Tolkien’s notes in ‘The Nature of Middle-earth’ finally answer the question of how elves manage in bed.
I’m sure there are a majority of us who if we had to describe in two words the main difference between The Lord of the rings Y Game of Thrones we would say without hesitation: “sex and violence”. In Tolkien’s world there are enough wars and deaths to depopulate Middle-earth a couple of times per era, but it’s not half as bloody as the weddings imagined by George RR Martin. And if we talk about sex… between a saga originally conceived as adventure books for children with The Hobbit that grew into something else and a series with the HBO adult label there is a Helm’s Deep.
It is not that Tolkien’s characters do not love and desire each other, more would be missing, although the bromance between Frodo and Sam (the true hero of The Lord of the rings) carries more weight than any romance, but Aragorn’s feelings for Arwen and Éowyn’s for Aragorn are so platonic that we find it hard to imagine them trying any kamasutra position. And if we talk about elves, we have double chastity. Elves are so noble, so perfect, so eternal, so chaste… But baby elves have to come from somewhere, right?
Let’s say Tolkien (which, by the way, would be puritanical but not racist, no matter how much neo-Nazi propaganda wants to appropriate it) he preoccupied himself with the subject almost like someone trying to penetrate the mysterious sex of angels. Among his notes, edited Carl F. Hostetter in The nature of Middle Earth (and what is more natural than sex), Tolkien makes a mess to categorize something as fluid as elvish love.
Tolkien distinguishes for the elves between the Quenya or friendship, the in the where a soul (ugly) leans toward another and the yermë what is, yes, sexual desire. Then he gets even more muddled to explain why the yermë belongs both to the bodyhour) as to ugly or why it doesn’t usually happen without melmë, which is the elvish word to describe the sentimental bond between two lovers.
Certainly, he did not have to invent so many terms to answer what has led us to this article. How do elves manage in bed? In those same notes Tolkien answers us. with the series of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in mind ahead of its premiere on Amazon Prime Video on September 2, a user of Reddit has had the courtesy to share with us all Tolkien’s definitive answer on the sex of angels, sorry, elves:
. . the act of procreation, being of a shared will and desire and in fact controlled by the fëa [alma], was achieved at the speed of other conscious and voluntary acts of delight or production. It was one of the most delightful acts – in process and in memory – in an elven life, but only its intensity provided its importance, not its time or duration: it could not have been endured for long, without an “expense” disastrous… the delight in elves is longer and more intense than in men: too intense to be endured for long.
It starts badly, reducing everything to procreation, but the answer does not disappoint. We understand that Tolkien wants to tell us that elvish sex is so intense that it could not be endured for a long time. A pity, because if the elves live an eternity, it would not hurt if the duration also extended to the orgasm. But of course, they run the risk of that “disastrous expense”…
Source: Fotogramas
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
