To attempt by device or ‘magic’ to recover longevity is thus a supreme folly and wickedness of ‘mortals’. Longevity or counterfeit ‘immortality’ (true immortality is beyond Ea) is the chief bait of Sauron – it leads the small to a Gollum, and the great to a Ringwraith. JRR Tolkien, Letter 212 In my previous essay on Death and the Half-Elven, I quoted from this letter in order to illustrate Tolkien’s shifting view on mortality and its root in his own fictional world. In this context, the final sentences merely illustrate that this counterfeit immortality was, to Tolkien, a great evil…
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We all of us are things forgotten still clinging to memory. Immortality. The great and universal human ambition. Promised ever and anon by the mystic words of prophets and sages, whose very sight hath pierced the veil twixt death and everlife. Sought after by philosophers and surgeons, greedy grasping for elixirs and potions that may prolong mortality by weeks, days, even precious and fleeting seconds. It may be that the king, the historian, and the artist can rightly claim to having mastered immortality. For though their fleeting flesh perishes and withers into dust, their deeds and doings ring through the…
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