That old thread is a wonderful thing to behold! I remember it fondly, as the elves remember their past days. Truth be told, I also remember wondering with some degree of amusement how long Saucepan had been a father; I knew that Squatter was not; I can say this now: I know Sauce better!
Yet, thoughts and life goes on and so I would like to add something here that I did not to that discussion: proof that Estelyn need not close this thread just yet.
Tolkien's passage reverberates for me with something akin to musical harmony. There is an allusion which made me favour Rimbaud's idea that Arwen's passing belongs to the expression of theme and literary type rather than to psychological reality. It is the similarity between Tolkien's description of Arwen's passing and Psalm 103, verses 15 and 16. Helen has copied Tolkien's description from the Appendix into the first post here. Compare that with the King James' Bible:
Quote:
As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
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I see this as suggesting that Arwen's role in
Lord of the Rings is to bridge that very difference beteen the elves and the doom of men. It is, for me, a poignant symbolic role.