[BRIEF NOTE] Elvish Power in Pratchett
Apr. 6th, 2005 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldPratchett’s Lords and Ladies is a novel set in his petty kingdom of Lancre, organized around the personalities of Lancre’s three active witches. All seems well, as the king--unlikely successor to the throne as described in Wyrd Sisters, but decent enough because of all that--is preparing to marry. But then, even as Lancre prepares for a joyous wedding, two of Lancre's three statutory witches discover that at a stone circle high in the Lancre mountains that leads elsewhere (best not to ask where), people have been dancing so as to open the gate between the human world and the other place.
Some bored young women wanted to open the gate elsewhere, because they wanted the elves. They remembered the old stories about the glamour of the elves, their beauty and their grace, their fine manners and their intelligence. They wanted to make everything new again into their dowdy reactionary old kingdom. What these young women didn't take into consideration was the possibility that the old stories about the elves might have been slightly, but crucially, twisted askew. Thus:
It is true, in Pratchett's universe, that the elves are more capable in many domains than human beings. They command culture and intelligence far more readily than dirt-scrabbling homo sapiens sapiens, mainly because of their innate superiority. The elves, in fact, are so far ahead of human beings that they don't consider themselves bound with the humans in a single moral community, as one prey found out:
Elves are interesting creatures, particularly in more recent fiction. Tolkien's elves are the prototypes: ancient and long-lived, wise and cultured, graceful and strong. His elves, survivors of a long-vanished world, are superior to the human beings who live in their fallen world. One thing that Tolkien didn't consider--or, at least, didn't consider in The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit--was the question of what beings who were, in truth, far superior to the humans created in their image would do to their inferior copies. The precedents in human history, when one talented group of people gains control over another, not-so-talented, group, aren't reassuring.
More on this theme later.
Some bored young women wanted to open the gate elsewhere, because they wanted the elves. They remembered the old stories about the glamour of the elves, their beauty and their grace, their fine manners and their intelligence. They wanted to make everything new again into their dowdy reactionary old kingdom. What these young women didn't take into consideration was the possibility that the old stories about the elves might have been slightly, but crucially, twisted askew. Thus:
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project clamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No-one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad (Pratchett 169-170).
It is true, in Pratchett's universe, that the elves are more capable in many domains than human beings. They command culture and intelligence far more readily than dirt-scrabbling homo sapiens sapiens, mainly because of their innate superiority. The elves, in fact, are so far ahead of human beings that they don't consider themselves bound with the humans in a single moral community, as one prey found out:
There was something about the eyes. It wasn’t the shape or the colour. There was no evil glint. But there was . . .
. . . a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours (142-143).
Elves are interesting creatures, particularly in more recent fiction. Tolkien's elves are the prototypes: ancient and long-lived, wise and cultured, graceful and strong. His elves, survivors of a long-vanished world, are superior to the human beings who live in their fallen world. One thing that Tolkien didn't consider--or, at least, didn't consider in The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit--was the question of what beings who were, in truth, far superior to the humans created in their image would do to their inferior copies. The precedents in human history, when one talented group of people gains control over another, not-so-talented, group, aren't reassuring.
More on this theme later.
