Ca commence à se voir

And, without so much as a warning, I'm back, as if nothing had changed. Except, you know, it's in english. And the current purpose of this is now to put down random thoughts on random readings, until, of course, I decree otherwise.

It will serve me as a notebook of sorts, and will maybe somehow ignite the shadow of a conversation here or there; it has anyhow no greater ambition than that. That's right kids : the secret to success is to lower your expectations as much as you can, and then make your goal half that.

I'll kick off with The Children of Hùrin, which is as far as I know not an insult but a book written by J.R.R Tolkien and pretty much put together by his son Christopher Tolkien, who for now close to forty years has acted as a curator to the Tolkien litterary legacy.

I will take for granted that you are at least remotely familiar with Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, most probably in its movie version. Well, the book I'm about to tell you about is set in the same universe, which is Tolkien's middle earth, his own personal brand of germanic legends rewriting.

You see, Tolkien was a philology professor, which means he made a living out of discussing incomplete, boring old tales written in an archaic language. Understandably, he choose to let some steam off during his spare time by writing incomplete, boring retro-tales in several archaic languages he himself built from the ground up.

At this point, you might well ask why, so I feel I have to remind you there was no World of Warcraft at the time. Tolkien was both a language nerd and a fantasy nerd, a nerd squared if you will, but you have to remember is full name was John Ronald Reuel, so there's that. In a world desperately lacking Comicon and cosplay, he took the matter in his own hands. His son, Christopher, put together at least fourteen volumes - this one being the latest and probably the last - of carefully arranged, edited and annotated writings of his father, which if I follow the logic started in this paragraph makes him a nerd cubed. Incidentally, I don't know the chosen career path of Christopher Tolkien's progeny, if he has some, and to be honest I'm not eager to find out.

In The Children of Hùrin, we follow a hubris filled human warrior who's bent on taking out Morgoth. Now, if you remember the big villain from the movies, Sauron, well, Sauron was Morgoth's first lieutenant, The Roscoe P. Coltrane to Morgoth's Boss Hog. Morgoth was the original villain, the all corrupting luciferian fallen angel; he created the Balrogs, he created the orcs by torturing and twisting elves. He is in fact such a bad motherfucker he should be played by Samuel Jackson.

Still. The warrior falls, and is doomed to watch his progeny be doomed as well. In the end, they kill the dragon, after much suffering. Or something. Forgive me, I read that something like three years ago, that is so not the point. It's actually a not quite boring, quite complete retro-tale, mimicking the overwrought, epic language used to depict the adventures of Beowulf, Cuchulain and Conan (right?) in plain, (somewhat) understandable english -actual, not-made-up english, not Quenya nor Sindarin, Klingon or even Whedonglish.

And as such, it succeeds, greatly.

[EDIT] : n'oublions pas de préciser que le bouquin est superbement illustré par Alan Lee

Title from David Sylvian - Orpheus