you understand that, despite your youth.”
~~~
Maglor’s songs became longer and more complicated. At last, his father refused to teach him any longer.
“We will still read lore together,” said Fëanor. “But you must study performance and music theory with Rúmil the Sage. He understands music as I do not; and you should ask him to teach you sarati, too. If you are going to be a poet, you ought to be able to read our earliest histories for yourself: and they have not all been copied over.”
Fëanor was right, as usual. With Rúmil for his critic, Maglor’s composition skills improved in leaps and bounds; and the singing exercises Rúmil assigned him helped his diction, too. Reluctantly, Maglor set aside his small arched harp to learn about its musical cousins: the Vanyarin pedal harp, and the Noldorin hook harp.
“Those are only the new names, of course,” said Rúmil, with undisguised disapproval. “The hook harp and the arched harp were invented long before we came to Aman, and divided ourselves up. Plenty of people play all three; and the pedal harp is only for formal occasions, since it is very hard to travel with.”
When they were not playing music, they spoke much of lore: linguistics and history, mostly. When Maglor asked to learn sarati, Rúmil didn’t restrict them to working with his old, obsolete alphabet. He also taught Maglor a newer, different system to preserve his melodies in writing, so that even someone who had never heard them would know what notes to sing.
“I expect your father will come up with a superior method eventually,” he said, affectionately. “But until then, my neumes will serve you well enough.”
To Maglor’s surprise, such jests were frequent, and they did not seem to be self-deprecating. Rúmil was clearly fond, not jealous, of Fëanor.
“Why should I not be fond of your father?” he asked Maglor, once. “He was my student, and understood my work as few ever have. Otherwise he would never have been able to better it. Moreover, I was friends with Míriel Serindë of old, and rejoice to see her child succeed so brilliantly. Your father’s triumphs are hers, too.”
It was a heart-warming speech, and kindly meant: but Maglor frowned in confusion.
“Her name was not Serindë.”
Loyalty made him pronounce the sibilant the way his father always did: as though it were about to bite and poison someone.
“I move with the times,” said Rúmil, unfazed. “Just as I do not mind writing with your father’s newfangled alphabet, I accept that pronunciation will change with the centuries. Your grandmother disagreed with me on that point, but if she could not sway me, you certainly will not.”
“My father freely admits she was stubborn,” protested Maglor. “But she did not resist change to our language out of stubbornness alone, but in remembrance of the friends and kin she left behind in Middle-earth. She foresaw a day when, even if we reunited with them, our changed way of speaking would make us strangers—perhaps even enemies.”
“And you?” asked Rúmil. “Do you, too, dream of reunion with long-lost kin?”
“Yes,” said Maglor, vehemently—although in truth, he had not given it much thought until now.
“Then it is well you are a poet,” said Rúmil. “The difference of a few consonants will not stop you. Your songs will move strangers to tears.”
“I don’t want to make strangers cry,” said Maglor. “I want them to understand me.”
“Just like your grandmother,” said Rúmil. “Arguing with a compliment!”
~~~
Míriel trimmed the dangling threads from her latest tapestry and stepped back to study her work. Vairë’s dyes came in every hue imaginable, but Míriel still refused all but the shades that had been available to her in life. Madder and sappenwood, woad and nettle: that was enough to make the sun red and the sea blue. Anything more would be magic, not art.
“These stories are about my family, not yours,” she reminded Vairë, who favored dyes that glistened with wetness, or glowed with their own light. “Why shouldn’t I tell them in my own way?”
It was a rhetorical question, for, Valië though she was, Vairë rarely questioned her artistic choices. Indeed, Míriel sometimes missed her elvish rivals in Tirion. They had been fools, praising her worst work and ignoring her best innovations; but even their wrongheaded criticisms had spurred her on to greater heights. It was hard to make art alone.
“You will find that out soon,” Míriel whispered to the crouching figure at the bottom of her tapestry. He plucked the strings of his little harp, despite the blisters on his hands. For better or worse, he had never let pain keep him from his work.
Once, Míriel had harbored hopes of meeting her grandson. He would visit her in Mandos, or perhaps they would both finally get around to going home.
Now, a meeting seemed more unlikely than ever. But although the story of Maglor’s life seemed to be over, Míriel swore she would never stop putting him into her tapestries.
She hoped, too, that he would keep singing of her.
~~~
NOTES:
1. If you are curious, the visual model for Maglor’s arched harp was this gorgeous instrument.
2. There is a footnote in Shibboleth of Fëanor that claims none of Fëanor’s sons shared his interest in linguistics, “save Maglor who was a poet, and Curufin, his fourth and favourite son.” The same essay describes Míriel as a musician in all but name: “She had a beautiful voice and a delicate and clear enunciation, though she spoke swiftly and took pride in this skill.” (If she had lived, I’m sure Maglor would have written patter songs for her to sing.)
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-24 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 03:15 am (UTC)My favourite was the different versions of the tapestries and the associated conversation between Maglor and his father. The idea that the Valar would never be able to tell the elves' stories as well as the elves could themselves is a thought-provoking one, to me.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-24 12:13 pm (UTC)I guess, depending on how literally you interpret the Ainulindale, Miriel and Feanor might be wrong about the Valar's understanding of history/the world...but I think the elves must have had some doubts about that, at least among themselves.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 04:39 am (UTC)Of course, Fëanor’s rational approach is very appealing to me. His mother apparently had similar appetites and determination to know and understand her world, manifested in this story by her attempt to try to find the history hidden within the mythology.
I love the reference to Tolkien saying that the story of the awakening of the Elves at Cuiviénen was intended as a counting game to teach children their numbers, and not a literal account of their origins. I find the assumption that many, if not most, of the first Elves of Cuiviénen did not live to tell their story—Middle-earth was far from a safe or easy place for those early Elves.
Míriel is such an appealing character in this tale. I also love the connections you draw between her and Maglor. You give such depth to Maglor also, who more than most characters is all but hidden behind a fanciful body of fanon. Thanks for including the link to the photo of the harp also. What a beautiful instrument. Rúmil is a great character too. Lovely story. Such a lot of interesting canon details packed into the narrative. It is one of those stories which is provocative more by its links to canon than any departures from it. So much fun to read it.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-24 01:59 pm (UTC)I am so glad you like my Maglor characterization--that means a lot coming from someone who has clearly put a lot of thought into him as well!
no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 04:52 am (UTC)This story is a glorious work of art! Who knows, perhaps a hundred years from now, when someone is scanning via the vastly improved internet from the ocular implant, they will run across this gem in an old archive, dust it off and set it on display yet again!
no subject
Date: 2014-03-24 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-24 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 05:07 am (UTC)I loved how you closed the circle between Maglor and Miriel with the final scene.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-24 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 07:50 am (UTC)Anyway... I love this. With a great and fiery love. But it's so layered that it's hard to pick out the exact things to praise, so this might be a bit incoherent. The idea behind the whole fic is great, and the structure, with the main body and the coda, is one of my favourites... but going back to the idea: fanfics about art and artists often feel particularly satisfying. I suppose they are particularly likely to resonate with writers, even hobby writers, both in minor ways (such as Miriel's feelings on the reviews she once received, or the way Maglor finds inspiration) and in more profound ones. This story is giving me strong and amorphous feels about how we all use our "art" to communicate across various chasms. I love reading a long-dead writer's work and finding that it actually speaks to me, that I can get some sense of how their thoughts might have run. And I love it when someone GETS some aspect of something I have written. Maglor really gets Miriel's work, doesn't he? (Feanor probably does too, but it's easier since he actually knew her.) And he wants to be understood himself, not to wring cheap sentiment from listeners. And doesn't Rumil love Feanor in part because he GOT it?
But enough about me and my personal obsessions! Now onto less blathery comments. I will not comment on the writing style, as you surely have the good taste to appreciate it fully yourself. I will choose to focus on characterization, because it is very believable and very skillfully revealed through their words and actions. We have Feanor, perfectionist and didactic and yet very much a family man; Miriel with her stubbornness, clever ideas, and artistic integrity; and Rumil, who pretty much steals the show near the end there, with his calm, centered wisdom. They all feel so real, as do their relationships.
Finally, Miriel's historical research is a brilliant project. I wish I knew more about some of those other stories...
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Date: 2014-03-26 06:12 pm (UTC)I am really drawn to art about artists, too. Sometimes I worry it is because I am a bit shallow and just identify better with characters (or dead historical figures) who are like me, but I think you are right that there is more to it than that.
One of the things that has struck me recently about the Silmarillion (and Tolkien's other writings as well) is that it is FULL of characters who use their art to communicate--not just people whose professions seem to have been artistic (like Maglor, Miriel, or Rumil) but amateurs like Fingon and Tuor, whose spur-of-the-moment art inspires divine intervention, or Finrod, who doesn't seem to have composed any named songs but who uses music to speak to the Edain and to defend his friends. This is perfect for me, since it means I don't have to work at all to shoehorn my personal interests into fic!
Actually I think it's significant that Feanor's mature art is NOT really about communication--he invents tengwar earlier in his career but ultimately abandons linguistic studies in favor of making and jealously guarding his gems (and swords!). Now I am wondering how well that might map onto his character trajectory in other ways.
I hope you don't mind that I responded to your "blathery" comment with blather of my own...I am glad the characterizations worked for you--especially Rumil, whom I grew very attached to while writing this!
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Date: 2014-03-27 10:46 pm (UTC)But yeah... Feanor. To bring this back to ME again -- I just cannot relate to the "jealous guarding" aspect of his persona. I enjoy making things, but then I give them away because it's great if people enjoy them, and my house is of limited size! I get the feeling that he invented more efficient writing so he could write down all his inventions and ideas.
Rumil was totally a highlight.
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Date: 2014-03-23 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-26 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 04:26 pm (UTC)I will forever be a sucker for tales that examine how history is made, who gets to tell it, what tales get prioritized and which get lost. You bring that front and center here, and the fact that you do it through the art of grandmother and grandson makes it all the more poignant.
As I said last night, I love your Fëanor--even as his own issues dominate his lessons with his son, he's very clearly a father who means well and cares deeply about his family.
When he sang the song to their family, Fëanor wept, and called him a true son.
For whatever reason, this was the line that got me the most. ;___;
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Date: 2014-03-26 06:15 pm (UTC)And THANK YOU FOR HELPING TO FIX THE ENDING, this fic would be half as good without your wise intervention. <3
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Date: 2014-03-23 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-26 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2014-03-27 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 06:51 pm (UTC)This is so ... true! All artists (and writers) probably feel this way
in their most honest momentsI really love this -- Maglor, Fëanor and Míriel -- what a brilliant, difficult family.
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Date: 2014-03-26 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-26 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-23 11:16 pm (UTC)Loved this. And then their discussions on art. And this is the best Miriel I've seen. I loved this.
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Date: 2014-03-26 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-24 12:10 am (UTC)Thank you for sharing!
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Date: 2014-03-27 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-27 07:56 am (UTC)I've fallen behind with commenting...
I hope I'll get around to commenting in more detail on this story at AO3 later and on your Galadriel story as well.
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Date: 2014-03-24 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-27 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-25 06:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-27 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-26 05:04 am (UTC)This was beautifully written.
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Date: 2014-03-27 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-28 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2014-04-08 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-12 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 01:04 am (UTC)“The Valar cannot tell us our history,” said his father, firmly. “It is not theirs to tell, no matter how much they think they know.”
I agree completely with this.
And the final three paragraphs are sheer perfection.
This is a wonderful, wonderful story!
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Date: 2014-05-12 04:16 am (UTC)