Tolkien Reading His Own Elvish Poem Is Utterly Beautiful
When you are writing, you are free to create anything.
Worlds, people, wars, relationships, even languages.
What You Create Is Yours
Featured on io9 last week was a video of JRR Tolkien reading an Elvish poem. His Elvish poem, titled Namárië, in a language he created.
Not only is this poem something that he created, but it is created using something he created. He could not have written that poem if he had not first build a new and beautiful language to write it in.
You Can Create Anything
When we write, we tend to put contraints on ourselves, even if they don’t exist.
Tolkien and others (such as Marc Okrand, the American linguist who created Klingon) have shown that you don’t even need to be constrained to existing languages.
Whether you invent your own language or not, you can create sentences that sound as beautiful as Tolkien’s Elvish poem. Don’t be constrained.
Christopher Jackson is the Editor for Fuel Your Writing and a creative copywriter. He is currently working on Project: Snotbook, an interactive children’s storybook for iPad.
I love this so much! Thanks for sharing Christopher. Tolkien is the most amazing writer, hands-down. Beautiful.
That was very beautiful. Great reminder; Tolkien was a brilliant man we can all aspire to be like.
Thank you for posting this reading by Tolkien. I forwarded it to my twitter and Facebook – Facebook address is Heather Marsten. I appreciate hearing authors read their own work.
Great advice, and great content! Nice post, Christopher. Thumbs up!
It’s wonderful to see how people can express their thoughts and emotions into words. Truly remarkable!