the HoM-E/UT Society ~ following the Legendarium from c.1915 - 1972

[lindil]

Lest anyone think this was a flash in the barrow... [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I just returned to my attempt at a HoM-E/UT read through.

I re-read the link between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur.

A few more interesting(to me) notes than I perceived the last go around:

Again I am struck by the Cottage/Rivendell parallels. The descriptions and whole feel of the Cottage were to hinted at in The Hobbit, and explored more fully in FotR, and one senses the same sort of reverence in Eriol as in the 5 Hobbits that spend time at Imladris.

...to be a guest there a while seemd to him [Eriol] to be the fairest of all things.

The description of the lights in the hallway as Eriol is being led to his bed seem more than a little to be a foreshadowing or rather the first appearance of some form of the Feanorean Lamps of the later Tuor and Turin sagas.

These two guided him [Eriol] down the corridor of broidered stories ...until it brought them to a passage lit by small pendent lamps of coloured glasswhose swaying cast a spatter of bright hues upon the floors and hangings.

maybe I am reading to much into it.

A few passages of note I thought worth typing out and sharing...

Then slept Eriol, and through his dreams there came a music thinner and more pure than any he had heard before, and it was full of longing. Indeed it was as if pipes of silver or flutes of shape most slender-delicate uttered crystal notes and threadlike harmonies beneath the moon upon the lawns; and Eriol longed in his sleep for he knew not what.

This is exactly the kind of passage so common in Lost Tales. It contains elements to be later incorporated [the power and longing contained in elvish music in this case] but in a completely different context and often with the orignal protaginist [ the strangely named Tinfang Warble] soon to disappear never to return.

This along with many other points of vagueness and familiarity combined, give the Lost Tales a twin feeling of familiarity and strangeness.

I am greatly comforted by the fact that all of the bizzare names such as Tinfang Warble were soon to disappear from the Silmarillion. Every revision, became clearer and more pure. Till we have solid gold in the POst LotR era writings.

We soon after encounter for the first time Rumil, the great sage of Tirion, and he actually gives us some of the most humorous dialogue we will see in all of Lost Tales.

...have I not conned even the speeches of beasts, disdaining not the thin voices of voles and mice? - have I not cadged a stupid tune or two to hum of the speechless beetles? ... Wherefore is it that this morn I felt as Omar the Vala* who knows all tounges, as I hearkened to the blending of the voices of the birds comprehending each, recognising each well-loved tune, when tiripiti lirilla here comes a bird, and imp of Melko - but I weary you sir of, of babbling of songs and words.

* About Omar the Vala CJRT dryly remarks that 'he is a divinity without much substance'.

We also see our first glimpe of the existence and esoteric qualities of the speech of the Valar though it goes unnamed.


Also Eriol's preface to the Ainulindale is quite touching.

All in all it was a pleasent preface to the Ainulindale about to be told to the first mortal [ and of course it is [almost] the first version of the Ainulindale itself. And it is truly astounding just how clear and constant this Tale was to stay, almost certainly the least altered aspect of the entire Legendarium.

In very many ways Early Tolkien reminds me of early progressive rock. many of the themes are there that will be developed later, but there is not yet the same sureness of skill, and there is a distinct immaturity in phrasing that competes with the moments of brilliance.

It is also very curious to note how much more accepting I was of the quality of the work whenI first read it in 11th grade on the very week or so the Book of Lost Tales I came out.

[ July 18, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]