[Aiwendil]

All right, here are my comments on the latest proposal.

CE-SL-11.5b: I gather that the point of this is to remove mention of "taking up again the mastery of Arda" to bring this in line with MT VI, but it introduces a redundancy, since the Valar's trepidation about the hurts they will cause to Arda is then mentioned twice. Also, the editing of Manwe's speech makes him repeat "Melkor" unnecessarily. If we do edit this to agree with MT, I think better would be:

that we should CE-SL-11.5b{take up again the mastery of Arda, }<AAm make war upon Melkor> at whatsoever cost, and deliver the Quendi from the shadows{ of Melkor}.' Then Tulkas was glad; but Aulë was grieved, and it is said that he (and others of the Valar) had before been unwilling to strive with Melkor, foreboding the hurts of the world that must come of that strife{.}

CE-EX-28b: Here you (rather cleverly) try to use material from <b>LT</b> to narrate the story outlined in <b>MT</b>. But one must be careful! There is a superficial similarity between the statement from <b>LT</b> and the story in <b>MT</b>, but there is also a critical difference: In <b>LT</b>, where Melkor has been a bit more of a Loki-esque figure than the great evil he later became, the Valar decide to try to treat with him before they go to war - for they have a reasonable expectation that he might listen to them. In <b>MT</b>, there is no suggestion that this possibility occurs to them until after the war, when Melkor pleads for mercy on his own initiative. In the later Legendarium, it is hard to believe that the Valar could think they could "entreat him to better deeds" as if he were a wayward schoolboy. So I'm sorry to say I don't think this works, and I don't think it successfully enacts the story outlined in <b>MT</b>.

CE-EX-28.2: I'm still unsure about "tilkal". Even if we accept tambe, latuken, ilsa, and kanu (and I have doubts about the phonology of latuken and ilsa in later Quenya), laure, I'm pretty sure, only refers to the colour, not the metal after the Lost Tales. But I'd need to refresh myself on Quenya, or consult someone more knowledgeable, to be sure.

Again, though, I don't see a problem with the word "magic" here.

CE-EX-28.4: I think that Vorotemnar and Ilterindi are fine in later Quenya, though again, my Quenya knowledge is very rusty.

CE-EX-28.6: I still feel that the language here is very much that of an analytical note by Tolkien, not a narrative. You rightly remove "covering action", but "sphere of influence" still grates. However, I'm not sure that this addition is needed for the purpose you use it for - already above, we say that they wish to make war upon Melkor "and deliver the Quendi from the shadows" (of Melkor). So I suggest that even if we are taking up this part of the <b>MT</b> story, we do not actually need this addition.

CE-EX-37b: There is still confusion here caused by merging the LT and AAm stories. In the latter, and in our text, it is told that the siege lasts for years. In AAm this is followed by the statement that at last the gates of Utumno were broken. In the proposal here, however, it's followed by the statement from LT that the Valar came to the gates of Utumno and Melkor shut them before their faces. In LT, this describes the beginning of an altogether far shorter battle, but it rings very odd here. I suppose one could posit that in all the war up to this point, the Valar had never actually come close enough to the gates that Orome's horn could have blasted them open, but this seems like quite a stretch to me, especially since AAm specifically locates the fighting before the gates of Utumno. As nice and vivid as the LT imagery is, I still think it has to go in this instance.

CE-EX-37.5: The statement that the halls are unroofed is from AAm, whereas unless I'm mistaken the description of Tulkas and Ulmo breaking the gates but not utterly destroying the caverns is from LT. If there's a contradiction, then, the halls being unroofed has to take precedence.

CE-EX-38.1b and following: The addition from LT is, I gather, intended to help achieve the story of MT VI. But the character of the interaction between Melkor and the Valar here is quite different from anything in the later sources, and I don't think that it quite works. In LT (and CE-EX-38.1b), Melko somewhat comically speaks to the Valar as if they were friends he was inviting to tea, and this kind of fairy-tale naive guile doesn't at all fit with the later conception of Melkor, much less with that in MT. But more importantly, this doesn't actually do anything to achieve the story in MT VI, for there Melkor's deception is one of feigned repentance and abasement, not feigned congeniality.

In LT, the Valar then decide that they cannot overcome Melkor by force (which you have edited out here) and therefore they pretend to accept his "fawning insolence" in order to come at him unawares, even to the point of saying they have come to salute him. This, too, is gone in the later sources and nothing in MT suggests that it was resurrected.

CE-EX-38.6b and following: As I've argued above, I think the LT material doesn't actually do anything to establish the story from MT, which means that these insertions are doing all the work. And I'm afraid they still simply don't read as narrative to me. The first part (38.6b) is less problematic, but the rest (38.7b, 38.8b) is very much in the voice of Tolkien making notes for himself, not that of a narrative - on top of which the many (necessary) deletions make it read somewhat oddly. 38.9 is certainly fine narrative prose, and in fact of all the LT additions so far is the only one that seems to me to go some way toward telling the story Tolkien outlined in MT VI - but it is not enough.

CE-EX-45, -39e: Again, the distant, analytical writing of MT VI is very jarring against the vivid narrative of LT. But I don't think this is as problematic as the section at CE-EX-38.1b.

Those are my specific reactions to the current proposal - but to step back slightly, my view of this is that I don't really see the value in going to heroic lengths to adopt the story as projected in MT VI, when it requires such drastic interventions in the text and - even in the best case - results in a text that is stylistically and tonally incoherent. I don't see that we have any obligation to follow MT in places where it radically departs from the story of LQ, AAm, and other late texts.

I'm sorry to return from such a long hiatus with such an argumentative post! I hope you're doing well - I heard from a friend who lives in Germany that COVID was pretty bad there for a while; I hope your friends and family are safe and healthy.