Tolkien original work from which
The Silmarillion ultimately sprang was
The Book of Lost Tales and reading it shows Tolkien’s original conception was lighter and there is even some obvious intentional humour.
For example (emphasis mine):
… and the cliffs are full of a chattering and a smell of fish, and great conclaves are held upon their ledges, or among spits and reefs among the waters.
And soon after:
But Ulmo fares at the rear in his fishy car and trumpets loudly for the discomfiture of Ossë and the rescue of the Shoreland pipers.
From the second volume:
Now Tevildo seeing Beren narrowed his eyes until they seemed to shut, and said: “I smell dog”, and he took dislike to Beren from that moment.
And soon after:
… and she teaches him how to sit and sprawl, to step and bound and trot in the semblance of a cat, till Huan’s very whiskers bristled at the sight, and thereat Beren and Tinúviel laughed. Never however could Beren learn to screech or wail or to purr like any cat that ever walked, nor could Tinúviel awaken a glow in the dead eyes of the catskin ‒ “but we must put up with that,” said she, “and thou hast the air of a very noble cat if thou but hold thy tongue.”
And possibly:
… and I have learned it by heart, reading it in the great books, and I do not comprehend all that is set therein.
This may lightly refer to the teller here being a young girl who is understood to not fully comprehend sexual matters related more fully in the versions of the tale she has read. Or for those who think that Beren and Tinúviel did not have sex during their first life, then it may refer to the statement: “for his [Melko’s] dark mind pondered some evil.
”
When Tolkien rendered his tales into verse the general lightness disappeared. (Though the tale of Túrin was always grim.)
But the
Silmarillion was always in intention a very abbreviated version of Tolkien’s legendarium. How much humour would have survived in a similarly abbreviated version of
The Hobbit or
The Lord of the Rings?