Tolkien's Emotional Universe

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Ath, thank you for that lovely, beautiful, sorrowful and TRUE post. I'm not sure that I have anything to add, but I couldn't let it go by without acknowledging it.

[axordil]

There's one important difference, it occurs to me, between LOTR and Beowulf. In Beowulf the disenchantment is our own doing: we slay the monsters because we cannot live with that we neither control nor understand. That we simultaneously pine for what we destroy is a crux of the work--one cannot slay dragons when one has slain them all. That's not the case in LOTR, where the disenchantment is In The Music.

[WampusCat]

It can even be something we're kind of happy about losing, but it's still loss.

Like the Ring. After all his effort to destroy it -- after his willing intent to destroy it -- Frodo still yearned to touch it, back home in the Shire. At least that is my belief. Bilbo said it outright, and we assume that he is senile. But I think both hobbits never stopped desiring it.

[N.E. Brigand]

In Beowulf the disenchantment is our own doing: we slay the monsters because we cannot live with that we neither control nor understand.

Not because the monsters are killing people?

[axordil]

That too. But before the hero is found to kill them, people did what they always did in the face of the inimitable unknown: cower. Suffer. Leave. Those are the normative responses of humanity when faced with monsters in the absence of the monster-slayer. Beowulf, like the monsters he kills, is both like us...and not like us. He comes from a foreign land, with his own comitatus in tow, full of tales of unlikely deeds and self-assurance. We, the non-heroic, are almost as afraid of him as we are of the demons he wrestles with. Not without cause, either: no son of Hrothgar is there to take the throne when the time comes, only this interloper.

To face the unknown, to unmask the unknown, to name the unknown, is part and parcel of defeating the unknown. Or of being defeated by it. Or of becoming it.

[Sassafras]

Just a wee bit scattered and it's taken a long time but for what it's worth, here's part two:

And then there are the Elves.......



“They are a fair folk, and wonderful, and they have a power over the hearts of Men. And yet I think sometimes that it might have been better if we had never met them, but had walked in lowlier ways. For already they are ancient in knowledge; and they are proud and enduring. In their light we are dimmed, or we burn with too quick a flame, and the weight of our doom lies the heavier on us.”
Children of Húrin:

They do have a power. And in their light we are dimmed. Those two observations are close to an absolute for me but it’s hard to generalize about Elves and say that they are one thing or the other because they are neither one-dimensional nor uniformly good, or pure, or wise, or valiant or any of those ‘heroic’ qualities. There is also malice, greed, jealousy, covetousness, impetuosity, darkness and any number of negatives. They are both like and unlike us but in all ways they are magnified.

And as I told Voronwë a short time ago when he nudged me about finishing this post ....... Trying to pin down and examine my emotional response toward Elves is like trying to catch lightening in a bottle. Elusive, just around the corner and out of sight, they are inspiring but it seems I cannot unscramble my brain enough to find adequate words and so am reduced to the descriptive. It’s like trying to rationally explain the essence of great music ....... it can’t really be done ...... When one lacks the requisite frame of reference one can only hint at the eloquence.

That said,
There is a grandeur about them, they are statuesque even, complex and multi-dimensional, or in contrast, seemingly of deceptively simple demeanor...... deceptive because although Tolkien stated that Elves represent the 'aesthetic and creative aspects of mankind'...... had that been the sum total we would have had cardboard paragons and thus there is also duality. While we can (and I do) attribute motives really I can do no more than approximate the broad outlines of their humanity (elvishness?) because while similar enough to recognize they are so much more, more radiant with an intrinsic clear light; light I have only known reflected on rare occasion.

They are described as tall, grey-eyed and luminous; their physical appearance being but a metaphor for the artistic sublime but above all ( I believe) for passion. Say what you will about Elves … but, at least in the First Age, they Live!

I was a mere girl of twenty-two when I met the immortal race of Elves. Real Elves. Not the elves I had been accustomed to meeting in the pages of my story books … not the tiny, twee, winged-sprite sort of elves who danced in fairy circles and lived under mushrooms and even were sometimes malicious or at least mischievous and stole babies replacing them with changelings. Those elves seldom served much purpose other than to introduce the magic of misplaced time into a story.......but they were not relevant: they did not live and breath and if they cast spells or met with misfortune, I didn’t much care. In contrast , I very much did care about The Quendi, for are they not nobility incarnate and filled with the living essence of power in Middle-earth? ....... There was a glamour upon them which hinted at a metaphysical language I could intuit but not properly translate. They were fey and dangerous in the way that all beings with great knowledge are dangerous and they inspired in me an almost religious awe. But they were, despite the wisdom of their great souls, ( or perhaps because of it) overwhelmingly tinged with sorrow.......it was no mere transient state but instead one instinctively felt it was inextricably entwined into the very substance of their ontological being.

The first lesson I learned about Elves was that in Tolkien’s world there are no happy endings. And, somehow the inevitable Fall and subsequent ramifications of an ever encroaching regret makes them all the more alive and perhaps even more relevant to the human condition.

Athrabeth wrote:

But not one of them, not even the greatest and most blissful of the Eldar in Aman itself, can escape the inevitability of losing something, or someone, or some time or place that was loved

Ultimately, the story of the Quendi is one of love and loss and the fall from grace.

In the Lord of the Rings, Legolas says:
"For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream. Yet beneath the sun all things must wear to an end at last.

The Elves are fading, we are told. Life itself is becoming a burden to them. Fading: The very word carries doom within itself........ slowly, inexorably within Arda’s linear time they are thinning into transparency while the Men around them become ever more solidly involved in history.

"Yet if you fail, then we are laid bare to the enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the times of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and be forgotten."


The birthright of the Elves was starlight and the blessed light of Valinor; but somehow, somewhere in the music, the tragedy of their lives was written....... Still, it seems to me, that it was only following the brutal destruction of the Trees which then lead to the emergence of a fractured, less potent light of sun and moon, were they ever after touched with a melancholy and so began the transformation from vivid passion into one of waning, nostalgia, bereavement and yes, regret .

Galadriel called it The Long Defeat.


I think it begins with Míriel.......

The birth of Fëanor has sapped all of her will and all of her resolve ....and in near total exhaustion she is reduced to the bare essentials of self- preservation. That light within, that spark which illuminates, has grown dim and her soul has folded in upon itself depriving her of the very ability to go on living. Her choice is no choice. She cannot remain in the physical world and be wife to Finwë or mother to Fëanor … nothing remains … she is empty.: The magnitude of the fire that is Fëanor has sucked all life out of her.

"It is indeed unhappy,’ said Míriel ‘and I would weep, if I were not so weary. But hold me blameless in this, and in all that may come after."

And we do know what does come after.


There have been so many words written about Fëanor that it is impossible to know quite where or how to begin. I can without apology say that in sheer magnitude of power he is immensely attractive to me … One perhaps shouldn’t be enamored but the appeal is both primitive and strong and I can easily enough find within myself an unabashed admiration for the heights he soared together in with empathy for the depths to which he finally plummeted.

Then he died; but had neither burial nor tomb, for so fiery was his spirit that as it sped his body fell to ash, and was born away like smoke; and his likeness never again appeared in Arda, neither has his spirit left the halls of Mandos.

Is Fëanor not the perfect example of a fallen angel? The prime creative force turned destructive. And can we not all recognize in ourselves the capacity to destroy what we love?.......I am, quite simply, awed by the vibrancy of his terrible charisma; yet, juxtaposed with his fearsome artistry, one sees that he lacks simple emotional intelligence. He is without restraint and is thus fundamentally flawed. Never entirely satisfied with the glories of the Silmarils, he is paradoxically envious of his own creation and is ravaged by the desire to possess them. Then again perhaps it was more that the purity of art in harmony with nature was not in him when he thought to capture (imprison?) the divine Light of Teleperion and Laurelin.

There is no balance in him.

In the First Age, the Elves are in the first full flush of youth.......The mistakes made are the mistakes of both youth and excess and Fëanor is master of impulse without insight.......as is fitting, I suppose, for he who precipitates the Fall, and thereby brings himself and (ultimately) all his kind into closer proximity with the very fabric of Evil. In selfishness and in pride exacerbated by the lust to possess ...... Fëanor contributes mightily to Arda marred. He has, at the last, been manipulated into playing a sympathetic string in the cacophony of Morgoth’s Ring.

It is in the Third Age the Eldar, long sundered from Aman, have become a people wearied by confinement to the circles of the world and with the futile effort of preserving the past. It cannot be done in this world or any other and all that is left to them is to leave the land that has shaped them as they have shaped it. They can take the straight road but they can never again return to the lands of Middle-earth.

Yet I do not believe that the world about us will ever be as it was of old, or the light of the sun as it was aforetime. For the Elves, I fear, it will prove at best a truce, in which they may pass to the Sea unhindered and leave Middle-earth forever. Alas for Lothlórien that I love! It would be a poor life in a land where no mallorn grew. But if there are mallorn trees beyond the Great Sea, none have reported it.

One wonders then if they will carry the sorrow with them into Aman. Do they leave the shores of Middle-earth with joy......or are their hearts filled with the tears of resignation and regret. If it is to be regret, then the heart aches with unbearable poignancy.


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To borrow from Sam again:

“Though that doesn’t do them justice by a long road.”

I haven’t even approached half of what I'd like to say and therefore, I think,

To be continued:

[Nin]

I am afraid my post may seem little within all those in here.

I read LOTR for the first time when I was twelve, almost 13 in hospital for a harmless operation. I could merge into it. Read all day long, finish the three books within one week. Yet, at that moment, I did not fall in love with the books. I liked the story, but I stayed, somehow, at the Fairy Tale level. I had not read the Hobbit and when I finally read it, a few years later, I was disappointed.

I re-read it a few months later and then dozens of times. Love on second sight. I wrote music to the poems. I knew pages entirely by heart. For years, I imagined myself marrying Éomer. One of my favourite characters.

I had liked fantasy before (like for instance, Darkness Rising by Susan Cooper or German fantasy, the Neverending Story or Krabat – the Germans will know) And I was and I am still very alone with that in my family and surroundings. My father had refused to buy me those books – he considered them like some kind of under culture.

I always felt – and I still do feel that way – that I have to justify my love for LOTR. That by now, by growing up I should have preferred deeper books, more classic books, books who are “good” literature. Yet, I love Tolkien. I still try to explain, when I explain that it is different from all other fantasy, that it is more. Yet, from all my family members for instance, there is a certain disdain for LOTR or for any other fantasy books. My sister is complaining about the fact that her ten year old son reads only Harry Potter – and he reads the novels on his own. I don’t understand that.

First, LOTR is a pleasure to read. There is an epic story, action, things and creatures which make you dream and challenge your imagination. Maybe that’s why so many people I know don’t consider it as “good” literature. It’s a pleasure to read. Accessible for everyone. You don’t need to study literature to read and enjoy LOTR.

And then…

I have not analysed the universe of Tolkien like some of you have. My understanding and my liking is still “from the guts”. Yet, I see that the book has grown with me. I read a different story when I was twelve than when I was thirty. There are ways to read the story. You can feel the knowledge of the Professor, the knowledge of myths of other times and other origins. It has a depth I have found in no other fantasy.

Well, I have to prepare exams for tomorrow, I just wanted to add a small word about favourite characters. For a long time, I favoured Éomer. I liked it how he, whom nothing had prepared to that, knows what to do, how to choose between right and wrong. When he had to follow Aragorn to what looked like a certain death, he follows without any hesitation without knowledge of the Ring, of the Legends of old. He follows because he knows what is good and is ready to die for it. I read it like that and for me it was like an echo of Sam and yet stronger, for unlike Sam, he had not a person to whom he was attached like Sam was to Frodo. Well, I have always liked Éomer and his impetuous youth. And maybe also the fact that his impetuous youth had the same value as Elrond’s knowledge, that a simple life as a gardener has as much value as a warrior as someone who is lored and powerful as the elves. Maybe it’s the fact that LOTR despite being a story about good and evil does not judge which way to do good is the best.

Well, you can go back to the wise and powerful posting now, simple minds like me are not made to linger for long among such heights

[Primula Baggins]

There's nothing simple about your mind, Nin.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Great posts, Sassy AND Nin! I don't have time to respond to either of them now, but I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge them. It warms my heart to see such thought and emotion.

[solicitr]

no son of Hrothgar is there to take the throne when the time comes, only this interloper.

A quibble: Beowulf succeeds Hygelac as king of the Geats. Hrothgar's successor is his (nogoodnik) nephew.

Sassy and Nin: superb posts.

[axordil]

That's true, thanks for jogging my memory.

And maybe also the fact that his impetuous youth had the same value as Elrond’s knowledge, that a simple life as a gardener has as much value as a warrior as someone who is lored and powerful as the elves. Maybe it’s the fact that LOTR despite being a story about good and evil does not judge which way to do good is the best.

I think this is so, and I can't help but feel the imprimatur of WWI and the trenches there, where enlisted man and officer alike were equally likely to fall.

She cannot remain in the physical world and be wife to Finwë or mother to Fëanor … nothing remains … she is empty.: The magnitude of the fire that is Fëanor has sucked all life out of her.

Now that's something I hadn't thought about before in JRRT--the motif so common in 19th and 20th century Gothic-tinged literature of the Child as Monster (or in the case of Frankenstein, the Monster as Child), as a vampiric force that cannot be contained.

ETA: When was Christopher born again?

[solicitr]

1924- long after the Lost Tales, but long, long before the death of Míriel arose.

[axordil]

I do find myself wondering now if one of the kids was particularly hard on Edith. I don't normally go in for biographical criticism (WWI doesn't count, being a pretty broad and traumatic event for a generation of writers) but it's such an odd little element for a guy to write about in that part of the century, with such far-ranging implications for his work...

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's an interesting thought, Ax. Can you expound further on that?

[axordil]

Well, the motif of the child as monster/vampire, both draining the mother of life and turning out to be beyond control, is usually found in more Gothic works, and pretty much by women authors, at least that I'm familiar with. It's there in Mary Shelley, as I said, but also in more recent works--think Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child or Toni Morrison's Beloved. It's the dark underside of the "normal" mother-child relationship.

So what is it doing in the Sil, which isn't much about moms and kids? I need to go look and see if it crops up in Celtic or Germanic myth and legend now, because if it doesn't, it's just an odd and unexpected--and effective--twist. If she had died in childbirth plain and simple, it would have sufficed to explain Finwë's remarriage and the complications thereof, but the particular way it's presented raises these questions for me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think that the resemblence may be mostly accidental. In order to see what Tolkien is really talking about, one has to look at the full story of Míriel and Finwë, including the discussion in the essay Laws and Customs of the Eldar, rather than just the extremely abbreviated story that Christopher included in the published Silmarillion. Míriel's story is not so much about Fëanor draining the life out of her as it is about Death coming into the world as a result of it's Marring by Melkor. It is also about the permanancy of Love, which can survive the finality of Death, and even the intrusion of third parties and other loves. Míriel and Finwë's reunion is a highly important -- and greatly ignored -- part of the story.

[axordil]

Maybe the onus for the echo there would be on CJRT's selection then...

BTW, I didn't want to imply before that any of JRRT's kids were monsters. Just that I could see that a difficult birth or postpartum period for his beloved Edith could leave a mark on him. I know such a thing would do so for me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That could well be. I've often wondered about Christopher's relationship with his mother. I have long had the impression (I don't know whether it is justified) that he particularly assimilated his father's idealized vision of Edith as Lúthien. Lúthien is virtually the only female character in the Silmarillion who is not diminished by Chrisopher's editing choices.

[solicitr]

That could merely be because the Beren and Lúthien section of QS was complete and needed little editing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's not really true, soli. In fact, Christopher did quite a bit of combining of different versions to form the narrative included in the published book. More to the point, he actually included MORE detail than his father intended. Tolkien initially began what Christopher calls version "A", but broke off about half way expressly because it was getting too long, and began the somewhat more compressed version "B". Yet Christopher nonetheless included most of version "A" as far as it went.

In contrast, the fourth version of Finwë and Míriel was in fact complete (and much more recent than the work on Beren and Lúthien) and needed little editing, yet Christopher included only a tiny portion of it.