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Quote:'But I fail to see why such a change in motives and main factors underlying the legendarium is to be rejected and not to be welcomed as anything produced earlier?'
I do welcome the later writings - I think they are some of Tolkien's greatest works, & contain some of his most beautiful prose & profoundest thought. I just feel tht a lot of what is in there is so different from the original mythology that it is like putting new wine in old bottles - it starts to crack the whole thing, or like patching an old garment with new cloth. When Tolkien introduced works like Osanwe Kenta, The Athrabeth, Laws & Customs, etc, into the Legendarium as he found it when he turned back to it after completing LotR he was bound to cause himself problems. And this whole idea of the histories coming from different hands cannot accomodate two such completely different accounts of the origin of the sun, or a mad conception like the 'Dome of Varda' - which is simply an act of desperation on Tolkien's part, in his misguided attempt to make his mythology fit in with modern cosmology.
The point is, all these later conceptions -- ie Morgoth sending forth his power into Arda, which is incredibly clever - are later inventions, & played no part in the original stories. The effects of the War of Wrath on the world were not inspired by this conception of Morgoth's attempt to corrupt the Hroa of incarnate beings by corrupting the matter of Arda. They were a 'mythologisation' of the hellish destruction left by the mechanised warfare of WW1. The Valar did not intervene originally because they were haughty & proud & were simply leaving the Noldor to stew in their own juices. Hence, they have to be begged. Earendel has to come crawling before they will condescend to help. When Tolkien goes back to the Legendarium, he realises this behaviour will no longer work for the 'new' Valar he is concieving, so he begins to construct some very complex 'explanations', which don't convince at all.
(Sorry, More later)
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