Eldalamberon.poetry.annieva

www.eldalamberon.com

Poetry

**Lirit Annieva**
Mintya John Denver Narqelie 1997 Cwestalthir	antalye tyávenyar, Ve tauresse ye lóme, Ve 'n oronti mi tuile, Vantala timpea, V' erumesse ye súre, Ve olóre luin' ear. Qantalye tyávenyar, Nin enqantuva. A meluvan le, Antuvan kuile an le, Qoruvan lalalyasse, Rankulyanta nin tyel, Undukaituvan ar le, Oio nai omentielva. A meluvan le, Ni emmeluva. Qantalye tyávenyar, Ve tauresse ye lóme, Ve 'n oronti mi tuile, Vantala timpea, V' erumesse ye súre, Ve olóre luin' ear. Qantalye tyávenyar, Nin enqantuva.

Notes 1. qanta- or quanta- 'fill, make full'.
-lye 'you' or 'thou', second person singular subject pronoun; the corresponding object pronoun is le 'you' or 'thee' (lines 9, 10, 13, 15); and the possessive suffix is -lya 'your' or 'thy' (lines 11, 12).
tyáve 'taste'; like the abstract sense of the English, the Quenya term was used to refer to personal preference, in particular to one's sensibility to the sounds of speech that one prefers, as in the term lámatyáve 'individual pleasure in the sound and form of words'.
-nya 'my', first person singular possessive suffix; the corresponding reduced subject pronoun is -n 'I' (lines 9, 10, 11, 13); the direct object pronoun is ni 'me' (line 16); and the indirect object is nin 'for me, to me' (line 8).
-r plural suffix; thus tyávenyar 'my tastes, my sensibilities'.
2. ve 'like' or 'as'; this can be used to express a simile, comparing two objects by virtue of some shared attribute, e.g. yéni ve linte yuldar avánier 'the years like swift draughts have passed away'; or it can be used to express a metaphor, comparing two attributes or situations adverbially, by virtue of a similarity in the manner of their achievement (or lack of achievement), e.g. yéni únótime ve rámar aldaron 'long years (as) uncountable as the wings of trees'.
taure 'forest', locative tauresse 'in a forest'.
ye 'is' or 'to be, being'. The first of these possible meanings is seen in írima ye Númenor 'lovely is Númenor' or sí ye tyelma 'here is ending'; the placement of the subject following the verb, especially a form of the verb 'to be', seems to by typical in Quenya, cf. vanwa ná Valimar, and also laurie lantar lassi. The infinitive use of a verb stem ('to be, being') is less frequent, and more speculative; an example is the use of rúma- 'shift, move, heave' in undume rúma 'the abyss moving'.
lóme 'night, gloom'; this can be interpreted as the subject in ve tauresse ye lóme 'as night is in a forest' (= my senses are filled in the way that gloom fills the forest at night); or, since lóme 'night' also refers to the time period, the noun can be used adverbially to mean 'during the night' or 'for the duration of a night', in the same way the oiale 'ever, everlasting age' is used in hísie untúpa Calaciryo míri oiale 'mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for-ever'; thus ve tauresse ye lóme could mean 'like being in a forest (for) a night', which is intended to suggest the English idiomatic sense of "like a night in a forest" (= like spending a night in a forest).
3. 'n 'the'; this is an alternative to the more frequently used Quenya form i 'the'; and example is utúlie'n aure 'the day has come'.
oron 'mountain', plural oronti 'mountains'.
mi 'in, inside'.
tuile 'spring, spring-time'. The locative tuilesse would mean 'in spring' in a general sense, so the phrase mi tuile may suggest something more particular, perhaps similar to English 'in the middle of spring'.
4. vanta- 'walk', participle vantala 'walking'; this has to be understood elliptically, as either '(like) walking' or '(when someone is) walking'.
timpe 'fine rain'; the adjective timpea 'rainy' or 'like rain' is a "made-up" word, on the model of laurea 'golden, like gold', derived from laure 'gold, golden light'; and literally can only be understood as describing the person on the walk becoming 'rainy' or covered with fine rain.
The line vantala timpea can be taken as another comparison, given the parallel of its surrounding phrases, since in Quenya poetry the word ve is optional; thus in kaivo i sapsanta, Rána númetar 'as a corpse into the grave, the moon went down in the West', the word 'as' is left unexpressed in the Elvish. A more prosaic rendering of "like a walk in the rain" would be ve vanta timpesse, but this has stress on all the wrong syllables to fit with the tune of the original, so a more elliptical phrasing was devised to fit meter.
5. v' = ve 'like'; with the vowel dropped because of the initial e in the next word; a usage that is probably seen in v' ematte sinqi Eldamar, although the exact meaning of this is not known.
erume 'desert', locative erumesse 'in a desert'; erumesse ye = 'is in a desert' or 'being in a desert'.
súre 'wind'. Another word that might be used here is raumo '(noise of a) storm'.
As in the previous lines, the comparison with the locative means 'you are in my senses ... as the wind is in the desert', and also 'you fill my senses ... as the wind would if I were in the desert'.
6. olóre 'dream'; a noun which can also be used like an adjective, as in the name Olóre Malle 'the Path of Dreams', literally 'dream path' in the sense of a path that is associated with dreams, or exists during a dream. The derived adjective olórea means 'dreamy' or 'like a dream'. Related to these is the word lorda 'slumbrous, drowsy', which probably comes closest to "sleepy" in literal meaning, but olóre has been used because it could most easily fit the meter.
luine 'blue'; the form luin' has elision of the final e due to the initial e in the following word.
ear 'sea, ocean'.
8. nin 'for me', as in i yulma nin enquantuva 'shall refill the cup for me'.
enquantuva 'will refill, will fill again'; which since it contains the same verb stem q(u)anta- can be taken as an elaboration or modified repetition of the verb in the previous line, with the same subject; just as in English 'you fill my senses, will fill them again'. In Quenya the object can also be left implicit, as in nai hiruvalye Valimar, nai elye hiruva 'maybe thou shalt find Valimar, maybe even thou shalt find (it)'. So in context nin enquantuva means 'for me you will fill my senses again', and as Tolkien's translation of hiruva shows, it can also be imperative, 'for me you shall fill them again'.
9. A 'O'; a vocative particle or interjection, calling for the attention of the listener. It can introduce an imperative, as in A laita te! 'O (you) praise them!', or something said about the listener, as in A vanimar, vanimalion nostari 'O (you) beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children'.
mel- 'love', first person singular future tense meluvan 'I shall love' (indicative) or 'I will love' (imperative), as in sinome maruvan 'in this place will I abide'.
le 'you', object pronoun.
10. anta- 'give, present', antuvan 'I shall give, I will give'; here meaning 'I will dedicate, I will devote'.
kuile 'life, being alive' ; the intended allusion is to the poet's own life, though this is not made explicit, ais it is in the original song.
an 'for'; used to mean 'with respect to, insofar as, because, when', in an sí Varda máryat ortane 'for now Varda has uplifted her hands', or mára mesta an ni véla tye ento 'goodbye till I see you next' (literally something like 'farewell until the time for me to see you next'). This probably derives from the meanings like 'for the purpose of, for the benefit of', which English for has when used with a noun referring to a particular action or person. This usage is still seen in the corresponding Sindarin word, e.g. in naur an edraith ammen 'fire for rescuing us' or ú-chebin estel an-im 'I have kept no hope for myself', but is normally expressed by the dative ending -n in Quenya, as in vanda sina termaruva enyalien alcar Elenna-nóreo 'this oath shall stand for recalling the glory of the Land of the Star', or Ilu Ilúvatar en káre eldain a fírimoin 'the Father made the World for elves and for mortals'. The preposition an is used here (speculatively), instead of the dative ending, in order to emphasize the contrasting parallel of dative an le 'for you' with direct object le 'you' in the previous line, and an receives stress here, just as the preposition does in the original "give my life to you". The parallelism is carried forward with ar le 'beside you' in line 13.
11. qor- 'drown, choke', qoruvan 'I shall drown, I will drown'.
lala- 'laugh'; this is apparently a verb, but is used here as a noun, by (speculative) analogy with the relationship between a verb like vala- 'order' (as in á vala Manwe 'may Manwe order it') and the corresponding noun vala 'angelic power, Authority'; lalalya 'your laugh', locative lalalyasse 'in your laugh'.
12. ranko 'arm', stem form ranku-/ranq- (as shown by the derivation of ranko < *ranku in "The Etymologies", and the plural form ranqi, phonetically [rankwi] with the sound w a prevocalic reduction of u); hence rankulya 'your arm', allative rankulyanna, dual rankulyanta 'in(to) your arms'.
tyel, tyelde 'an end'; this and the related word tyelma 'ending' are used in Fíriel's Song as euphemisms for death and the last judgement, insofar as these were understood by the Númenóreans, ten sí ye tyelma, yéva tyel ar i-narqelion, íre ilqa yéva nótina, hostainiéva, yallume 'for here is ending, and there will be an end and the Fading, when all is counted, and all numbered at last'. So nin tyel 'for me an end' is an indirect way of saying 'my death', or even 'my final fate beyond death'.
The phrase rankulyanta nin tyel 'into your arms for me an end', is to be understood as elliptical for 'into your arms being for me an end' = 'my goal or fate being to end up in your arms'. The use of the allative to express a goal or direction reached at a time different from the expression itself is seen in mornie caita i falmalinnar imbe met 'darkness lies on the foaming waves between us', meaning that the waves are located there now having moved onto the them a long time ago. So when an action like 'ending up' involves motion towards a goal together with staying there after, that goal is expressed in Quenya by the allative case, both before and after completion of the motion towards it.
13. undu-, un- 'down, downwards'; an adverbial prefix added to a verb-stem, as undu-láve 'down-licked' = 'drowned deep', or un-túpa 'down-roofs' = 'covers'; with a sense of thoroughness as is the use of the adverb 'down' in 'wash down', 'pour down', or 'batten down'.
caita-, kaita- 'lie', undu-kaita- 'lie down', first person singular future undukaituvan 'I shall lie down' or 'down will I lie', cf. sinome maruvan 'in this place will I abide'.
ar 'and', but also compare ara 'outside, beside', which may have a shortened alternative form ar, much as we see variants in an, ana, na 'to, towards', or vor, voro 'ever, continually'. So the phrase ar le can certainly mean 'and you', with the pronoun here understood as an additional subject of the verb, cf. sinome maruvan ar hildinyar 'in this place will I abide and my heirs'; or (speculatively) ar le may mean 'beside you', with the pronoun understood as the object of a preposition.
14. oio 'ever, everlastingly'.
nai 'may it be that, maybe'; which consists of the verb ná- 'is, to be', combined with the particle i, which can be used like English 'that', either demonstratively to point out something or someone definite ('that, those, the') as Indis i Ciryamo 'the Mariner's Wife', literally '(the) wife of that mariner', or relatively to allude to something or someone mentioned ('that, which, who'), as in i Eru i or ilye ea 'that One who is over all'. In the combination nai tiruvantes 'may they keep it, may it be that they shall guard it', the relative 'that' refers to the whole idea of tiruvantes 'they will guard it', making it the possibility wished or hoped for in the verb ná-, which must in this cases have future imperative force, 'may it be, (I hope that) it shall be'.
omentie 'meeting', specifically of two people or groups.
-lva 'our, yours and my'; so omentielva 'our meeting', oio nai omentielva 'ever may it be that meeting of ours'.
16. ni 'me'.
emmeluva 'will love in return'; this is a (speculative) combination of the same prefix en- 'again, back, re-' that is seen in enquantuva 'will refill' with the verb mel- 'to love', with assimilation of en-mel- to emmel- 'love again, love back' (cf. archaic English relove 'love in return').
The future tense meluva is use imperatively here ('you shall love me' = 'come love me'), and because it is imperative and the subject is 'you', Quenya does not require the subject to be expressed. We know this indirectly, because the future plural laituvar is used imperatively to mean '(you) all shall praise!' (compare English all rise! = 'you all rise!'), and while it is marked for plural subject by the final -r, it has no explicit pronominal suffix, the way laituvalme 'we will praise' does.