"about-elf-and-faerie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

However, the soft sound of feet in the woods is far from the shining glory
of Galadriel. In trying to understand how this change came about, we must
consider the creation of Tolkien's mythology. Tolkien did not sit down, as
some of us do, and decide to design a world, rather, he decided to design
a language, and the world which would give birth to it. If we consider the
earliest work from the 'Lost Tales' (considered by some to be dragged out
from under the kitchen sink by Christopher Tolkien), especially the
travels of Aelfwine, we see a traveller speaking to elves from the outside,
more a reporter than an actor. Tolkien created, in his early mythology, a
race of beings, once great and mighty, who faded, and became diminutive
things hidden in a buttercup. So on this basis he rationalised a race he
could identify with, through the faerie of Medieval times, into the modern
bumblebee sized sprite. It is also important to note that the very
earliest of these tales was set in Britain itself. Middle Earth had not
been thought of. It is so easy to think of the coherent subcreation we
know of today as the world in which the Elves were born, but the Elves
were in fact the firstborn in more than just a mythological sense. Through
Tolkien's passion for language, the Elves were born before Middle Earth.
As the mythology and language grew, first through what is now the
Silmarillion, so the idea of an Elf grew, and grew apart from their Celtic
kin. They grew in stature, and in manner, till they came to take the place
as the nobility of Middle Earth. Indeed, even when 'The Hobbit' had been
written, Galadriel was not on her throne. (Consider a comparison between
the Wood Elves of 'The Hobbit' and the Elves of Lorien.) It was only in
the writing of 'The Lord of the Rings' that the Third Age, and Lothlorien,
came into being. This growth parallels a shift to the second type of
faerie, the elf of Germanic mythology. In Germanic mythology, it is the
fertility god Freyr(2) who is linked with the elves, and they live with
him in his hall, Alfheim. Freyr, and thus the elves, was linked to the
sun, and this explains the brighter aspect of the later Elves. However,
the Germanic elves have a lot in common with the Celtic faeries: their
beauty for one, and the fact that the elves live in the barrows of the
dead, a clear link with the hollow hills of the Sidhe.

The Elves of Middle Earth live in areas of lush forest, bright and green.
Though it may seem that the Elves glean their life from the forest, it is
the forest that gleans life from the Elves. The Elves tend the forest in a
way no man could, forever, since they are immortal. Not the false
immortality of the Ring Wraiths, with lives stretched out beyond enduring,
but the true immortality of ones whose whole essence is life. For how else
are we to interpret Gandalf, when he says "A mortal, Frodo, when he keeps
one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow, or obtain more
life, he merely continues till at last every moment is a weariness."(3) If
this is false immortality, then the true immortality of the elves must
mean to gain more life as each minute passes, to be as constant as the
earth. For even if Elves die "their spirits go to the Halls of Mandos and
eventually return to Middle Earth re-embodied" (4). Beyond their mere
immortality, they are, as First born of Middle Earth, more intimately
linked to the world than the mere residents, the Men, the Hobbits(5), and