Thread: Glorfindel
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Old 05-15-2018, 11:18 PM   #3
Findegil
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Join Date: Jul 2002
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I m not sure if the draft ‘presented as someone making conjectures about what might have happened’ ‘is not in keeping with the entire rest of the body of work’. We have already comments and introduction telling about the textual history of what follows. So it is in my view not the case that we have only ‘an authoritative story’.
I think that this difference in the overall approach is at the moment the main point of disagreement between us. Most of the points of criticism ArcusCalion raise are connected to this. So I think we must clear that point first before discussing it again and again in each single point raised. And I think it will have an impact on later chapters as well.
For me it was clear that what we as real world editors compile as Translation from the Elvish is in itself a compilation of works from different sources, some of which are pure narratives, some narrative plus later commentary, some more descriptive, some are essay. Early in the project there was an emotional debate about revisions to smooth the ‘style’ of the writing. It sprang from the hard break in style felt between Tuor and his coming to Gondolin from UT and The Fall of Gondolin from HoMe 2, but the decision taken at that time was used ever after. In the result the revisions for reasons of style were denied for this first step of the project. Lindil, the main promoter of the stylish edits, envisioned a second phase of the project in which the once established text would be farther revised to make it more uniform and of higher literary quality, but it was consensus to separate the two steps an refrain from any pure stylish edits.
The question at hand is of course not quite the same, but it has some similarities. When we lift some paragraphs or sentences from an essay like Of Dwarves and Men into the body of some chapter of pure narrative we clearly have to adapt them to their new environment. But here we are speaking about full chapters. Okay we adapt them in a way, since we have to change them from essay by JRR Tolkien reflecting about this own creation. But is it not overdone if we change them to fact reporting narrative? I at least approached the edit differently and changed them to essay by some later Middle-earthian writer reflecting about the history of his world. That this is not alien to Tolkiens writing is shown by many examples like The Elessar or The Istari.
Often enough in the history of this project we found that ambiguity is our best friend if we can handle it. That does not mean, that we should not try to find out what ‘really’ happen in Middle-earth. And if we are able to make that out (by unanimous consent) we should try to make it as clear as our rules and the texts we are working with allow. But the team soon discovered that unanimous consent can not always be reached even by endless high sophisticated discussion. So from the start there was a need for some alternative. The simple and at the beginning of the project often used way was voting. This is a nice and fast working procedure for a large team, but is very dangerous for small teams. So the smaller the team became the more we avoided voting. The discussion for building up an unanimous consent became longer, deeper and more enlighting. But since it remains true that unanimous consent can not always be reached, in this process ambiguity became more and more important and – at least from my point of view – our work better: we strove to allow an interpretation of our text that would fit the different ‘personal Middle-earth cannon’ of each team member if we could not change that ‘personal cannon’ by profound arguments.

All that said, I am inclined to think any essay by some later scribe gives more freeness for ambiguity than a narrative text can do. And if the style of our basic text is in that way, I am against changing it without farther fording reason.

Now to some not directly connected points:
GLOR-SL-04.5: Good catch. I didn’t thought about that. I agree on the first part. But do not see any good reason to remove Turukáno here.

GLOR-SL-09: Clearly Turgon is often called ‘King of Gondolin’ even before he had could claim the title ‘Highking of the Noldor in Middle-earth’ after the death of his brother Fingon. But I think the interpretation of the text is to narrow here if ‘the decision of their king’ is read as ‘Turgons decision’ after our editing. Clearly the decision is taken by Finrafin (in agreement with Turgons wishes) and that was by what people like Glrofindel were grieved.

GLOR-SL-13/14: I couldn’t resist to gain say this particular case in special: How could any narrator of our text being inside the legendarium be sure what had happened in Mandos? He might get a report from coincil of the Valar out of Valinor by some Elve or Maia that was present, but from inside the Halls of Waiting? Or do we suppose that Glorfindel himself would openly talk about his purgatory stay in Mandos? I don’t think so, and therefore ambiguity is for sure needed here.

GLOR-SL-14.5: Agreed. Good catch.

Respectfully
Findegil
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