LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 01 - The Taming of Sméagol

[Nurumaiel]

Lalwendë said

Now why would he also hate things associated with Light, such as the rope and lembas? It could be alluding to something evil and dark within him; is this because he is by nature evil? Or is it because the Ring has made him so?

I'm unsure if there is anything else about Gollum's life before the Ring besides that which is told in LotR, so I don't know if there is something about him I've missed, but a possibility is that Gollum did know something of Light, and that was what made him so averse to it. If he knew Light, if he knew goodness, it could be that the sight of Elven things, the sight of the Sun and Moon, made him see how wretched and without it he was. Perhaps he hated Light because, when there was light, it showed him up, so to speak, and his darkness.

I would not say that Gollum was, by nature, evil. It seems to me, reflecting on the scene where he touched Frodo's knee, that there was at least the possibility of goodness in him. But he had not lived a very good life, despite his capability to be good. He murdered, etc. It could be that Light showed to him clearly what he wasn't and what he could have been, perhaps still could be. The light of the Elves... their beauty, and he was a wretched sort of creature, and so on.

He describes the Elf eyes as 'fierce and terrible.' Generally I imagine Elf eyes as something entirely different. Perhaps the Elf eyes are good and bright, but Gollum, not being that, finds them fierce and terrible? Perhaps because he knows Light and his lack of it, he hates it more than he would otherwise?