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Old 01-05-2005, 01:53 AM   #23
davem
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davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
I wonder if the 'uniqueness' of LotR is in part explained by something Lalwende alluded to in her comparison of the work with a 'dictionary'.

What is unique, certainly, is that the stories were never 'fixed', never 'finished'. Even the published versions were subject to revision. Major changes were made to The Hobbit ('Riddles in the Dark' being the prime example of a major change, but there were other lesser ones). There were changes made to LotR for the second edition & this is something that is continuing - we've had between three- & four hundred amendations to the text for the 50th anniversary edition. The unpublished (at the time of their author's death) writings went through constant changes & a steady evolution up to his death.

In this sense the Legendarium was never finished & probably never would have been - however long Tolkien lived. In this sense it is like language itself, constantly evolving & developing. It was in a constant state of change. As its author grew & changed so did his creation. This is perhaps why it is unique, why it seems so 'alive' to us. I can't think of any work of art which is comparable. Certainly no modern work of fantasy is like it. Authors now want to finish & publish & move on to something else. They are looking to bring their work to completion - they actually don't want the thing to keep changing & evolving.

Perhaps its because Tolkien was so affected by the way Language changes & evolves (& by the way myth & legend - & particularly folkore - do as well) that he thought differently to the way the rest of us do & that came out in his writings, in the way he worked.

There is another 'unity' - that between the author & language (& myth) that maybe explains Tolkien's uniqueness.

Perhaps also this is why the movies don't satisfy in the same way as the books - the movie makers wanted to 'finish' their movies, to bring them to a state of 'completion' - though the EE's do resemble Tolkien's approach in a kind of way, as they are also 'revisions' of an original version.

I think it was this freedom that Tolkien had to amend, revise, evolve his work that makes it seem more 'alive', more 'true' (or even 'True') than other works of fiction. Its not a fixed, 'dead' thing - or that's not the sense one gets about it from immersing oneself in it. Its almost as if something of the 'uncertainty' of the secondary world that the author felt himself is communicated to us. Its 'alive' because its 'moving' & changing, always in a state of 'becoming' - like language itself, like his own invented languages, which were never 'fixed'. In that sense his languages never became like Latin for us - a dead tongue. The whole creation was in flux from the moment it came into being, so it was always 'alive' & I think that's what communicates itself to us, & why we keep going back to Middle earth. Its never the same for us - its' 'changing' state reflects our own.

Or something like that......
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