What did Tolkien really mean ....

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

Just a brief comment on the whole question of "when". I don't feel that these two options---pre-publication revision or identifying an additional layer of meaning after publication---are necessarily exclusive.

It depends on whether we're talking about The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion & HoME, etc.

I find what seems to render this entire discussion implaccably muddy, to be rather unfortunate. It is as if every attempt to gain clarity is greeted with an additional stirring of the depths of the muddy waters so that frankly nothing at all can be said with certainty. Such uncertainty may be a most comfortable environment in which to convey one's own relative opinions, but does little to shed light on what can be known with certainty. The only way to deal with such 'stirrings of the depths' is to take each argument one by one and treat it as logically as possible. I hope I have time for that. I don't right now. But it must come before I present any evidence from the documents at my disposal.