The Problem of Rog

[lindil]

Reading my copy of the recently [and gratefully] acquired Tolkien's Legendarium[p.24] I came across the oft seen but never digested quote of the professor's:

The legends have to be worked over...[elipsis in the quote] and made consistent; and they have to be integrated with [The Lord of the Rings] and they have to be given some progessive shape.

This of course is more or less our stated aim, but I wonder if we have, for the sake of a completely understandable conservatism in regards the texts, drawn our parameters, our freedom of editing too closely to acheive the initial goal of JRRT.

This all treally belongs in another thread and I will copy and paste it to a new one in the public forum I think [once I look over the principles again], but I think it is germaine to Rog, in that it is in a sense become a [very] miniature Ruin of Doriath for us.

It is of course good that we explore every conservative option before reaching for the more creative one's since after all we are trying to preserve as much of the pre-LotR Legendarium into one Tale as possible, to fill in CJRT's Silm. gaps not JRRT's.

anyway, there is my 3-4 am musing for the day, if I develop it into more concrete suggestions, this forum will be the first to know [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img].

Response to Mithadan and Aiwendil:

btw Aiwendil, your last quote in the preceding post contained a repeat of your second to last quote. Mithadan's words were lost in the last one.

A.:

If the best justification that we have for a change is something as artificial as this{the nickname idea}, then the change should not be made.

Hmm, that is of course working from a position where keeping Rog is seen as a possibility. I do not work from there.

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L. quoted by A::Essentially that I feel [or, IMO] if we keep Rog we must somehow justify it in the text.

[qoute]A.'s reply: Ah. I understand now; thank you. So you would not consider leaving the text as it is on the implicit assumption that "Rog" may have been a nickname? For this option, as flawed as it is, struck me as a possibility recently. What I mean is that if "Rog" were simply a nickname (as I don't think it would be, but as others suggest) would this necessarily be stated in the text? It is quite common for characters to be referred to by their after-names with no explanation. But I take it that for you there is a problem with the jarring effect of "Rog" on a reader, one that could not be solved save by altering the text (i.e., it could merely be explained away).[/quote]

My understanding of the Rog dilemna [ 'The problem of Rog'- actually I will have to rename the thread that - too apropos to pass up.] does not leave room for an implicit but an applied solution, for that still leaves the reader encountering the name 'unassisted' which is the very thing pretty much all of us agree would NOT have happened in any JRRT revision.

That is why for me a footnote explaining as per Mithadan's last suggestion it's archaic nature, or a foornote or textual gloss explaining it away as a nickname not a proper name is the [far and away] preferred solution. I will admit that leaving it and admitting it doesn't fit is somewhat bizarre, but I think we need to consider unusual one-off solutions, to what will almost certainly be [hopefully!] a one-off stlye problem.

I must remain adamant on one point: it is not "out of the question" in light of our principles. There are arguments for it and against it; I don't think that our principles trivially or obviously necessitate the removal of the name.

I carefully prefaced my statement to which the above quote is a response with: 'to my understanding of our Principles...'
I recall all to well, that the Principles were finalized with this very Rog question left open to later debate.

Of course their was no satisfactory way to word them any more concretly at the time, in order to leave room for this very debate.

There are a couple of subtleties that have been gone over before but that I think could stand to be reiterated. First of all, evidence that JRRT would have changed something is by itself not enough to require us to change it. Think of Myths Transformed, for example. What we need are texts of greater precedence contradicting, explicitly or implicitly, texts of lesser precedence, without introducing irreconcilable contradictions into the Legendarium.

MT is only partially analagous to our Rog dilemna. MT contradicts even itself, it is in a sense a record of brainstorming sessions, so our principles clearly do not require us to edit the Silm based on such. This is essentially a 'How much do we incorporate from later ideas' question. Rog is the other end of the scale, a 'how far do we bend to accomadate obsolete aspects of the Lost Tales and early Q phase.

With every other name in Lost Tales we were able to update or eliminate. Rog I think must be viewed with the same to options.

... The evidence against "Rog" is that Christopher Tolkien thinks it does not fit with later Sindarin. If it could be clearly shown that this is true, there would be no question at all - "Rog" would have to go. As things actually stand, I think there is a very strong argument against "Rog". But I think that since we cannot actually explain how the name fails to fit with later Sindarin, we can at least entertain the possibility of retaining the name.

Yes the crux of our dilemna.
First off CJRT'thinks' it is obsolete is imo far too light of a description, he did that which I do not recall him doing anywhere else in the HoM-E, he stated flat out it would not have survived, no doubts. He is, as we know etremely careful with his words and how he characterises every nuance of change within HoM-E. Since neither he [as far as he has let on, and he is always willing to make reference to a source, even when he does not provide it] nor can we, I have always boiled it down to plain, 'not sounding right' - aesthetics. Imo, not one whit less important than fidelity of the whole than anything else.

The "-rog" in "Balrog" is not the cognate of the LT "Rog". I fear I set wrecked havoc on this whole inquiry when (two years ago or more?) I made a great fuss over a supposed connection between them. There is none, save the obvious phonological resemblance.

I should point out that nowhere (as far as I can tell) do we see anything suggesting that there were certain words or elements in Sindarin that were not suitable for proper Elvish names.

Thanks for the clarification on the -rog point. Sorry for not catching that along time ago.

As for the unsuitable words or elements, I was considering Rog unsuitable on 2 possible grounds, one of which you cleared up [rog=demon] the other has no clearing up, as it sees Rog as no longer Sindarin. The -goth element seems exscusvvily used or bestowed upon evil beings though. Morgoth, and Gothmog.
I was about to say Mor- = dark, but remembered Turin's Mormegil nickname [hey!] and his mother Morwen.


A.:

Is there anything with the sense of "strong" besides the "pol-" and "tulc-" words?

Still looking. Do you have the Goldogrin/Gnomish Lexicon?

A.:

I wouldn't count that one [refering to Turin at the Dagor Dagoreth-L] out quite yet.

Good! Glad I might be wrong on that one. I suppose to speak more exactly I should have said Turin as a Vala.

A.:

But I think you may be underestimating the damage cutting the Rog scene could do. The trouble is not only that we would lose some nice detail, but that we would have a gap in the plot of the Tale. Rog's attack plays a critical role in the course of the narrative as it now stands.

I am sure we could if needed bridge the longer detailed account with a one or 2 line condensation that leaves Rog out, but his and his companies actions in. Indeed, this goes back to the old recommendation of 'Keep the company of the Hammer of Wrath' but loose it's captain suggestion. If others are as concerned about consensus as Aiwendil is, that may be the closest we come, and I must say is looking more attractive by the hour.


Well I am willing to come up work on editing a 'Rogless' battle scene, if in theory there are no absolute rejections of the very possibility from the get go.

I may also email jallanite just to see what his take on all this is. He was extremely disturbed to see the Legolas question reduced to a vote, so perhaps he would be encouraged by [at Aiwendil's persistent effort] the attempt at consensus here, however contracted it may be.

[ November 13, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]