Death of Christopher Tolkien

[Mithadan]

Christopher Tolkien can rest in ease and contentment knowing that he presented to the world his father's lifelong imaginings and work regarding Middle Earth. We owe him a great debt.

[Formendacil]

I've spent since last night trying to find words for this... the best I have come up with is something I wrote to a friend on Facebook last night:

"I have... a lot of thoughts about his passing. It feels a bit melodramatic to say, but it's probably true: his death will be roughly as important in my life as the deaths of Benedict XVI or Queen Elizabeth will be, in the sense that he's one of the pillars holding up the backdrop to the world as I've known it so far.

...the phrase that I literally just typed elsewhere is "cultural grandfather." I have a claim on Christopher Tolkien only in the sense that a few million Tolkien fans do--of gratitude for his scholarship and prudent guidance of his father's literary estate--but it's still a loss that feels personal."

Part of the grandfather analogy, no doubt, is that I've always remembered CT's age as the same as my own grandfather's--a fact that has anchored my sense of time and generation whenever I've thought of Tolkien's biography. Fittingly enough, all my grandparents have passed, and this sense of bereavement is no doubt partly that of a passing age.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I posted this on another forum, but thought I would share it here. This is what I will remember: his wit, his intellect, and above all his kindness. (As well as extraordinary skill at saying "no" politely and without giving the least offense.)

I suppose now I can lift my embargo at least to the extent of his very first letter to me, since it says nothing private, copyrighted or indeed that isn't common knowledge.

c/o George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
40 Museum Street
London WC1A 1LU
England.

15 August 1975

Dear Master Hicklin,

Thankyou for your letter. I must reply to your
questions very briefly, but I hope you will find the answers
adequate. I cannot tell you precisely when The Silmarillion
will be published, but I think certainly not before 1977, and
I very much hope by 1978. You ask when it was begun, and
that is a very difficult question; in a sense, it occupied
my father all his life, and much of the myth and legend that
it contains were in being before even the Hobbit was written.
A full life of my father is being written which will tell you
a good deal about it, and that will be published, I hope,
before long.
You also ask about the geography of the Elder Days.
The Silmarillion has very little to say about the lands of
Middle-earth west [sic] of Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains. Its
narrative is concerned with the Elves in Aman (the land of
the Valar in the West, over the Great Sea) and in Beleriand.
the region of Middle-earth between the shores of the Sea and
the Blue Mountains. Almost all this region was drowned,
and all that was left in later times was the country of Lindon,
which is marked on the Lord of the Rings map west of the Blue
Mountains. Thus Gondolin, Nargothrond and Thangorodrim
were in regions that had long since passed under the sea at
the time of the War of the Rings.
The Silmarillion will contain a map of the whole of
Beleriand, extending from the shores of the Sea in the west,
to Thangorodrim in the North, and to the Ered Luin in the east.
The book will also contain some texts other than the Silmarillion
proper, such as The Akallabêth, the Drowning of Númenor.

Yours sincerely,

[calligraphic signature done with a square nib]

There is nothing remarkable about this at all, except for one thing: he wrote it. Notwithstanding his immense literary labours, and the fact that (as he told me long after) he was in fact packing house for the move to France at the time, he nonetheless took the time to sit down and type up specific answers to the importunate questions of an American 13-year-old.

Do you have any idea how few other authors would bother?

[Kuruharan]

Not much to add other than condolences for the family and gratitude for the work.

[Aiwendil]

Christopher Tolkien's death has hit me harder than a celebrity death has for a long time. If I could have chosen any celebrity to meet, it likely would have been him.

Everyone here knows how important his work was to all of us. Without his dedication over several decades, many of the greatest pieces of writing by our favorite author never would have seen the light of day.

[Mister Underhill]

Well, well... it's been a few moons since I hit the ol' POST REPLY button. I am sad to hear of Christopher Tolkien's passing. I've nodded along while reading all of the replies. No writer -- especially not one as organizationally challenged as JRRT -- would dare to hope for such an exacting and faithful steward for his or her life's work. Christopher's dogged organizing, research, sleuthing, and scholarship has immeasurably enriched the Tolkien canon.

It feels like another way to mark the end of an era, in a time when it increasingly feels like we're brushing up against "the end of all things". Or maybe that's just my advancing middle age showing, nearly twenty years after I first logged into this wonderful website. This place has been on my mind lately. Much has changed in the world and in my life, but one thing I miss is thinking -- and talking about -- Middle-earth on a daily basis. Tonight I raise a glass in Christopher Tolkien's honor, and in appreciation of all you Tolkien-heads too.

[Kuruharan]

This recent event has led me to pick up Tolkien's works again, which I haven't done in awhile (I know, for shame! )

I came across this today in my read through of The Silmarillion and it seems appropriate.

But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.
-Of Beren and Lúthien