If I may step in here, I think
Lush was replying to an insinuation in the previous post, one which in fact misinterprets my earlier post.
Quote:
Celebrian posted:
I tend to agree with The Saucepan Man. Is this not an example of Edwardian grace, that the "indirect", as Bethberry calls it, is used to deliberately limit the amount of evil to that which is in the mind of the reader?
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My use of 'code of silence' and 'indirection' was intended to suggest a linguistic strategy Tolkien used. That strategy is very aptly described in
Fordim's excellent posts on the literary and historical habits of euphemism in this regard.
Some of us understand this linguistic pattern. To say that we are interpreting based "on the amount of evil ... that ... is in the mind of the reader" is a personal attack. It says our interpretation is wrong because our minds are filthy. Such an
ad hominem attack has no place in a discussion forum and
Lush was right to call
Celebrian on it.
Tolkien chose to write the passage vaguely, but he left enough linguistic evidence to demonstrate how he wanted this occurence to be regarded: discretely but not overlooked or passed over. He had lots of evidence in the early lives of Christian saints, after all, which is common knowledge among those who read lives of the saints.
It is part of the readerly experience to become close to some characters and to identify with them. That does not, however, mean that we must deny the right of others to interpret the characters in ways which might make us uncomfortable, especially when these other interpretations are fairly and legitimately made. There is a long tradition of literature that in fact acknowledges the important role of literature in making readers uncomfortable. It is part of the reading experience.
Ruoutorin, your quotation from HoMe can be discounted on the grounds of literary evidence. There is much matter in HoMe and UT which we can discuss, but on the whole such work remains tangential to the texts published in Tolkien's time. After all, as HoMe and UT demonstrate, Tolkien's ideas changed, and changed often, over the decades he wrote his legendarium. Usually, when authors read back into a text, readers are free to consider what the text meant at the time of publication. After all, is there any evidence that Tolkien was thinking about Celebrian when he wrote that passage, or was he trying to establish something general about elves? He often made statements that were generalisations and then had to go back and try to fit the specific incident into the generalisation, or vice versa. This is what is "Tolkienish", a creative mind in constant motion over time and we must capture a snapshot of one moment.
The fact of the matter is that Tolkien wrote a passage which is vague but which allows for a specific interpretation. The indirection is part of his writerly behaviour here. But as
Fordim points out in his posts, understanding the linguistic habits of Tolkien's time helps us to understand where he was as a writer here.