Tolkien and the Book

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

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.

Maybe. I do wonder whether the works they create - from handicrafts to Lorien - are straight recreations of what was, or whether they are 'idealised' versions, which they have built up in their minds over the millenia. If they have no (or few)books & depend mainlElves y on memory then maybe those memories aren't as 'fixed' as they may at first seem. Human memory seems to work not through exact recollection but rather through a process of 're-creation' - is Elven memory totally different?

Whatever. I've asked a few times on various threads why the Elves don't 'sub-create' in the strict sense of creating secondary worlds in the mind - ie fictions - which Tolkien claims is innate in us as children of a Creator. Is Lorien (& Rivendell, Gondolin, etc) such a -sub creation? If so, then to what extent are they 'copies' & to what extent 'enhancements' (ie, fictions)? Certainly, their innate sense of sadness & loss will affect how they experience reality, so even if they were to copy/store things in as pure a form as they were capable of, they would not prove to be objective sources. They don't, after all, 'embalm' facts but perceptions.

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Originally Posted by davem

I've asked a few times on various threads why the Elves don't 'sub-create' in the strict sense of creating secondary worlds in the mind - ie fictions - which Tolkien claims is innate in us as children of a Creator. Is Lorien (& Rivendell, Gondolin, etc) such a -sub creation? If so, then to what extent are they 'copies' & to what extent 'enhancements' (ie, fictions)?

Do we have any real sort of indication that elves don't indulge in 'making things up' other than Tolkien not including examples? We are generally exposed to the elves in reference to world affairs. Very sober times. But I do not find it hard to believe that the elves of Rivendell in the Hobbit would spin yarns, if of course you concider them truly elves. And that such gifted artists would not play with words just for the love of language, seems unlikely to me.

But as for the purpose of written language, it might not be such a leap to assume that it might have been developed for another purpose than merely recording events or ideas. For example, having just watched the movie Hero, I am particulary thinking of the connection that movie places between calligraphy and swordsmanship.

[Aiwendil]

Hilde Bracegirdle wrote:

Do we have any real sort of indication that elves don't indulge in 'making things up' other than Tolkien not including examples?

A good point. In fact, if the Elves did create fiction, it's a little hard to imagine in what context we would hear about it. But I also think there's something to Fordim's point:

if one lives in a world in which the story of Luthien and Beren actually happened, why would one need to make believe?

Hilde Bracegirdle also wrote:

But as for the purpose of written language, it might not be such a leap to assume that it might have been developed for another purpose than merely recording events or ideas. For example, having just watched the movie Hero, I am particulary thinking of the connection that movie places between calligraphy and swordsmanship.

This is an interesting idea, but ultimately I must say I don't buy it. Writing is always associated with lore by Tolkien. And was not Rumil, who first invented Tengwar, a sage and historian?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Hilde

Do we have any real sort of indication that elves don't indulge in 'making things up' other than Tolkien not including examples? We are generally exposed to the elves in reference to world affairs. Very sober times. But I do not find it hard to believe that the elves of Rivendell in the Hobbit would spin yarns, if of course you concider them truly elves. And that such gifted artists would not play with words just for the love of language, seems unlikely to me.

I'm still intrigued by the fact that Tolkien, for whom sub creation (the creation of a secondary world which exists in the mind) was the highest form of Art, did not include any references to sub creation among the Elves - no mention of Feanor making up tales or composing Epic poems about his equivalent of 'Middle-earth'.

We are given a lot of Elvish poetry in the Legendarium, but all of it is about actual persons/events in their history.

Or are they? Do we know for certain that all these references are to actual events & people? was there no embellishment in the accounts & poems - even in the 're-tellings'? No bias, no stressing one aspect of an event & playing down others?

As I said, this is the thing about written records - they tend to tell you what they are - fiction, history, philosophy, science, & once written down they are fixed. Memory, especially the memory of an immortal, is a much more dynamic process. But its more complicated than that - whose books are they?

(Also, its cheaper & less hassle to alter & amend memories - no typos to put right & errors in the text to discover, requiring one to buy an expensive 'new' edition or make do with the 'inaccurate' version. Chizz chizz....)

Let's look at the Silmarillion - put together by Bilbo: his 'Translations from the Elvish'. His main source? The Elves & books at Rivendell. Now, in the Sil, the Feanoreans don't come off very well. Not quite the villains of the piece, but hardly the heroes.

But can we trust what we're told about them in a work based on the the library & inhabitants of Elrond's House? Would Elrond have been entirely unbiassed as regards the Feanoreans? Would his Mother-in-law, given that she & their father were 'unfriends for ever'?

Both books & memories are consciously or unconsciously biassed, no less in Middle-earth than here, but memory, being a living process, is more malleable.

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

It is a rather strange thing that springs to mind. If you set down these histories on paper and they become fixed they may be biased not only because of the historian but also the era they were written in, lacking the broader scope that time grants. But if the history is an oral one, they now no doubt continually gain the perspective of time, but as davem suggests, they might also become distorted from the original telling. I could see this easily happening in order to emphasize key points if nothing else.

Good point about Rumil. Perhaps this might be why he felt compelled to come up with a writing system. In his own lifetime he could have conceivably seen histories embellished.

So it looks as though the elves wrote volumes of history, either prose or song and perhaps of varying accuracy, but we only know of non-elves (or half elves) actually reading them. And as for pure fiction, maybe in the late 4th Age the non-elves will have gotten around to reading that lighter fare, and put hints out there for us to find them. If only we knew where to look!

[Child of the 7th Age]

There are so many interesting ideas in this thread! A number of points ring very true: that Elves are less dependent on the physical book than those who follow them, and that Tolkien's emphasis and hence that of the Elves is more on language and stories than collections of books per se.

I'd like to point to two areas, however, where I think we need to be careful how we are using terms. At points, this thread perhaps postulates too sharp a distinction between certain categories of writing: "history" versus "not history", and oral versus the written transmission of the past.

Let's start with the latter, which is easier to deal with: the supposed distinction between the "shifting annals of oral history" and the more "rigid" history recorded in books. A slew of recent studies have shown that this distinction is not as clear-cut as one might suppose. The very nature and essence of history is change, at least if we are referencing the history of modern Western Man (the tradition with which JRRT was concerned). Although a cliche, it is nonetheless true that every generation of Western Man regularly rewrites its past. Whether the record is oral or written, new material and interpretations are put forward. In the case of oral history, the changes in the record are more often accidental and less often intentional. With written history, the equation is reversed, but change is the mode of operation for all varieties of Western History. As to why history changes, it is quite often a reflection of the fact that changes are occurring in the present: new material is found and attitudes change. Changes in modern ideologies and technology actually bring about new ways of looking at the past.

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. This would be as true of their oral history accounts as it would be of those chronicles that are set down in book format. It is the intention of the Elves that is the key rather than the mode of transmission of their stories. It's interesting to note that there are certain traditional cultures (not part of the modern West) similar to the Elves in that they cling to the ideal of an unchanging past. These tribes pass along sacred stories in an oral format that never varies. The worth of the storyteller is judged by the degree to which he/she is able to replicate a story without a single change.

Judging from what Tolkien tells us, I would guess that this changeless transmission would also have appealed to the Elves. Even if a story was phrased in new words, perhaps written in prose rather than poetry, they would not have wanted to see the heart of the story alter in any meaningful respect. It would have gone against everything they stood for. Yet, at the same time, there would have to be some inherent tension between the desire to preserve and the desire to sub-create. The two could not always have been an easy fit.

Will post later about "history" versus "non-history" (fantasy, fiction, ...or whatever you prefer to call this category).

[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'.......

[Anguirel]

Originally Posted by davem

Let's look at the Silmarillion - put together by Bilbo: his 'Translations from the Elvish'. His main source? The Elves & books at Rivendell. Now, in the Sil, the Feanoreans don't come off very well. Not quite the villains of the piece, but hardly the heroes.

But can we trust what we're told about them in a work based on the the library & inhabitants of Elrond's House? Would Elrond have been entirely unbiassed as regards the Feanoreans? Would his Mother-in-law, given that she & their father were 'unfriends for ever'?

Both books & memories are consciously or unconsciously biassed, no less in Middle-earth than here, but memory, being a living process, is more malleable.

davem, while you're asking exactly the right question, opening up fascinating lines of thought, I think that your example is perhaps a bit flawed. If I wanted to find an unbiased commentator on the War of the Jewels, I could scarcely do better than Elrond, who is committed personally to every camp involved except Morgoth's.

Remember that though he might have been Earendil's son, he was Maglor's foster-son from a young age, and after his early childhood never saw, well, never encountered, his true father again. (I use the distinction because I can well imagine him gazing sadly at the Evening Star...) The path Elrond took, as a lormaster and one of the Wise rather than a great warrior, shows far more of Maglor's influence than Earendil's. In any case, his personal reactions to much of the deeds of Feanor's sons would undoubtedly be complex.

It is in other areas we should look for bias. You were spot on when you spoke of Eol, who is given a lot of stick for his status as an outsider; similarly Mim. Both stand for oppressed races, incidentally, the wild Teleri and the Petty-Dwarves...

I always imagine the Silmarillion as solid evidence that Elves were loremasters and scholars. One of the most clear points of Elven authorship can be found by comparing two groups of heroes, to my eyes:

Beren's outlaws. Each one of them is named, as if to save their memory from oblivion. It is mentioned that songs of their deeds are still sung by Elves.

and

Finrod and Beren's companions, apart from Edrahil entirely anonymous. Because they're Elves. They have not died as mortals do, and there is no need to urgently preserve them.