Through the different natures of Elves and Men, Tolkien sought to explore death and the proper way to interact with the world of Creation. In Letter 181, Tolkien all but confirms this when he writes:
“Elves and Men are just different aspects of the Humane, and represent the problem of Death … In this mythological world the Elves and Men are in their incarnate forms kindred, but in the relation of their ‘spirits’ to the world in time represent ‘experiments’, each of which has its own natural trend, and weakness” (Letters, pg. 341).
Beyond confirming that Elves and Men have different natures, this quote hints at why those distinctions arise on a metaphysical level: the similar “incarnate forms” and different “spirits” of Elves and Men. I believe these distinctions are critical to understanding the different roles and fates Tolkien envisages for Elves and Men in his universe. Tolkien most clearly develops these ideas in the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, where he introduces the concepts of hröa (body) and fëa (soul). To begin with hröa, Tolkien writes in Letter 181 that “Elves and Men are in their incarnate forms kindred,” thus implying that they share the same hröa (Letters, pg. 341). This is confirmed in the Athrabeth, when Finrod tells Andreth both Elves and Men “drew [their] hröar and their sustenance” from “the matter of Arda” (Athrabeth 309). The hröar of both Elves and Men are fundamentally of Arda. For Tolkien, both species needed this hröa to experience the world.
As we discussed in class, an existence as fëa only, but not as hröa, would not be satisfying. To prove this, we considered Sauron: after the Ring is destroyed, Sauron does not die. Rather, he loses his physical body, his hröa, and becomes solely fëa, taking the form of a menacing thunderstorm. Yet, in this form, he is unable to influence Arda and is blown away by wind from the West. Thus, beings need hröa to experience and influence Arda. As Ilúvatar would obviously want his Children to be able to enjoy His Creation, all beings thus have hröa. To be able to enjoy Arda specifically, their hröar need to be of Arda. This is why Elves and Men are common in this respect. They are even common in being affected by Arda Marred. Finrod tells Andreth that “you live in Arda Marred, as do we … all the matter of Arda was tainted” by Melkor (Athrabeth 309). Not even Aman has been free of the Marring since the Trees were destroyed. As a result, the hröar of Men are “weaker than they should be,” and the “health and stature” of Elvish hröar “is diminished” (Athrabeth 309). Regardless, the purpose of Elves and Men sharing hröar is clear: both are meant, at a baseline level, to experience Arda.
However, Elves and Men experience Arda in different ways, because they have different roles and different fates. As Elvish and Mannish fëar differ (Letters, pg. 341), unlike their hröar, to understand these differences and their consequences, we must look to fëar. In the Athrabeth, Tolkien explains the two key tenets of both Elvish and Mannish fëar. Elvish fëar are “bounded within … the Time of Arda” and are “unable to leave [Arda], while it lasts” (Athrabeth 331). Mannish fëar, on the other hand, “le[ave] Time … and never retur[n]” and were “not designed to stay long in Arda” (Athrabeth 331). This difference in fëar is directly responsible for the different fates of Elves and Men. Because Elvish hröa is of Arda, and Elvish fëa is bound to Arda, the Elves are therefore immortal within Arda while it lasts (Athrabeth 331). Finrod puts it best when he explains to Andreth that the Elves “belong to Arda (in hröa and fëa)” (Athrabeth 308) – they are fundamentally of Arda. Even if he dies, an Elf’s hröa and fëa both remain on Arda, so he can be reborn if he wishes. Men, on the other hand, while their hröa is of Arda, their fëa are not. As Finrod says, the “fëar of Men are not … confined to Arda” (Athrabeth 308). Rather, Mannish fëa leaves Arda after the hröa dies. Because the fëa leaves Arda, Man is mortal: his fëa is not within Arda and cannot thus be reembodied in the left-behind hröa.
It is clearly this difference in fëa that explains the different “natural trend[s]” (Letters, pg. 341) of Elves and Men. Finrod says as much:
“Each of our kindreds perceives Arda differently, and appraises its beauties in different mode and degree. … To [Men] all things that he sees are new and strange, and in that degree lovable. To [Elves] all things are familiar, the only things that are, his own, and in that degree precious” (Athrabeth 315).
So, Elvish immortality means that to the Elves, “all things are familiar”, and therefore they are largely content with their surroundings. Further, because the Elves are immortal, they can pursue the “artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane nature raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men” (Letters, pg. 341) (they are exempt from much of the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, essentially). As a result, they have a “devoted love of the physical world, and a desire to observe and understand for its own sake” (Letters, pg. 341). Men, on the other hand, because they are mortal, constantly experience new things and are thus never content with their surroundings. In the constant struggle for survival, they seek to understand the natural world not for itself but as a “material for use or as a power-platform” (Letters, pg. 342). It is this basic difference in nature that explains many of the differences between Elves and Men. For one, while the Elves are content with their surroundings, Andreth says “no heart of Man is content” (Athrabeth 307). This is precisely why Men look to nature as a “material for use.” The Eldar, then, say that Men “look at no thing for itself; that if they study it, it is to discover something else” (Athrabeth 316). Men are thus inherently curious beings (Tolkien, it seems, would be a fan of the Life of the Mind). It is perhaps this feature that makes Men uniquely predisposed to Melkorianism in the Elvish view. There is a very thin line between studying something to understand it and to use it for your own ends (as we saw with Aulë and the Dwarves and Fëanor and the Silmarils).
The Elves’ love of the natural world instills in them their unique “weakness” (Letters, pg. 341): a deep-seated “unwilling[ness] to face change” (Letters, pg. 342) and an attendant desire to “preserv[e] the past” (Letters, pg. 342). Hence, Sauron was able to deceive the Elves into forging the Rings of Power: he played upon their desire to prevent their realms from naturally decaying over time. However, such a thing is impossible in the mortal lands of Middle-earth. We see this with Galadriel, who is an Elf and thus is of Arda. With her power boosted by Nenya, she recreates Aman to an extent in Lothlórien. Yet even her real recreation of paradise must fail, because no one can escape the passage of Time. Hence, Galadriel laments that:
“The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.
O Lórien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore
And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor” (The Lord of the Rings 485).
Galadriel does not get to indulge in her escapism: she must either return to the real paradise, Aman, or remain a powerful figure in Middle-earth while accepting the diminishment of her artificial realm. In this way, Tolkien seems to be harkening back to his essay “On Fairy-Stories”: he is directly rejecting the notion that memory and stories are escapism. The usage of the Ring Nenya here is also very interesting to me. By using the Ring to stop the flow of time (in a sense) in Lothlórien, Galadriel has attempted to bend Arda to her will. To me, that seems like a distinctly Mannish activity, based on the two natures laid out previously.
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| Farewell to Lórien by Ted Nasmith |
Beyond the Rings, the Elves have two ways of “avoiding” the change they fear, though neither is truly effective in mortal Middle-earth. The first, more palliative than preventive, is through memory of the past and stories. The second, and more literal, is sailing West to the Undying Lands of Aman, or paradise. However, this method is in a way contingent upon memory as well: Eärendil only reaches Aman because he gets the Silmaril, which, as we discussed, is the memory of the Light of paradise in Aman before Morgoth marred it. As a natural expression of their main weakness, memory seems to be especially the province of the Elves. As Finrod says:
“In memory is our great talent, as shall be seen ever more clearly as the ages of this Arda pass: a heavy burden to be, I fear; but in the Days of which we now speak a great wealth” (Athrabeth 319-320).
The Elvish desire to recall memories of a higher past is directly contrasted with the Mannish desire to explore the present and future throughout The Silmarillion. When Beren enters Doriath, he is described as “doomed to roam,” and “lonely still to roam” (The Lord of the Rings, pg. 251). Lúthien, meanwhile, dances happily on the greens of Doriath, singing to the music of Daeron. When the Green-elves of Ossiriand first find Men, they tell Finrod that Men are “hewers of trees and hunters of beasts; therefore [they, the Green-elves] are their unfriends” (The Silmarillion 142). While the Green-elves seek to exist in harmony with Arda, and venerate the past beauty in which they found it (and preserve it), Men seek to understand that beauty and use it
Man’s hunger for new things becomes Man’s “weakness” (Letters, pg. 341) when it becomes excessive hunger. We are told that the Men who arrived in Beleriand, fleeing from the East, “were eager to learn the lore of the Elves” (The Silmarillion 147). This makes sense, as the lore of the Eldar would constitute new knowledge. This is shown more directly with Beren. As he retrieves a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown, he is overwhelmed by its Light. He is the first mortal to behold the Silmarils, and suddenly, he is captured by the desire to have more, and so he decides to cut the other Silmarils from the crown (The Silmarillion 181). This insatiability leads to the awakening of Angband, the loss of his hand, and eventually, Beren’s very death. The idea of paradise comes in here as well: the Silmarils, as we discussed, are the memory of the Light of paradise. Perhaps Beren’s sudden desire is a rekindling of the Mannish desire to attain the Light over the sea they are unable to possess. Beren is not satisfied with one Silmaril, with the memory of the Light of the Trees; rather, he wants to gather all three Silmarils, all the Light of the Trees left on Arda, all of their paradise that is physically left.
Beyond Beren, Faramir tells Frodo that the Kings of Gondor died out because they spent their days “in high cold towers ask[ing] questions of the stars” (The Lord of the Rings 886). They thus became too focused on the mysteries of Arda and the stars, and ancient heraldry, and not focused enough on the outside world. Their desire for knowledge became unbalanced in one particular direction. The Stewards, Faramir says, have been “wiser” for that very reason: “they recruited the strength of our people from the sturdy folk of the sea-coast” and focused on defending Gondor (The Lord of the Rings 886) while also preserving Gondor’s lore (Denethor, for example, is very learned). Thus, Tolkien thinks Men should pursue new things, knowledge, and stories of the past, but there is a limit: as with Galadriel, memory should not become escapism; the outside world still exists. In this way, Tolkien harkens back to “On Fairy-Stories” once again. While both Man and Elf may rely on memory and stories for sustenance and empowerment, neither can use them to ward off the inevitable flow of Time.
- WRM
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