[mindil]

I've been thinking for a long time about a quite different way of thinking about Tolkien's sources.

From HoME, it is clear that he did a great deal of rewriting. There were many things he was unsure about. Many things he only "realized" late in the process.

This does not work as a process of translation from fixed texts. Nothing about the writing process in HoME reads like a translator puzzling out a mysterious alphabet, or trying to decipher broken or faded text.

Rather, it reads very much like a person who is working from oral material, and who repeatedly goes back to his living sources to hear more. Much of it, in fact, reads like overheard material, with no ability to directly interview the narrators.

And indeed, Tolkien presents his most thorough material as oral tales. Tales told in the Cottage and told in Rivendell, told by Aragorn at Weathertop, told to Bilbo by Gandalf, and so on. Everything in the Red Book began as oral history.

What is more, Tolkien repeatedly describes how non-Elvish speakers are able to understand Elvish - the meaning somehow penetrates. Which is to say, that if Tolkien had heard the tales in their original Elvish, he would have understood them, though their exact phrasing would be lost in translation.

Tolkien also describes how people in our world reach Tol Eressea - it helps to be a child, and then one can reach it either through the Way of Dreams or the [apologies - I've forgotten the name of the physical route]. There is every reason to believe that Tolkien, as a child, heard the tales in person in the Cottage of Lost Play, and then, being the unique person he was, continued to travel to Tol Eressea by the other route.

Now, Tolkien was ready to "pretend" that he had found ancient manuscripts - he wasn't afraid of getting locked up for that. But he was wise enough not to bluntly state that he had written the tales from personal experience with real elves. Though if you read his accounts, he often hints to just such a thing.

It is conceivable that the reason so much of his writing is still locked away is that it is full of his personal experiences in ME, and the late, much missed CRRT didn't want the world to lose respect for his father as a crackpot.

In any case, Eol/ Elfwine is Tolkien. And the entire legendarium is a compilation of tales he was told or overheard himself, plus a few things that may have been written. And when he found a plot hole in the story he was trying to write up, he went back for more information. But getting back to ME wasn't something he could do reliably. He couldn't always get where and when he wanted. Sometimes he could interact with the MEians, and sometimes he was not-quite-present. Sometimes he understood a story clearly, and sometimes he wasn't at all sure he had understood it right. Sometimes he heard different versions and wasn't sure how to reconcile them.

His being able to reach ME depended on how "childlike" he was, and this faded with time. Probably in older age, he couldn't get there at all, at which point he began to consider the reframing of his "mythology."

And even prior, when he was still able to travel to ME, he didn't feel obligated to write everything up exactly as he heard it. For LoTR, he certainly made up lots of dialogue and details for the sake of a story that would go over well in our world. He may also have changed things for the sake of the story. Most likely, the number and identity of the hobbits who traveled with Frodo to Rivendell, which was in such flux as he wrote, was eventually written up for story purposes, not for faithfulness.

It is possible that as his ability to travel to ME grew and shrank, he might have been able to be present, or not-quite-present, in person for some of the action. He might have reported some of the Hobbit from first-hand experience, for example.

Anyway, I have long felt that it would be a very profitable project to comb through HoME and the History of the Hobbit with the tools of literary analysis to try to resolve which pieces are first-hand knowledge, which are authentic oral history, which are bits he made up, and so on.

Unfortunately, I have no time to dedicate to such a project, which is why I haven't posted it till now, though I've been thinking about it for a number of years. But if anyone wants to take up the challenge, it would be fascinating to sort out.

And when his other writings are made available, we can see if I was right.