Here am I attempting to play catch up with some thread which have intrigued me.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Tolkien
It is plainly shown that Faery is a vast world in its own right, that does not depend for its existence upon Men, and which is not primarily nor indeed principally concerned with Men. The relationship must therefore be one of love: the Elven Folk, the chief and ruling inhabitants of Faery, have an ultimate kinship with Men and have a permanent love for them in general. Though they are not bound by any moral obligation to assist Men, and do not need their help (except in human affairs), they do from time to time try to assist them.
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I take this from the second long quotation
davem made from Tolkien's essay. Without having read all of it, I am of course hampered in what I can surmise about this very intriguing change, but one point stands out first for me.
I don't see where it necessarily follows that
The relationship must therefore be one of love. Unless Tolkien means that only love can provide any kind of kindship between the two realms. This seems to me a definition rather than a proof, rather similar to defining a straight line as "the shortest distance between two points."
Is this related to what more I have to say? I'm not sure. However, it seems that if Tolkien wanted to create a realm of fantasy that would be respected, revered, loved--heart's desire--he could not do so within the ethical world he had created. He could have flawed characters with weaknesses and foibles but he could not have as the primary focus of interest characters who were both malicious and deceitful and deliberately cruel. He did not, for example, show us how Saruman fell to evil. Or Grima. He did give us the fascinating portrait of Gollem, but by and large he observes the doctrine that to study deeply evil ways is to succumb to them. He follows what I might call--and this could well be an unfair overgeneralisation--a Catholic fear of knowledge. Or perhaps I shouldn't even say Catholic. The first prime directive after all was to avoid knowledge of good and evil.
So, if Tolkien wanted creatures who belonged to a perilous realm, who incorporated elements of fairies, sprites, boggarts, dwarves, brownies, spriggans, he would have to work within this tradition which feared full knowledge of evil as something not fit for his human creations. He thus had to domesticate his elves and cleanse them of their capricious ways which were not sympathetic to humans. Otherwise he would have had an evil realm which was beyond the power of the good he wished to portray.
As I said, without having the full essay to read, I am just making some guesses about why he changed his elves. And maybe I'm just saying the same thing that
drigel did with different words and ways. Of course he had the right to, as
Estelyn suggests, but why he did it is a great topic for a thread.