Physics opportunities at ELFE

I review some central physics opportunities at the 15–30 GeV continuous beam electron accelerator ELFE, proposed to be built in conjunction with the DESY linear collider. Our present detailed knowledge of single parton distributions in hadrons and nuclei needs to be supplemented by measurements of compact valence quark configurations, accessible through hard exclusive scattering, and of compact multiparton subsystems which contribute to semi-inclusive processes. Cumulative (x > 1, xF > 1) processes in nuclei measure short-range correlations between partons belonging to different nucleons in the same nucleus. The same configurations may give rise to subthreshold production of light hadrons and charm.