Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
When an almond tree became covered with blossoms in the heart of winter, all the trees around it began to jeer. “What vanity! … Just think, it believes it can bring spring in this way!” The flowers of the almond tree blushed… “Forgive me, my sisters,” said the tree. “I swear I did not want to blossom, but suddenly I felt a warm springtime breeze in my heart. ”
(Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis)
source: seductiveinsouciance
#Yuko Murai #Art #Nikos Kazantzakis #Saint Francis #almond tree #spring #almond blossoms #in my heart
[image description: tweet by Netchimen’s Reverie that reads “Tolkien describing places that are evil: no trees grow there” /end description]
This is doubtless because of his experience of the trenches in the Great War.
Like, this is what things looked like to soldiers who fought in that war (image in black and white of a solitary soldier walking across a muddy wasteland pocked with puddles):
Here’s Delville Wood, the site of a battle in 1916 (sepia image of a wasteland dotted with broken and dead trees):
Here’s an image from the Battle of the Somme, in which Tolkien participated (image of soldiers standing above and inside a trench or earthwork in a grey wasteland; smoke from artillery is on the horizon)
So yeah: no trees = evil was Tolkien’s own direct lived experience. It’s precisely why Mordor and the wastelands around it look like they do in his books.
the plateau of gorgoroth, the heartland of mordor, is described as being scarred by countless pits dug by orcs
the true seat of evil is full of foxholes and trenches
There’s a lesson to be learned here.
I hope Tolkien would be happy to learn that a hundred years on, trees grow again here:
