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Originally Posted by davem
Intriguing question. Essentially, the difference between memory & written record is that memory is 'active' & unfixed - what it records is changeable & updatable if new facts are discovered or enhancements desired. In short, memory is a living process.
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Not so with the elves, though. They've embalmed their memories. Their tragedy is that all they do is look back. There is no active growth principle in their art.
But this living/dead dichotomy doesn't really pertain to what I find intriguing, how their art is fixated on history and its reconstuctions. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure there's anything in their stories that are "make believe." It is all "once was."
Strange, too, that Tolkien would make the Rohirrim such an oral culture, for the Anglo-Saxons of course did leave written records. Not that I mean to make a crude Rohirrim = Anglo Saxon analogy.
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Originally Posted by Lal
What is very odd indeed is that such a person as Tolkien who was clearly well and truly a bookworm should leave out mention of extensive libraries in his own story. Have other writers done this too? There is a fabulous library in Gormenghast, and a book collector in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell; Harry Potter also features a wonderful library and uses the 'book' as a plot device. Maybe Tolkien cared more for what books did, or what they contained (i.e. stories) than books as artefacts or repositories?
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You know, I'm not so sure Tolkien was a book person per se. I think language was his bag, language in all its shifting and shifty complexities. And perhaps that's why he was so drawn to creating languagues and then hanging cultures on them. I think he was caught in the web of performative language. Think of all those hours in the Bird and Baby! And the Inklings reading their works aloud. We're back to 'cellar door' territory.
Hilde, that image of being torn between the waves and the pebble's drop is quite beautiful and extraordinary!