One of the defining characteristics of Tolkien’s Fairy Stories is that they must maintain an “inner consistency of reality”, that is, not rely on a suspension of disbelief in the reader. A natural question that thereby poses itself is: how does one achieve that sense of reality within a story? Perhaps the first answer ought to be language, or, more specifically, adjectives, which others in this blog have discussed more deeply than I will do here. My main concern lies with another mechanism that Tolkien uses consistently throughout his stories, which is that of the “Elf-Friend.”
In her essay “The Footsteps of Ælfwine”, Flieger presents the Elf-friend as, “the link, the connector or mediator between the ‘real’ or natural world and the world of Faërie–the supernatural world of myth and the imagination.” The importance of this figure, as we will see, is that elf friends serve as a vessel through which the reader is able to navigate the world of Faërie without experiencing it as wholly foreign. In many cases the elf-friend will take on the role of storyteller, through which descriptions of the realm of Faërie are told and retold for the benefit of the reader. As we discussed in class and as Flieger notes, “the tale exists only in its telling.” What interests me, however, is the range of elf-friends that we encounter throughout Tolkien’s works.
The first and perhaps salient example we shall treat is Aelfwine, whose name translates exactly to “elf-friend”. He was a bard of some renown, which already reinforces the idea of the elf-friend both experiencing the unknown and relaying such experiences to us. Moreover, he is stated to have traveled “the straight road” of the Elves and returned to tell the tale; he is the bridge between the reader and Faërie, without which we would be unable to properly understand or receive tell of such a world.
Another major example is present in two of Tolkien’s major works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Both are largely concerned with, well, hobbits, as Tolkien describes in his not-so-brief sketch of his works to Milton Waldman: “...the tale of the Hobbit takes a virtually human point of view – and the last tale (LotR) blends them” (Letters, p. 204). It’s important to note that while The Lord of the Rings does have a larger narrative focus than The Hobbit, the story is told from the point of view of hobbits whenever possible. This is in large part because hobbits are the characters we are likely to feel closest to, being largely unfamiliar and unacquainted with the wide, complex world of Middle-Earth. It’s also an important reason why these works are more approachable to many than that of The Silmarillion, which is concerned primarily with elves, and thus feels more remote and ancient (though not necessarily a bad thing). It should be noted that hobbits also play a fundamental role in how the narrative is told, in that the story is canonically written by Bilbo and Frodo, which eventually becomes The Red Book of Westmarch. However, I will not go further into detail on this idea here, as we have other things to discuss.
These first two examples of elf-friends have been more typical, or middle of the road. The next few we will see will either drift too far into the world of Faërie, or stray too far away from it. The former is represented largely through The Silmarillion, whose elvish accounts allow us to step back in time and glimpse many of the stories that were mere legends and myths referenced within The Lord of the Rings. However, in doing so, they lose some of the familiarity that we grew used to in Middle-Earth. Arda and the Valar are far above what we could ever experience as mortals, and there is no character who serves as the bridge between reader and story that we are able to relate to (although it does progressively become more concerned with Men as it approaches the Third Age).
To go in the other direction is to lose some of our connection with Faërie and elves. The first step this way is through Smith in “Smith of Wotten-Major”, who gains temporary access to the world of Faërie. The fay star on his forehead acts as his passport throughout his adventures, which seem more remote and foreign in a different way than those in The Silmarillion. Those tales, while distant, were so because of the person through which we received them. We are not elves, and are thus removed from their experiences. Smith, however, is human, and we feel a closer kinship with him. The foreign nature of his adventures stems from the lack of description that we receive on the land of Faërie. Whether it be elven mariners returning from the Dark Marches, the birch that saved him from “wild Wind”, or the elf-maiden that he danced with, we receive no further elaboration aside from that which describes his experiences alone. All we can glean is that Faërie is a land both mysterious and perilous, and one in which Smith is consciously and painfully a stranger. Importantly, Smith fails to recount his experiences properly, either because he cannot remember them or he is unable to put them into words. In any case, this is not his main objective, and he remains a traveler in those lands until he returns the fay-star at the request of Alf-prentice, the King of Elves.
The final example I will use, and to me the most poignant, is that of the narrator in “Sea-Bell”. This is by far the furthest removed we have seen any kind of elf-friend, if we can name him as such. The call to Faërie is similar to Smith in that they both receive an object which serves as a bridge to the other world (in this case, a shell). In Sea-Bell, however, the narrator catches only glimpses of the elvish inhabitants, who seem to be avoiding him. All he witnesses are fleeting echoes of their presence in this land:
“I heard dancing there, music in the air,
feet going quick on the green floors.
But wherever I came it was ever the same:
the feet fled, and all was still;
never a greeting, only the fleeting
pipes, voices, horns on the hill.”
Unlike Smith, who, while clearly a stranger in Faërie, this speaker is bereft of any connection. The land he inhabits, like Smith, is foreign and perilous, but further, it is more actively malevolent towards him. This is provoked primarily once the speaker declares himself as king of the land (as he has seen no challengers to this claim), after which a dark cloud arises and chases him into hiding. While the speaker eventually returns to his home, the price he pays is severe; he is old, beaten, and bent, and no one has ears to listen to his strange tales:
“To myself I talk;
For still they speak not, men that meet.”
Smith is able to end his adventures to Faërie with some modicum of autonomy, even if it is bittersweet. Moreover, he is able to return home in peace, that is, in good standing with the elvish kingdom. While he does have to give up the key to entry to Faërie, he is given some choice in the matter. In "Sea-Bell", the narrator has no such choice; he is forced from Faërie, never to return again, and finds his key into Faërie “silent and dead”.
I would wager to say that, along with some other allegorical implications that Flieger and Shippey propose (i.e. Smith represents Tolkien, Nokes as the critic lacking imagination), “Sea-Bell” provides the most severe condemnation of those who venture into Faërie in arrogance and ignorance. In opposition to Smith, who attempts to treat Faërie with respect and displays some sense about where he is to go and the powers above him, this narrator rushes with no knowledge of the land he wanders through and little respect for its inhabitants. He abuses the rare chance at entrance into Faërie and is driven out and suffers heavily because of it. This narrator embodies the literary critic who approaches fairy stories with disdain, and leaves with the misconstrued idea that there is nothing of substance there. I’m sure they perceived nothing of substance, or thought they did; but that is because they ventured into Faërie without the willingness or Sight to perceive and experience another world. Faërie rejected the critics just as much as the critics rejected Faërie from the realm of significance.
The larger concern I hold, though, is not a criticism of critics, but to rue their relationship, or lack thereof, with Faërie. Like the narrator of “Sea-Bell”, they are at most able to catch memories of wonder or enchantment, not directly participate in them. Instead of experiencing the joy of eucatastrophe, they are left haunted and troubled by the feeling that a Mystery has passed them by, not to return again.
- GTB
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