Quote:
Originally Posted by Galin
My question continues to be, if Tolkien considered the revised poem to be internal -- that is, a translation of some Middle-earthian author and not a reflection on Warwick by JRR Tolkien the poet --... then who is the imagined author? And more importantly, what is this Kortirion... that the Edain built?
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Glad to be of assistance,
Galin.
Your questions are very good ones. They provoked me to look again (after a long while) at the revised poem, published in
The Book of Lost Tales, Part I, found in Chapter I, pp. 39-43 of my edition. Both are obviously closely related, the identity of the author being dependant on that of Kortirion, which is as you say, the more important question.
I don't think we can say, from the benefit of our present knowledge, who the author is. Perhaps something might later be found in Tolkien's papers. But from what we have, we don't know. Perhaps Tolkien intended it to be that way; because out of the verses that appear in the
Adventures, the authorship of only 5 of the 16 is definitely given. Verse 3 ('Errantry') is Bilbo's, as is 5 ('The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late'); Verse 7 ('The Stone Troll'), is said to be Sam Gamgee's, as are 8 ('Perry-the-Winkle') and 12 ('Cat').
In his Preface, Tolkien said that the verses in the book were selected from those in the
Red Book of Westmarch, which we better know as
LotR. The selection was '
taken from the older pieces, mainly concerned with legends and jests of the Shire at the end of the Third Age', that '
appear' to be made by Hobbits, '
especially' by Bilbo and his friends '
or their immediate descendants'. Authorship was '
seldom indicated'. Those outside the narrative (i.e. the text) were '
in various hands and were probably written down from oral tradition'.
Perhaps Tolkien intended, as you said, to give 'Kortirion' an unknown author, which would in this case have been an unknown hobbit, using information on that city from various sources, like the unknown hobbit writing 'The Hoard' based on '
lore of Rivendell, Elvish and Númenorean'. But even in such a case, how could the subject matter of the poem fit in with the history of Middle-earth that was now 'fixed' in the published
LotR, let alone in Tolkien's then unpublished writings of the First and Second Ages? I think that he was faced with the challenge of either completely revising the poem, or of making substantial revisions to what he had already written on Middle-earth, published and unpublished. (He'd already revised
The Hobbit, to fit in with
LotR regarding Bilbo, Gollum and the Ring.) It's fair to conclude, I think, that it might have been seen by him as too much of an effort, therefore it would be far easier to leave out that problematic poem.
I hope this makes some sense to you.