[Formendacil]

In a weird sort of way, the fact that Tolkien never visited these final tales in detail makes them (and really, this single chapter could have been--or should have been--several tales, not just one) some of my favourites. The fact that they were sketched in such spare detail means that there is more empty canvas than usual to fill in with the imagination.

This is not to say that the rest of the Silmarillion leaves the reader thinking that everything that could be said about any given story has been said--on the contrary, the Silmarillion works a lot of its magic because of its remoteness: through the sense that there is so much unsaid, and unremembered.

The Tale of Eärendil, which should be the grand conclusion to the Silmarillion, takes this distance to greater lengths than the foregoing tales, and I think this adds to the deep sense of nostalgia* one feels in reading the Silmarillion. The breakdown of detailed narrative puts the reader into the position that Tolkien was in when he was grasping at the mostly-forgotten stories behind words like "Éarendel."




*And as a philological note, I think that the "-algia" part of this word, which comes from "pain" (or something approximating that... I don't speak Greek, after all), is quite appropriate.