Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

[Bêthberry]

This discussion brings to mind a discussion I once had concerning the nature of medieval texts and the kind of "close reading" which used to be taught in schools and universities.

Medieval texts are fragmented texts in that full and complete editions such as we now are accustomed to have been lost to the vissitudes of time. With scribal transmission, we also have variations in texts, variations which cannot be resolved by recourse to "authorial intention" . The upshot of this earlier discussion was that the medievalist with whom I was talking argued that we cannot use methods of textual analysis derived from "modern texts" for medieval ones. Medieval narratives work differently and they deserve different approaches. (I think likely what has happened now is that more 'medieval' aproaches to narrative are being used on 'modern literature', but that's beside the point and I've really stated this very broadly for the sake of delineation rather than definition.)

What does this have to do with Tolkien? Well, more and more as I look at his oeuvre, I see a writer whose work not just takes its themes and structure from medieval (and earlier) texts. I see a writer who own stance as "author" is being 'medievalised.' Whose texts are being 'medievalised.'

First we had Christopher Tolkien 'tieing in' pieces of The Silm to make a coherent story. Then we had him edit HoMe and UT. Now we have Christopher producing a book which he believes respresents an authoritative version (if I understand davem's point here. I haven't seen the edition).

Without meaning in any way to deny Christopher's great knowledge and expertise, I would like to suggest that what he has done instead is to create a situation where multiple versions of texts abound, as exists with earlier literature. What we have essentially are two authors, one of whom was primary and the second of whom is the interpretive author. In short, I think Christopher's work takes us farther and farther away from a single authorial intention. And it takes Tolkien Pere's work further away from such modernist ideas as coherent, consistent character.

In short, I don't think we have any Ariadne's thread which will help us out of this labyrinth. Just more and more frayed ends.

[Boromir88]

Let's look at the full sentence, maybe that can get us somewhere farther here.

Slow, because they do not count the running years, not for themselves.

Ok, the first phrase "they do not count the running years," then it follows up with, "not for themselves." So, now where I'm going is, the added "not for themselves," means they DO count the running years, they just don't do it for themselves. It's clear that some elves do count the running years. This sentence just says, they don't count the running years for themselves. Time is not important to the elves, but it's important if they wish to communicate with the other races, so there for they DON'T count it for themselves, but they DO count it in order to gather news from other places. Maybe the phrase is suggesting, they DON'T count the years for themselves, since they are ageless, and it's suggesting that they just don't count "how old they are," but they keep track of time to communicate with other peoples.

Therefor, I come to the conclusion that "do not" and "need not" are interchangeable, if you take it the way I just showed. If the sentence was just "They do not coun the running years," then that would mean they don't count it. But, it adds in the "not for themselves," which shows they don't count it for themselves, but they do count it for other reasons.

Edit: I know I just contradicted myself, but that's because I wasn't looking at the whole sentence before. I think the added "not for themselves," changes the meaning of the sentence. Making "do not," and "need not," interchangeable, since they don't count it for themselves.

[Lalwendë]

I've posted, hopefully, if it works, a link to my post the other day on the
nature of Elven time . I think that the actual crucial point to begin with here lies in the words 'running years'. What are the running years? I think that these are the years of mortals, which must seem to zip by to Elves. An Elven year, apparently, runs for 144 years of mortal time - an age which most mortals do not seem to get to. If you can imagine it, someone as renowned as say, Bilbo would have his life over in a year.

So, if the Elves do not count the running years, not for themselves, this is emphatic. They simply do not count those years in their own reckoning. But if the Elves need not count the running years, not for themselves, then it's something that by dint of being immortal, it's not necessary for them to do. In which case, the new (old, aargh!) version actually explains more about the nature of Elven time. But the 'old' version (do not) also makes sense, it simply says less about the nature of immortality.

Boromir 88 - I'm in agreement with you all the way on the importance of written words. The tiniest difference or mistake in a text can have the most enormous effect. Words are quite dangerous things, they've been known to start wars when misused. Well, you can't imagine how much this discussion is amusing to me, it reminds me so much of endless discussions about semantics in meetings. Yet, I am enjoying it...

[davem]

I hope everyone will bear with me here, because I’m going to repeat some of my earlier points, but I want to try & clarify my position.

There are different kinds of changes made in this new edition. The first kind is the change from:

’Thank goodness you don’t keep any boats on the west bank!’ said Frodo. ‘Can horses cross the river?’

‘They can go twenty miles north to Brandywine Bridge - or the can swim,’ answered Merry. (A Conspiracy Unmasked)

to ‘They can go ten miles north’, which is fine, because its correct, & should have been changed, but it was missed in the proof-reading stage.

Another kind of change happens in this chapter (The Great River), where the line ‘Nonetheless they saw no sign of an enemy that day nor the next.’ is altered (apparently correctly) to ‘They saw no sign of any enemy’. This doesn’t really change the meaning of the statement.

But I still say that changing ‘theydo not count the running years’ to ‘they need not count the running years’ alters the meaning & implication of Legolas’ statement.

Its the qualifier, ‘not for themselves’ that makes the difference. Of course, without that the statement ‘they do not count the running years’ would be incorrect, as Celeborn has already shown that they can count the passage of time. But with that qualifier it is changed from a statement of objective fact to a comment about the Elves relationship to time.

Despite what other’s have argued (very cogently) I think there is a difference between ‘do not’ & need not’ for this very reason - Legolas is speaking (& I think the whole context confirms this) about the Elves relationship to time - how they think about it, how they relate to it & what it means to them.

As I said, I can’t see that CT’s statement that his father simply inserted the word do to fill a lacuna in the copy he made for him, & that his father’s original need should stand doesn’t hold up. At this time Tolkien hadn’t come up with a definitive text - he was still working on it, & its likely that he decided on reading through the text that do expressed his thoughts better than need.

Whatever. The issue is whether there is enough evidence to justify the change back to need. I can’t see that there is enough evidence - certainly not as much as in the other two kinds of case I mentioned. Or even in the case of the change from ‘He (Pippin) was smaller than the other’ to ‘He was smaller than the others’.

We also have to take on board Bb’s point about CT’s role in this. Its one thing to change the Silmarillion texts to make them acceptable for publication, as they had never received Tolkien’s final approval, & it could be argued that maybe he would have accepted the changes CT made. But that’s a different issue, as it never came to that. He didn’t achieve a final form. In the case of this change we have Tolkien’s final approved version & CT has authorised a change which (imo) alters the meaning of a major character’s statement on an issue of central importance in the Legendarium on the flimsiest of evidence.

So its a matter of CT’s authority. This is not a case of making a change for the sake of coherence, or picking from variant readings, each of equal validity as was the case with the Sil texts. This is a matter of changing the meaning of a characters words in an established, authorised text. Does CT have the right to do that? And if he does, where does it stop? Could he make any change he wanted? And if he can change the text, why not someone else? If a new version of a chapter was discovered with greater changes in it, would it be right to replace the existing text with those later changes? Also, CT has shown (quite convincingly) that there is a later version of the Earendelnwe (as I pointed out earlier), yet that version is not used in this edition - why not? This change (& there may be more, I’m only focussing on this one because I’ve picked it up due to the fact that we’re currently reading this chapter in the read through), it seems to me, has been made with less justification than that one would have had. This touches on the Canonicity issue for me, as it changes LotR from a ‘canonical’ text & opens it up to the possibility of other changes.

Is this new version ‘better’ than the old one? Its the first revision not authorised by Tolkien himself. It seems to me that if this one is accepted then we’re crediting CT with equal rights over the text to his father. Does he actually have those rights?

[Aiwendil]

Bethberry makes some interesting points regarding authorial intention. We are veering toward the old canonicity argument here; I think it may be worthwhile then to consider things from the perspective of the author vs. text vs. reader distinction that emerged there. Apologies if some of this is less coherent than usual; I've been up since very early and am really only less than half awake. Bethberry wrote:

Without meaning in any way to deny Christopher's great knowledge and expertise, I would like to suggest that what he has done instead is to create a situation where multiple versions of texts abound, as exists with earlier literature.

This is surely the case. And this, I think, points to a flaw in the author-centric view of "canonicity" which is solved by a text-centric view. The co-existence of different versions presents a real problem if one views a work of art as a manifestation of the intention of the author. The question "which version is valid?" becomes overwhelmingly important; and the author-centric view seems to demand that there be a single, definitive answer to the question. A text-centric view does not have this problem: it simply is the case that there are a number of different texts. Some may be "better" or more enjoyable than others; some may be the product of the author at a later stage of life than others; but ultimately they are all simply texts and there is no need to determine which is singularly authoritative. It still makes sense in this view to ask which word ("need" or "do") Tolkien may have intended at various points in time, but if a clear answer is not forthcoming, this presents no serious problem to the text-centric view (nor, if it comes to it, to the reader-centric view).

I have seen Christopher criticized for publishing HoMe and thus establishing a state of affairs in which there is no single authoritative version of the Silmarillion. I think this criticism arises from the needless desire for a single version that can be taken as a manifestation of the author. The case of the Silmarillion points out just how absurd that desire can be - for the published Silmarillion (or any Silmarillion) certainly does not represent some kind of ideal authorial intention. HoMe, on the other hand, lays out the texts as they are, the goal being not to present a single Canonical Text but rather simply to tell the truth about what words various pieces of paper have written or printed on them. To prefer a single version that claims authority over a scholarly presentation of all the texts is to prefer ignorance.

Now, insofar as Christopher claims that the new edition of LotR is uniquely authoritative, I think he is mistaken - not because there is anything wrong with this edition, but simply because the whole concept of a single authoritative version is in this case not applicable. There are cases in LotR (rather few in comparison with something like the Silmarillion) where multiple versions of the text exist and none is clearly authoritative (in the sense of "most highly approved by the author"). Is this itself a problem? I don't think so. Nor is it a problem, I think, that we now know of the existence of the two versions and of the circumstances surrounding them. It could not possibly be a problem that we have more information; on the contrary, if we were to simply take the "do" as authoritative and pretend that "need" was never written, we would be falsely ascribing a certainty of authorial intention to the word. I would go as far as to say that our knowledge of the facts surrounding the two words provides evidence that neither "do" nor "need" is to be construed in such a way as to contradict the other version; for clearly Tolkien was at one point quite happy with the one and a short time later equally happy with the other.

[davem]

Maybe it would be helpful to quote from the introduction to the new edition

That the printer had quietly reset The Fellowship of the Ring, & that copies had been issued without proof having been read by the author, never became known to Tolkien; while his publisher, Rayner Unwin, learned of it only thirty eight years after the fact. Tolkien found a few of the unauthorised changes introduced in the second printing.

In 1992 Eric Thompson.. noticed small differences between the first & second impressions of FotR.

The observations of Dainis Biseniecks, Yuval Kfir, Charles Noad & other readers, sent to us directly or posted in public forums, have also been of service.

Efforts such as these follow the example of the author of LotR during his lifetime. His concern for the textual accuracy & coherence of his work is evident from the many emendations he made in later printings, & from notes he made for other emendations which for one reason or another have not previously (or have only partly) been put into effect.

The fiftieth anniversary of LotR seemed an ideal opportunity to consider the latest (1992) text in the light of information gathered in the course of decades of work in Tolkien studies...with an electronic copy of LotR searchable by keyword or phrase....Christopher Tolkien even observed to us that some apparent inconsistencies of form in his father’s work may have been deliberate: for instance, although Tolkien carefully distinguished house[ ‘dwelling’ from House ‘noble family or dynasty[/i]’

Many of the emendations in the present text are to marks of punctuation....

[/i]Most of the demonstrable errors noted by Christopher Tolkien in HoME also have been corrected, such as the distance from the Brandywine Bridge to the Ferry (ten miles rather than twenty) & the number of Merry’s ponies (Five rather than six), shadows of earlier drafts. But those errors of content, such as Gimli’s famous (& erronious) statement in Book III, ch 7, ‘Till now I have hewn naught but wood since I left Moria’, which would require rewriting to emend rather than simple correction, remain unchanged.

So many new emendations to LotR,& such an extensive review of its text, deserve to be fully documented. ,,,To this end, & to illuminate the work in other respects, we are preparing a volume of annotations to LotR for publication in 2005.[/i]

(Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull)

This may give the impression that CT was not responsible for the changes, but the real point is, many have been made as a result of his work & all have been authorised by him, so he had the final say in what happened.

[Lalwendë]

At the risk of mentioning the dreaded C word, in terms of canonicity, I would prefer to stick with the established text, for the simple reason that this is the text that most people will have access to, and hence discussion will remain straightforward. Although, I have to say, the changes do not seem extensive, but if say, a revised version of The Hobbit (in which the Riddles In The Dark chapter was once very different) were to be issued, on the premise that this would then be the version printed in future, then a certain amount of confusion would take hold between readers.

Anyway, thanks are due to davem for quoting the introduction to the new edition. I for one shall have to wait a little while to see it, as I have had to commit my pennies elsewhere, and the text reproduced is interesting. I noted that some of the alterations had been identified by readers themselves, which brings in the whole issue of readers contributing to a text, but at a considerably different level than simply reading their own meanings into it; this is an interesting idea, but not one I am wholly comfortable with.

Mention was made of an electronic copy being available, which caught my eye. My boss gave me an electronic copy recently, and he had himself noticed some inconsistencies in the text which I had not. Concerned that his electronic copy was 'wrong' in some way, he asked me to look these inconsistencies up in the books, and I found them there also. Apart from the fact that there were these differences (which I won't go into here, but I'd be interested to know if they remain in the new version...another time) it struck me that with e-books around, it would in fact be very easy for alternate versions of books to come into circulation. What was the complete context of the mention of the electronic version? I'd be interested to know to what extent the presence and use of e-books had influenced the decision to make emendations.

At least, any confusion as to why this new edition was released has been cleared up a little. I for one was stumped last week when I was asked about its purpose.