[ruffles23]

He thought that he disliked seeing one who had mortified him so keenly; but he was mistaken. It was a stinging pleasure to be in the room with her, and feel her presence.

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

[ruffles23]

[ruffles23]

"If a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour."

—Victoria Erickson

[muse-write]

The splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story;

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O, sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,

Blow, bugles; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river;

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

The Splendor Falls

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

[ageofgeek]

I've been thinking about tolkien lately, and i know this must've happened to many fathers and mothers across europe in the 1940s, but

do you ever think about how tolkien was sent to fight in a pointless, brutal, terrible war, from which only he and one of his friends returned? a war that promised young british men that they would find glory, only to find death and trauma and suffering? and when he returned, stricken with trench fever, he told his children stories of the adventures of a humble hobbit - a simple tale, that maybe purposefully didn't reflect just how awful his own "adventure" was.

And then just 20 years later, those children, his children who had heard those stories of a humble hobbit, got sent to fight in another brutal, devastating war, and he had to watch them go without him, knowing what they would go through because it had happened to him.

and this time, after that second war was over, and his sons had returned to him safely, he wrote another tale. This one not as simple. This one not for children, but for the grown men and soldiers his sons had been forced to become. This one centered the brutalities of war but also the hope of friendship and love.

i just. do you ever think about john ronald reuel tolkien???

[ruffles23]

Incredible.

[artist-issues]

I just really need everyone to understand that I have this instant realized that C.S. Lewis means Númenór when he says “Numinor” in That Hideous Strength.

As in, Númenór, the heritage of Aragorn, from Lord of the Rings.

As in, C. S. Lewis was writing about Tolkien’s “True West,” the land in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, ten+ years before the first Lord of the Rings book was written and published.

Meaning 1) C. S. Lewis was kind of vaguely collaborating with Tolkien, hoping that Tolkien’s stories would link up with his own, the same way he used to collaborate with his brother on Boxen and Animal Land and all that when they were kids;

And 2) That Hideous Strength ties medieval legends of Logres and Arthurian legends into what would become Middle-Earth… WITH Ransom’s different planets, and 1940’s sci-fi world.

[ruffles23]

This is the content I live for.

[piano-hoarder-deactivated202602]

One of my favorite things about JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis is they both look exactly how I imagined they would.

[inklings-challenge]

"L. said to me one day: 'Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try to write some ourselves.' We agreed that he should try 'space travel' and I should try 'time travel'. His result is well-known. My effort, after a few promising chapters, ran dry: it was too long a way round to what I really wanted to make, a new version of the Atlantis legend. The final scene survives as The Downfall of Numenor. [...] We neither of us expected much success as amateurs, and actually Lewis had some difficulty in getting Out of the Silent Planet published. And after all that has happened since, the most lasting pleasure and reward for both of us has been that we provided one another with stories to hear or read that we really liked--in large parts. Naturally neither of us liked all that we found in the other's fiction."

-The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 294, February 8, 1967

[petitworld]

Iford Manor Gardens, Iford, England by Stacy Cartledge

[ruffles23]

The flowers growing between the steps….

[flowerytale]

Emma. (2020), dir. Autumn de Wilde

[ruffles23]

So I guess I’ll just love you from the window.…..while you’re dancing with the charmers in the room.

Loom ~ Zach Bryan

[oldpaintings]

In Awe by Edwin Austin Abbey (American, 1852–1911)

[ruffles23]

Modernity conceives of man as an autonomous being who owes homage to nothing and no one save his Almighty Self.

Crunchy Cons ~ Rod Dreher

[ruffles23]

We can’t keep dragging our favorite piece of the past along into the present. Some things you should just leave be, maybe they are in the past for a reason.

[ruffles23]

[ruffles23]

Big Black Car - Gregory Alan Isakov

[triflingthing]

Lamp Light Books (a literary themed hotel) in Sapporo. The lobby is a library coffee shop.

[ruffles23]

Shut. Up.