dininziliel:
Quote:
|
...compels a desperation to escape it by any nearby means should it last a half second longer...
|
Indeed. Precisely! You are the first person I've run across who knows what I'm talking about - from the inside. Enough! Moving on...
davem: I understand what you and SPM are getting at, however it is anachronistic to attribute a kind of fascism to the Elves of the First Age. Yes, many of the elements are there, and perhaps one may be able to construct an argument out of it that Tolkien was commentating upon his times (God forbid such a thing ever appear in article or book!).
HOWEVER: (and I quibble) I think it would be best to view this not from a mid-20th century lens, but from that of myth. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what the ramifications of this might be. But I'll take a stab at it. The Elves of Tolkien have their sources in Western myth, including such characteristics as immortality, superiority of thought and body and craft, and a frankly epic proportion to their endeavors that is foreign to the lot of Man. So Elves are indeed superior to the humans around them, and deign to aid them in knowledge and craft; even mating with them (who knows why?). Tolkien takes this into account in LotR, and brings it home especially with Samwise. "They seem to be above my likes and dislikes." So to attribute fascism to Elves is perhaps akin to mice attributing evil to cats simply because cats eat mice. From the mouse's point of view it might make perfect sense, but in the context of the "reality" with which the Elves must live, it's simply not to the point. This has been a decidedly round-about way of making my point, partly because I didn't know what my point was when I started. [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] Anyway, it harks back to a point I made earlier about envying them not. Perhaps I was wrong to say that we are both Elves and Men; because I can see now that there is a way in which we simply cannot fathom the dilemma of Elvishness.
03-18-2003, 07:30 PM
Threaded Mode