Beren in Dagor Dagorath

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Sorry, I think I got tangled up in my own thoughts. Tolkien wrote "unless the prophecy of Andreth the Wise-woman should prove true". As the author, he obviously knows whether the prophecy is true or not;

Sorry, I only have a quick reaction to this - a methodological one, so to speak: as I read the last sentence, it struck me that of course that is or may not be, strictly speaking, true. I mean that we know that Tolkien's modus operandi was (meticulous footnotes to footnotes and plans notwithstanding) was also that he is not inventing the story, he is discovering it. So in that framework, he himself may not have known whether ultimately the prophecy was true or not. Perhaps he would later "discover" that it was, disregarding everything. And perhaps the lack of clarity just reflects the fact that when he wrote those deliberations, he was not sure himself whether they are true or not.

(I personally like to operate in that framework, but this is only chiming in - if you are the type of seekers that want hard facts and definite solutions, obviously not stopping you. It only occurred to me to offer this alternative point for those who may like it, and in general to remind of that aspect of Tolkien's mythological writing.)