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I finished Tolkien's letters last night. Thank you, Jeff, for prompting me to read that. What a marvelous mind and spirit that man had! When the end came I felt as though I had lost a beloved grandfather.
I guess I've always felt more or less that the Elves in Middle Earth during the end of the third age, (the time depicted in LotR), represented Good in Tolkien's universe. But from the letters I've discovered that he felt they had a tragic flaw ... of wishing to stop time. The three rings were all meant for preservation, in one way or another. It's true! Elves have an acceptance that new things will come into being. They intellectually understand that time must go forward. Yet their hearts are all in the past. The world before it was stained. The beauty of the two trees. Rivendell is a place of reflection, not of action, and Lorien is where a little bit of the world from ages gone by remains unchanged.
Tolkien seemed to share that feeling, to a certain extent. Perhaps he saw it as a tragic flaw in himself, as well.
Side remark: the funniest moment in the letters: at one point, when describing the anger of some fans over an early dramatization of LotR on the BBC, and the reviewers of it, he says this:
"My correspondence is now increased by letters of fury against the critics and the broadcast. One elderly lady -- in part the model for 'Lobelia' indeed, though she does not suspect it -- would I think certainly have set about Auden (and others) had they been in range of her umbrella."
[ May 18, 2004, 05:35 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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There is an even greater flaw: blindness. Consider that the Elves blamed Man's moral failings for the preservation of the OneRing. Yet if the OneRing had been destroyed in the first War, the Elves would have had to leave Middle Earth for the same reason that they had to leave after the second War.
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I was never comfortable with the elves in Middle-Earth either. They're cold and elitist, and they give me the creeps. I mean, they're cool and all, and they were nice to visit along the way, but I wouldn't want to live there. No, I much prefer hobbits. And maybe ents too (although they may be a little too slow for me).
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I'm going to have to get this book. It sounds fascinating.
As for the elves, I could tell Tolkien definitely never intended for them to be seen as perfectly good. But all their really bad actions with world-wide consequences took place before the LotR.
It'll be interesting to take a look at the history with that flaw in mind.
They're Old Money; the whole Mordor thing is basically a NIMBY problem.
Elves are to Tolkien what Spock was to TOS; every time you need somebody who can walk on snow or see for miles or talk about how much better things were a hundred years ago or has a nicitating eyelid, you've got a go-to chap with pointy ears and a snooty attitude.
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<laughs> Oh, wow, I SO disagree. Though that probably goes without saying.
To say the Elves' problem with Mordor was a NIMBY one is completely wrong. There was no side-effect of Morder that the Elves enjoyed and participated in. There was no benefit to them. Mordor was trying to enslave them.
I love hobbits, too, but if it weren't for rangers and elves, hobbits would long ago have been run out of their lovely little land. Hobbits had ceased to remember they were being protected.
Here's a question that is at the heart of my current moral questioning. Is it better to be like Tom Bombadil, observing and exercising little or no influence, loving things for their own sakes, and leaving them as they are? Or should one be like Gandalf who is striving with people and working to inspire them always to accomplish great things and be the best they can be? The one is more eastern-religion-like, and the other is at the heart of Christianity. Which way (or neither) is the way of higher wisdom?
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I think the answer to your question lies in whether one wishes to be part of the world or not.
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You're right, Tom. And I AM part of the world. I'm not just here as an observer or appreciator.
I'm reading also the excellent book by Honore's dad about Darwin's finches. The scientists studying the birds watch what happens as they go through a terrible drought, and their population is decreased from several thousand to a few hundred. One of the birds becomes a camp hanger on, perching on the researcher's shoulders and picking up crumbs. I don't see how they can help but grieve, in that case. How they can record and watch and not try to help? Of course helping would destroy the validity of the study (in which they discovered really important stuff) yet I don't think I could not do whatever I could to help, and study be hanged.
Yet the power to do good is as dangerous a power as any other. Galadriel rejected Sauron's ring, though she accepted the one she had, Nenya, and the power it conveyed.
We have all been given great power. How shall we use it? How ought we to use it?
[ May 18, 2004, 03:26 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Honore, your dad's book was reviewed in Scientific American this month, too! Did you see that? Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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Yup... that was their second "fall". To have their cake and eat it too: To remain in the mortal world in a simulated blissful Valinor with them as the superior caste.
[ May 18, 2004, 03:39 PM: Message edited by: Telperion the Silver ]
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quote: There's so much good you could have done, Uatu. There's so much you know. So much you could remind people of. You said there's no evil, Uatu. You said there's no devil. There is. You're it. You're him. You could have helped us. You could have done such amazing things. Such glorious things. But you only thought of yourself. To do nothing in the face of need, Uatu. That's evil.
--Earth X #X
(For the uninitiated, "Uatu", also known as "the Watcher", is a member of an alien race dedicated to watchful noninterference. Prior to Earth X, Uatu had always been depicted as on the side of good.)
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That was the whole reason why they came east in the first place -- to be a big fish in a small pond. I find the elves beautiful and useful, but I certainly don't *like* them. At least, not the ones that came east (like Galadriel).
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To me, the elves' tragic flaw is that they're really, really, really boring.
And I also agree, to some extent, with TomD.
But mostly, when you're dealing with someone as boring as Tolkien to begin with and THEN add a people as boring as the elves...phew, it's like a literary soporific.
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Dante, I'm astonished that you think that. I suppose there is no accounting for tastes. I've read the trilogy 10 or 15 times, and I've never yet been bored. Each time it means more to me, in fact, and I want to know more about it, to understand it better. I wish there were better information available about the elvish languages. I'd like to study them. I found out one new word in the Letters. The word for cow (in Q. or S., can't remember) is mundo. He suggested some bull names, Aramund (king of bulls), and so on, and some cow names, though my favorite suggestion of his was from Greek, Galathea which could be interpreted as goddess of milk.
[ May 18, 2004, 05:16 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Another quote from the letters that broke me up. He was answering a question about the existence of matriarchs like Smeagol's grandmother in Hobbit culture as a whole.
quote: A well-known case, also, was that of Lalia the Great (or less courteously the Fat). Fortinbras II, one time head of the Tooks and Thain, married Lalia of the Clayhangers in 1314, when he was 36 and she was 31. He died in 1380 at the age of 102, but she long outlived him, coming to an unfortunate end in 1402 at the age of 119. So she ruled the Tooks and the Great Smials for 22 years, a great and memorable, if not universally beloved, 'matriarch'. She was not at the famous Party (SY 1401), but was prevented from attending rather by her great size and immobility than by her age. Her son, Ferumbras, had no wife, being unable (it was alleged) to find anyone willing to occupy apartments in the Great Smials, under the rule of Lalia. Lalia, in her last and fattest years, had the custom of being wheeled to the Great Door, to take the air on a fine morning. In the spring of SY 1402 her clumsy attendant let the heavy chair run over the threshold and tipped Lalia down the flight of steps into the garden. So ended a reign and life that might well have rivalled that of the Great Took.
It was widely rumoured that the attendant was Pearl (Pippin's sister), though the Tooks tried to keep the matter within the family. At the celebration of Ferumbras' accession the displeasure and regret of the family was formally expressed by the exclusion of Pearl from the ceremony and feast; but it did not escape notice that later (after a decent interval) she appeared in a splendid necklace of her name-jewels that had long lain in the hoard of the Thains.
[ May 18, 2004, 05:47 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Oh, I understand that lots of people, most of them of otherwise sound mind, really LIKE Tolkien, aka. But to me, he is the height of tedium, and his elves are its epitometic, monolithic symbols.
I can't get through a Tolkien book because after a few hundred pages of "...and then THESE elves did THIS..." I am filled with the desire to grab somebody by the lapels and scream, "I...don't...CARE!"
Others apparently find that stuff interesting, but I need real, accessible characters to care, and for me, the elves are neither. And, of course, a lack of caring will get me away from a book faster than Ethalanmiriadorianiel didst set sail away to the Golden Isles in tremulous flight from her once-beloved Gondorlorioliscious in the Really Ancient Times of the Twenty-third Age of the Decidedly Deciduous Folk.
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But Tolkien's Elves WEREN'T stuffy. For heaven's sake, don't you people remember 'The Hobbit,' and the song the Rivendell Elves sung to Bilbo and Co. as they entered?
Tolkien's Elves, from what I picked up from the books, were downright MERRY. The aloof, snooty ones were the DWARVES.
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Well, Dwarves were aloof and snotty towards Elves. Big grudge-holders, the Dwarves.
And you know, I think Tolkien actually liked Men more than Elves. As individuals, the characters that are the most good, the most powerful, and the most noteworthy are all mortal-with the exception of those who *marry* mortals. But that's just a vibe I get.
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quote: I was never comfortable with the elves in Middle-Earth either. They're cold and elitist, and they give me the creeps.
I agree digging-holes - thats how they came across to me in the book - and in the film!
Uuummm! all except Legolas of course - hot stuff - friendly mingler & totally the opposite of creepy - referring to the Orlando Bloom - totally changed my view of elves - off to bed to dream of elves!
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