Posted: April 07, 1999 at 15:50:52: by Michael Martinez
: But what Elrond said "to preserve all things unstained" IS : holding back time. If something is not being effected by time, : time is being held back from it. SO it is quite possible when : Tolkien said their power was to hold back time, he indeed meant : what Elrond was saying.Possibly, but your inference that Bilbo was affected by this power is only partially correct. Bilbo would have eventually faded -- that is not the kind of preservation the Elves had in mind. They were trying to prevent fading. : As for memory of their stay, I point to Tom Bombadil. Time : seemed to be messed up there. They became so involved with the : music and dance that they simply lost track. A similar thing : happens in Rivendell. When they are in the room where Frodo : meets Bilbo (the Hall of Fire?) Frodo speaks of being : captivated by the elvish songs. Time is not distorted in Bombadil's house. No one lost track of the days. Nor does anyone seem to have lost track of the days in Rivendell (although a time distortion there would have been consistent with the time distortion in Lorien since Elrond had one of the Three). Being captivated by songs is not the same as time distortion. : They say they could remember "a number of days" but how many is : that. Since it really can't be determined by other means, we : must use the appendix and say 30. No, we must use Sam's reckoning, where he says he can remember three nights for certain and maybe several more. That's a far cry from 30 days. Even Aragorn agrees with Frodo that time moved quickly in Lorien, "as for the Elves". It is certain that they experienced far fewer than 30 days in Lorien.
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