Littlemanpoet wrote:
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Does The Sil convey truth with the same power that Smith does? I don't think so. I've rarely been moved by The Sil (cannot include Valaquenta, etc. - Tolkien didn't); but I am moved deeply every time I re-read Smith.
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Davem wrote:
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Like LMP I've always been more moved by Smith than by the Sil.
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Mark12_30 wrote:
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I'd guess that the Sil has too much "elven anthropology" and not enough mystery.
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I find this very interesting. My reaction is quite different; I have always found the Silmarillion to be much more powerful and more moving than
Smith. I wonder why it is that we have such different reactions to the two works.
It seems to me that the fundamental difference between
Smith and the Silmarillion is that the former is a work
about fantasy while the latter
is fantasy. This is partly because of the difference between the "transitional fantasy" of
Smith and the "immersive fantasy" of the Silmarillion; but it is deeper than that.
Smith seems almost to be a literary treatise presented in the form of a story. We touched on this in the Canonicity thread; the word I used there was "meta-fantasy". In my view,
Smith sketches out the requirements for a succesful work of fantasy story-telling, but it does not, in itself, fulfill those requirements. That isn't to say that I don't like it, or that I think it's unsuccesful - rather, that whatever it is, it isn't really a faerie story in the sense that Tolkien's other works are.
The Silmarillion, on the other hand, is a kind of
total faerie story. The immersion here is more complete than that in a work like LotR; for in the Silmarillion the story
is the world. The story begins when the world begins, and the faerie setting is built up not merely
in aid of the story, but
as the story.
I am curious regarding other people's opinions of
Smith vs. the Silmarillion. In particular, I wonder whether the divide between those who find
Smith more moving and those who prefer the Silmarillion might roughly coincide with the divide between those who are interested in authorial intention and those who fall into the "reader's freedom" or "textual supremacy" camps. For it seems to me that in
Smith the voice of the author is more clearly revealed; there is a stronger authorial presence. In the Silmarillion, the art and the artist seem to be more fully concealed.