How close is the published The Silmarillion to JRRT's Silmarillion?

[Mithalwen]

While I think there is something flat earth about ignoring the existance of HoME, I did have a lot of sympathy for the Oxonmoot speaker who was pounced on and told here theory was WRONG because an essay in HOME contradicted it even though it was A valid interpretation of the event as recounted in the published Silmarillion.

It is hard to generalise when HOME contains different materials from definitively superceded drafts to notes that may have been a passing idea. We can't necessarily know if a last word on a subject was the final word with the unfinished posthumous works however I have to admit to being annoyed when I saw a discarded draft being claimed as a development of the material in the LOTR appendices as published because it suited the poster's hobbyhorse.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

While I think there is something flat earth about ignoring the existance of HoME, I did have a lot of sympathy for the Oxonmoot speaker who was pounced on and told here theory was WRONG because an essay in HOME contradicted it even though it was A valid interpretation of the event as recounted in the published Silmarillion.

I do not think, nor do I recall ever saying, that HOME should be completely ignored at any time. I myself have only read Volumes I-IV, but I do find them interesting.

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

It is hard to generalise when HOME contains different materials from definitively superceded drafts to notes that may have been a passing idea. We can't necessarily know if a last word on a subject was the final word with the unfinished posthumous works however I have to admit to being annoyed when I saw a discarded draft being claimed as a development of the material in the LOTR appendices as published because it suited the poster's hobbyhorse.

Yes. My issue is with the bringing forth of HOME information with a concurrent argument of why it should take precedence over The Silmarillion. If someone wants to put more stock into HOME, fine. But everyone should not be expected to fall in line with that.

[Mithalwen]

I didn't mean it personally Inzil, I was speaking generally. I have heard tell of folk who don't like HoME mentioned because the like to pretend it is all real.

I can't say I have read every word of Home either.. but I find it fascinating and useful . I don't think the published Silmarillion has automatic precedence over HoME since it waa necessary in the first instance to have coherence and compromises had to be made. Not saying that CT wasn't best placed to make that judgement but we can't be certain that he chosec as his father would have done and so I don't see that drawing attention to other versions is wrong. We can't be certain what JRRT would have finally decided about Gil-galad in the way we can be sure that a hobbit called Trotter had been rejected as an idea. He was working on a Middle Earth pretty much till he dropped.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I didn't mean it personally Inzil, I was speaking generally. I have heard tell of folk who don't like HoME mentioned because the like to pretend it is all real.

All right. I was afraid I had given that impression, and that wasn't what I'd meant at all.

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I can't say I have read every word of Home either.. but I find it fascinating and useful . I don't think the published Silmarillion has automatic precedence over HoME since it was necessary in the first instance to have coherence and compromises had to be made.

I understand your point, to be sure. I just think that in some instances it becomes necessary, when debating particular points about the works, to have a definite standard. Otherwise, there would seem to be little point in putting forth opinions at all, when they can be countered by endless citations of drafts and whatnot. When the published Silmarillion and other sources are at odds, I'm going with the Silm. Let others do as they like.

[Mithalwen]

Ah well then we will have to wear pink hats on this because for reasons stated the published Silmarillion cannot be a definite standard. It is not to be discounted and may have been the best solution to the problem but a posthumous work left as unfinished as the Sil was from 60years of drafts just can't be THAT authoratative..

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Ah well then we will have to wear pink hats on this because for reasons stated the published Silmarillion cannot be a definite standard. It is not to be discounted and may have been the best solution to the problem but a posthumous work left as unfinished as the Sil was from 60years of drafts just can't be THAT authoratative..

Fair enough. I've never said the Silm was anything like perfect. However, I think it's nearest thing to a definitive history of the Elder Days available. If/when the Estate puts out something to supplement or supplant it, I'll be more than happy to roll with that.

[Formendacil]

Rather than using loaded terms--and thus concepts--like "authoritative" or "definitive" when discussing the account of the 1977 Silmarillion, perhaps it would be better to consider it the standard account. This sidesteps the question of whether it OUGHT to be the best-known version and accounts for the fact, irrespective, it IS.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Yes. My issue is with the bringing forth of HOME information with a concurrent argument of why it should take precedence over The Silmarillion. If someone wants to put more stock into HOME, fine. But everyone should not be expected to fall in line with that.

Your statement “if someone wants to put more stock into HOME” mistates the point. I don”t know of anyone who “wants to put more stock into HOME” in general. People just state information about Tolkien from various pieces of data and argue about it and naturally include the published Silmarillion and HoME and various other writings by J. R. R.  Tolkien and Christoper Tolkien.

I accept no-ones’ attempted limitation on this material of any kind. One may on particular topics place more value on a section of HoME than a section of the published Silmarillion because for that topic the material found in HoME appears more pertinent to the discussion. One may also point out where appropriate that portions of the published Silmarillion were complete inventions by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Kay, not deriving from anything written by J. R. R. Tolkien.

One “should not be expected to fall in line” with any argument that one thinks does not stand up. One should argue back in return, or ignore the argument.

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I just think that in some instances it becomes necessary, when debating particular points about the works, to have a definite standard. Otherwise, there would seem to be little point in putting forth opinions at all, when they can be countered by endless citations of drafts and whatnot.

You provided no indication of what you are talking about. There is certainly no point in providing opinions that “can be countered by endless citations of drafts and whatnot.” If there are really “endless citations of drafts and whatnot” than the opinion is probably invalid. That seems to me to be obvious.

When the published Silmarillion and other sources are at odds, I'm going with the Silm. Let others do as they like.

Are you then mindlessly going with whatever appears in the published Silmarillion in any discussion, regardless of what appears elsewhere, even if “endless citations of drafts and whatnot” are against it? That is not a very convincing position to take. So you believe that Galadriel’s statement in the Fellowship that she crossed into Lórien in the First Age is wrong and that the Silmarillion statement that no Noldor crossed the Ered Lindon in the First Age is correct.

In fact both Fellowship and the published Silmarillion are fictional stories and you shouldn’t believe anything in either of them.

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Fair enough. I've never said the Silm was anything like perfect. However, I think it's nearest thing to a definitive history of the Elder Days available. If/when the Estate puts out something to supplement or supplant it, I'll be more than happy to roll with that.

So, even though the published Silmarillion is not perfect, you are happy to roll with it because it’s the nearest thing to a definitive history of the Elder Days available. What then of the HoME volumes covering the Elder Days plus Unfinished Tales and The Children of Húrin which include much more material?

More of us here are willing to roll with all this material. That this includes a lot of material which is difficult to remember as not a reason to reject this material. I suspect you really support The Silmarillion so much because accepting only that is easier, not because it can be logically argued. But you are ignoring much material that may make a paper by you convincing or obviously bogus.

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

While I think there is something flat earth about ignoring the existance of HoME, I did have a lot of sympathy for the Oxonmoot speaker who was pounced on and told here theory was WRONG because an essay in HOME contradicted it even though it was A valid interpretation of the event as recounted in the published Silmarillion

I recall the first Tolkien paper I attended, at a conference in Toronto, in which the speaker laughed at the idea that Tolkien considered Gandalf an angel. This was before The Silmarillion or Letters had emerged, and then Unfinished Tales.

Maybe the reader you heard was equally WRONG. I’ve since encountered lots of wrong papers where the reader believes what he or she wants to believe.

If the reader you heard was on the ball, he would have mentioned the HoME essay and then briefly given some bogus reason why he was not considering it. As it is, apparently he was caught unprepared.

[Mithalwen]

Jallanite, it wasn't that kind of wrongness. I don't want to be more explicit since it would identify those concerned and I don't want to get into that kind of public row potentially based on memory and any notes I might be able to decipher. IIRC the speaker had to curtail the paper and time restriction also meant that they were denied the chance to respond. I could pm if you atr particularly curious.

[jallanite]

The information you provided is sufficient.

I gather you think that possibly the paper might have been fine given time and an oppurtunity to respond. I’ve been in that situation so I understand.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

As to statements by CT or the Estate, note that on the dust jacket of Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur it is stated: “The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain ...”. This entirely ignores “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Pearl: Sir Orfeo.

Jacket blurbs come from the publisher, not the author; and Tolkien's Gawain was just a translation of a 14th-c poem, not an original work.


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It might be relevant to hear what Guy Kay had to say about the process of constructing the Silmarillion, and CT's intentions. When GK came aboard, CT's plan had been to present the Silmarillion material in keeping with the sentiment he expressed in the excerpt given above from "The War of the Jewels"- that the work is its history, in a way, and what CT envisioned at that time was something like UT:

"The initial idea had been to produce a scholarly text rather than a single narrative. Such a book would have been some 1300 pages long, and would have consisted of chapters which had as their main text the latest version of the passage concerned, followed by appendices giving variant readings from other, earlier versions, complete with an editorial apparatus of footnotes and comments on dates and inconsistencies, and so on. The first two chapters had already been drafted by Christopher Tolkien in this academic style when Kay started work. However, Kay felt strongly that such an approach was the wrong one ..."

It was in great part Kay who convinced him to make a "synthetic" Silmarillion for publication, and I get the feeling that CT has always had nagging doubts about having agreed to do so.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

As to statements by CT or the Estate, note that on the dust jacket of Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur it is stated: “The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain ...”. This entirely ignores “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Pearl: Sir Orfeo.

Jacket blurbs come from the publisher, not the author; and Tolkien's Gawain was just a translation of a 14th-c poem, not an original work.

I am quite aware of that. But often the author of the book, or in this case the editor, in involved in discussing them before they are finally printed. But in this case someone slipped. The blurb might have said something like

The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain (save for his translation of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’) ...

or like

The Fall of Arthur, by J.R.R. Tolkien; not a translation, but a verse venture into the legends of Arthur King of Britain mostly from his own imagination ...

As it reads now, it is inaccurate.

It might be relevant to hear what Guy Kay had to say about the process of constructing the Silmarillion, and CT's intentions. When GK came aboard, CT's plan had been to present the Silmarillion material in keeping with the sentiment he expressed in the excerpt given above from "The War of the Jewels"- that the work is its history, in a way, and what CT envisioned at that time was something like UT:

"The initial idea had been to produce a scholarly text rather than a single narrative. Such a book would have been some 1300 pages long, and would have consisted of chapters which had as their main text the latest version of the passage concerned, followed by appendices giving variant readings from other, earlier versions, complete with an editorial apparatus of footnotes and comments on dates and inconsistencies, and so on. The first two chapters had already been drafted by Christopher Tolkien in this academic style when Kay started work. However, Kay felt strongly that such an approach was the wrong one ..."

It was in great part Kay who convinced him to make a "synthetic" Silmarillion for publication, and I get the feeling that CT has always had nagging doubts about having agreed to do so.

Quite so. I think Guy Kay was quite right in this, but that the other treatment was also required. Now Christopher Tolkien has provided both to us.

[lindil]

Personally, CJRT had the right approach at first, there could still be a brilliant 'annotated' silmarillion that has all the major variants and incredible bits of HoME with minimal commentary. Hopefully douglas anderson or someone with cjrt's ear can pull it off. too much incredible material is buried in HoME thatr would be perfectly in place in a greater silmarillion. As to what is canon, i don't too much care anymore, though a group trying to work it out is an understandable if hazardous exercise ;-).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Um, HoME already exists. Why do we need an "abridged version?"

(Incidentally, I did ask Christopher about the prospect of a sort of "Unfinished Tales II" or "HoME Reader" which would repackage some of the more complete narratives like The Wanderings of Hurin, the LR Epilogue and so forth with reduced commentary into a single ca 400 page volume. He was unenthusiastic.)