Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Bethberry
On the other hand, much of this strikes me as evidence of Tolkien's mind. He must have been, I think, exceptionally bored with most of his life's daily work, to devote this much attention to creating not one but several versions of calendars for Middle-earth.
|
Interesting thought! The nice answer is that Tolkien was something of a perfectionist with regard to the world he had created, and so he simply wanted to ensure that everything necessary in a world was 'in place'. He may have begun by pondering how a world without the annual definitions which we have (e.g. Christmas, Passover, Eid etc) might operate, by trying to 'place' events such as Yule and so on in this world.
Or more likely is that the calendars arose as a result of his need to clarify the moon phases mentioned in LotR, which I believe he had at first made mistakes with.
It never fails to amaze me what kind of mind he must have had, able to memorise and make reference to the most minute details, which were all 'facts' of his own making, without the assistance of technology which might help us today. I should love to see some of those original papers, and to what extent he made notes or cross-references on them.
But the whole of his life's work really could be said to have been driven by a peculiar kind of mind - that's the not so nice answer perhaps. His job itself was one which would have been helped by a mind focussed on tiny details - not just the analysis of language and of texts but also analysis of students' papers and arguments. If anything, I think the work which he did lent itself to the creation of his world as it had his mind trained in attention to detail. Though I also think that his private work must have provided him with an element of 'escape' or 'retreat' where he only needed to be true to the world he had created rather than true to the wider world and academic community.