Q. Andúnë pella Vardo nu luini tellumar “West beyond [the borders of] Varda’s under blue domes”

Q. Andúnë pella Vardo nu luini tellumar, “West beyond [the borders of] Varda’s under blue domes”

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The 5th phrase of the prose Namárië. Tolkien altered the text from the poetic version as follows:

Andúnë pella Vardo tellumar nu luini >> Andúnë pella Vardo nu luini tellumar

Tolkien moved the preposition and adjective nu luini “under blue” to be in front of the plural noun tellumar “domes” that it modifies. However, this separates the genitive modifier Vardo “Varda’s” from its noun, which is hard to explain. It might make more sense to place Vardo after the preposition nu “under” to give the complete noun phrase Vardo luini tellumar “Varda’s blue domes”, or perhaps moving it to the end as in luini tellumar Vardo “blue vaults of Varda” (which is the poetic translation):

Andúnë pella Vardo nu luini tellumar »»» *Andúnë pella nu luini tellumar Vardo

The preposition pella “beyond” also presents some problems of interpretion, given that it follows the noun that it modifies. See the entry for Q. pella for further discussion.

Reference ✧ RGEO/58 ✧ Andūne pella Vardo nu luini tellumar “West beyond (the borders of) Varda’s under blue domes”

Elements

Andúnë “The West” ✧ RGEO/58 (Andūne)
pella “beyond (boundary or limit)” ✧ RGEO/58
Varda “Exalted, Lofty, Sublime” genitive ✧ RGEO/58 (Vardo)
nu “under, beneath” ✧ RGEO/58
luinë “blue” plural ✧ RGEO/58 (luini)
telluma “dome, cupola, vault” plural ✧ RGEO/58 (tellumar)

Element In