Master of Middle Earth (14 page)

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

And counsel
together took

Who should of
dwarfs

The race then
fashion,

From the livid
bones

And blood of the
giant.

Modsognir, chief

Of the dwarfish
race,

And Durin too

Were then created.

And like to men

Dwarfs in the
earth

Were formed in
numbers

As Durin ordered.
¹⁴

Dwarves are the
only folk fashioned in this way. Tolkien keeps the idea of their uniqueness but
not the particular method of it recounted in the
Eddas.

Another racial
peculiarity which he fastens upon dwarves is the small number of their women.
Only one third of all dwarves are female, Tolkien says, and not all of these choose
to marry. In consequence most dwarf males never marry, and children are few.
Those males who do get wives keep them for life "and are jealous, as in
all matters of their rights." The devastating effects of these statistics
upon dwarf character in general can be imagined, and are certainly more than
enough in themselves to produce the inbred clannishness and surly tenacity that
drive away other races.

The sexual
imbalance is the probable cause also of the intense secretiveness of Durin's
folk. They have a language of their own which they guard so jealously that
"few of other race have succeeded in learning it." Each dwarf,
moreover, has his own "secret and inner" name, his "true"
name, never revealed to any one of alien race. "Not even on their tombs do
they inscribe them." What Gimli's true name is we never find out, nor does
Legolas, intimately though the two come to know each other. Gandalf refers to
this instinct for privacy in describing the rare silver mined in Moria, which
elves call mithril: "The Dwarves have a name which they do not tell . . .
The Dwarves tell no tale." Galadriel in Lórien knows how to make secrecy
an element in her test of Gimli's loyalty to the Fellowship: "And it
seemed to me too," he reports to his companions afterward, "that my
choice would remain secret and known only to myself."

The artistic
sensibilities of male dwarves, which make them master craftsmen in metals and
stone, seem to be a sublimation of their sexual frustration. Being unable to
have marriage, "very many" males come not to desire it, "being
engrossed in their crafts." Even their love of beauty, however, is usually
colored (or tainted) with the jealous possessiveness that runs through so many
facets of their nature. Listening to Thorin's crew sing praise of the smithy
work of their ancestors, Bilbo "felt the love of beautiful things made by
hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous
love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves."
¹⁵
We have Gimli's
word for it, though, that when confronted by the supreme loveliness of the
caves of Aglarond in Helm's Deep his people would rise above all thoughts of
gain, as he does. "There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely
to gaze at them . . . None of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or
ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there . . . We would tend these
glades of flowering stone, not quarry them." Caught up above his usual
dour self, Gimli proceeds to give a superbly lyrical picture of the echoing
domes and chambers underground, the glint of polished walls, marble columns of
white and saffron and dawn-rose springing "from many-coloured floors to
meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen
clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces!" Here he is a
true spokesman for the finer qualities of his race.

As suggested
above, Gimli's membership in the Fellowship of the Ring enables him to become
an ambassador for the dwarves to other members of the band and to the other
peoples whom they meet on their journey. In Moria he opens the eyes of the
hobbits, of Legolas, the elf, and Boromir, the man, to the past glories of
Durin's civilization. To the Lórien elves he exhibits dwarf pride and obstinacy
in preferring to fight rather than be treated as a spy. Galadriel welcomes him,
after setting aside the law which excludes strangers, as an ambassador of good
will for his race: ". . . today we have broken our long law. May it be a
sign that though the world is now dark better days are at hand, and that
friendship shall be renewed between our peoples." He learns in Lórien to
accept the love and understanding that she offers him and, so learning, he
outgrows the parochialism of his kind. In asking as a parting gift only a
strand of her hair "which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars
surpass the gems of the mine" he transcends dwarf obsession for both gold
and gems and frees the longing for beauty, the love of love, from the alloy of
earthly price. Galadriel can then foretell of him that '"your hands will
flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion." Gimli also
accepts the role as peacemaker between elves and dwarves that she has proposed
for him. When he returns home he will set her hair in imperishable crystal as
"a pledge of good will between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of
days."