gipsoteco

As I'm revisiting the Professor’s works, I came across these essays: one, two, three, four, which examine—in some cases quite technically—how he understood death differently for Elves and for Men.

One thing that particularly struck me is that, when it came to Men, Tolkien never assigned them a view of mortality that was fully consistent with the theological perspective of Catholicism, and this had a certain impact, for example, in Athrabeth.

I’m curious about how, for example, that text might have differed if Tolkien had realized he wasn’t aligned with Catholic theology: as can be seen from the essays I mentioned earlier, Elvish and human mortality would have been exactly mirror images of one another.

IMPORTANT: I really wanted to put in the post some actual info about the 'misconception', but unfortunately it's a quite technical theological issue, and English isn't my first language, so it would be very difficult for me to summarize it in brief; I warmly invite you to have a look at the essays I linked.

Per chi non conoscesse l'argomento: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coresidenza

È una cosa che ho scoperto qualche tempo fa per via di un mio amico che sta per trasferirsi per lavoro in un'altra città: non vuole abitare da solo ma nemmeno avere dei coinquilini 'stretti', e come via di mezzo disse di stare cercando se in quella città ci fossero dei "cohousing".

Incuriosito sono andato a vedere di cosa si trattasse.

In effetti come via di mezzo non è male: hai la riservatezza dei tuoi spazi privati, ma ci sono anche gli spazi comuni, e si vive organizzati, dandosi una mano tra tutti.

Avete mai avuto esperienze in tale senso?

So che in Italia ce ne sono alcuni (c'è tipo un sito che li elenca) ma sembrano pochi.

Al che mi è anche venuta un'altra considerazione: le persone single stanno aumentando e, comprensibilmente, una parte di queste non vorrebbe affrontare la vita adulta senza qualche tipo di legame di vicinanza. La coresidenza potrebbe fare al caso loro.

I read Tolkien’s works years ago, and for a while I was very interested in various aspects of the fictional world, such as languages, geography, and calendars; then, as often happens, I moved on to other interests. I recently discovered that, over the millennia, our planet’s rotational speed has been slowing down, and therefore the length of the tropical year is decreasing (while the orbital period remains more or less unchanged). I recalled having done some calculations on the length of year across various calendars, and I had seen that in the Elven calendar, the average length of the year was:

365 days x 11 times + 368 days (the 12° year doubles the three enderi) = 4383 days in 12 years

4383 days x 12 times = 52596 days in 144 years (1 normal yén)

52596 days x 2 times + 52593 g (in the 144° year of the third of three yéni the enderi aren't doubled) = 157785 days in 3 yéni (432 years cycle)

The average length of a year in this system is therefore 157,785/432 = 365.2430556 days

In addition to this, I recalled reading something about what Tolkien said regarding the setting of his stories in a distant imaginary past:

Letter to Rhona Beare (1958) - 3019 T.A. is 6,000 years before 1958, so 1 F.A. would be 11,091 B.C.

The Awakening of the Quendi (1960) - 310 F.A. is 16,000 years before 1960, so 1 F.A. is 14,349 B.C.

BBC interview (1964) - 3019 T.A. is 7,000–8,000 years before 1964, so 1 F.A. is 12,085 / 13,085 B.C.

Why did I specifically mention the hypothetical correspondences with 1 F.A.? Because that would be the period when the Elvish solar calendar began to be used as the Sun began it's cycle. And guess what? The year duration was 365.2430556 days... approximately around 11,000-12,000 B.C. !