Immortality

[Mat_Heathertoes]

Harking back to Dwarins original question touching on probably the most pivotal subject in Tolkiens mythology.

Was the immortality of the elves their bane?

I’m of the opinion that immortality was an integral part of the elves and their fate just as far as mortality formed the essence of mankind’s existence and its fate within the Circles of the World. As far as the word ‘bane’ goes, it’s meaning; fatal injury or ruin or a source of persistent annoyance or exasperation could be both fitting and yet incongruent with the history of the Elves and their civilisations before the Dominion of Men at the beginning of the Fourth Age. If one reads the Ainulindalë then it appears that the entire history of the world up to and including the End of Days is contained with the First Music of the Ainur

..and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of it’s end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Illúvatar and were silent.

and

..wherefore, though the Music is over all, the Valar have not seen as with sight the Later Ages of the Ending of the World.

Ainulindalë

Although the Valar have not seen with sight the ending of days and what was to come after the Dominion of Men, they took part in the Music of the Ainur and its 3 distinct themes. In answer to Voronwe’s earlier question, Melkor's discord aside, I always took the 1st theme to represent creation and the passage of time, the 2nd theme to be the theme of the Powers and the 3rd theme to represent both Elves [sorrow] and Men [endlessly repeated] .. as Tolkien says there were two musics blended within the one theme and …

they were utterly at variance. The once was deep and wide and beautiful. But slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes.

Ainulindalë

But I am digressing here, what I am trying to say is that the word ‘bane’ would imply that the Elves were so cursed by merely coming into existence in the form that was appointed to them; to be immortal, to be first, to be created ‘of the stuff of Earth’ as Tolkien described them. I think not, I think that just as in our own world, the mythological world of J.R.R has to have a purpose, a reason for being and those who dwell within it also have a reason and a purpose in being there. I know I have an annoying tendency to spatter these posts with quotes but if I may be permitted, JRRT’s lengthy but superb letter to Milton Waldman (131) outlines in great detail his own philosophy toward the concept of immortality and its effect down the ages on the collective psyche of the Firstborn

The ‘Elves’ are ‘immortal’, at least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with death.

The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when ‘slain’. But returning – and yet, when the Followers{Men} come, to teach them, and to make way for them, to ‘fade’ as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed. The Doom (of the Gift) of Men is mortality, freedom from the cycles of the world. Since the point of view of the whole cycle is the Elvish, mortality is not explained mythically: it is a mystery of God of which no more is known than that ‘what God has purposed for Men is hidden’: a grief and an envy to the immortal Elves.

It is natural therefore to assume that in mankind’s eyes the Elves should be worthy of an almost ‘god-like’ praise when gifted with these powers of Art or ‘sub-creation’ as Tolkien himself labels it. But I think that throughout the histories, the worst excesses of mankind arise due to the effects of ‘pre-historical’ ‘Fall of Man’ and the lies of Morgoth. Mankind’s attempts to try and ‘compete’ or compare itself with the Firstborn instead of following the intended course of learning from and ‘growing through’ the elder kindred. This is illustrated in that the Gift of Men becomes the ‘Doom’, that men, even the descendants of the three Houses of Elf-Friends yearn for the Undying Lands to the eventual Downfall of Numenor and the Changing of the World.

However I believe that the Valar had good reason to summon the Elves to live with them in the West and that, in spite of the ‘Fall of the Noldor’ and the ramifications thereof, the Elves to their eventual attenuation should have all removed en-masse to Aman. The Elves’ chief source of grief was being deathless and changeless in lands filled with death and change. To have these many gifts of creation and then to see the objects of their toil swept away or destroyed by the passage of time and the actions of the Enemy was their greatest sorrow. Therefore the Valar’s intention to gather the Elves together in a land where there was no death and no changing was their way of showing their love and desire for friendship from the firstborn Children of Eru.

In that time the air of Middle-Earth became heavy with the breath of growth and mortality, and the changing and ageing of all things was hastened exceedingly; life teemed upon the soil and in the waters in the Second Spring of Arda, and the Eldar increased, and beneath the new Sun Beleriand grew green and fair.

Chapter 12 – Of Men – The Silmarillion

But many of these elves refused this summons or were exiled from Valinor in later times and it was to these people that felt the griefs of deathlessness most keenly. The realms and achievements of the Exiles and the Sindarin in Beleriand were briefly great and glorious but eventually beaten down by the passage of Time and the Enemy through treachery, lust and hatred. I think the history of the Rings of Power in the Second Age and Third Ages could arguably be a misguided attempt by the remaining Exiles to try to arrest change and repair the damage done by Time and the Enemy by their own powers of sub-creation. The power of the Three Rings of the elves was of that nature. Sauron in his cunning and evil nature saw the innate weakness and hurts that the elves suffered during the First Age and using the craft of Celebrimbor brought about the creation of the Rings of Power and his own attempt to control the last of the Elven kingdoms and the free peoples in the North-West of Middle-Earth.

To sum up I’ll begin with another interesting fragment and something I particularly agree with in a passage from another [yawn] one of JRRTs letters

Elves and Men are represented as biologically akin in this ‘history’, because Elves are certain aspects of Men and their talents and desires, incarnated in my little world. They have certain freedoms and powers we should like to have, and the beauty and peril and sorrow of the possession of these things is exhibited in them ……

Elves and their immortality is simply a mirror of some of our deepest desires in our mortal world. The desire to have the time to bring forth our beauty or the purpose or the ability to create that resides within all of us … but do we comprehend the penalties and burden of immortality? Do we or could we cope with the unending experiences of loss and the irrecoverable changes to the world around us that we would have to witness and be part of as the ages slide by?

So is that a bane or simply the way things are? I’d say both.