Tolkien and the Book

[davem]

'There is more than one history of the world'. ' Aegypt' John Crowley.

Originally Posted by Child

The Elves are wholly exempt from this equation. Unlike Men who are somewhat more accepting of change, the Elves desire to embalm both the past and present to ensure that no change occurs.

But doesn't this assume there is a single Elvish history, agreed upon by all parties? Would the 'unchangeable', fixed account of the Feanoreans match the 'unchangeable', fixed account of the Elves of the Havens of Sirion? Would there be an agreed upon version of what happened to Aredhel accepted by Eol, Maeglin & Turgon, et al? Would Feanor's account of the Rebellion be the same as Fingolfin's, or Galadriel's, or of the Teleri? Etc, etc...

There may be unchangeable accounts, but to what extent would these accounts differ from each other? It seems to me that for these accounts to become 'embalmed', those retaining them rejecting any consensus in favour of preserving inviolate what they had experienced/recieved, would actually exacerbate tribal seperations & mistrust. In order to produce an objective account - or the closest equivalent - the different accounts would have to be amalgamated, which is precisely what Elves would not naturally do. Which account would win out in the end?

Yet if they, with the best will in the world, attempted to produce a single, coherent account of 'what really happened', how much would be lost - & how could they be certain that what was discarded was actually false? I think perhaps what they ended up with was a series of versions of history, most, if not all, containing the central events, but with different biases. The version any individual (in particular any mortal) accepted would be down to chance to a great degree. Through Bilbo's Translations from the Elvish we have an acount of 'what really happened', but do we have the account? Bilbo only had access to the versions available in Rivendell.

In short, accounts of 'what really happened', whether written or oral, are from a particular point of view - whether they change over the years (or the millenia) or not. Politics comes into it, personal bias & trauma too.

So, if what we have by the end of the Third Age is an 'objective' history of the Elves in Middle earth, then we don't have 'embalming', if we have 'embalming' we don't have an 'objective' history - however well preserved it may have been.

This is not even to get into the human (or 'Sauronic') versions of 'what really happened'.......