Patreontober day 12 - kenopsia
Added 2024-10-12 19:45:08 +0000 UTCI'd never heard the term "kenopsia", but when I looked it up, my first association was an early poem by Tolkien entitled "Kôr - In a city lost and dead" which encapsulates the eerie feeling of a place bereft of life. It was an early version, I think, of the voyage of Eärendel and his coming to Tol Eressëa, which later became his coming to Tirion and finding it empty because of a festival. (I always suspected there was no narrative need for this, but Tolkien wanted to harken back to this early poem, if only for himself.)
Here's the poem from the Book of Lost Tales, Part 1:
Kôr – In a City Lost and Dead
A sable hill, gigantic, rampart-crowned
Stands gazing out across an azure sea
Under an azure sky, on whose dark ground
Impearled as ‘gainst a floor of porphyry
Gleam marble temples white, and dazzling halls;
And tawny shadows fingered long are made
In fretted bars upon their ivory walls
By massy trees rock-rooted in the shade
Like stony chiselled pillars of the vault
With shaft and capital of black basalt.
There slow forgotten days for ever reap
The silent shadows counting out rich hours;
And no voice stirs; and all the marble towers
White, hot and soundless, ever burn and sleep.
