Why do you read HoME?

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

(...) I'd rather have a Silmarilion that would recount the "actual" history of Middle Earth. To me it seemed more a "cop out" because Tolkien might have been afraid that he was no longer up to the task of restructuring the Legendarium in such a significant way.

I think Christopher Tolkien is correct about JRRT's thinking, in a period before his father had even finished The Lord of the Rings.

"Where could such ignorance of the Elves be found but in the minds of Men of a later time? This, I believe, is what my father was concerned to portray: a tradition of Men, through long ages become dim and confused. At this time, perhaps, in the context of the Notion Club Papers and of the vast enlargement of his great story that was coming into being in The Lord of the Rings, he began to be concerned with questions of "tradition" and the vagaries of tradition, the losses, confusions, simplifications and amplifications in the evolution of legend, as they might apply to his own -- within the always enlarging compass of Middle-earth.

This is speculation; it would have been helpful indeed if he had at this time left any record or note, however brief, of his reflections. But many years later he did write such a note, though brief indeed, on the envelope that contains the texts of the Drowning of Anadune:

"Contains very old version (in Adunaic) which is good -- in so far as it is just as much different (in inclusion and omission and emphasis) as would be probable in the supposed case:

a) Mannish tradition
b) Elvish tradition
c) Mixed tradition"

note by JRRT loosely dated to "sometime in the 1960s"

Now granted the note itself dates from the 1960s specifically, but the texts that inspired Christopher Tolkien's comments here are much earlier, again, dated to before The Lord of the Rings was even completed.

For myself I think Quenta Silmarillion as a mostly mannish affair was a natural enough resolution.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Well, Tolkien himself couldn't make up his mind about it; this can be seen in the 'round-world' Downfall of Anadune and related papers ca 1945-6 which were later explicitly rejected in the 'flat-world' Akallabeth. There are elements of the Appendices dating from around 1949 which greatly suggest the round-world story, and others which entered circa 1954-55 which are flat-world.

I don't think Tolkien felt up to the massive work of recasting the fundamental cosmology, in effect jacking up the house and replacing its foundation; while the idea of a distorted Mannish version has appeal, it also has problems for whatever fictional theory of transmission Tolkien might have decided on. Bilbo's "Translations From the Elvish?" Bilbo had direct sources of information in Elrond, Glorfindel and sometimes Gandalf to set him straight. Akallabeth written by Elendil? Elendil personally lived through it and would have known the form of the Old World. Surviving Gondorian manuscripts? Don't fit especially well as a co-transmission with the memoirs of two Shire-hobbits.

I'm not saying the problem was intractable, but Tolkien certainly never worked it out, and CT wisely kept silent.

In any event, whatever Tolkien's intentions for transforming the cosmological myth, his ideas were only notes and jottings that never received narrative form, and CT would not have been justified, I think, in replacing the completed QS and AAm texts with material of his own devising "based on" notes and jottings.

[Mithadan]

Galin, can you please provide the source of your CRRT/JRRT quote? I find this topic interesting and I know of a related quote from JRRT that I will dig up, but the question of timing of JRRT's intentions is relevant.

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

Galin, can you please provide the source of your CRRT/JRRT quote? I find this topic interesting and I know of a related quote from JRRT that I will dig up, but the question of timing of JRRT's intentions is relevant.

It's from HoMe IX, the third section, 'The Drowning of Anadune'.

[Galin]

Sorry about the lack of source Mithadan. And thanks Aiwendil! Also there is an *error* in my quote above, as C should say: Mixed Dunedanic tradition (not simply "mixed tradition")

I don't think Tolkien felt up to the massive work of recasting the fundamental cosmology, in effect jacking up the house and replacing its foundation;...

Perhaps. But I wonder if maybe he just didn't like the new ideas (as brief as they are, in a sense) as much as the old ones. Add that to the idea that the Silmarillion need not be "Elvish" as told to an Anglo-saxon upon Tol Eressea...

... while the idea of a distorted Mannish version has appeal, it also has problems for whatever fictional theory of transmission Tolkien might have decided on. Bilbo's "Translations From the Elvish?" Bilbo had direct sources of information in Elrond, Glorfindel and sometimes Gandalf to set him straight.

I've heard this before, but to my mind getting everything straight isn't the point. Bilbo is translating a particular work. He and Glorfindel might know about its inaccuracies, but that's no reason to alter a work of antiquity. Especially (I think) if one is a Hobbit! I don't find this problematic at all, especially given that the "truth" of the big questions will be in some part of Bilbo's translations, if not in others.

Akallabeth written by Elendil? Elendil personally lived through it and would have known the form of the Old World.

Well (in DA) upon learning that the world was like an apple, even the King of Numenor wanted to test the theory by sailing East, but he never got the chance. Moreover, we don't really have Tolkien drawing the final picture here for us: he could easily have stamped "mixed dunedanic tradition" on Akallabeth, instead of Elendil.

Surviving Gondorian manuscripts? Don't fit especially well as a co-transmission with the memoirs of two Shire-hobbits. I'm not saying the problem was intractable, but Tolkien certainly never worked it out, and CT wisely kept silent.

Granted you are not saying that the problem was intractible, but here again I find nothing very problematic about sources hailing from Gondor as well as Imladris.

I dunno, that seems natural enough to me.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Here is at least a conceptual framework to play with: Bilbo was working in Rivendell making use of Elrond's library. But there was a problem here- the Elves don't write "history" in the way we mortals understand it. Being immortal, their requirements were different and they were much more inclined towards poetic recastings of things commonly known (among themselves), stuff even more obscure to an outsider than Bilbo's mock-elvish Earendil poem was to us pre-Sil LR readers.

The "Elvish" Bilbo translated, then, was not works by Elves but rather Dunedainic works in Sindarin, those surviving books from the royal library at Fornost which had been committed to Rivendell for safekeeping: histories written by Men which were far more comprehensible to Bilbo's mortal mindset. (According to this theory, even the Annals would not have been contemporaneous Elvish records a la medieval chronicles, but a Numenorean or Dunedainic reconstruction of the timeline of the Elder Days.)


---------------------------------------------

[Galin]

Yes I think translations from the Elvish by B.B. can refer to the Elvish languages, not necessarily to Elvish accounts, although I do think even one more purely Elvish account can be employed to offset certain (mis)conceptions in an indirect sort of way. And as I say, for me part of the genius of The Drowning of Anadune is that it's a Mannish account that yet serves to reveal the teaching of the Western Elves. Interestingly, in a late note:

'All peace and all strongholds were at last destroyed by Morgoth; but if any wonder how any lore and treasure was preserved from ruin, it may be answered: of the treasure little was preserved, and the loss of things of beauty great and small is incalculable; but the lore of the Eldar did not depend on perishable records, being stored in the vast houses of their minds. When the Eldar made records in written form, even those that to us would seem voluminous, they did only summarise, as it were, for the use of others whose lore was maybe in other fields of knowledge*, matters which were kept for ever undimmed in intricate detail in their minds.'

*Author's footnote

'And as some insurance against their own death. For books were made only in strong places at a time when death in battle was likely to befall any of the Eldar, but it was not yet believed that Morgoth could ever capture or destroy their fortresses.'

JRRT Shibboleth of Feanor

WCH wrote: (...) (According to this theory, even the Annals would not have been contemporaneous Elvish records a la medieval chronicles, but a Numenorean or Dunedainic reconstruction of the timeline of the Elder Days.)

Another instesting description belongs to a typescript of one version of the Annals. For those who have not read HME...

'Here begin the 'Annals of Aman'. Rúmil made them in the Elder Days, and they were held in memory by the Exiles. Those parts which we learned and remembered were thus set down in Númenor before the Shadow fell upon it.'

Morgoth's Ring, note to Annals of Aman*

In my opinion The Tale of Years was going to supersede the Annals (which themselves had grown fuller in parts and more like Quenta Silmarillion) but in any case, although I'm not sure this is necessarily how Tolkien would have finally worded it, Numenor is in the mix...

... as again in material later published by JRRT in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil:

'... No. 14 also depends on the lore of Rivendell, Elvish and Númenorean, concerning the heroic days at the end of the First Age; it seems to contain echoes of the Númenorean tale of Túrin and Mim the Dwarf.'