The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3) in J.R.R. Tolkien

Jun 03, 2018 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: linguistics-and-philosophy, why-not-call-it-poetry, german-and-dutch, older-men-younger-women, children, transcendent-experiences, older-women-younger-men

As a German, I am still a pre-teen, and I had to read the last volume of the German edition of The Lord of the Rings as a pre-teen. I am not sensitive enough to the nuances of language to be able to comment on the interesting debate about this new translation, which excited many people's passions on both sides when the book came out in 2000. Though I did find the translator's brief afterword very interesting. I loved his elegant apology to Margaret Carroux, the original German translator, where As a German, I am still a pre-teen, and I had to read the last volume of the German edition of The Lord of the Rings as a pre-teen. I am not sensitive enough to the nuances of language to be able to comment on the interesting debate about this new translation, which excited many people's passions on both sides when the book came out in 2000. Though I did find the translator's brief afterword very interesting. I loved his elegant apology to Margaret Carroux, the original German translator, where he starts by saying that he knew many passages from her work by heart, and it was painful to change them; also his explanation of the ambitious goal he set himself when beginning the new edition, which was to produce a book which read as though it had been translated not from English, but from the original Westron tongue. Now that's the right attitude. Wolfgang Krege is a guy who makes me proud to be a Tolkien geek.

As I said, I can't appreciate Krege's work from a sophisticated literary viewpoint, but I can appreciate it as a person who loved the book and was often unable to put it down. It made me cry twice, which the English edition is no longer able to do, and I noticed many intricate details that had escaped me on earlier readings. Just to name two, I had never consulted the maps closely enough when following the last stage of Frodo's and Sam's quest, and I had missed how circuitous their path was from Cirith Ungol to Mount Doom, following the wasted valley between the Ephel Duáth and the Morgai all the way up to the Isenmouth, before looping back south again. And I had not noticed that the "Orod" in "Orodruin" is the same word as the "Ered" in "Ered Lithui", but in the singular rather than the plural. Tolkien seems to have an almost infinite number of these Easter eggs waiting for me; I always find some new ones.

Above all, the thing that captured me was the language. My German is now good enough that I could appreciate the register shifts at an emotional level and be swept along by them the way a pre-teen is. At the height of the action, when the fate of the world hangs in the balance and the choices made even by relatively minor characters are of momentous significance, the narration is of a poetic, almost Biblical, sparseness and intensity; and then, as the action winds down and the hobbits return to the Shire, the language also returns to comic everyday prose. My pre-teen German self dimly recognised that Tolkien was saying something very important here, without fully understanding what it was.

When I had reached the end, I found that my command of German had somehow improved a great deal. I went back to the Einstein-Born letters, which I'd not been able to read a few months ago, and now they seemed quite approachable. My German self is growing up.

Thank you, J.R.R. Tolkien; thank you, Wolfgang Krege. ...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Stephanie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

WHAT’S COME OF HIS WESKIT???

Andy Serkis review:
Overall, really good! I’m still annoyed by his elves but his hobbits and men are quite good. Orcs and monsters are kinda painful to listen to, does he have a throat left? I like that he sings the songs.

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Oct 30, 2008 Ella rated it it was amazing

This book is so awesome! It's got to be the best book in the entire world! My parents said I couldn't read it for a whole year cuz' I read it so much, but the torture will end in march! ...more

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