Rivendell stands for the horizontal capacities of elf society to reach out, touch, and influence the other intelligent people of Middle-earth. Everybody is welcome there, everybody feels at home, everybody talks to everybody else freely as he would in no other place. Very different is Lórien, "the heart of Elvendom on earth," as Aragorn calls it. That is all perpendicular, all elvish. Strangers are not welcome there. The population consists wholly of Silvan elves living not in houses but on platforms in the tops of huge mallorn trees, which grow nowhere else on Middle-earth. Indeed, all its vegetation, from the flowers of elanor and niphredil in the grass to the tree walls enclosing the city of the Galadrim is unique. So, especially, is "the power and the light that held all the land in its sway," perceived by Frodo. Later he comes to understand that the whole enchanted region is created by the power of Galadriel focused through the elf ring Nenya, which she is wearing: "The power of the Lady is on it... where Galadriel wields the Elven-ring."
No such light shines over cosmopolitan Rivendell. In Lórien is the purest essence of faery, resembling the light of the Two Trees in Valinor, whereby Galadriel has made for herself and her people a region and a life as close to that of the Undying Lands as she can contrive on Middle-earth. In keeping with the nature of the elf ring from which it springs, Lórien the fair is a land of peace and healing where the Company recovers from weariness and grief for the loss of Gandalf, and where the reborn Gandalf himself comes after his fight with the Balrog, naked, to be clothed in white and nursed by Galadriel. Just across the river Sauron's stronghold of Dol Guldur broods on its stony heights above twisted, rotting trees. But the darkness it generates can make no headway against its opposite, the light of Lórien. Tolkien has arranged the confrontation with a purpose, of course. The elf Haldir speaks for him in seeing in the combat between light and darkness large implications for the theme underlying the whole War of the Ring: "In this high place you may see," he points out to Frodo standing on a tree platform, "the two powers that are opposed to one another; and ever they strive in thought, but whereas the light perceives the very heart of the darkness, its own secret has not been discovered. Not yet." But Tolkien also wants to bring the struggle being waged in Lórien right down to a personal one between Galadriel and Sauron. He manages this in a subsequent garden scene in which she demonstrates to Frodo and Sam how her mirror works. What defends Lórien, she tells them, is not so much the singing or even the arrows of her elves as her ability to read the Enemy's thoughts in its waters: "... I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all of it that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought. But still the door is closed!" Matched against the sight which the inherent sympathies of goodness give it, the selfishness of evil is blind.10
Nevertheless this advantage cannot save Lórien in the end. It was doomed an Age ago at the first forging of the rings. Haldir, speaking for his fellows, knows and laments it. Even if Sauron is beaten, "For the Elves, I fear, it will prove at best a truce, in which they may pass to the Sea unhindered and leave the Middle-earth for ever. Alas for Lothlórien that I love! It would be a poor life in a land where no mallorn grew. But if there are mallorn-trees beyond the Great Sea, none have reported it." A homebody himself, Sam recognizes that the elves "belong here" in Lórien, more even than hobbits do in the Shire. From this love of the elves for Lórien, which Galad-riel tells Frodo is deeper than the deeps of the sea so that their regret for it will be undying and never wholly assuaged, arises most acutely her temptation to accept the Ring when Frodo freely offers it to her. For this would be the one forbidden way to save her land. For centuries she and her husband, Celeborn, have loved it and "fought the long defeat" (superb phrase!) which is to be their lot. Now if she accepted the one Ring she could not only conquer Sauron with it but preserve the elf ring on which hangs the very existence of her country. She has even thought of taking it by force from her guest. In the final temptation scene, one of the finest Tolkien ever wrote, she dreams aloud of all the good she might do as Queen of Middle-earth, building up to the explosive recognition, "All shall love me and despair!" This settles the issue for her. Rather, she will "remain Galadriel," fight the good fight against Sauron for the sake of Middle-earth, and return with all her people to Valinor across the sea.
Tolkien's characterization of this greatest of elf women is remarkable throughout. One of the original Noldor leaders who left the Undying Lands with Fëanor in the First Age, she proudly declared, when exiled, that she had no wish to return. Consequently the approaching loss of Lórien is made more poignant for her by the possibility that she will be obliged to remain on Middle-earth, and sink to a rustic state in which she will "forget" all her high knowledge.11 Her temptation to accept the one Ring is increased correspondingly. Her intuitive understanding of Gandalf's motives for risking the Moria passage is keener than her husband's. So is her ability to absorb at a glance the inmost thoughts of each of her guests, especially Gimli, whose adoration she wins by a single unexpected glance of love. She has sternness, too. Apart from its meaning for Lórien, Frodo's mission is too crucial for all Middle-earth for her not to test the integrity of his companions by an unspoken offer to each of whatever he most desires. Boromir's knowledge that he has failed her scrutiny makes him hate her and drives him to looks and actions that warn Frodo of his danger. "There is in her and in this land no evil, unless a man bring it hither himself," Aragorn has assured the Company. Boromir has brought his in his own heart—the intention to seize the Ring.
As the Company prepares to leave Lórien, Galadriel has the fortitude to encourage her sad lord though "already our evening draweth nigh." She and her women with their own hands weave cloaks for all the travelers into which they embroider the hues of the land they cherish, "for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make." Much better than the anonymous products of our machines today, Tolkien implies. She also bestows on Frodo and his companions parting gifts carefully selected to meet the needs of each. Aragorn's brooch of elfstone is both the fullfillment of a prophecy and a "token of hope" for his kingship; Frodo's phial of water infused with the light of Eärendil's star will take him safely through dark places in Mordor, and so on. The strands of her golden hair that Galadriel gives Gimli bind them together in affection and signify the passing of the old feud between elves and dwarves. All her gifts come from a generous, wise, and tactful heart. She appears briefly once more at the end of the epic, pardoned by the Valar and ready for the journey overseas. Her true farewell, though, is at her last meal with the Company in Lórien, where to Frodo "already she seemed ... as by men of later days Elves still at times are seen: present and yet remote, a living vision of that time which has already been left far behind by the flowing streams of Time."
But we do not understand her yet, not until we understand better the slow pace of time in Lórien, and why she made it so. Through this we shall learn something fundamental about the inner life of all elves. As they float down the river, Anduin, the members of the Fellowship debate why their stay in Lórien seemed to them subjectively to last only a few days, whereas the shape of the moon they now see overhead indicates that by objective time they were there about a month. Frodo remembers that on first stepping over its borders he felt "that he had stepped over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days, and was now walking in a world that was no more. In Rivendell there was a memory of ancient things; in Lórien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world." He thought himself in a timeless country exempt from change, and actually heard the cries of seabirds whose race had perished when the world was young. Accordingly he now suggests that in Lórien "we were in a time that has elsewhere long gone by." It must have been before any moon existed, for he saw none there. Time had been stopped.
Legolas, out of his personal experience, corrects him by saying that time never stops, though it may flow more slowly in some places than in others. He then goes to the heart of elf psychology: "For the Elves the world moves, and it moves bot
h very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream." This analysis tells why the deathlessness of the elves makes them forever sad. Undying themselves, they watch all mortal things around them, which they love, always growing old and dying. "It is a grief to them." This is the swiftness of time. Then they turn inward to contemplate their own hardly changing natures. This is the slowness of time.
Frodo immediately divines that Galadriel has slowed time, and with it the processes of growth and decay, inside the boundaries of Lórien: things still wear out there, "but the wearing is slow in Lórien . . . The power of the Lady is on it. Rich are the hours, though short they seem, in Caras Galadon, where Galadriel wields the Elven-ring." Correspondingly lessened, then, is the grief of Lórien's elves in being surrounded by the processes of decay. They can be happy there, as they were only in the yet more perfect peace of the Undying Lands, where nothing ever grows old, and as they can be nowhere else on Middle-earth. They love the place passionately. Losing it will be an intolerable return to sorrow, which must drive them back eventually across the sea.
So in elves the difference between subjective and objective time produces tensions that tend to split their lives into two streams, inner and outer. Men feel this difference, too, in lesser degree, but the greater reach of elvish minds and the deeper ache they feel from the transiency of things around them sharpens the split and turns them more inward. Treebeard's comments to the hobbits on the innate empathy of elves for all living and dying creatures points up their pain. For more than men or dwarves, for instance, elves have built up out of their memories of the past an independent world, parallel to the present, into which they can retreat. In Gimli's words, for elves "memory is more like to the waking world than to a dream. Not so for Dwarves." This in response to Legolas' attempt to comfort Gimli for his loss of Galadriel by reminding him that his memory of Lórien will never fade or grow stale. During their pursuit of the ores Legolas' sleep is quite unlike that of his companions, and his dreams are a reality apart to which he consciously turns for rest: ". . . he could sleep, if sleep it could be called by Men, resting his mind in the strange paths of elvish dreams, even as he walked open-eyed in the light of this world."
Elves have learned to penetrate also into that ambiguous region where life verges upon death. The Valar have taught them how. That, as Gandalf tells Frodo, is why Glorfindel and other lords of the Eldar are able to stand against the Nazgûl: "They do not fear the Ringwraiths, for those who have dwelt in the Blessed Realm live at once in both worlds, and against both the Seen and the Unseen they have great power." To live at the same time in the worlds of the seen and the unseen is perhaps only-the ultimate extension of those powers of intellect, memory, imagination with which the elves have learned to occupy their immortality. Legolas may not be able to stand against the Nazgûl, or against the spirit of the Balrog risen from its dungeons underground, but he is the only one of Aragorn's followers able to walk in the dark among the wraiths of the dead oath-breakers unafraid as in a familiar country.
In all the traits just discussed elves have departed in spirit far from the ways of other creatures on Middle-earth, including men. But one further difference, even more radical, remains. All the mortal races look forward to some sort of life after death in some unspecified somewhere, but not the deathless elves. The latter never seem to expect more than endless life in Valinor. Will they never meet the other races again after the resurrection? Apparently not. This is why the elf princesses Lúthien, Elwing, and Arwen choose to become mortal, in order not to be separated after death from the mortal men they love. Sneaking of Lúthien, the first to accept this Doom of Men, Aragorn tells the hobbits in the camp on Weathertop: "But she chose mortality, and to die from the world, so that she might follow him . . . they passed, long ago, beyond the confines of this world." For this reason the parting between Arwen and her father Elrond is so poignant, because it is forever: ". . . and yet grievous among the sorrows of that Age was the parting of Elrond and Arwen, for they were sundered by the Sea, and by a doom beyond the end of the world."12 Even beyond the ending of Middle-earth. Grievous indeed the parting, not only for the individuals concerned but also for the races whose destinies decree so final a separation. The knowledge of it deepens the sadness of the elves' departure as the epic closes.
They leave Middle-earth with reluctance. Tolkien pictures them sitting together under the stars far into the night, looking to the chance wanderer like gray figures carved in stone, unspeaking, but in thought "recalling the ages that were gone and all their joys and labours in the world, or holding council, concerning the days to come." One wonders how content they will be in the Undying Lands. These are not Paradise. No beatific vision or new celestial life awaits the returning elves. In the endless tranquillity will Haldir and the others of Galadrim cease to long for the mallorn trees of Lórien of the Blossom, or Elrond for some struggle or other which he can lead? Enough— perhaps—that they will always be free to explore the boundless horizons of the mind, and need no longer die vicariously, as on Earth, with the constantly dying life around them.
2. Dwarves: Durin's Folk
The band of dwarves in The Hobbit, animated by a lust for treasure and for revenge, are a bumptious lot whom Bilbo often finds annoying. Beorn is "not over fond of dwarves," and the Silvan elves of Mirkwood, having gone to war with them some time before in a dispute over the ownership of gold, "did not love dwarves" either. At the end of the tale Thorin, the dwarf leader, is so adamant against sharing Smaug's hoard with those who have helped him recover it that his people are saved from battle with both elves and the men of Long Lake only by the descent of an army of ores, which unites the three races temporarily. Evidently dwarf character has in it a strong vein of "possessiveness," never a virtue in Tolkien's lexicon, and a quickness to quarrel that does not endear it to other races. Thorin himself, repenting as he dies, admits as much to Bilbo: "Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you ... If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." His successor Dáin establishes a lasting friendship with the men of Dale and Esgaroth by dividing the treasure with them on generous terms.
At the start of The Lord of the Rings many years later, however, Dáin's community of dwarves is the only one that has close relations with its neighbors. Gloin confesses to Frodo at Rivendell that Beorn's descendants still "are not over fond of dwarves." A dwarf community in the Blue Mountains, northwest of the Shire, seems never to be visited by anybody, and though its members travel freely through the Shire on business and put up overnight in the inn at Bree, they remain virtual strangers to the folk there. The embassy of G16in to the Council of Elrond is a first notable move toward a working alliance with the other free peoples against Sauron, and allows the shrewd elf lord to carry it a step further by introducing Gimli, son of Gloin, into the Fellowship of the Ring, where he can come to know, and be known by, the representatives of hobbits, elves, wizards, and men. Gimli's subsequent troubles at Lórien, Fangorn, Rohan, and elsewhere along the line of action bear witness to the hard initial suspicion with which his race is almost universally regarded.
This isolation of the dwarves has not been caused solely by the fact that they are "calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money" or that "there is no knowing what a dwarf will not dare and do for revenge or the recovery of his own," as The Hobbit puts it. Behind these traits lies the broader truth stated in The Lord of the Rings that "the Dwarves are a race apart," created in a way (of which Tolkien gives only the barest hints) unlike the origin of other species.13 Durin, their forefather, "slept alone, until in the deeps of time and the awakening of that people he came to Azanulbizar." As the Fellowship passes through Moria, Gimli sings an ancient ballad of his folk
which expands the account somewhat:
The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone,
When Durin woke and walked alone.
He named the nameless hills and dells;
He drank from yet untasted wells;
He stooped and looked in Mirrormere,
And saw a crown of stars appear...
The ideas that Durin was first born without a companion and went about giving names recalls Adam in Eden. After recounting the glories of dwarf civilization in Moria under Durin's descendants, the ballad ends with what looks like a prophecy of his resurrection:
There lies the crown in water deep,
Till Durin wakes again from sleep.
The prospect of a reawakening after death is traditional among dwarves. In The Hobbit Thorin, dying, expects it: "Farewell, good thief ... I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers until the world is renewed." In Appendix A Tolkien adds that dwarves believed Durin's spirit to have been reincarnated in the bodies of five later kings of Moria, "for they have many strange tales and beliefs concerning themselves and their fate in the world."
The uniqueness of dwarf origins and endings is accepted also by the Eddas, from which Tolkien may have derived it as well as Durin's name and function. In the Norse account the race is fashioned by the gods from the dead body of the giant Ymir:
Then went the rulers there
All gods most holy
To their seat aloft
Master of Middle Earth Page 10
