The Single Greatest (Publishing) Tragedy in Tolkien's Life (yet another rant)

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

6. The words you use, Helen, are all quite loaded: "story fan" versus "world fan" versus "philosophy fan"; what kind of eucatastrophe; faerie versus revelation; in short, I'm not sure what to understand from all of these labels. They seem like short form for whole realms of content.

Aye, several of them are short for whole threads. You could say the post came from the compost of the Downs.

It is a bit overarching. I'd try again but I must be off (to teach Sunday School and thence to work-- on Sunday??? Outrageous! Yes...) But I suspect that The Author of The Story (by which Tolkien did not mean himself) is busily laboring in the garden of your own soul. I look forward to the flowering and then the fruit.

[davem]

From the new Flieger book, 'Interrupted Music':

Very well then, if Iceland & Norway & Wales & Ireland had their great manuscript books, objects of scrutiny & examination by schollars, Tolkien's Middle-earth would have th efictive equivalent. If these real-world books had been translated, edited, regularized as to spelling, & published, Tolkien's mythos should have no less. He therefore would devise a similar treatment for the stories in his legendarium. But to provide these equivalents, Tolkien had to invent a 'pre-history' of existing texts, & geanealogy of transmitters: bards, minstrels, storytellers of all kinds stretching over a period roughly comparable to the prehistoric (migration) age, transmitters who diseminated the stories both vertically in time & horizontally across the geography of Middle earth. These had then to be succeeded by a further succession of historical 'redactors' & scribes, agents who could believably transfer the stories from their original oral tradition to tangible artifacts, to manuscript books. The final stage would be their appearance in print.
The task Tolkien set himself, then, was first to create an authentic & convincing oral tradition, a legacy of songs & stories attributed to identifiable bards & storytellers & perpetuated by subsequent performers. Second, he had then to devise a stage or stages of transmission in which this body of material could come to be written down by later redactors, with the process culminating on a few 'surviving' manuscripts in the manner of his medieval models. Third & finally, he had to create some sort of believable frame within which the manuscript material - much of it needing not just transference from one medium to another, but presumed 'translation' from one or more of his invented languages into English - could find its way into print in his own twentieth century.....

Commenting on CT's statement that he felt it was, in retrospect, an error to publish the Silmarillion in the form he did in 1977 she states:

The published Silmarillion gives a misleading impression of coherence & finality, as if it were a definitive, canonical text, whereas the mass of material from which that volume was taken is a jumble of overlapping & often competing stories, annals & lexicons.

Looked at from this perspective, I think we can see that, rather than being a project his father would have disapproved of, HoME does in fact do exactly what Tolkien pere wanted his Silmarillion to do & perhaps does it better than he could have done it himself....

[Bêthberry]

As usual, I come to the debate after many substantial points have been made and some very fine discussion put forth.

I have been pondering this thread, however, since lmp's first post. What I have to offer, rather than reply to specific points already made far better than I could, is some rambling thought which I hope manages some coherency.

First of all, I think it is fascinating and well worth while to consider the role of Christopher in his father's work. And not just the publishing of The Silm and HoMe. Anyone who has read Tolkien's Letters, particularly those during WWII when Christopher was stationed in South Africa, will be aware of how very much Tolkien Sr thought of Tolkien Jr as his audience. Time and again JRR asks C for his opinion. Publishing the papers after JRR's death can perhaps be seen as an extension of this process for Christopher. I don't know, but the fact remains that there was some kind of symbiotic relationship here which was part of Tolkien's habit of composition. Was this relationship something which stimulated Tolkien's later work? There is a letter (cannot remember the number now) where Tolkien bemoans his children's loss of faith. Was the increasingly didactic part of his latter work part of Tolkien's response to this, as to the rising secularisation of his world?

As an aside, Christopher was an academic in his own career and the scroll on the wall of the Bird and Baby includes Christopher as an academic and member of the Inklings. Does anyone know what else Christopher has done? What was his academic field aside from Middle earth?

Also, we keep coming up with this idea of a pristine reading of enchantment. (davem is currently berating me for destroying enchantment on the Chapter by Chapter discussion of Shelob's Lair.) The problem I have with this is trying to set in stone just what the perfect first reading is. lmp, you are yourself an accomplished writer. You understand how to intersperse dialogue and exposition, action and reflection. Is this something that you suspend when you read initially and do inretrospect? I guess what I am asking is, what do you mean by enchantment and by tearing apart the tower to see the stones? (Yes, I know the Tolkien allusion.)

What HoMe has done, I think, it make available to the general public the kind of detailed writing papers which more usually remain sequestered in libraries and the domain of scholars to pour over. The publication of HoMe has actually democratised Tolkien scholarship, I think.

Now, for my own theory, being myself a little of the Ann Elk variety. I see the vast panorama of Tolkien's writing in narrative terms. I see a very strong impulse towards the kind of heterogeneity of style, narration, point of view, structure which marks early narratives and the Bible itself. The Bible is, after all, a compendium of various authors over a great range of time. This variety is fascinatingly various and multiplicitous (is that a word?). Then I see the impulse towards hegemony and control, authorship as one voice, one vision, one way. In himself, Tolkien seems to have combined contradictory impulses, a paradox of authorship. He was both a medieval pluralist and an authoritarian eighteenth century rationalist. This paradox informed his work throughout his life, directing his ideas differently at various times. As readers, we can pick and choose which we like best, but I think it is also rewarding to consider how the cauldron bubbled for Tolkien, either simmering or roiling boil, for that might help us understand aspects of creativity. That might be something altogether different, however, from simply reading for enjoyment, which of course offers its own rewards.

EDIT: Cross posted with davem.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Helen

But I suspect that The Author of The Story (by which Tolkien did not mean himself) is busily laboring in the garden of your own soul. I look forward to the flowering and then the fruit.

Bless you.

Originally Posted by davem

I think we can see that, rather than being a project his father would have disapproved of, HoME does in fact do exactly what Tolkien pere wanted his Silmarillion to do & perhaps does it better than he could have done it himself....

It's ironic that what is being described in answer to my assertion, that Tolkien created this heterogeneous diversity of text and narrative over a lifetime, is probably not what Tolkien intended. Rather, it's how his mind worked and his artistic endeavor sorted itself out. He certainly was not scientific, but his template has now been laid for others to follow. Nobody does it, so far, because, outside of it being an unacceptable idiom in publishers' minds (spectres of "valid criticisms"?), it may be too gargantuan a task; besides, one would have to be an expert in philology or at least linguistics, or be able to feign such expertise.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Does anyone know what else Christopher has done? What was his academic field aside from Middle earth?

I think Christopher followed in his father's footsteps in philology, and taught Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

lmp, you are yourself an accomplished writer. You understand how to intersperse dialogue and exposition, action and reflection. Is this something that you suspend when you read initially and do in retrospect? I guess what I am asking is, what do you mean by enchantment and by tearing apart the tower to see the stones? (Yes, I know the Tolkien allusion.)

Thank you for your kind words, Bb. To answer perhaps both questions, the more I learn about the craft of writing, the harder it is to achieve Secondary Belief, including my rereadings of Tolkien. It's a fact of life that with gained knowledge comes the loss of ....not innocence ... but simplicity of perception, I suppose, the desire to recapture which may have something to do with a desire for Eden or Middle-earth. That's probably why the 'mythic unity' concept is so important to me. Any analysis is by its very nature a dividing, a paring apart, and thus a loss of the enchantment that story brings.

So whereas it may not be the misspent life I originally asserted, there is still a loss occurring each time Christopher's commentary interrupts (yes, a loaded word) the story, because story creates mythic unity while commentary necessarily de-stories (destroys) it. So whereas we have a great treasury bestowed to us by the kindly and well meant efforts of Christopher, I can't help thinking that it undoes (unintentionally, I'm sure!) what JRRT was trying to do. And also, JRRT's own later analysis and attempts to harmonize his legendarium away from mythology toward a modern mindset was mistaken and harmful to his original purpose.

[Aiwendil]

Being rather a strong proponent of HoMe, I feel I should try to say something in answer to Littlemanpoet. But I am afraid that to a significant extent, this issue is really one of personal taste. If someone dislikes HoMe, well, that's that. To each his own. But that goes both ways - and there are many people (like me) who genuinely enjoy HoMe. I am thankful to Christopher Tolkien first of all simply because his efforts gave me many, many hours of great pleasure. I enjoyed his "interruptions".

So perhaps this is a subjective thing. Still, when littlemanpoet writes:

Part of my "beef" is the breaking of the enchantment. I don't want it.

. . . I find myself incredulous. For I can't believe that the enchantment is that brittle. Is it so fragile that a footnote will break it? Is it so fragile that the mere thought that it is not true, that it was in fact written by a real author, chases it away?

It is not so for me. It is something stronger. It is something that holds up under close scrutiny. My experience of Tolkien's creation - and, for that matter, of all my favorite works of art - is that the act of studying it can only enhance my appreciation of it. To have (almost) all of Tolkien's Silmarillion material allows me to enjoy his creation in ways far beyond what a single narrative does. And Christopher's commentary is, in my view, an essential part of that presentaion. As I see it, there are more or less three ways Christopher could have published the Silmarillion:

1. As a single narrative
2. As merely a series of his father's texts, without commentary/interruption
3. As HoMe

We have a grievance against the "interruption" found in 3. But I think the problems with the others are greater. Any single narrative is a contrived narrative, in which Christopher's influence is far greater than in HoMe. If Christopher interrupts the material in HoMe, he disrupts it (necessarily) in the '77. Also, any such narrative necessarily leaves out a vast amount of material. The problem with option 2 is simply that it is incoherent. Without Christopher's information on dates of composition and such, any presentation of all or most of Tolkien's Silmarillion writings would be quite a jumble; a reader would be completely lost.

So though you may fault Christopher's chosen method, someone would fault him no matter what he did. There is no "perfect" presentation of the Silmarillion. Christopher gave us two very good ones, and I for one am very happy with that.

I realize that I am only addressing part of the issue that littlemanpoet raised. In fact, I agree with some of the other points. I think that it would probably would have been best if the Silmarillion had been accepted along with LotR. I don't think that his goal of harmonizing the Silmarillion with LotR was completely "unnecessary" - but I do think that if a deal had actually been struck at this point, he would have brought the Silmarillion into a form he found satisfactory much more quickly.

I also agree in part with the proposition that, as littlemanpoet put it:

Tolkien's latter creative life was misspent.

Specifically, I think that his issue with the scientific unreality of the flat earth mythology was completely misguided. For of course his Legendarium is not scientifically valid.

However, I think that he had some great successes in the post-LotR work on the Legendarium that cannot easily be dismissed. The Narn i Chin Hurin is my favorite thing that he wrote, and I don't know that I'd give it up even for a complete, authoritative Silmarillion. In this as well as the later "Tuor", the later Geste of Beren and Luthien, and "The Wanderings of Hurin" I think we find Tolkien's narrative and descriptive powers at their height. The characters are vividly drawn; the stories are engaging; the mythology is powerful. No, I don't think I could bear to give those things up.

[davem]

It seems we pro-HoMe-ers are all a bit uncomfortable with the 'Myths Transformed' period & feel it was a mistake for Tolkien to try & change his Legendarium in the way he did. It probably was, & I wish he hadn't gone that way, because he would quite probably have managed to finish things like the ones Aiwendil mentions.

Having said that, & I realise I'm possibly sidetracking this thread here, wasn't that 'period' actually inevitable right from the start? Right from BoLT the conceit was that this was as much history as Myth. These accounts were what really happened - a phrase Tolkien was to use repeatedly over the years of his approach to writing them. In other words, the Legendarium was to be a replacement for England's lost mythology (though, as Flieger has pointed out, what Tolkien actually stated in his letter to Waldman was not that he wanted to write a mythology for England but rather a mythology he could dedicate to England), & was to be, originally, the accounts of the Elves themselves - the eyewitnesses - written down by Eriol/Aelfwine. So it was never intended to be taken by readers as a mythology that Tolkien 'made up' but rather as one that he was passing on. This culminates in the conceits of the Red Book & the single page of an ancient manuscript that sparks off the journey of Lowdham & Jeremy in NCP.

So, if the Legendarium was to be history as well as myth, the true account of what had really happened, then Tolkien would eventually have had to bite the bullet & account for why the world of the early Ages was so physically different from the world we live in now. Of course, he tried various explanations -principally that the world was physically changed at the Fall of Numenor - actually that doesn't work because we know that this world was never flat.

It was his very desire to produce a mythology which would be accepted by those (the English) he wanted to dedicate it to that (he seems to have felt) required it not to contradict known history or science. More, that required, I suppose, that it fitted in as closely as possible with what we know about the world. Inevitably he was going to fail & get himself tied up in all kinds of knots, but as I say, the more I think about it, the more I feel that he was heading for that period right from the start, when he chose to build on pre existing foundations (like Cynewulf's Crist) rather than lay his own...

[HerenIstarion]

Originally Posted by davem

It seems we pro-HoMe-ers are all a bit uncomfortable with the 'Myths Transformed' period & feel it was a mistake for Tolkien to try & change his Legendarium in the way he did.

Tut-tut. Some of us are perfectly comfortable, you know:

Canonicity 127
Evil Things 114 (see also 92 and below). Wait, it was you whom I was posting to on both occassions!

(What miss-stakes-s-ss, my precious-ss, what miss-stakes-s-ss?)

No true accounts for anything that happened, just a refraction of eyewitness' perception, further altered by the worldview of the scribe and mistakes of his nearsighted copier.

I would also spice the post up by much quoted (by yours truly, mainly ) line of 'Leaf by Niggle':

Things might have been different, but they could not have been better

Said by Niggle (allegedly representing Tolkien, or creative aspect of his personality) himself, as he stopped to worry about 'unfinishness' of his work. The quote expresses my feelings about the issue perfectly: Of course, I would certainly like to have more plots to read about ME, but, again, where is the guarantee that even if Tolkien wrote tenfold amount of stories, I would not crave for more all the same? As it is, I'm glad things happened as they did, and diving into the 'world', with facts but no 'plots' is equally satisfying.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

I am afraid that to a significant extent, this issue is really one of personal taste ...So perhaps this is a subjective thing. .... I can't believe that the enchantment is that brittle.

Whereas discussing this under the rubric of personal taste may reveal some interesting facets, I think there's more to this issue than that. I also think that there is a subjective element to it; how could it not be so when we speak of enchantment?

But what do we mean by enchantment? It seems clear enough that what we're talking about here is related to our comparison of Smith of Wooton Major and The Silmarillion in the "SWOM in Middle-earth" thread. There, davem and I, and others, wrote how we found ourselves more moved by SWOM than by the Sil, whereas others had the opposite experience. "Moved" is obviously an extremely subjective term.

The words you use, Aiwendil, reveal an approach to the work of Tolkien that is not "home" for me, though clearly it is "home" for you. Just two examples: "close scrutiny"; "act of studying". HoME, as presented by Christopher Tolkien, renders such activity a necessity. It seems to me (and correct me if I err) that you approach HoME as a historian, or even perhaps as a lay philosopher. I respect such an approach. However, as I said above, it is not "home" for me. For me, the enchantment is the thing, and it is no simple thing.

I suppose it's time to wander into that second thread I had mentioned earlier. Pardon me for the rehash, but I feel it's necessary. Some of you know this stuff already, so I'm sorry for creating unnecessary boredom. You might want to check my facts to make sure I'm expressing this correctly.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge posited "suspension of disbelief" as an activity a reader brings to a work of fiction. He meant that the reader realizes, of course, that the work of fiction is not true, but suspends that realization for the sake of enjoyment of the story. J.R.R. Tolkien made a further distinction between suspension of disbelief and "secondary belief". JRRT felt that the mere suspension of disbelief was not an adequate description of what occurs in reading fairy story. The author weaves a spell by means of the subcreation of a feigned reality, a secondary reality. If the author does well, the reader is cast (voluntarily) under the author's spell for the duration of the reading (and perhaps longer). This is the enchantment. Its effect is to experience that subcreation as real, even though it is feigned. At no point need the reader be truly deluded that the feigned reality is primarily real, but for the sake of the story, that secondary reality may be entered into as if passing into a room in one's house.

But there are things that break the enchantment. It no doubt varies from reader to reader. I find that the enchantment is more easily broken the more I learn of the craft of writing. Thus, my own extended knowledge threatens the enchantment.

What about Christopher's commentary on his father's multiplicitous (yes, it is a word, Bethberry ) versions of all manner of story from the First Age? My recollection is that Christopher refers to "my father's" this, and "my father's" that. Rather than attempt the feigned history, he presents it as his father's creation. He was probably wise not to attempt the feigned history, if he felt that he was not capable of it. Nevertheless, all of Christopher's commentary sets the feignedness aside. There is no possibility of secondary belief. One may suspend one's disbelief, but that is not the same as the enchantment of secondary belief.

Please understand that in all this explication, I'm not really being successful in communicating the reality of the experience of secondary belief enchantment. If one has not experienced it, I most assuredly cannot adequately describe it.

Just a quick question for davem: could you please start your own darned thread? Just kidding. The real question is: do you really think Tolkien had to attempt Myths Transformed, or do you just think it was inevitable that he would try?