Child
I think you make an interesting point re Tolkien's latest intentions about the Legendarium. Its something I've expressed before. The later works you mention are clearly 'theological' in intention, exploring the
meaning of the Legendarium as much if not more than developing the story. I don't think they necessarily contradict the idea that he was moving away from the idea that such definite 'rules' & limits are important in sub creating a secondary world. I think the lack of set bounds & limits in Smith gave him a sense of freedom to create, & explore, Faerie. All the background he had created for Middle Earth would necessarily restrict his imagination, his sesne of artistic freedom. Perhaps part of his motivation in introducing (or attempting to) a new story, a new account, of the early period was simply that he felt too bound by what he already had. Whether you like or dislike the contents of 'Myths Transformed', what you see is a sudden burst of creativity. Smith is part of that to my mind. He was trying to break free from the restrictive rules he had imposed on himself.
As to interpretation, there is some freedom, but that freedom is limited, because, as has been pointed out, we can't make the text mean whatever we want it to mean. Of course, if we remove the author from the work, & treat it as a 'historical' account of an objectively existing 'world', then interpretation is not only valid, but necessary. So the question then becomes, is the Legendarium such an account, or is it a work of Art? Or a collection of Artworks.
If it is Art, then it is to be 'experienced' as much as (or more than) interpreted, & the
effect it has on us will be the issue. So, whatever effect it has on us as individuals will be valid.
There was recently an bit of a spat in the Tolkien Society over whether a book by Terry Donaldson should be sold by the Society. The author is Irish, & in the book he stated that when he first read it he identified the people of the West as the Irish, & the Orcs, Nazgul, Balrogs, & ultimately Sauron, as representing the British 'invaders'. So we have an example of 'alplicabilty' here, whether its his interpretation, Stormfront's, or that of some Christians who see it as a Christian work. Art 'enchants' in a good or bad way, it casts a spell, changes us & the way we see the world. If we are enchanted we will experience the art, rather than interpret it or seek to discover 'meaning' or 'relevance'. If we are interpreting it we are not experiencing it. Interpretation is only possible once the spell is lifted (or if it was never truly cast).
In other words, like the wanderers in Faery, experiencing a 'fairy drama', who Tolkien speaks about in the Fairy Stories essay, while the spell is working we will simply
believe that what we are seeing is 'real'. It will move us, to ecstacy, fear, horror, awe, & it will have no 'applicabilty' to anything beyond itself. This is the power of LotR or Smith. While we read (especially for the first time) these stories we are caught up in the enchantment, & the events & characters are simply what they are. Only when we step out of that world & attempt to interpret the events will we
impose 'relevance' on those events & characters, & try & work out what they 'mean'. But while we were 'ensorcelled' they meant nothing beyond themselves. Aragorn (or Gandalf, or Frodo) was not an allegory of Christ while we were travelling with him on his journey through Middle Earth with the Fellowship. He was simply Aragorn. The Numenoreans were not Aryan 'supermen' while we were watching their history unfold within Middle Earth - or if they were then we were not enchanted, & were simply trying to understand an 'allegory'. It would then have been an intellectual game, played to gain ammunition for a 'battle' to be fought in the 'real' world.
So the issue of 'enchantment' is the central one here, not a side issue. Enchantment cannot be explained, only explained away. There is no 'meaning', no explanation, while we are wandering the paths of Faerie. It is what it is. When 'meaning' is sought, & certainly when we believe we have 'found' it, we are really admitting the spell has been lifted. Our attempts at 'interpretation' are really attempts to enchant ourselves - we are trying to work out how the trick was done, so we can do it to ourselves. But magic doesn't work that way. The teller of the tale is not enchanted by the telling, though he may have (must have?) been enchanted once. So all interpretations of Art are 'wrong', because they are unecessary. I don't think Tolkien drew much distinction between 'Monsters' & 'Critics' in this sense. A critic who attempts to 'explain' what a work of Art
means has simply broken the thing to find out what it is made of, in order to put it back together, 'remake it in his own image', in order to claim it for his own. So Stormfront, or Mr Donaldson, or the Christian fundamentalists, or whoever are trying to claim the power of enchantment from Tolkien, to
dictate the form of the enchantment that we will experience. But not being Artists themselves, but 'allegorists' they not only fail to enchant us, but risk breaking the power of the Art to enchant anyone again.
Where Tolkien the Artist succeeds, there is
no 'meaning' to his stories, not 'intellectually' analisable 'meaning' - anymore than you or I or the guy across the street has any 'meaning', in the sense of our 'meaning' something else; we are what we are. Where Tolkien fails as an artist, we may find lots of 'meanings', but they won't matter to us in the least, if we have any sense, because then he would be attempting to make us think like him. He would be trying to 'allegorise' the world for us, rather than enchanting us.
The search for 'Meaning' in the 'secondary' world is one of the vices of we inhabitants of the 'primary' world. While we truly inhabit the secondary world it should seem as real as this world, because we should be totally 'in' that world, not looking on it, in a detatched way, from this world, & analyzing its 'meaning'. This world is this world, Middle Earth is Middle Earth, & I think Tolkien went to such pains to deny any allegorical meaning to his stories not because he wanted to avoid a lot of hassle from readers asking him how, exactly, LotR was 'allegorizing' WW2, (or the Christian life, or any other damn thing they could come up with) but because he knew that looking for allegory, interpreting the secondary world in terms of the primary, breaks the spell better than anything else.
The Legendarium doesn't 'mean' anything. That's why its so
enchanting. There's no 'meaning' to argue about, no correct or incorrect 'interpretation' of anyone or anything in it, because when you're able to argue about such things you're no longer in that world, you're back in this one, & that's a bit like Aragorn or Gandalf trying to understand the meaning of this world, & interpret the 'allegory' of this particular world. This world is not an allegory, neither is Middle Earth, so neither of them can be interpreted, & nothing of relevance to this world can be found in Middle Earth while you're there. And you should be very careful in trying to bring anything back when you leave. In the old stories people who tried to bring back gold from Faerie found themselves with merely a handful of dead leaves (or something even less savoury
)