Davem wrote:
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Time is the enemy, because Time moves them away from the perfection that once was - even if that 'perfection' never really was, & only existed as a 'dream' in the minds of later Elves looking back.
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This may be applicable to nostalgia in the real world, but I think that for the Elves the perfection, or at least something very close to perfection, really
did exist. Aman before the unchaining of Melkor and Beleriand before the return of Melkor were, in different ways, genuinely idyllic. In the real world, the Utopian past may be a myth, but in Arda (a mythical world) it was real.
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Which brings us, perhaps, to the 'Elvish' strain in Tolkien, because for all he condemns the Elves for their backward-looking he seems to be of the elvish party himself.
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I suspect this is not uncommon; I certainly have more of the Elvish pessimism than the Mannish optimism about the future.