The Lord of the Rings is back and, in the first episode of the Rings of Power, it’s hard to tear your eyes from the massive pile of elven helmets left on the battlefield, as crows caw in the background.
The scene is reminiscent of Vasily Vereshchagin’s famous painting, The Apotheosis of War. This painting hangs in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, a place I never want to return to, on account of the war that was launched by Russia against my native country, Ukraine, on February 24th of this year.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Now that Ukraine is on the counteroffensive, I can’t seem to take a deep breath. Even from thousands of miles away, war makes everything about itself.
With Ukrainian friends and other people I hold dear furiously driving back the Russians, atrocities in formerly occupied territories are revealed, and every passing minute brings the possibility of more loss. I’ve learned to live with this possibility in recent months, but now it has an aura of hope around it.
Hope is not for the faint-hearted, I can tell you that much.
This brings me back to another Lord of the Rings character, Arwen. In Peter Jackson’s films, Arwen, as portrayed by Liv Tyler, was a beautiful badass. In Tolkien’s original books, however, Arwen’s role was to wait, send hope, and keep faith.
This more old-fashioned Arwen was meant to keep a light burning, even when she was afraid. When I was a teenager, I thought that she was boring. Now I know how incredibly hard her role was.
In Dorothy Parker’s “Penelope,” the waiting wife is seemingly at odds with the adventurous husband:
In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.
The fate of Odysseus is more exciting, and Penelope is seemingly overshadowed by it. Perhaps she is even bitter.
Maybe, on the other hand, these two halves are meant to complement one another. Some of us fight, and some of us keep the lights on. Some are able to do both. In all of these scenarios, faith is what binds together the fighter and the person who waits for the fighter.
When I was a teenager who disdained Tolkien’s Arwen, I traveled to Moscow with my mother and stood in front of The Apotheosis of War. I distinctly remember that I shivered. I remember how the floors creaked. I remember that it was summer in the capital of the country that I did not curse then.
A very friendly art critic we met there walked the halls with us, pointing out details you’d otherwise never spot. It was a different time, and this critic was excited to meet a family that had traveled all the way from the United States, eager to show us around.
As I remember, this kind and talkative man didn’t have much to say about Vereshchagin. He wanted to be silent.
The memory is not an aberration to me these days, I don’t want to erase it.
I did not betray that solemn moment. It was others who betrayed me, and millions like me, and all I can do now is keep the lights burning.
It’s my hope that Russians, collectively, understand what they have done, but also, that’s not up to me to decide. All I have to decide is whether or not I am strong enough to believe. And that decision is easy.
Image: Apotheosis of war
