"Aurë entuluva" by Lyra (Revolution challenge)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Title: Aurë entuluva!
Artist: Lyra
Genre: Sign/postcard
Warnings: bad calligraphy.
Characters: N/A (well, implied Húrin, I guess)
Summary: Húrin's famous battle cry makes a fine protest sign. Or maybe just a motivational postcard :P





So for B2MeM, I wanted to paint Eärendil battling Ancalagon for the "Darkness Falling" prompt, but that turned out to be rather beyond my capacities. I'll still give it another try, but it's probably going to take all year so I needed something more do-able... and also something uplifting. Sooo I remembered that when I made some sloppy protest signs for the SWG challenge stamps, I actually quite liked the "Aurë entuluva" one and decided to re-make it, more orderly and with a more fitting colour scheme this time. Might work as a protest sign or postcard or t-shirt or whatnot...

Come to think of it, it's rebellious in two directions; towards Morgoth, against whom Húrin actually utters it in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and against Thingol's ban, because it's Quenya. Huh. As it happens, the other battle-cries we know from the Nirnaeth - Utúlië n'aurë etc., Auta i lomë - are also Quenya. Supposedly, the Noldor hardly used Quenya anymore at this point, but apparently, they made an exception on this special occasion? You can't tell me that's not meant to flip off Doriath (THANKS FOR NOTHING, THINGOL). Not by Húrin, maybe, but definitely by Fingon. Heh.

Anyway! Day shall come again!



Crossposted to the B2MeM community. Thrift, thrift, Horatio...

Comments

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

It's beautiful. I would wear that t-shirt. And I am no a t-shirt kind of person. I've long passed the age in NYC where t-shirts are considered hip or attractive.

Talk about protest and revolutionary attitude!

You can't tell me that's not meant to flip off Doriath (THANKS FOR NOTHING, THINGOL). Not by Húrin, maybe, but definitely by Fingon. Heh.

Of course, I have always that those are in Quenya. I've always suspected it was used a lot more than it is claimed to have been used in some discussions of it in the texts. That's me and my attitude, however. Language doesn't work that way, no matter who is passing the laws.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

:) Thank you!

Welll, I'm willing to believe that Sindarin may have been the official vernacular of Beleriand, but I'm sure that the Noldor - not just their lords - would have continued to use it pretty shamelessly, including "all their daily uses". Unless they really bought Thingol's "slayers of kin unrepentant" spiel and Quenya became so linked to the kinslaying that they were quite willing to drop it (but then, even "their lords amongst themselves" should have abandoned it, no?). IDK, there's probably some data on German immigrants to the US and their attitude towards their native language during/after WWII that one could use for reference/inspiration, but I'm not invested enough in the matter to study that now. ;)

Barring the power of shame (TM), in a human populace, I'd assume it eventually died out/became a purely scientific language because it's likely that nurses, nannies and other household staff would be recruited from the lower classes (more likely to speak Sindarin), so it would become the language the new generation of Noldor grew up with, i.e. their native tongue. But since that kind of thing takes decades even among humans (where the older generations eventually die out), with Elves we'd probably be looking at centuries - if Elven society functioned in that way in the first place. But for all that Pengolodh was supposedly the greatest scholar of the lambengolmor, he clearly didn't work in diachronic sociolinguistics. ;)

[hhimring]

I like it and find it very motivational!

The battle cries in Quenya are interesting. Fingon is explicitly addressing the Edain as well as the Elves--and the latter apparently include Cirdan's mariners, Beleg and Mablung, as well as Annael and other northern Sindar.

And he's surely expecting to be understood, by all these and not just by any older Noldor.

Hurin, of course, could have learned Quenya in Gondolin--and maybe, in a way, is addressing Fingon and Turgon, in absentia, as much as Morgoth and his troops.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Isn't it just? And yes, unless Fingon is just yelling whatever's coming to his mind and not particularly caring whether he's understood or not (plausible in the situation, I guess), even the Edain would be expected to understand Quenya, even at this late point...

Then again, maybe it's all just a translation problem; the chronicler, living in Gondolin and being a loremaster, may have recorded things that were really said in Sindarin in the language of lore, and the translator didn't want to translate the battle-cry into English but also not into Sindarin, so stuck to the "original" Quenya? XD

Anyway, thank you!