The compiled/interpreted architecture is only important because Emacs is written in C and Elisp isn't incrementally compiled to native code.
If Emacs was written in Lisp (like Zmacs), then it would have the same flexibility it currently has without having to contain an interpreter of any kind, and the user-written customizations would have the benefit of being compiled to optimized native code. Some things that you can't do in Elisp for performance reasons would be perfectly doable in a Common Lisp version of Emacs.
If Emacs was written in Lisp (like Zmacs), then it would have the same flexibility it currently has without having to contain an interpreter of any kind, and the user-written customizations would have the benefit of being compiled to optimized native code. Some things that you can't do in Elisp for performance reasons would be perfectly doable in a Common Lisp version of Emacs.