Once again I'm influenced by my own experience in this - but isn't this what a masterpiece is for, to evoke in each reader very deep and personal feelings?

A few days ago I was standing in the garden of my aunt's house in a small, fairly wild valley, full of fields and flowers and woods, and now in the full beauty of summer. She is selling it, and I have gone there to visit since I was a child, so I felt the sorrow of loss. I was looking at the sunset beyond the tall hills and I very clearly felt like an Elf.

I may be going into armchair psychology here but I think that in Tolkien's mind Elves *are* children on the verge of adolescence - in that they know they are losing something beautiful forever. My thought is a bit muddled here, because it's not Elves who pass into adolescence, but Men. I think Middle Earth's ages are like the ages of human beings. The Fourth Age, the Age of Men, is the Age of Adulthood. Elves must go, and will always be remembered as something distant and unbelievably beautiful that is lost forever.

The fact that they themselves try to preserve beauty to the point of obsession could be a message about not trying to stop this inevitable process. My reasoning may be faulty because it doesn't take into consideration the point of view of an Elf - but who really can know how the Elves live and think in the West? Only Frodo and Bilbo and a few selected others, and they never came back to tell. We have Arwen, though, who dies of desperation on mortal shores... one of the most poignant moments of the saga.

More will follow...