Authorial Detachment or "The Vanishing Harper"

[Anguirel]

You'd expect Elrond, as Maglor's foster-son, to be a harper with a higher standard than most...I'd forgotten his harp. Well picked up.

We could even include, at a stretch, Gimli; his song of Durin was a kind of recording, I seem to remember he recovered the Book of Mazarbul, and he was as sundered from his folk at death as Dwarves can get...

But perhaps we should attempt to draw more conclusions from the solid examples we've got rather than contort other characters to fit the pattern. Though I do think Gimli just about makes it.

Another harper, Finrod Felagund, has a harp on his coat of arms and is renowned for his "song of staying" against Sauron, but...ouch...does not die apart from his people at all; quite the reverse. From this I deduce that he was more a doer of deeds in his art than a recorder of them...maybe...

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Anguirel

Another harper, Finrod Felagund, has a harp on his coat of arms and is renowned for his "song of staying" against Sauron, but...ouch...does not die apart from his people at all; quite the reverse. From this I deduce that he was more a doer of deeds in his art than a recorder of them...maybe...

Is this a good moment to plug my old htread "Music and Magic in Middle Earth"?

[Child of the 7th Age]

At last it struck home. All these assorted bards and scribblers seem to me to be one, huge, fascinating authorial metaphor. From here stems the apparently omniscient perspective. All characters in the Legendarium are, of course, extensions of Tolkien; but these sub-authors occupy a middle ground, a twilight world. They have to depart to obscurity to represent the distance the author must, in the end, maintain between himself and his creation. Even Tolkien has never walked the streets of Minas Tirith, or wondered at the glades of Doriath. Regretful he might be, but Maglor cannot come back among the people of the Elves-he has his story to tell, to lament in song, and must remain detached. Likewise the others.

Strange, but when I read this, the first person I thought of was Frodo. Surely this applies to him. Also to Bilbo, although perhaps not in such a poignant way. The two are both tellers and singers. For a while, Frodo is also a doer, but that comes to an end. Bereft of doing, cast into the role of a teller, Frodo is no longer able to hang on to the world that he knew and loved. The old order fades, and those who bore the telling of it to the new must also fade. Yet the music and the tale do continue.

All of us have but a brief moment when we are part of the story. In that sense, we are not just doers but tellers of a finite story. At its end, we must all depart. Perhaps Tolkien is underlining this point in its widest sense. Why else do we mourn so for Frodo at the end of the story? We are mourning both for him and for ourselves. It would not be so sad to me if a teller like Frodo had departed out of anger. Yet, despite all he had been through, the pain inside and out, the scene of the final departure is filled with mystery and longing. It is clear that he still loves the Shire and that his attachment to Sam has not lessened. But in the end those of us still on the shore are left without knowing where the tellers have gone. It is the not knowing that hurts. The only thing we have left is their tale.....