Re: Answer to Sally's Question: Elves, Neste

Oh, it's late, and I'll be up even later.  So what the hey.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christian Thalmann" <cinga@...>

> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Sally Caves <scaves@F...> wrote:
>
>  > It's as if a force majeure
>  > wanted not only to discourage belief in fairy lovers and elves, but to
>  > deride them as well,
>
> A force majeure such as the Church, I assume?
Oh, yup.  I'm thinking of the big wave of Inquisitorial questionings in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the continent, which wanted to
discourage the laissez faire attitude taken by some people about fairies and
elves and the Otherworld, but Burchard of Worms was much earlier.  His
tenth-century Decreta is a list of interrogations and punishments (usually
bread and water) for heretical thinking: "do you believe that witches can by
spells cause a man to lose his God-given shape and turn into a wolf?  If you
do, you should do penance for five days on bread and water.  Do you believe
that fairies and elves can make a woman pregnant with their seed?  If you
do, you should do penance for five days on bread and water."  "Do you
believe in fairies and elves period?  Fauns and satyrs and sylvani?
banshees and pookas and Peg Powler?  Well, if you do..."  That sort of
thing.  I improvise.  The fifteenth-century Malleus Maleficarum, that book
full of chuckles, goes into great detail about the power of incubi and
succubi to assume by glamour the shape of human beings and transfer sperm
that way.  No longer is the fairy lover just a fairy.  He or she is now a
demon-- or a witch who seduces through the power of the Devil (with the
permission of course by God), and who must be routed out, interrogated,
tortured, and burned.

>  > The talk came at a
>  > fortuitous time, because I've been asking you all what you meant by the
>  > "Elvish."  It does indeed seem to go back much further than Tolkien's
> use of
>  > it, but Tolkien neatly removed his Elves from all taint of the sexually
>  > dangerous, while restoring them to proper size and to an original
>  > Otherworldliness.  He turns them into almost angelic figures whom
mortal
>  > women cannot possibly fear or desire!  This was one of the great
>  > frustrations about LotR for me when I encountered it at fourteen.
>
> Yes, this air of holier-than-thou virginity isn't something
> I admire about the elves...  But then again, there's very
> little romance and next to no allusion to even the existence
> of sexuality in the whole book.
Well, what he left out, a whole bunch of us were putting back in, at least
in our imaginings.  But you're right.  Tolkien is writing fantasy in the
mode Victorian.  Lots of homosocial bonding and ethereal, perfect women.

>  > Glorfindel was obviously off-limits... just too unavailable.  Legolas
was
>  > too bonded with Gimli; Elrond had a mother and a daughter who looked no
>  > older than he did.  What interest would he have in a mortal woman?
>  > Miscegeny was verboten (except in a few notable cases), and so, I
> imagine,
>  > was anything less legal.  LOL!  (remember, this is my teenaged self
>  > thinking.)
> I was very grateful for the Faramir/Éowyn romance.  At
> last two normal realistic people finding happiness
> amongst each other!  =)
Me, too.  And the only real kiss in the book, did you notice? :)

> BTW, in my first reading I hadn't even noticed that you
> had used a German word in there...  funny how the mind
> works.  (Or then, funny how sloppy a reader I am.)
You mean force majeure?  :>   All kidding aside, verboten is perfectly
English!  Pronounced /v@r'bot@n/.  Or, in Americanese, v'rBOAT'n.  Swallowed
"t."

>  > I speak as a heterosexual FEMALE conlanger and conworlder, but
>  > I wondered if the popularity of the concept of the Elf, and the word
> itself,
>  > conjured up a people that were sexy because they were Other.
>
> Well, inaccessibility is in a way sexy all by itself...
> albeit in an unsatisfactory way.
Oh, no, very satisfactory.  To teenaged imagination, that is.  I always
liked Spock better than I liked Kirk.  Kirk undid all the mystery.  Until
they produced that stupid episode where Spock gets sprayed by the flower.
That just embarrassed.

> As for just being "other", I don't think that suffices.
> Tongue and lip piercings are "other", but profoundly
> unsexy IMHO.
Hee hee hee!  The Teonim can get into piercings.  Mostly of their ears, but
they see the erotic possibilities of the other types.

>  > In inventing my early Teonim, I wanted them
>  > to have an "otherness" to them, but I did NOT want to copy Tolkien.
>
> Ah, sounds familiar.  My Obrenaj also have many Elven
> traits (social, musical, lithe, beautiful...),
....all these have the educated elite Teonim.

> but on
> the other hand they also have very secular sides, such
> as their human mortality and their appreciation for
> worldly pleasures.  =)
....all these have the aristocratic Teonim, too.  And the not-so.  The Teonim
have slightly Asian features, as you might note from some of my drawings,
which are idealized, of course.  This seems consonant with a people who
dwell on  islands in the middle of the Black and Caspian seas, and who
travel East and West between "meltings" as they call it.  But their features
are mixed with Caucasian features--sort of like some people of Kazahkstan.
The more exotic body-types have a variety of skin tones and mixtures: from
freckled to mottled, from dark to naturally parti-colored hair.  There are
fat Teonim, skinny Teonim, short, tall, big-nosed, small-chinned, ugly
Teonim, but the ideal is olive-skinned, well-built bodies, well-formed
polydactyly, dual-colored irises that "flush" gold with emotion, and hair
that is dark at birth and gradually and prematurely grows white-blond with
age.  Hair fashions are big; braids, combs, twists, bleachings, dyings.
Men, if they aren't clean-shaven, have closely clipped beards and mustaches.
Women like pointy hats.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."