Stories from England
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Mellon – The World’s Best Known Elvish Word
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the fellowship must pass through a gate that bars the way into Moria. To enter they must find the ‘magic word’ that will open the door. Fortunately, they have the wizard Gandalf with them, who knows every appropriate magic word. Yet, he gets stuck. Nel Signore degli Anelli di J.R.R. Tolkien, la compagnia deve passare per un portone che chiude la via in Moria. Per entrare devono trovare la ‘parola magica’ che aprirà la porta. Per fortuna, hanno con loro lo stregone Gandalf, che conosce ogni parola adatta. Eppure, si trova bloccato. A conversation about the Elvish word mellon, which appears in that…
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John Donne’s For Whom the Bell Tolls: with translation
John Donne’s passage For Whom the Bell Tolls is most familiar to audiences of our time through Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the same name, set in the Spanish civil war. John Donne’s words are often understood today as a poem (and they are indeed poetic). However they come from a book of devotions, and a longer contemplation on the meaning of the bell. John Donne lived in seventeenth century England. The tolling of the bell was a constant reminder of the call to prayer, and when in 1624 he wrote the passage, John Donne was Dean of St. Pauls (then one of the highest offices of the Anglican church). Il…
