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.

Elvish Work

As they about to leave Lothlórien, the members of the Fellowship receive gifts from Galadriel and the Elves.  Upon receiving some impressive cloaks, Pippin asks if they are magical garments.  The leader of the Elves replies, “I do not know what you mean by that… They are elvish robes, certainly, if that is what you mean.  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.”

One of the tragedies of our world is that this form of labor is out of reach for so many, who are bound to systems of production and conditions of labor that are far from idyllic.  William Morris, the nineteenth-century British artist and activist, imagined something like the elvish vision of work.  Useful Work Versus Useless Toil (Penguin Great Ideas, 2008) is a great introduction to his thought, and may even show us some hidden paths to Lórien.

Image:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Morris_Tulip_and_Willow_design_1873.jpg

The Lady Galadriel

Galadriel is one of Tolkien’s more developed – and most fascinating – female characters.  In part, this is because she is extremely powerful.  And though this power rests partly in her great beauty, she is full of complexity and surprises.  In the chapter “The Mirror of Galadriel,” she charms Gimli the Dwarf not just with her appearance, but with her knowledge of and respect for his culture.  Despite the enmity that existed between Elves and Dwarves, she says, “Dark is the water of Kheled-zâram, and cold are the springs of Kibil-nâla, and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dûm in Elder Days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone.”  “And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding.”

Galadriel isn’t just beautiful – she is profoundly intelligent, covertly ambitious, and generally “deep.”  What does Galadriel see, when she looks into the Mirror of water and starlight that offers visions from afar?  When tempted by the offer of the One Ring, she notes that she could become “Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain!  Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning!  Stronger than the foundations of the earth.”  Surely she could see those forces echoed in her own mind and body.  Or she might simply see “a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.”  In Galadriel there is power and humility, urgency and patience, mystery and revelation.

Is Aragorn right to say that there is no evil in her?  Perhaps.  Yet surely he is right to say “Speak no evil of the Lady Galadriel!” – for she is, as Frodo says of her, “wise and fearless and fair.”

 

 

Image: Adapted from Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee.

 

The Memory of the Land

In “The Ring Goes South,” Gimli the dwarf says, “we have wrought the image of those mountains into many works of metal and of stone, and into many songs and tales.”  The landscape of Middle-earth is certainly a powerful force in the minds of the book’s characters.  Yet, nature in the story is not merely a static object, but a living force.  It is something that feels and remembers.  The connection is, of course, particularly strong in connection with the elves.  Gandalf observes, “Much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.”  Legolas actually hears the stones lament the vanished Elves: “deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone.”

In real life, we may think the landscape remembers us – but usually because we have damaged it so severely that we can see its lingering scars.  In Middle-earth, it is the life – perhaps even the soul – of nature that speaks and remembers, not just its broken bones.