The Battle of Evermore and the timeless nature of fantasy

(early metal-ish Friday)

That it is told in the language of fantasy is not an accident, or because Tolkien was an escapist, or because he was writing for children. It is a fantasy because fantasy is the natural, the appropriate language for the recounting of the spiritual journey and the struggle of good and evil in the soul.

--Ursula LeGuin, “On Fantasy and Science Fiction”

The critics who have dismissed fantasy as juvenile escapism have failed to recognize that fantasy grapples with real and eternally pressing issues, albeit wrapped in metaphor and fantastic trappings.

The same critics who worship at the altar of realism and extol the virtues of novels about average people in familiar times cannot admit their darlings have rapidly aged and are fast losing their relevance. While the classics of fantasy remain as fresh today as the day they were written.

That’s because the language of fantasy is unbound by time, or place. It deals with the big issues—conflict within and without, love, sorrow, friendship, the inevitable march of time, pain, decay and death—in poetic abstraction, and in heroic meter and timbre. Modern novels that reference an author’s time and place will confuse the modern reader with surroundings that grow increasingly abstract and impenetrable with the passing years, while the Hyborian Age or Middle-Earth remain eternally familiar and inhabitable even as their authors slip further into the past. They are distanced from the ordinary, but close to the human heart.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, though perhaps never as well as this version by Heart. Because we all grasp its emotional depths, and understand the meaning of the plaintive cries.

The apples turn to brown and black

The tyrant's face is red

Oh war is common cry

Pick up your swords and fly

We’re always trying to bring the balance back. It’s the eternal struggle never won, but once in a while we experience the blessed peace of equilibrium.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, and remain as unspoiled as Lothlorien, because it is the timeless matter of fantasy.