Otter thoughts....

[Tollers]

[PART 1]

The Passage
"Legolas watched them for a while with a smile upon his lips, and then he turned to the others. 'The strongest must seek a way, say you? But I say: let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and lead or over snow - an Elf.'

With that he sprang forth numbly, and then Frodo noticed as if for the first time, though he had long known it, that the Elf had no boots, but wore only light shoes, as he always did, and his feet made little imprint in the snow."

Why post on this passage?
I am shy to post on the new stuff as I started listening at both ends once I hit Session 100, but I have been so fascinated by this scene my entire LotR lifespan that it urges me to contribute a few thoughts. I do not pretend to be correct as there are many more wise among the Authorities of Mythgard.

I'd like to start by beginning with my specific fascination of this scene as one of the chief Elf-spots (others being: the dreaming/sleeping sequence, Loth rope, and fading are others like it) that came right to my mind when I first found Mythgard during Morgoth's Ring. I still recall the essence of the statement Professor Olsen made when those scenes came flooding in to my head. His statement was one I had long pondered.

It went something like this:
After all of the words in The Lord of the Rings (and even The Hobbit) we know very little about Elves, Morgoth's Ring is really the first time we get more of their Nature.
(This of course is picked up quite a bit in Nature of Middle Earth as well.) I was immediately drawn into Dr. Olsen's passions as this was one of many shared thoughts and the sort of thing of which I'd always loved sitting down and talking over a cup of tea.

Therefore, "Otter thoughts" will be my pun to discuss the passage in the following chunks: (a) What is it telling us about Elves/Legolas, (b) Why do we not get anything from Sam (or others), and (c) How should we think about Tolkien's Shift to Worldbuilding with this untouched.

 

[Tollers]

[Part 2]
A. What is it telling us about Elves/Legolas?
(1) It is not unique to Legolas. Legolas himself attributes such skills to "an Elf" and not "this Elf" or "to Legolas." - This was discussed in the class, and similar conclusions were drawn, but I desired to post it since it is illustrative that while Legolas is said to be a "strange Elf" by Frodo (we presume as author), but it is not his walking on snow that makes him strange and that adjective is not mentioned here, and yet this footwork is what seems to have made the cut for the well known PJ movies (in all much more extraordinary ways than perhaps walking on snow - Elf versus Oliphaunt anyone?)

(2) Legolas is not stoic. He is not a Vulcan, and he has much more to say than Captain-Obvious-Narrative lines he is left with in the movies. This IS "Tra-lil-lil-lil-lolly, ha! ha!" What I love about this awkward scene is that it is not exactly as we have learned "Hobbitry," but rather "Elfish." Legolas reminds us not in a cold and serious voice "there is a foul voice on the wind," but rather after he "watched them for a while with a smile" that he finds this amusing (I assume to the degree of a bunch of dwarves going to take back dragon gold with no weapons who barely get to Rivendell alive).

If I recall, Legolas was (at least since Tolkien discovered lines for him) quite filled with puns at this moment and if my memory is correct, it is also the reason I believe his first statement half to Gandalf "If Gandalf would go before us with a bright flame, he might melt a path for you,' said Legolas. The storm had trouble him little, and he alone of the Company remainder still light of heart. This is Elf humor that Gandalf has not quite done enough between "miruvor" and and making wet logs burst to flame. It's a admiration to Gandalf from Legolas but also a jesting nudge to the rest of the party to "show up" (perhaps he even senses Boromir's diplomacy).
[edit] I did no go back and look this up as well. Legolas originally says (after inheriting the line from Boromir) instead: "It is a pity that Gandalf cannot go before us with a bright flame and melt the snow."(The Treason of Isengard 170)

This can inform us that Legolas actually does know he cannot, and therefore is joking with him and others, but Gandalf also knows Legolas can run on the snow (see below) of a sort but that also will do the rest of them no good.

But, I diverge...what I meant to say when I said "I recall" is that I think Legolas in very early drafts joked about "tame dragons" aiding them to burn the snow (a potential reference to The Hobbit, but at very least a clever retort back to being set on fire. He is (if I recall correctly) from the offset possessing "tra-la-la-lally" lines.

(3) Perhaps the most controversial statement I am about to make is that it does not seem (whether Elf or Legolas specifically) quite different from the other things we learned about elves in LotR and certainly prior to any metaphysics or etymological outline of them. It is possible to expect Tolkien to have worked this up outside of LotR in parallel, but that is precisely what I think Dr. Olsen is getting at does not exist (I'll come back to this in the last section), but to stay with my claim, what I have in mind is: Miruvor, Cloaks, Lemblas, Running on ropes across a river, fading, teaching trees to talk, and living on words/poetry are akin. Looking outside of the LotR text even things like "reincarnation" and growing beards strike me similar.

My explanation could go on very long, and I'd love to talk about it perhaps in person at Mythmoot, but I'll give a simple and more complex short version here:
(3.i) Elves are fading and part of their nature is in fact to conform the hroa to the fea until it eventually fades, and yet they are doing this all their lives. They are thinning themselves out or thinning substance out within time - they are becoming fully Elf by absorbing the world/memory of it around them.

Elves can run on ropes quickly and without a balance rod because they are uniting/absorbing with the rope or thinning out their weight or the ropes grasp to their clutch, they are slow to poison and living on words because they are sustained by their fea not their hroa, they put all they love and know into what they make so that those things like miruvor or cloaks or lemblas can "stretch out" or "connect the user to its environment." I admit I do not like the word "stretch," but it is the best I can do with the pull of the fea on the hroa (and I'll include nassi). The smallest bite of lemblas and "a mouthful" of miruvor is all that is needed to adjust their hroa and awaken their fea.

(3.ii) There is some complicated work Tolkien does in NoME on primal matter, reincarnation, and patterns. In short, my more complicated explanation is that Elves have closer approximation to the nassi/patterns of each erma (than other creatures but less so than the Valar), and can both preserve the erma while adjusting the nassi (whether it is their own hroa or the world around them). The main purpose this originally serves is on reincarnation for elves (as they adjust their hroa to over time look like them or even if they want to grow a beard), but sometime bigger is I argue is derived here both in terms of what "memory" is to an elf, but also what they can do with it and how them knowing more intimately the nassi of things but also having stronger control over the hroa allows them to transform things or transcend themselves. While men need to invent snow-shoes, Elves just transcend or "pull/conform" the nassi between themselves and in this example [the snow] for period of time. Elves do not merely just run on top of snow, but they do not get cold from it as he wears no boots. Walking on snow therefore is like getting tree-bark to say hello (even if it uses a lot of time to do so properly)

To sum up, while the disappearing in the woods in The Hobbit may be a tainted example, running across a thin rope over rushing water is not, and I'd argue walking on the snow is akin to it. I would also argue Legolas may have to give up/spend more of his will/fea to do this long term, which generally would make it not a universal practice. This also supports why there is "little imprint."

(4) Ploughman, Otters and Elves oh my
Legolas's humor is aligned with the Elf point of view (if my #3 is close to the mark). In regard to snow, you can: Move it, Go Under it, Go Through it, Go Over it.
I believe he watches them for a while smiling because he actually believes they will be successful, but take some time.
Ploughman - move it
Otters - go through it
Moles/Dwarves - go under it (which no one is attempting to burrow)
Elves - go over it (a fact he clearly knows few possess)

 

[Tollers]

[Part 3]

Why do we not get anything from Sam/a Hobbit/rest of the party?
This is perhaps the hardest of the three sections, but here is what at least strikes me
(1) Sam: He cannot see well, he has 3 to care for (himself, Frodo and Bill) and his usual exclamations about "Elves sir!" come in the times where he is immersed in their presence (Galdor's singing and food, Rivendell, LL).
(2) Pippen: No great answer. He has simply justly come to the realization he is not on a hobbit walking party and is cold and near death
(3) Aragorn/Gandalf: Why do they not mention anything to Legolas like "go run down the mountain and get more firewood or carry a hobbit down. This is perhaps the hardest for me, but my gut says this is abandonment and risky to split up and firewood will do not good and he cannot carry all of them. The whole snow-ordeal is stumping him because he is probably assuming they'd planned for (snow) whether they know about his abilities or not.
[edit] I did go back and look at the Treason of Isengard as I thought Christopher has said something, and it appears that Gandalf's snarky claim was the inspiration (and so in the jest back and forth with Legolas is close to the mark just has Legolas's of burning snow is close to the mark.
"It was Gandalf's reply here...to Legolas's remark (originally Boromir's about melting a path that led to Legolas saying, 'I go to find the Sun!' and very probably (as I think) the source of the idea that the Elf, so far from being as helplessly marooned as Gimili, Gandalf, and the hobbits, could run upon the snow." (171)

It is noteworthy to point on that Christopher did not include Boromir or Trotter/Aragorn here as a reminder that Gandalf was quite short!

The biggest take-away I always use this section for is to point to it as a proof-point that Hobbits do not go on long adventures and through snow with no boots/shoes. Frodo remarks on Legolas not merely running over the snow, but has "no boots." Frodo would not remark on this without a "Elves too!" if this was commonplace for Hobbits. He is startled by this.

How should we think about this in light of Tolkien's Shift?
This last section are contemplations on why this smacks against world-building in the way he is doing it in LotR. I will admit, I do not have all the dates straight in my head, and so my first response may not be great, but I am pretty sure in his first couple drafts that he did not have this part (Legolas running on snow). If I recall correctly, he added this late(r). How and when that intersects with post-Loth, Moon phases, date recons, I am not sure, but his first impulse is not to write this, and I take that to mean it came to him through other means of development or Legolas simply telling him "we can do this Tollers!" What I am concluding from this is that he is aware and perhaps entering but not fully immersed in his world building yet, I mean....the late 60's stuff with Elf aging is kinda the far end of it right? My suggestion is that Legolas running on snow is not merely at the beginning as a mere Hobbit fairy-in-the-woods-thing that sounds cool so he left it in, but nor is it very late where he is measuring distances for supplies from Gondor to the Field of Cormallen. (He will return to Elves in full measure and more than we anticipated!)

Second, it seems in our deep discussions that Tolkien comes at this a few ways (and rarely is it advance planning). One of the ways is he uses the text as data to then make a claim of what a creature is or who has what or someone's job/role (here I am thinking about Gandalf having the Ring of Fire and his job being motivation). I think this was not planned by Tolkien and rather the story/the data is what informed him of who had it and how it worked or helped Gandalf. Another way is that someone just says something, and that thing creates new worlds and history. Sometimes he gets back to these data points, and sometimes he does not. Entwives... And finally, some times he is asked a question he had not discovered through a letter by someone, and then answers it by going to the text or responding to the inquiry or that he has not discovered it yet.

Third, I think I would most confident answer this standout (and I include walking on ropes with it) as the entire bit of Morgoth's Ring and NoME (his later stuff) as he was sorting out the nature of things, and why two races, what it meant for them to both exist in that world. I think he was laying down some strong foundations for that, and by strong, I think with work, many scholars (and I include Dr. Olsen in this) as being able to proport some mysteries through the metaphysics so far provided. If this was attempted, I'd likely request the first projection to be of mummified dwarves over snow walking elves, but that is just me. My conclusion here is he was working some of this out, but he was answering these specific things we zoom in on in LotR through broader philosophies as we see in later work. For some of these there may be enough to explain it, and for some perhaps not, but I am not sure he is doing a lot of this within the LotR proper (even if he is doing some outside of it in parallel).

TL;DR - I proport elf snow walking is a wonder, but they are hobbsicles so shiver and shrug....
If you take anything of value away from this let it be that at least beyond a "thinking fox" we can rest in peace knowing there are river otters in Middle Earth!

Jacob

 

[Jim Deutch]

I've been waiting years for this passage! Running back and forth over a rope strung between trees is an example of physical prowess and control. It is something that even Men can accomplish. The main bar to gaining this skill is, in fact, psychological: in the movie "The Walk", about Phillipe Petit and his tightrope walk between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, there is a scene where he falls into a pond, and a parallel moment high above NYC when he almost loses his nerve and the cable shakes under his feet. It's all about calm and confidence and knowing that you are safe: the cable supports you - is almost part of you - and falling is just not part of your reality at the time. And you don't fall.

Tolkien's thinking may have been something along those lines. But no Man can walk on top of freshly-fallen snow! It violates laws of physics, or at least of engineering. Snow can't support that much weight over that small an area. It just can't. This is plainly magic, manipulating the physical via the Will, similar to Gandalf's creating magical fire. Does Legolas lighten his body, or does he strengthen the snow? Probably neither: were JRRT to "explain" it he would probably expound on matters complicated and abstruse and I wouldn't "get" it anyway. Why can he walk on snow but not on water? No idea, but it may have something to do with Ulmo and the magic already inherent in the waters of ME.

It's a truly fascinating and mysterious thing. And one of my favorite passages in the whole book.