[Aiwendil]

Is A New Silmarillion Justified?

It is necessary first to inquire into what exactly a "New Silmarillion" is, then into what it might mean for such an object to be "justified" or "unjustified".

The phrase "New Silmarillion" or "Revised Silmarillion" implicitly assumes that there is some "Old Silmarillion" or "Unrevised Silmarillion" with which it can be compared (indeed, in reference to which it is defined). What is this "Old Silmarillion"? It can only be the published Silmarillion, the ‘77, if you like.

But what is the published Silmarillion? It is not a text written by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is rather a continuous narrative constructed by Christopher Tolkien (and Guy Kay) out of the various texts written by his father. The objective of a "New Silmarillion" is the same: to present a continuous narrative constructed out of the various texts. It is thus not really a "revision". It bears no direct relation at all to the published Silmarillion. It is "new" only in the sense that, as it happens, the published Silmarillion was created first, chronologically.

The question, then, must become whether a continuous Silmarillion is justified. If yes, then, at least in principle, the New Silmarillion project is justified. If no, then the published Silmarillion is unjustified.

What can "justified" mean in this context? Obviously, it cannot have the kind of strong moral meaning it does when we ask, for example, whether a war is justified. I suppose we might break it down into two questions: is there any value in a continuous Silmarillion? Is there any harm in a continuous Silmarillion?

To the second question, I would answer "no" without hesitation. No one is being forced to read such a thing; no one is being forced (or even urged) to consider it "official" in any way. The existence of such a thing cannot be harmful.

The real question, then, is whether there is value in it. This is perhaps a bit more difficult to answer, but I think that the eventual answer must be "yes". I am a great fan of the scholarly approach to Tolkien's writings exemplified by HoMe. But the Silmarillion is above all else a work of literature - and a great work of literature. It deserves to exist in a coherent form. Would Beethoven's ninth symphony be great if it were never played, but merely studied in score? Would The Lord of the Rings be great if it existed only as scattered pieces of narrative with complex and oft conflicting indications for how these were to be fitted together? Would Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band be great if it were merely a long string of studio outtakes?

Maybe these things would still be in some sense "great". But when I consider such possibilities, the value of having these things whole, as fully realized works of art, becomes immediately apparent.

Silmarillions Plural

References to "The New Silmarillion", "The Revised Silmarillion", or (worst yet) "The Canonical Silmarillion" undoubtedly sound a bit monolithic. That is because each of these is to some degree a misnomer.

Even if the value of a continuous Silmarillion is admitted, the objection may be raised that the published Silmarillion already exists, so the desire for a continuous Silmarillion is fulfilled. Why is a new one needed? Add to this the misperception that the new one is intended to supercede the ‘77, to be THE Silmarillion for all time, and we have a very reasonable question.

But there is not a single "New Silmarillion"; there is an infinite number of them.

With the publication of HoMe we have essentially all of the Silmarillion texts. This is the primary source material, and nothing can ever alter that. Now it is clear that these texts can be arranged in many ways, can be added to or subtracted from, combined or dissected. It is clear also that the texts bear certain empirical relations with each other, and form something of a complex network. There is an astronomically high number of ways of manipulating these texts to form a new text (when we add the possibility of adding text, it becomes infinite). These ways can be evaluated in terms of the logical structure of the relations among the texts. In other words, there are an infinite number of Silmarillions that could theoretically be constructed out of the source material, and in theory there must be principles that can be invented that will guide the construction of such a text.

All this may seem a bit pedantic, since it is quite obvious that we can invent principles and then apply them to the source material and create a new text. But the chief point to be taken from it is that these are all operations in a purely logical space defined by the source texts - in other words, there are all sorts of continuous Silmarillions more or less inherent in the source material.

Obviously, some of these will be a lot more interesting than others. We could construct a Silmarillion by taking the QS found in HoMe V and replacing every fifth paragraph with the corresponding paragraph from Q in HoMe IV. This would be a very silly thing to do. There would seem to be no point in such a Silmarillion. But it is still a possible Silmarillion, inherent in the source material. We could take all the latest narratives written by Tolkien and put them together in chronological order. This would be a good deal more interesting, if only because we humans tend to think that the author's final thoughts on each particular subject are more interesting than his thoughts from various random intervals in the middle of his life. But such a Silmarillion would also have features that we would call disadvantages; the content of certain sections, for example, would conflict with the content of other sections.

So we can narrow our attention down to those Silmarillions in which there is a kind of consistency from beginning to end (and we need not worry that "consistency" is a vague term, for the set of Silmarillions we are interested in is arbitrary). Even here there are very many options. We could construct a perfectly consistent Lost Tales mythology. We could construct a Silmarillion using the QS as a base text and supplementing it only with earlier texts, altering inconsistencies in favor of QS. We could do the same but supplement it only with later texts. We could make a Myths Transformed Silmarillion. We could make a Silmarillioin in which no words not found in the base texts could be added. We could make one in which we are free to write fan fiction wherever it suits our fancy.

Again, some of these will have advantages and some will have disadvantages. I think that very many of them would be extremely interesting, and would have value in existing. The published Silmarillion is one of this sort. The "Revised Silmarillion" we are working on here is another of this sort. They are two among hypothetical hundreds; theoretical thousands.

When you look at things in this light, it seems almost irrelevant to argue about the principles on which any particular one of these is based - for obviously these are not the only principles upon which a Silmarillion could be based. It is just that this particular Silmarillion has these particular principles behind it, and it happens to be the Silmarillion we are talking about at the moment. We could just as easily speak of that Silmarillion with those principles. "Such and such a Silmarillion," you may say, "was constructed by a committee; I see that as a disadvantage." Fine. Construct one yourself. Seriously - it's quite fun. Better yet, construct two yourself. Choose different principles from which to start and see what results you get in each case. And when you're done, I'll be eager to read them both.

So you see I think that it's no use to argue whether THE Revised Silmarillion ought to be made. There are thousands of possible Silmarillions and there is no harm in any of them being made, and value in many. But you've got to start somewhere, and, since there were several more or less like-minded people on the forum, we chose certain guiding principles and embarked on constructing one as a committee. I happen to think that those principles will make for a Silmarillion of particular value; but then, I helped write the principles, so maybe it's just my personal opinion. In any case, I don't think that any such set of principles is somehow on a different plane from the others, nor that any continuous Silmarillion could ever be called "official" unless JRRT were to return from the grave and write it himself.

Canon and Canon

I think that a lot of confusion in discussions like that in this thread stems from an ambiguity in the meaning of the word "canon" as applied to Tolkien's works. This, I think, is because the word actually has two meanings that are, in the cases of most authors, identical.

On the one hand (and, I think, in its primary meaning), "the canon" can mean the set of works that we can safely say are "by author X". The James Joyce canon is the set of works that we can say are "by James Joyce", etc. It is an important term in literary criticism for it more or less identifies the works that are fair play in the critic's consideration of the author's writings. For Tolkien, this set would include The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, the writings found in HoMe, "Farmer Giles of Ham", etc. There may sometimes be ambiguity concerning certain works, and whether they are to be admitted in to the canon of a particular author. But in the case of Tolkien, I don't think there are really any such works.

If "the canon" for a particular author includes only finished works, then these works will generally be self-consistent. If they are supposed to take place in the same world, they will agree with each other regarding the facts about that world. Other authors may come along later and add their own stories about that world - but of course these are not part of the "canon" of the first author; hence, "canon" can in this case come to be thought of as referring to the facts about the imaginary world. In other words, "canon" can come to be equated with the "true history" of the imaginary world, as opposed to any false or unauthorized stories about it.

Obviously, this meaning of "canon" diverges from the first in the case of Tolkien. For Tolkien left us various writings that are part of the Tolkien canon (first meaning) but that disagree with each other. So the canon (second meaning) comes to refer to the "true history" of Arda. Obviously, such a concept is something of a fabrication (since this is all fiction), and we ought not be surprised when we discover that there is no single, authoritative canon (second meaning).