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noWizardme
Gondolin
Apr 11 2025, 6:11pm
Post #51 of 56
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After 3 days at Rivendell, Sam describes elves thus:
“And Elves, sir! Elves here, and Elves there! Some like kings, terrible and splendid; and some as merry as children. And the music and the singing–not that I have had the time or the heart for much listening since we got here.”
Many Meetings, LOTR Book II
So that seems to cover both the terribly serious fighters of 'many defeats and many fruitless victories' [quoting Elrond], or 'the long defeat' [quoting Galadriel]; AND some who are jolly.
It woud be natural if the serious activist elves were the ones who majored in the story.
How come 'as merry as children' in the face of:
[a] very active satanic overlord who always shows up to lay waste any nice thing anybody has made until by the close of the first age the national character of the elves rests on a cornerstone of deep, unrelenting trauma.
uncle Iorlas
Short answer: I don't know.
Slightly longer answer: there is probably no correct answer (that can be worked out and agreed as consensus: of course forum members mey feel that their opinion is correct, but that's not the same). But somehow merry-as-children elves seem possible to Tolkien, when imagining his story world.
Longer suggestion:
Thinking about this I was reminded of the Buddhist idea of non-attachment. I doubt I understand that idea properly. So prepare one picn of salt before continuing. But I think the idea is something like everything that you might have or enjoy in the world is going to be taken from you by your death or by other things that you can't avoid. And the idea is to be happy anyway - as an internal state rather than a feeling associated with having or getting, or safety or connections or status.
I'm not suggesting here that Buddhism is what Tolkien was modelling his jolly elves upon. It's possible he may have learned about the faith, but there is no evidence for that as far as I know. So let's assume that was not in his mind as he wrote. It's just that an elvish sense of non-attachment would be one way of sloving this puzzle.
As an additional thought - nobody in the real word has the problem that they are potentially immortal and that's why it's sad that they see the things they love wear out or fade or be otherwise lost. But if we want to think about what that might feel like, maybe faiths that teach re-incarnation are one place to go.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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CuriousG
Gondolin
Apr 11 2025, 9:00pm
Post #52 of 56
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But I think the idea is something like everything that you might have or enjoy in the world is going to be taken from you by your death or by other things that you can't avoid. And the idea is to be happy anyway - as an internal state rather than a feeling associated with having or getting, or safety or connections or status. I see your point, and it may be true. I would say my own gut feeling is that Elves are happy because they're attached to Middle-earth. And they're attached in ways we Women/Men are not:
- Bound to world even when they die.
- Having a certain love/appreciation for the world that humans might have, but don't universally have via genetics and/or culture.
Reasons for thinking this way:
Galadriel: ‘The love of the Elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the Sea, and their regret is undying and cannot ever wholly be assuaged. Yet they will cast all away rather than submit to Sauron: for they know him now.
Lorien Elf explaining to hobbits why their cloaks seem "magic": 'Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lórien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.'
The observation that the premier Elven realms we encounter, Lorien and Rivendell, are nature-based and seem to suspend time, as if the Elves just want to enjoy the flora and fauna and the land itself forever.
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uncle Iorlas
Nargothrond
Apr 11 2025, 10:44pm
Post #53 of 56
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Buddhist non-attachment is a good model for how I imagine the elves, living on after so very much water under the bridge, to move through the world.
Somewhere around here, I think in the TV show forum, I said (in the moment it occurred to me) that Maude of the delightful 70s cult film Harold and Maude is a great deal like the elves as I imagine them. I don’t want to spoil a good movie though.
It doesn’t strike me as such a puzzle or contradiction, but I’ve had this model in my head for a while I guess.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Apr 12 2025, 10:08am
Post #54 of 56
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And perhaps those ideas aren't antithetical. The Buddhist I know best is a nurse - and so someone who has a deep attachment to the world and helping the people in it. And faiths that have a 'one and done' expectation about our time on Planet Earth have certainly thrown up a lot of people with a great interest and delight in what is found in this world: I'd include our devoutly Catholic author in that. But more widely I'm talking about the people who have made 'Western' culture.
Perhaps, indeed that is no more that normal healthy human behaviour, and the pathologies are excessive aquisitiveness or competitiveness or need for control and status.
But be as that may, I notice that elves and hobbits share that happy attachment. For example, see Sam's delight in elvish apples or ropes. And maybe that helps with the simple life idea we've been discussing.
Shire society is simple in part because it is protected from outside intereference by forces it does not understand, recognise or appreciate. But it's the hobbits' achievement to make that simplicity stable and happy, rather than creating their own little Mordor.
On that point: When we discussed The Scouring recently I concluded it was possible to think that Shire life had been corrupted entirely because of outside infleunces. Or that you could blame latent features in The Shire; suggesting that they could potentially Mordorise themselves. Of those two explanations my prefered one is the third ( ) -- that just as the One Ring can be seen as either/or/both an 'a force from outside' and a 'psychic amplifier'*, we can't in the end tell whether it is mostly Lotho's fault, or mostly Saruman's.
And anyway, a lot of hobbits went along with it until an alternative leadership returned...
Elves here and elves there have of course a longer wider and deeper experience of the wider world - no unappreciated nobles-in-hiding Ranger force to keep the simple folk safe from sheer no-bless oblige. But maybe 'elves here' do one thing and 'elves there' another. A lot of elves seem to be doing their own stuff: both Gildor and Haldir express caution about mortals, with whom they say they are unfamiliar.
And of course a culture can do more than one thing at one. As per Orsen Wells:
After all, it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. Script of The Third Man, 1949 Video clip here - this quote comes at the end after other interesting material.
--
*
The Ring's ambiguity is present almost the first time we see it, in 'The Shadow of the Past', when Gandalf tells Frodo, 'Give me the ring for a moment'. Frodo unfastened it from its chain and, 'handed it slowly to the wizard. It felt suddenly very heavy, as if either it or Frodo himself was in some way reluctant for Gandalf to touch it.
Either it or Frodo.... The difference is the difference between the world views I have labelled above as 'Boethian' and 'Manichaean'. If Bothius is right, then evil is internal, caused by human sin and weakness and alienation from God; in this case the Ring feels heavy because Frodo (already in the very first stages of addiction, we may say) is unconsciously reluctant to part with it. If there is some truth in the Manichaean view, though, then evil is a force from outside which has in some way been able to make the non-sentient Ring itself evil; so it is indeed the Ring, obeying the will of its master, which does not want to be identified.Both views are furthermore perfectly convincing. ...The idea that on the one hand the Ring is a sort of psychic amplifier , magnifying the unconscious fears or selfishnesses of its owners, and on the other that it is a sentient creature with urges and powers of its own, are both present from the beginning..."
Prof. Tom Shippey, "JRR Tolkien, author of the century." The Chapter on Concepts of Evil in LOTR
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Apr 12 2025, 10:09am)
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Silvered-glass
Nargothrond
Apr 12 2025, 8:01pm
Post #55 of 56
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After 3 days at Rivendell, Sam describes elves thus: “And Elves, sir! Elves here, and Elves there! Some like kings, terrible and splendid; and some as merry as children. And the music and the singing–not that I have had the time or the heart for much listening since we got here.”
Many Meetings, LOTR Book II So that seems to cover both the terribly serious fighters of 'many defeats and many fruitless victories' [quoting Elrond], or 'the long defeat' [quoting Galadriel]; AND some who are jolly.
Miruvor, the cordial of Imladris, would suffice to explain how the Elves are merry in Rivendell. We learn from The Hobbit that Elves like to party and get drunk, even to the point of passing out, and I don't think that aspect of world-building is necessarily limited to the Wood Elves. Elf physiology requires strong substances though, which goes well with how Gandalf is so sparing with miruvor's distribution to the Fellowship. A little more and they would have been too impaired to adventure effectively.
Drinking away the problems is one of the (bad) ways of coping with trauma. This also has a more explicit precedent with the Elven drink limpë in the framing story of The Book of Lost Tales.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Apr 13 2025, 7:02pm
Post #56 of 56
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Gives "High Elves" a whole new meaning!
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Yes, certainly "merry" is a euphemism for being intoxicated. But Sam says the elves are 'merry as children', which I have never heard of as a euphemism for drunkeness
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the idea of sloshed, blotto, wasted, bombed, loaded, stewed, stoned, blitzed or otherwise pharmacologically assisted elves. Thanks for that!
And I do see (though not double) where you might be coming from. Not only does Tolkien establish a drinking culture for (some) elves in TH -- my word, acceptable subject-matter for children's books was different then! -- but I was reminded of this bit from LOTR (Shortcut to Mushrooms):
“They halted under an elm tree: its leaves though fast turning yellow were still thick, and the ground at its feet was fairly dry and sheltered. When they came to make their meal, they found that the Elves had filled their bottles with a clear drink, pale golden in colour: it had the scent of a honey made of many flowers, and was wonderfully refreshing. Very soon they were laughing, and snapping their fingers at rain, and at Black Riders. The last few miles, they felt, would soon be behind them.
Frodo propped his back against the tree-trunk, and closed his eyes. Sam and Pippin sat near, and they began to hum, and then to sing softly:
Ho! Ho! Ho! to the bottle I go
To heal my heart and drown my woe. Rain may fall and wind may blow, And many miles be still to go,
But under a tall tree I will lie,
And let the clouds go sailing by.”
So I can certainly read what ever is in those bottles now as being a mood-altering substance (whether alcohol or something else); though possibly it isn't and the hobbits are just in need of their lunch.
[A previous discussion of this passage brough us this post from Darkstone about 'mad honey' which is a lot of fun (Darkstone's post, I mean) ]
I also went back and read Frodo, Sam and Pippin's encounter with Gildor et al. with this idea in mind. I enjoyed the idea of the rather odd accounts Sam and Pippin give of it being drug induced rather than being their first encounter with beings that have a mystical side.
For example, everyone passes out, sleeps through the departure of their hosts, and memories of the events the next day are a bit ...hazy.
Indeed it's notable that no other elf-encounter the hobbits have take them that way, and the idea that Gildor got them stoned, high or otherwise 'merry' does account for that.
If it was alcohol, Frodo does seem pretty tollerant the next morning of Pippin running about and signing though - no sign of a wicked hangover.
But of course there is nothing to say that the intoxicant (if there was one) was alcohol. And running about and singing before asking to stop today's hike for a long pub lunch is a bit odd even for Pippin. He sems to have forgoten completely that they are supposed to be crossing the Shire on the quiet, and anyway are now being pursued by sinister Riders, who may or may not be looking for them on that road, or thinking The Perch is a fine place to nab them.
So maybe Pippin is that stupid sober (at least in this early phase of the adventure before the danger is supposed to have started), or maybe he is not sober.
A hypothicated intoxicant that could in any case be fictitious could be imagined to do anything whatsoever - good for just having fun with ideas, not so good for Critical analysis and discussion of Tolkien's literary works.
Onwards to the more general idea of elvish culture in Middle-earth being 'on its uppers' in more than one sense of the word. It would give things a somewhat Brave New World feel, I think. But rather sad.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Apr 13 2025, 7:03pm)
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