The differences between Elves and Men

[mhagain]

Tolkien's final words on the matter seem to have been expressed in his author's commentary to the Athrabeth Fonrod ah Andreth (HoME 10):

There are certain things in this world that have to be accepted as 'facts'. The existence of Elves: that is of a race of beings closely akin to Men, so closely indeed that they must be regarded as physically (or biologically) simply branches of the same race.

So there we have it: physically and biologically Elves and Men are the same species (Eruhini), and any differences between them (on the purely physical or biological level) are merely nothing more than common intra-species variation.

Some of the common tropes about Elves are not even suggested, or even outright denied, by Tolkien's work. That they're can't get drunk is false: Galion did. That they're immune to poison is false: Aredhel died of poisoning.

Of course outside of the physical and biological aspects there are other differences.

[cellurdur]

The differences are that Elves are more in tune with this world. They have 'magic' tougher bodies and can also control their bodies better.

In terms of physical characteristics Elves are taller, more beautiful and much, much stronger. They also tend to be more agile.

The Noldor were generally taller than the Sindar.

The exceptions to this are the Numenoreans and the House of Hador, who are the tallest and strongest. Descendants of Earendil also had 'magic'.

[arathorn]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

The differences are that Elves are more in tune with this world. They have 'magic' tougher bodies and can also control their bodies better.

In terms of physical characteristics Elves are taller, more beautiful and much, much stronger. They also tend to be more agile.

The Noldor were generally taller than the Sindar.

The exceptions to this are the Numenoreans and the House of Hador, who are the tallest and strongest. Descendants of Earendil also had 'magic'.

That's pretty much everything in physical terms. Nice post!!!

But don't forget you are talking about the Eldar, Silvan elves tend to be shorter and weaker.
Agreed the average Numenoreans and some Hadoreans could reach even the Eldar Noldor strength.
The Noldor were also somewhat larger than the Teleri.

[tom the eldest]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

The differences are that Elves are more in tune with this world. They have 'magic' tougher bodies and can also control their bodies better.

In terms of physical characteristics Elves are taller, more beautiful and much, much stronger. They also tend to be more agile.

The Noldor were generally taller than the Sindar.

The exceptions to this are the Numenoreans and the House of Hador, who are the tallest and strongest. Descendants of Earendil also had 'magic'.

What about the silvan,teleri and vanyar?

[arathorn]

Originally Posted by tom the eldest

What about the silvan,teleri and vanyar?

Just look at my last comment about what the said. and Sindar=Teleri.

[tom the eldest]

Originally Posted by mhagain

Tolkien's final words on the matter seem to have been expressed in his author's commentary to the Athrabeth Fonrod ah Andreth (HoME 10):



So there we have it: physically and biologically Elves and Men are the same species (Eruhini), and any differences between them (on the purely physical or biological level) are merely nothing more than common intra-species variation.

Some of the common tropes about Elves are not even suggested, or even outright denied, by Tolkien's work. That they're can't get drunk is false: Galion did. That they're immune to poison is false: Aredhel died of poisoning.

Of course outside of the physical and biological aspects there are other differences.

Isnt galion get drunk because the wine of dorwinion is so strong?

[arathorn]

Originally Posted by tom the eldest

Isnt galion get drunk because the wine of dorwinion is so strong?

Yes and poison was made by an elf, so what Tolkien was trying to say is that things that were made by humans such as their wines and poisons weren't capable of affecting the elves in the same way.

[arathorn]

Actually the Sindar liked long-bows and axes.
The Silvan liked short-bows and long-knives.

[tom the eldest]

Originally Posted by arathorn

Actually the Sindar liked long-bows and axes.
The Silvan liked short-bows and long-knives.

Huh,they did?but they stil of telerinian descent right?i guess they get more diverse in selection of weapons.but yeah,the three main elves kind like spear,bow or sword and shield.

[arathorn]

Originally Posted by tom the eldest

Huh,they did?but they stil of telerinian descent right?i guess they get more diverse in selection of weapons.but yeah,the three main elves kind like spear,bow or sword and shield.

In my opinion this has nothing to do with their sub-race mentality.
Mirkwood is a very dense forest and a long-bow wouldn't be a good a idea just as a big sword or a spear, but in the battle of the five armies they used spears for the battle was in the open.
Lorien they used long-bows because the forest wasn't very dense(some huge mallorn tress) and there were some Sindar and Noldor that always used that weapons during the ages.

[mhagain]

Originally Posted by arathorn

Yes and poison was made by an elf, so what Tolkien was trying to say is that things that were made by humans such as their wines and poisons weren't capable of affecting the elves in the same way.

Are you quite sure that Tolkien actually said that? I can get very drunk on incredibly strong wine too, but that doesn''t give me immunity to weaker wines.

Originally Posted by tom the eldest

Huh,they did?but they stil of telerinian descent right?i guess they get more diverse in selection of weapons.but yeah,the three main elves kind like spear,bow or sword and shield.

The Silvan were mostly descended from the Nandor, who were mostly of Telerin origin but had picked up some Avari on the way to Beleriand (per the note CT cites in his commentary on GA38).

What's interesting about the Avari is that according to Quendi and Eldar they were evenly divided between the Second and Third clans, so the seemingly common assumption that all Avari were Teleri in origin doesn't hold true. A further note in Quendi and Eldar states:

The first Avari that the Eldar met again in Beleriand seem to have claimed to be Tatyar

With the Tatyar being, of course, the Second Clan, and these Avari therefore actually being kin to the Noldor.

What all of this establishes is that some of the Silvan Elves were very probably Tatyar in origin, descended from those who the Nandor picked up before they entered Beleriand and who were likely to have been those first who the Eldar met (and note that Tolkien is careful to say "Eldar", not "Noldor" here, so this could just as easily be Thingol's folk).

[Galin]

I think the issue with the Avari, and even the true meaning of the term Eldar, depends upon which citation one employs.

Not unlike the issue of Eldarin height, although I already know what I'm going to get if I make the seemingly impossible claim that maybe not every 'late' description Tolkien wrote about Eldarin height was meant to be fused into one concept. Ahem.



It's once again sifting among [mostly] draft texts, with certain ideas arguably revised, others made uncertain by a 'lack' of mention perhaps, still others written years after something else, made all somewhat nice and tidy by Christopher Tolkien, for us, but who knows what Tolkien had in front of him when he was creating a 'new' text years after he had written something related...

... I put author-published description in a strong postion. We are looking for a measure of certainty it seems, at least often enough [I don't want to be certain of all things, myself, and like plenty of the misty elements], and despite even Tolkien's penchant for change, which arose even with respect to already published text [for example publishing that Galadriel's father was named Finrod, then (second edition) changing it to Finarfin], author-published is as 'certain' as we can get in my opinion... with even Tolkien illustrating that he is revising a different animal, if so.


Anyway there is text in Of Dwarves And Men which suggests that the idea of Avari in Beleriand was rejected; and late text in which the Tawarwaith, or Silvan Elves, of Mirkwood are simply noted as Telerin Elves in origin, hardly to be distinguished from Avari.

But that seems to distinguish them to the reader! And it's later description than Quendi and Eldar, and again, the Avari of Beleriand seem abandoned according to Of Dwarves And Men... sooo, what of Avari in the Anduin Vale however? Abandoned idea or back to Quendi And Eldar for that much? In any case the Avari are not mentioned outside of the remark I referred to, so read it as is, and arguably there's no real reason to think any Avari, Tatyarin or Nelyarin, had mixed in by Frodo's day.

Or is there? Not that I recall. Again if we toss in a text made years before, then we have the concept rather certainly. But that's a different matter... again keeping in mind that that text has the Avari in Beleriand!

And then there's the tantalizing notion [published by Tolkien] that the Silvan Elves of Lorien sail Over Sea. Hmm, would Avari sail? Could they sail? Was it only the Silvan Elves of Telerin origin that sailed, although that is never stated in the published account itself... it's just implied that the Silvan Elves in general could sail Over Sea if desired.

Mix and match. Hey it's not like I don't do it too, or think it's wrongheaded in every case. Tolkien, after all, need not be confined to tell his full 'tale', or explain every matter fully, within each and every text, for the other side of the coin here.

I'm just sayin'.... maybe a little less certainty with respect to some of these height and strength issues?

Or nah. What fun is that

And I won't even go into the definition of Eldar... although one of these passages is Tolkien-published. Huzzah.

[mhagain]

Originally Posted by Galin

<snip>awesome</snip>

Nail on the head.

The key problem is : "which writings do you accept?" You can't accept all of them because they contradict each other. CT acknowledges this and gives ample warning as early as his foreword to the Silmarillion.

A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father's) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all at heavy and needless cost.

You can't accept none of them because then you'd have no history and we may as well go back to having fun bad-mouthing Peter Jackson.

So you have to accept some of them, and once again CT puts it best:

Moreover, my father came to conceive The Silmarillion as a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales) that had survived in agelong tradition; and this conception has indeed its parallel in the actual history of the book, for a great deal of earlier prose and poetry does underlie it, and it is to some extent a compendium in fact and not only in theory.

So you need to work on the basis that you're dealing with writings that are going to contradict each other, that aren't going to give the full story, and that sometimes you're going to have to piece together a story that works for you from multiple different sources.

Reading the Silmarillion is to a large extent like reading a popular history account of ancient Mesopotamia. You know that decades or centuries of work deciphering ancient writings, putting together evidence, and trying to present what in the end only amounts to a current consensus underlies it, but it still has value on it's own and is still worth reading if you want to learn.

Arguing about content in HoME is like arguing over which of the Sumerian Kings List, the Epic of Gilgamesh or some merchants tablets from Nineveh contains the true account. It's fun to do for those of us who have an interest, but we need to do so with a keen awareness that we'll never really know. We're not arguing the case for fact, we're arguing the case for our own interpretation.

Both CT and JRRT this time:

Divergent versions need not indeed always be treated solely as a question of settling the priority of composition; and my father as "author" or "inventor" cannot always in these matters be distinguished from the "recorder" of ancient traditions handed down in diverse forms among different peoples through long ages (when Frodo met Galadriel in Lorien, more than sixty centuries had passed since she went east over the Blue Mountains from the ruin of Beleriand). "Of this two things are said, though which is true only those Wise could say who now are gone."

And I think that sums it up the best.

[IxnaY AintsaY]

Originally Posted by mhagain

Arguing about content in HoME is like arguing over which of the Sumerian Kings List, the Epic of Gilgamesh or some merchants tablets from Nineveh contains the true account. It's fun to do for those of us who have an interest, but we need to do so with a keen awareness that we'll never really know. We're not arguing the case for fact, we're arguing the case for our own interpretation.

Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

[arathorn]

Originally Posted by Galin

Not unlike the issue of Eldarin height, although I already know what I'm going to get if I make the seemingly impossible claim that maybe not every 'late' description Tolkien wrote about Eldarin height was meant to be fused into one concept. Ahem.

HAHAHAHA!!!! that was good but is still hard to understand why do you prefer to create divergences.

[arathorn]

I think one of the hardest things ever in Tolkien's work is about who is and who is not an Eldar. And why are the avari weaker than the Edar if they also Telerin in origin. And I also think the Nandor elves seemed to be less powerful than the Sindar but some would say they are exactly the same.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by arathorn

HAHAHAHA!!!! that was good but is still hard to understand why do you prefer to create divergences.

I thought you might enjoy that

Anyway I wouldn't say I prefer to create divergences, but rather if I read two draft texts which even seemingly [or arguably] conflict, while I might be able to imagine a way in which they can be read as consistent, I feel I am also bound to at least consider that Tolkien might have been revising, changing his mind and creating a variant idea... or simply writing something new, perhaps having forgotten what he wrote possibly years before.

But for another example: when I have two descriptions published by the author that seem to be problematic, unless I have reason to think an arguable internal conflict is purposeful, then I am often the first to try to imagine how they can be said to be consistent, or consistent enough, or find some sort of 'internal-ish' explanation.

Divergent versions need not indeed always be treated solely as a question of settling the priority of composition; and my father as "author" or "inventor" cannot always in these matters be distinguished from the "recorder" of ancient traditions handed down in diverse forms among different peoples through long ages (when Frodo met Galadriel in Lorien, more than sixty centuries had passed since she went east over the Blue Mountains from the ruin of Beleriand). "Of this two things are said, though which is true only those Wise could say who now are gone."

A nice enough way to look at things, but I also think some might take this 'too far' [subjective as that is], or employ it too loosely perhaps, essentially creating internal inconsistencies out of external revisions, and thus essentially 'undermining' the art of subcreation.

But that's a matter for another thread perhaps

[arathorn]

Originally Posted by mhagain

Are you quite sure that Tolkien actually said that? I can get very drunk on incredibly strong wine too, but that doesn''t give me immunity to weaker wines.

I said that didn't affect them in the same way, not that doesn't affect them.
They can get drunk with men's wines but it takes more time.