Fairy-Tale Elves

In each of Tolkien’s major works, the characterization of elves is somewhat different.  In The Lord of the Rings they are noble but elegiac, a fading memory of an ancient time.  In The Silmarillion they are in their prime – bold, defiant, tragic.  In The Hobbit, though, elves are more playful, sprite-like creatures, linked, I suppose, with the Victorian fairy tradition.  The narrator explains, “So they laughed and sang in the trees; and pretty fair nonsense I daresay you think it.  Not that they would care; they would only laugh all the more if you told them so.” 

It is a less sophisticated and perhaps less compelling vision than in the other books, yet there is still something charming about them.  After all, “Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars…”  And Elrond is certainly a dignified character, “noble… strong… wise… venerable… and as kind as summer.” 

It’s interesting to try to visualize the details of the elves-in-the-trees scene.  After they finished their songs, did the elves leap down from the trees, falling like delicate leaves, all softness and ethereal flesh?  Or did they scramble down like nimble animals, with twigs still tangled in their wild hair?  Were they kissing up there, in their leafy hideaways?  Or merely dreaming of the Undying Lands, to which they might return?

  

 

Or were the elves just waiting around for some dwarves to show up, so they could give them a hard time?  The Hobbit’s fairy-like elves are a good example of why it might have been fun if Guillermo del Toro could have made a fresh Hobbit film, not linked with Jackson’s Rings project.  It could have been really, really weird – but thereby captured, perhaps more authentically than did the recent movie, the playfulness and strangeness of the book.  Tolkien may have hoped to firmly affix The Hobbit to his later, more grand and masterly project, but as I read it now, this book seems something apart from that greater story, yet something curious and wonderful, like a child still laughing and dancing with the reckless Peter Pan.

Image: From the Philadelphia Museum of Art.