[Bêthberry]

Like Estelyn I must agree that this is a most wonderful part of the Appendices. It is not a mere recital of feigned historical facts, but is the full voice of story.

Yet I would not ask the kind of questions Estelyn does, nor engage in the kind of discussion which davem pursues--not that either are misplaced or inappropriate. Why? Because for me those kinds of pursuits follow the nature of characterisation in formal realistic narrative. They depend upon the kind of verisimilitude which the nineteenth century novel has trained us to expect, a 'realism' or 'empiricism' of psychology.

To me, the great passionate interest of A Part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen lies in Aragorn's and Arwen's role as mythic characters. What we learn of them here is less dependent upon their psychological interaction and personalities and far more dependent upon what they epitomise. They serve Tolkien's idea about the gift of death. This is why, to me, Tolkien never shows us how Aragorn prepares Arwen for his and her death, why he skips over any incidents which would, through their participation, unfold their character, why we are never given Arwen's inner thoughts after Aragorn dies or while she sojourns in Cerin Amroth. We don't get petty details; we get an intense focus on one particular topic between them: this stark portrayal of stoic hope on the portal to nothingness and forgetting: our physical existence is a shadow.

I have a small quibble over having Aragorn die in the height of his powers, and, after death, grow into a perfection of beauty. It seems to me to sidestep the nature of death as a real diminishment, a wasting away of our powers and body and consciousness. In this state of pitiful weakness, to me, lies the real nature of our species. How we handle decrepitude reveals much about ourselves, as a culture and as individuals. However, I can understand how this culmination represents Tolkien's concept of the "good death", the honourable and noble death as, perhaps, Eru intended it, for those who have lived nobly and ethically. It works within the idealism Tolkien suggests that originally death would have been a finest hour rather than enfeeblement.

As to the question of how this part of their tale could have been included in the text proper: well, that depends less I think on any issue of length than on the nature of Tolkien's concept of plot. Given how Tolkien employs plot, it could not have been. The coherence of LotR depends upon linear plot; hence we have the separation into books rather than intercalated stories of Sam and Frodo with the other members of the Fellowship. For some sufficient reason, Tolkien chose to go with linear, consequential chronology. Existence is not the realm of possibilities, but of causalities, of sequence, in Tolkien's work.

Thus, he could not conceive of his narrator falling into a dream and foretelling the story of Aragorn's and Arwen's death. He could not have his narrator provide a 'looking forward' or, describing their marriage, be carried away in his authorial knowledge with a telling of their deaths, because then he could not, by the logical of his plot, jump back. The bridge between cause and effect would collapse. Tolkien's poetry lies in action rather than the interruption of action.

Perhaps all of this is a long winded way of saying Aragorn and Arwen belong far more to faerie than to verisimilitude.