[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

What's the solution, then?

I don’t see what the problem is to which you seek a solution.

Everyone can't be an HOME scholar, devoting much time to study of earlier drafts and variants, not to mention various notes and letters produced by J.R.R.T. in his later years. There's an endless capacity for debate if one takes your tack, for the fact is, if CT's version is unacceptable to you, there will never be an edition that satisfies. If that's all right with you, so be it.

That is certainly alright with me. As I pointed out, discussions do constantly slip into details not in the published Silmarillion. If you want to try to make a rule that no mention of material in HoME or other material published after Tolkien’s death is to be allowed in this forum, you are allowed to try. I don’t see you being successful.

Currently it is not necessary that members of this forum have even read The Lord of the Rings, much less the Silmarillion. There are no rules save that all discussions shouldtin some way relate to Tolkien, and even that is not really enforced.

For the purpose of discussion such as we have on this forum, there must be a standard to base opinions on, and The Silmarillion, for all its faults, fills the bill. I choose to see the published work as canon, because I do not see how it will be bettered.

There is a standard. The discussions are supposed to be related to Tolkien. That has until now been sufficient. Some discussions have been published solely about the volume Unfinished Tales. There is at least one thread solely on The Fall of Arthur. You are attempting to install new rules that have never been in place on this or any other Tolkien forum so far as I know. Can you understand why not?

I reject your limited standard on discussion just as much as Christopher Tolkien has and as most ĭf not all posters on this forum have, by being quite ready to discuss HoME material in any discussion where it fits. You surely know this. I don’t see anything to be gained by an attempt at dumbing down.

Originally Posted by Mornorngûr

I personally consider 'The Silmarillion' to be canon, whilst at the same time incorporating into my point of view all the later writings that fit the general history without drastically altering the storyline.

I personally reject the concept of canon.

Another example could be that we can accept that Turgon saved Idril from drowning during the crossing; but we can not accept that Celeborn came from Valinor with Galadriel (Well I refuse to accept it anyway )

Then don’t use the word “we”. Personally I accept all Tolkien fictional writing as just that, fiction. And that fiction, unpublished in Tolkien’s lifetime exists in variant versions, all of which is often discussed on this forum regardless of where it was published.

So you reject Tolkien’s later story that Galadriel came with Celeborn from Vainor separately from the other Exiles. Do you also reject Galadriel’s own statement of her origin as it appears in Book II chapter 7 of The Fellowship of the Ring:

He [Celeborn] has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted; for ere the fall of Nargothron or Gondolin I passed over the mountains, aǹd together through ages of the world we have fought together the long defeat.

But the published Silmarillion claims in the last sentence of chapter 14:

But none of the Noldor went ever over Ered Lindon, while their realm lasted.

This is in accord with Tolkien’s later account in which during the Second Age, not the First, long after the fall of Nargothrond and Gondolin, and after Galadriel had married Celeborn, the two of them crossed the mountains into Lothlórien.

I neither reject nor accept any of the accounts, but merely note that they differ. Christopher Tolkien seems to do the same.