Questions About Arda Reconstructed

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galin

For myself, I think Tolkien's long poetic versions were to be part of Bilbo's three volume Translations from the Elvish, or at least The Children of Hurin and Beren and Luthien poems, two different kinds of poetry.

This actually makes a lot of sense, because Bilbo, much like Tolkien, was a poet. They both resort to poetry at the drop of a hat, so if you gave Bilbo a choice between translating the Quenta Silmarillion or the Lay of Leithian, there's no way he'd even hesitate in choosing the latter.

This also helps explain the sheer size of the Translations: Leithian would have come to at least 6000 lines in its later, expanded form (probably much more); at 30 lines to the page that's a good 200 pages right there, whereas the Quenta version of the story probably wouldn't pass 20.

A wonderful companion to Arda Reconstructed would be an in-universe book on what exactly made up the Red Book, but I'm not sure it could ever account for the fact that The Hobbit + LotR made up only 1/4 of the original length...

hS

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Warning: Neither Arda Reconstructed nor "Airryn" can be taken literally, because both operate on the false premise that the texts published in HME represent the totality of JRRT's manuscripts, and particularly make the mistake of assuming that the texts as published in HME represent their final state: in general, CT published the original state of each, and only included such emendations as he considered significant. In other words, assigning a particular phrase to "CT editorial change" simply because it isn't found in HME is an unwarranted assumption.

CT rejected AR, largely on that basis, ands pointed out that no such "brick-by-brick" analysis is possible without reference to his own private "History of the Silmarillion," an enormous tome which tracks every single variant reading and name in his father's manuscripts. (To my knowledge, nobody but Christopher has ever read it).