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Originally Posted by Aiwendil
Alatar wrote:
Tolkien intentionally left the awakening of Men out of the Silmarillion; it seems to me that he intentionally left room for the Eden myth. Moreover, he refers in Letters to the first "fall of Men" as an event not actually depicted in the Legendarium.
I think that Tolkien did, at least at some points in his life, consider Arda to be a fictional version of the real world in pre-Abrahamic times.
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Well, the fact that the 'Fall of Man' is not mentioned is a rather odd thing for Tolkien to play up - he never says in any Letters that the 6.15 to Paddington, or those little plastic tabs on the ends of shoelaces are not actually depicted in the Legendarium. I don't think either of those things would be assumed to be present by readers of the Legendarium & neither would they expect (unless they were Christians) to find the Fall of Man there - at least not the Biblical version of it.
This just strikes me as yet another example of Tolkien attempting to make the Legendarium 'fit' in response to challenges from Christian correspondents. 'Oh, its really there, but I just didn't mention it' is a cop out. The real point is that for the purposes of the Legendarium there was no need for a Fall of Man - it played no significant part - unlike the Fall of the Elves.
The Athrabeth is a work of great beauty & profundity, but if it is read as a reference to the Christian story it ties the Secondary world too closely into the Primary world - something he himself said would be fatal. It would then both cease to be a self contained Secondary World but couldn't be accepted as a 'genuine' possible history of the Primary World - in other words it would be neither one thing nor the other. The thing is, Tolkien knew this well but he still felt driven to attempt this disastrous move. If he'd succeeded his creation would have been no more than another Narnia-type 'allegory'.
Of course, this is the danger of the Translator Conceit, because the TC actually does attempt to tie the Legendarium into the Primary World. Interestingly, most readers pay no attention to the idea. They actually don't want Middle-earth in the long distant past - they really want it to be a place that exists 'now', just round the next corner or over the next hill.