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Originally Posted by davem
I can see what you mean. However, much as I love The Sil, it has never touched my heart in the way TH & LotR always have. Its very big & impressive (& I mean that), but just as, with age, Frodo & Sam's story have come to mean more to me than the Three Hunters, Helm's Deep & Pelennor Fields, so, the epic tales of the First & Second Age mean less to me as I grow older. LotR is Tolkien's great work, because of the smallness, the intimacy & humanity, of Frodo & Sam's struggle through Mordor, & of Frodo's last days & departure. If the tales of The Sil have any real meaning & relevance, it is because of the simple humanity given them by the Hobbits. If it wasn't for the existence of Frodo, Sam, Bilbo & all the 'charming, absurd Boffins, Bolgers & Bagginses' I wouldn't care at all for Beren & Luthien, Feanor, Earendel, Turin & the rest. Mr Baggins (as far as I'm concerned) didn't 'stray into their world', they 'strayed into his'.
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'tis the opposite for me- and perhaps therein one may see some light cast upon our rather different looks at many matter in the Legendarium- the Hobbits were my first love, above and beyond the High and Mighty, with my interest gradually shifting to fading and forgotten Númenor, and now resting at last with the tragedy of the Elves and Valar. I cannot say that my interests shall not shift back to Hobbits at some distant date... but I shall never likely see my interest in the Elves fade. The painful bittersweet has more tug on my heart than the charming and absurd- for which reason Frodo is my favourite hobbit, and his end the most satisfying.
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Now, I can see & accept that LotR is properly part of the Legendarium, & that the events of The Sil are what 'explain' LotR, but LotR is what gives The Sil meaning. As far as I am concerned, there are 'two' works here - The Sil/LotR (excluding TH for reasons of style, depth, characterisation of the Elves & Trolls, etc) - & TH/LotR (only including The Sil peripherally if at all, due to its absence of Hobbits & what they symbolise in the main). Originally I read the 'first', & that was the story I came to love. Later I came to favour the 'second'. Now, for whatever reason (or none at all) I find myself increasingly moving back to my first love. Maybe its a phase I'm going through.
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I agree that, as presented, there is a bit of a "lack" to the
Silmarillion- that it does, in fact, require some "meaning", as you put it- or as a "grounding" in our world. However, where you find this meaning in the
Lord of the Rings, as do most readers, I suspect, I'm increasingly come to find it in the so sadly neglected tale of Ælfwine/Eriol... And here the Book of Lost Tales plays a major part- but not the only one. Although there was really no way Christopher Tolkien COULD have written the
Silmarillion into a publishable form, while keeping Ælfwine and remaining as close as possible to his Father's works, I wish indeed that it HAD been completed by Tolkien as such...