Quote:
Originally Posted by cellurdur
My point is when he started to disregard previous drafts as Mannish myths, he went about trying to write 'accurate accounts' of the myths.
For example explaining how when the elves were created Morgoth had the world created in a smog, but Manwe blew away the smog during the night and the elves first saw the stars and loved them ever since.
It's around this time he refocuses on things like the Children of Hurin and begins to hammer out things like makeup of orcs.
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So you mean the 'Myths Transformed' phase? This is where my confusion arises, as for me Tolkien abandoned these new attempts at a 'more accurate' cosmology -- more accurate because the
Elves of the West should know better...
... but his solution was [as can be illlustrated by various late notes and commentary in my opinion]: retain the Two Trees [at least in Quenta Silmarillion], as JRRT recharacterizes Quenta Silmarillion as a largely Mannish affair. Christopher Tolkien even comments [Myths Transformed] that his father seems to have found his answer, but didn't employ it at once in any case, with the writing of these transformed versions [Manwe blowing away the smoke and so on]...
... but it is the ultimate acceptance that the Silmarillion is mostly a Mannish affair that allows Tolkien to retain the less accurate but more beautiful tales, without transformation. And to employ the idea means no need to rewrite: the Elves of the West are no longer telling their version of Cosmology direct to Elfwine.
In short don't make the myths more accurate, keep them and make certain sources hail from a folk who are less informed than the Elves of the West, some of whom had been in contact with the Powers or Maiar.
But this is all about transmission in any case, and speaks to a general scenario in which [again in my opinion] opens up the door to more variation, and actually I think it is relatively late that Tolkien 'ratifies'
The Drowning of Anadune [DA] as a viable text in his legendarium, exactly because he now accepts that there need not be merely one version of the Drowning of Numenor, and that DA nicely contained Mannish confusions.
Anyway I'm not sure the idea you are suggesting [if I still understand it properly that is] can be proven objectively, at least easily. For instance you brought up orcs, but to my mind Tolkien only 'needed' [I'm not sure he really 'needed'] to hammer out the origin of Orcs because of a notable shift in thinking --
-- but that shift was that Evil could not create souls, or true living beings.
And the note published in Unfinished Tales might
possibly be Tolkien's latest remark about Orc-origins, yet -- as he had done with the Orcs from Elves theory, putting the idea in the mouths of the Eressean Wise -- JRRT puts the matter [Orcs from Men] as something the Eldar said or believed.
On the possible other hand I have posted before that Tolkien as Subcreator 'should' be, and was, greatly concerned with consistency, and that the purposed inconsistencies should be like pepper in the soup -- some measure will actually help make the Subcreated World
more believable, but too much will, or at least might, serve to help 'ruin' the taste. That measure is Tolkien's of course, but I am here speaking of a potential, ultimate legendarium published by the author himself [which is different from various draft texts when Tolkien is trying to work out
the version of a given text]...
... but yet seemingly contrary to this [arguably] I also maintain that Tolkien was, in later life, more open to publishing textual variations like
The Drowning of Anadune, a text that presents some drastic variations compared to earlier ideas [the shape of the world in origin being round, for example], and a text which was to be as much a part of the Legendarium as was Akallabeth; and again a text [DA] which also contained purposed confusion, like the Mannish authors confusing the Eldar with the Powers for instance.
And with respect to the Silmarillion related writings, Tolkien got more caught up in 'philosophical' issues, or with trying to explain the nature of the Elvish
fea for example, or why Men could not live in Aman due to their inherent gift and so on... and maybe that's what you mean by more accurate and less mistranslation, I don't know.
But I'm guessing we might be mostly talking past each other here? Not that that's a bad thing necessarily, but I'm still not wholly sure we are going to place the same subjective characterizations upon a given example of Tolkien seemingly doing X at a given phase in in his life.
At least not in every case
