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Re: Principles of editing the Silmarillion
I agree that 2a is now redundant, being superceded, and not at all contradicted, by point 1 and point 5 together. Might as well drop it unless someone can find something it covers (that we want covered) not included by 1 and 5.
Point 3 is I think a little misleading in the use of the word "edited". How about replacing "text edited by Christopher Tolkien" with "text or summary created by Christopher Tolkien". Point 2 already de facto covers text edited by Christopher Tolkien for the most part. What we want is to be allowed to use editorial additions and bridges by CT from accounts where we don't know what is his and what is his father's, from summaries of material not presented in full, and from invented sentences to fill gaps in the tradition (this last to be avoided whenever possible, but seized upon when all else fails.)
Change the beginning of 6 to read: "The actual words used by J.R.R. Tolkien or the editor or summarizer of his work may be ...." All these rules should apply to CT as well as JRRT and to anything pulled out of Humphrey Carpenter's biography (if there is anything there we want) or from any other source.
Add point 6 e) "they are, in verse passages, minimal changes that do not add new information to the tale, to maintain the proper metre and rhyme or alliterative pattern of the original verse". A little more flixibility is needed with verse. See further comments following.
We also need something to prevent conflict with the two major LR problems, the moon in the poem "Song of Durin" and Treebeard's account of the Great Darkness. Neither of these fit at all with the non-MT legendarium and even Treebeard's statements do not fit exactly with any of the MT material. It may be necessary here simply to state baldly that descrepencies with the "Song of Durin" and Treebeard's accounts of the Great Darkness in LR will be ignored in the base texts of the reconstructed Silmarillion. This
could possibly be added as part of point 1, possibly as a new point 6, adding 1 to each following point.
On the examples:
1.) I disagree that there is true outright contradiction between The Road Goes Ever On and the late Teleporno story. There is a strong tension between the accounts, but I do not think that tension is alone enough to reject the late account of a separate crossing of Galadriel with Teleporno. Perhaps Celebrimbor's Fëanorian descent apearing in LR might be used instead: because it is said of Celebrimbor in the second edition of LR in Appendix B under The Second Age "he was descended from Fëanor", statements in other wirtings making him one of the Sindar or one of the Teleri must be disregarded.
2). "The concept that earth was a globe from its beginning and orbited the Sun with the other planets before the destruction of Númenor may not be followed in the basic texts because of lack of details on the necessary changes that would have to be made to the Great Darkness, the creation and history of the trees, and the fate of Eärendil." (The Eärendil material I consider that greatest problem in dealing with MT cosmology.) I have reworded much MT writing not concerned with cosmology is quite acceptable. Also JRRT in some texts views the legendarium as a somewhat garbled set of Númenorean tradititions, and, as has already been suggested by others, it might be possible to use this interpretation, sticking to flat earth in the base texts of necessity, but inserting some of the MT material in appendices and footnotes.
Also insert here: "That Sador was a Drûg cannot be implemented as we have no details of the changes in history, speech, and behavior that would of necessity have accompanied such a change." There are now examples both for a major cosmological issue and a small single-story issue.
3. Change the second sentence to: "We may use Christopher Tolkien's summaries of unpublished manuscripts from Unfinished Tales." And yes, add the note about the Fall of Doriath. According to this principle we can use any parts of it that are not in contradiction with what we otherwise take as valid (which in this material will be hard to pin down). But of course we don't have to use all of it or any of it.
4. Add "but could discard the name and use only his title." I don't favor this, but I think it a valid option. It will certainly be used in the case of some Elvish forms where we know or suspect strongly that they are not valid in the new linguistic situation with the required meaning, but don't know what would replace them, as for example probably Tarnin Austa for 'Gates of Summer'. Fortunately with Elvish personal names we know that not all had meanings in the day-to-day language and there is also dialetical variation to hide a multitude of problems.
5. The Turgon for Fingolfin example probably best fits under 2, to avoid even worrying about whether this might not be a genuine reworking in which Turgon became the elder brother of Fingolfin. (It could be!)
Better here might be the missing member in the genealogy of Nimloth in LR, where JRRT almost certainly neglected to revise this passage in LR to agree with material produced between the completion of LR but before its final publication. We could follow the LR without a great amount of difficulty. But because it is almost certainly an errior of missed revision, we shouldn't.
6. The example is good. More daring changes I have made are from "His passion of tears upon the shore" to "Great was his passion of tears upon the shore" and "Great love of Eärendel and Tuor" to "Great was the love between Eärendil and Tuor." Even more daring is the insertion of the words "and opened it anew" in the account of the fugitives who attempted to flee out of Tumladen by the Way of Escape in the story of the fall of Gondolin. And then there are the changes I made to the introduction and conclusion of the "Horns of Ylmir". What is needed is to decide which changes are allowable and which ones are not and then list some of each as precedents either way. But the general principle should always be that a difficulty in sentence construction or grammar can not prevent use of what is considered valid data, and minimal changes are allowed for this purpose.
For my suggested 6 e, add if this emendation of mine is to be accepted: "Of the thirst and hunger**** of the thirty moons" to "Of the thirst and hunger****of the thwarting mazes". Logic for this appears in my post "Suggested emendations to Fragment of an alliterative Lay of Eärendel". Essentially I looked through a dictionary at all words begining with th and thwart was the only one I found that could be made to fit with the story, though it changes the meaning of the line here. But we will have to allow greater flexibility in verse?
On point 7, I don't think the corollary forces us to keep the mechanical dragons or Gothmog as son of Morgoth, to name two examples, if there is a reasonable probability that they have been removed from the legendarium in versions following BoLT. These examples might be listed here as changes that have reasoning behind them and therefore could be made accordingly. Both of these are supportable in part from argument by silence, but that I think is strong enough to allow omission of the mechanical dragons as quite possibly what Tolkien intended, and almost force omission of Gothmog's parentage per the dropping of children of the Valar and from the fact that so striking a parentage as being a son of Morgoh would almost certainly be mentioned if it were still part of the tale.
I think the point of the corollary is that we can't drop something only because some don't like it without some other evidence that JRRT had dropped it, not just happened not to mention it. It is otherwise too easy for any of us to identify his or her individual tastes with Tolkien's.
</p>Edited by: <A HREF=http://www.barrowdowns.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_profile&u=00000212>jallanit e</A> at: 7/13/01 6:50:33 pm
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