Quote:
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Whether the belief quoted in Morgoth's Ring is the final say, who knows? Tolkien changed opinions on his cosmos like other men change underwear. But the first section of The Silmarillion is certainly written in an Eldarcentric and not anthropocentric tone and point of view, which is at odds with a retelling with the usual conceits, flaws and historiographical integration of later mannish political and sociological creeds and concerns.
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As far as this much is concerned, I do believe Tolkien's final say -- granting that he never published his Silmarillion of course, but let's say 'final say' as in a fair number of late comments from different sources -- was that the Silmarilion was to be imagined as a largely Mannish affair, including a textual migration through Numenor.
In theory. I'm not sure Tolkien necessarily took up all the relevant texts and went through them line by line with this recasting in mind, but I do think such a recasting was his general answer to the problem that he believed existed. In other words, I think he tried a new Silmarillion, illustrated in part in
Myths Transformed, but abandoned this in general, realizing that he could retain much of what he had already written if he 'simply' tinkered with the transmission and authorship of the tales rather, despite the older Elfwine model.
I know that somewhere I have listed a fair number (not necessarily all) of the relevant citations that speak to a largely mannish Silmarillion, but who knows where I posted them if I don't. Some of them appear in this thread anyway.
http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=4390
Granted, as you say, it's possible that Tolkien might have come around again. He had published that Bilbo had produced his
Translations from the Elvish, but I think it's easy enough to imagine that the Elvish language is meant; and JRRT (later) published a reference to the 'Numenorean factor' in connection with
The Hoard from
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (noting:
'... No. 14 also depends on the lore of Rivendell, Elvish and Númenorean, concerning the heroic days at the end of the First Age; it seems to contain echoes of the Númenorean tale of Turin and Mim the Dwarf.').