Quote:
Quote: Raynor
From the letter #131:
"The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when 'slain', but returning - and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to 'fade' as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed"
Quote: Littlemanpoet
If Tolkien considered his Elves' primary purpose to be the elevation of Man, then he did not write what he intended. All the reading I've done reveals that the Elves' primary purpose was subcreation; teaching Men was a by-product.
|
It's also always a good thing to make the difference between different kinds of inevitabilities. Something just had to happen, because the way the things around it turned out as they did, or because they were intended by someone / -thing, to fill their function in a grander pattern. (Don't read in here the schism between the theory of evolution and the theory of the ID! It sure lurks there, but this propably isn't the forum for it.)
So on the other hand, things do lead into each other, and thus create the story that is, as looked upon afterwards, the only one that happened; or on the other hand, all things that happen, are being designed beforehand to unfold the way intended.
So elves might just be seen having to wane before the humans', because the way of the world just turned out that way (elves and humans and others making their choices in different situations that would add up the whole story): here they had their noblest chance to pass even some of their own to the later generations in the Middle Earth, by teaching the humans' etc. Or. Then we can see the elves only as filling their role in a grander tale, as the ones' who were "destined" to do just the things they did, ie. that from the very beginning, there was this fate upon elves, and every individual elve's life kind of served this greater purpose.
Who knows, which way Tolkien himself intended this? Was it clear to him, from the very beginning, that elves would fill this role in his world, or was it so, that after all the things he had started and got going, this was the only way the things could come out? Or was there something like "poetic fatalism", that kind of saw and arranged this beforehand, and Tolkien just followed, realizing it only at a later stage?