vardasvapors:

glumshoe:

Fantasy world in which Dwarves are not motivated by greed or love of gold, only by a profound scientific enthusiasm for geology.

Oh oh! I’ve heard of this fantasy world! I don’t think it was very influential unfortunately. At least, I think everyone it might have supposedly influenced just copied the misconceptions and in-universe misunderstandings of dwarves it repudiated instead? I guess that was a little bit its own fault because the author changed his mind about this portrayal for the better halfway through writing, but still a shame! Lemme try and remember what it was, and maybe bring up the relevant quote. Oh right!

‘Strange
are the ways of Men, Legolas! Here they have one of the marvels of the Northern
World, and what do they say of it? Caves, they say! Caves! Holes to fly to in
time of war, to store fodder in! My good Legolas, do you know that the caverns
of Helm’s Deep are vast and beautiful? There would be an endless pilgrimage of
Dwarves, merely to gaze at them, if such things were known to be. Aye indeed,
they would pay pure gold for a brief glance!’

‘And I would give gold to be excused,’ said Legolas; ‘and double to be let
out, if I strayed in!’

‘You have not seen, so I forgive your jest,’ said Gimli. ‘But you speak like
a fool. Do you think those halls are fair, where your King dwells under the hill
in Mirkwood, and Dwarves helped in their making long ago? They are but hovels
compared with the caverns I have seen here: immeasurable halls, filled with an
everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools, as fair as
Kheled-zâram in the starlight.

‘And, Legolas, when the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors
under the echoing domes, ah! then, Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of
precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded
marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There
are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into
dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening
pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears,
banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering
world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities. such as the
mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through
avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come.
And plink! a silver drop falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the
towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea. Then evening
comes: they fade and twinkle out; the torches pass on into another chamber and
another dream. There is chamber after chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of
hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; and still the winding paths lead on
into the mountains’ heart. Caves! The Caverns of Helm’s Deep! Happy was the
chance that drove me there! It makes me weep to leave them.’

‘Then I will wish you this fortune for your comfort, Gimli,’ said the Elf,
‘that you may come safe from war and return to see them again. But do not tell
all your kindred! There seems little left for them to do, from your account.
Maybe the men of this land are wise to say little: one family of busy dwarves
with hammer and chisel might mar more than they made.’

‘No, you do not understand,’ said Gimli. ‘No dwarf could be unmoved by such
loveliness. None of Durin’s race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not
if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming
trees in the spring-time for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering
stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap – a small chip of rock
and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day – so we could work, and as the
years went by, we should open up new ways, and display
far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the
rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in
Khazad-dûm; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain
there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let
the night return.’

–The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”