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Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age
I there are two reasons for this. First, Tolkien seemed unable to pick out one story and focus on that alone. He was always jumping from one aspect of the Legendarium to another. He was so in love with Middle-earth as a whole that he couldn't focus on one part of it to the exclusion of all others. If only he had done that... If only we had a complete Tale of Gondolin, or Beren and Luthien. I think we would all trade in the later writings for that. I do feel that the process of aging separated Tolkien from faerie.
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Well, CT did state in an interview that in his opinion the reason his father failed to complete The Sil ws simply because he was 'too tired'. Whether he had also 'lost his fay star' is another question - in the post LotR period he began to re-write Tuor & the Fall of Gondolin, the Narn & a great deal of other M-e related stuff - not to mention Smith. Of course, he never completed Tuor, never began Beren & Luthien, & what he did finish was a lot of shorter pieces. Its entirely possible that he felt that he could never surpass LotR - consider the time & effort he put in to that. I suppose that after that he may have simply felt daunted by the thought of beginning another epic retelling.
What he did was turn to 'explaining' aspects of his secondary world. And while that added 'depth' to the creation, & produced some fascinating stuff (as well, let's admit, some of his most beautiful prose) it was not 'necessary' - Osanwe Kenta, for instance, is a very clever piece, & is clearly the result of some serious thought on M-e metaphysics, but is it actually 'necessary'. Same with the essay on the Palantiri - very clever, quite interesting in itself, but in the end what's he's actually doing in these pieces & other like them is replacing 'magic' with 'science'. All part of the process which reaches its zenith (or should that be nadir?) in the dead end of 'Myths Transformed'.
So, in the end, I think
Child has a point. Of course, he knew the stories, & so could have set them down, but perhaps the vision, the inner fire, had gone. He could only re-write & touch up what he already had. Perhaps the choice was not either The Three Great Tales or The Athrabeth, Osanwe Kenta, Laws & Customs etc, but rather The Three Great Tales or LotR - by which I mean perhaps if he hadn't channelled his energies into LotR during the forties he'd have used them to complete the Sil & write the First Age trilogy.