This
week in Thinklings we turned our attention to Elves and talked in particular
about the influence of Christianity and the Genesis story on their depiction.
We
began first by thinking about The
Silmarillion and the Creation myth that Tolkien builds in this book. We
compared the creation of Eä to the creation of Earth and Arda to Eden, finding
many similarities. We thought about how Eru is and is not like the Christian
God. We considered the fact that ‘Ilúvatar, who retains omnipotence and all the
attributes normally associated with the Christian God, does not rule through
domination but rather through a delegation of power’.[1]
Rather than create the world himself, he sends the Valar to create it; the
Ainulindalë (music of the Ainur) was only an idea, or vision, of what the world
could be, not a creation process in itself. The Valar, we noted, had to enter Eä
and realise their vision with their own hands.
From
this contemplation of the world’s creation, we went on to think about where the
Elves fit into Tolkien’s Creation myth. Are they angels, or more like men, or
something in between? We considered their angelic and their human qualities and
then considered the following notion, which situates the Elves within the
narrative of the Fall:
[Tolkien’s] elves are essentially humans who did not
suffer the fate that, in Tolkien’s Christian belief, human suffered when Adam
sinned and was expelled from the Garden of Eden. One punishment for that sin
was that humans became mortal. Because Tolkien’s Elves did not Fall, they were
immortal. Tolkien also believed that humans’ creative and intellectual powers
declined as a result of the Fall. Elves did not, so their poetry, music, and
art must be indescribably beautiful.[2]
The group generally agreed that Elves are somewhere
between angel and human; like humans they a capable of causing sorrow in the
world, but they also have gifts of artistry and immortality that set them apart
from humans. From this, we took a brief diversion to discuss how immortality might
be seen as a ‘curse’ and mortality as a ‘gift’. It was noted how the Elves envy
men their mortality and how, bound to the world by their immortality, they
cannot move on to the Other world. We also had a think about the following
notion:
Tolkien
did regard death (as the end of
biological life, not as painful experience) not only as a part of human
life but even as necessary for eschatological perfection of Men. [...] The cases of Aragorn and Théoden
thus represent the theological position that with death a man’s life achieves
its perfection and definitiveness by and through death.[3]
We
talked about how this idea of death giving definitiveness to a man’s life. Some
members mentioned Anglo-Saxon ideas of a ‘good’ death and the importance of a
good death. Death concludes a man’s life and thus the manner of it is very
important. Elves, we discussed, lack this sense of conclusion or completion.
To
round off our discussion, we talked about the depiction of the Elves in Jackson’s
trilogy. A number of members were somewhat dissatisfied with how they were
depicted and we lamented the fact that some of their humour and light-heartedness
was lacking from the films, although others liked their depiction. We also
thought it a shame that people unfamiliar with the novels would not come to
know the Elves’ culture and sorrow through their songs – however, it was agreed
that it was best to not have Orlando Bloom break into a rendition of ‘The Song
of Nimrodel’ in the woods of Lothlorien.
Finally,
the group was treated to a magnificent Elf joke, and it seems only fair to
share it with everyone else:
Q:
How many Elves does it take to change a light bulb?
A:
They don't change it; they just sit around in the dark singing sad songs about
the glory of the light that was.
-
Corinne
[1] Benjamin Saxton, ‘J. R. R. Tolkien,
Sub-creation, and Theories of Authorship’, Mythlore, 31 (2013),
47-59 (pp. 55-56).
[2] Edward
Willett, J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of Imaginary Worlds (New Jersey, Enslow Publishers, 2004), p. 49.
[3] Thomas
Fornet-Ponse, ‘Strange and free"—On Some Aspects of the Nature of Elves
and Men’, Tolkien Studies, 7 (2010),
67-89 (p. 76).
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