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

[Child of the 7th Age]

Everyone....many good points here. But I do feel compelled to add something.

Saucepan Man I don't disagree. However, I do think that to attempt to shape a fictional world founded on myths and legend so that it accorded more with his own specific religious beliefs was as much a mistake as to convert it from a flat world to a round one.

Yes, I do think that would have been a mistake. But I can't help feeling that Tolkien's beliefs were so strong that they are inevitably mirrored in his writing, even when there was no conscious attempt to mold a world according to his personal leanings. And yet, there is even more to it than that. Let's take the example of the dialogue between Andreth and Finrod. Most readers focus on the idea of Eru taking on incarnate form and coming into the world, a clear connection with the Christian view of history. There is also a veiled reference to the "fall of Man". Both those elements are definitely there. Yet so are others, equally important.

In fact, I'd like to go out on a limb and push this a little further. In some ways the Athrabeth is the definitive statement of Tolkien's legendarium (and strangely I don't think we've ever had a serious discussion about it on this site despite a thread started several eons ago). The author has told us repeatedly that the Lord of the Rings and, by extension, the entire legendarium is about death. This is the one and only place where we get a clear idea of what the author is actually thinking about death, at least as mirrored in the human and Elvish viewpoints. Nor is this a philosophical discussion set in a vacuum. We know that Andreth speaks with bitterness out of her love for Aegnor; she represents the human mind. Finrod responds from the Elvish perspective. In my opinion, he is slightly condescending to her. He has trouble comprehending what the aging (48) Andreth feels as she sees herself eternally separated from her lover, the beautiful young Elf who will never age (at least not for several eons).

In much of LotR, we are given very clear ideas about what's right and wrong. Aragorn is the classic illustration of this: his firm statement that, whatever the age, right and goodness do not change. In the Athrabeth, however, there is not statement but dialogue: a dialogue that ends in question and speculation rather than firm answers. The two characters are in the dark: they know so little and the answers are so uncertain.

If Lord of the Rings and the legendarium as a whole is "all about death and dying", then the Athrabeth is an integral part of that very concept. And, if it is so, how can we think that Tolkien may have "misspent" his latter years in producing something as poignant as the Athrabeth?

***********************

I owe a heavy debt to Verlyn Flieger in the specifics of this argument about Andreth, although I've always felt this way myself. I've just gotten Flieger's new book "Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology". It was in paperback at Amazon. Littlemanpoet -- Flieger has a lot to say that is relevent to the question you've raised. She looks not at the content of the mythology but the logistics of its development, start to finish. And some of her conclusions are pertinent to your question: understanding how the later writings fit in. I am just reading it now, so can't say much more than that. (I cheated and skipped ahead to the section on Andreth. )

[littlemanpoet]

Thank you for your interest, friends. My feet are still on the ground, my intestines are intact, and my limbs still attached; so you have been merciful.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

The 'truth' about understanding lies in the tale and its life beyond the author. A tale, once published, is like a child who has grown up and moved away from Mum and Dad. It is responsible for itself.

- from
Canonicity, post # 26

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

...I think is vital in discussing Middle-earth, that we respect the extraordinary experience of reading his texts and engaging with his stories rather than demanding that there is any one particular way of reading him. This is my way of understanding sub-creation and it is one which will respect any fair and honest reading of Tolkien as the experience of the reader. Like Tolkien, I believe that meaning is not imposed by fiat but created by the web of words. In our acts of discussing Tolkien lie the essence of sub-creation, not in a reductive archeology.

- from same post

Originally Posted by davem

...the 'spell' is cast for most of us without the background history. If we choose to move beyond the 'unexplained vistas' we have to risk the loss of enchantment. The more we discover, the more 'fixed' Middle Earth becomes...

from Canonicity, post # 27.

Originally Posted by davem

Moving into ME, is at once fascinating & restricting. One often has to suspend not only disbelief, but also disapproval, & accept what Tolkien has given, in order to understand his vision. When one comes out of ME one can then make a decision on what one likes & what one dislikes. But we then risk disenchantment - breaking a thing to find out what it is made of.

- from same post

Originally Posted by davem

I reject the 'Dome of Varda' & related ideas & prefer the earlier 'primitive' (in Tolkien's word) version of the story. I said it was 'silly' - what I meant was it was not 'enchanting' - not to me - & is like choosing to print the fact. It neither enchants nor inspires, so I choose the earlier account. I mean no offence to the author, but we have to choose, & judge. If one version enchants me & the other doesn't, I think I know which choice Tolkien would approve.

- from same post.

When I began this thread, I had not yet read these two posts. I was not altogether surprised at their applicability to the issues this thread raises. I almost included "broken enchantment" in the title of the thread, but realized that I have two different issues on my mind, and that thread shall have to wait a little while.

Part of my "beef" is the breaking of the enchantment. I don't want it. In point of fact, I have begun to understand (thank you Canonicity debaters) that sometimes a beloved thing must die in order for a more powerful, life-giving thing to be born. The question remains whether I am willing to allow the original enchantment to die. This breakage, this destruction, of the original enchantment, is what I feel Christopher's work does for those who delve there. I do have some of those works, but I have been very, very picky. I have Unfinished Tales and The Lays of Belerian. I have read the histories of the war of the ring, and some of Morgoth's Ring. I have so far been unwilling to let the spell be broken.

davem (and others) point out that the Sil would not have been finished during his lifetime, no matter what. This is probably true because Tolkien was a human who never stopped growing. This makes sense to me. It is, in retrospect, one of the things that has fed into my broaching of this thread. I've been working on my own mythology for twenty years, and am now almost at the age when Tolkien began his writing of LotR. I am not so vain that I compare myself to Tolkien in genius or intellect or ability, but myth-making is my chosen passion. And I can imagine that I may write and write my whole life long and some Christopher will come along and publish Histories of my stuff post-mortem. That is a distinct fear for me. I suppose it runs along the lines of wanting to be around to see one's grandchildren. Enough personal stuff. I just thought I should mention that so you might see where part of this probably derives for me.

Just a few general replies to points made which, because this post is getting long, I'll refrain from quoting specifically (you know who you are).

1. HoME is indeed an "attempt to tear apart the tower to see what it's made of" in so far as it is a breaking of the enchantment woven by TH, LotR, and UT.

2. I know, and stated, that what I wished for was impossible.

3. Whereas most (if not all) of what Tolkien wrote is worthy, all that you are saying is that what we have is very good. I acknowledge that; but I still wish for something better ... or at least I did, unless the death of the enchantment is the necessary precursor to the birth of something better...

4. As to the Sil's completion prior to the publication of LotR, it was complete enough for publication as it was. Lalwendë's quote from JRRT's Letters is applicable to this, of course, but in that sense nothing anybody writes can be called finished.

5. As to wasted and/or misspent: well, maybe those words are indicators of my own fears more than a commentary on Tolkien's life work (indeed, they were the clue).

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.

7. I like the Athrabeth a lot. One of the reasons I like it is because as much as it is a philosophical discussion, it is story, grounded in a time and place and characters, which gives it shape and life and context that a mere philosophical treatise could not do. It enriches it with meaning. So in that sense I prefer story to all the Christopherian commentary.

There. I think that about catches me up.

[davem]

Certainly Tolkien went down some strange sidetracks in his later Me writings, but I think we must separate works like LotR, TH & Smith, etc, which were in effect completed & something like The Silmarillion which wasn't & never could be. The 1977 Silmarillion which CT put together is not Tolkien's Silmarillion & I don't think CT would claim it is. Actually, HoME (&UT) is the Silmarillion. The Sil is not a continuous coherent narrative. To quote from Flieger's new book (like Child I'm working my way through it)

In this multiplicity, his mythology would imitate without copying the structure of the many-visioned real-world mythologies with which he was familiar & on which he modelled his own. He knew from the beginning that his music must include not just the stories themsleves but also the storytellers & bards & scribes & translators who were the offspring of his thought. He saw clearly that in order to follow the overall pattern of hte great British & northern European mythologies on which it was modelled, his mythos must both create & depend on a variety of voices & methods of transmission & must appear in many recensions over a great(if largely imaginary) span of time. He, therefore, took pains to orchestrate in many different forms & in many different voices the stories that comprise the central episodes that tell of his heroic & often tragic figures & that express the concerns , the beliefs, & the worldview of his mythis Elves &, later, his Men.

In other words, for all that some episodes may fail to 'enchant', even (for some readers) 'break the spell ', HoME is (including CT's commentary) The Silmarillion - or as close to it as it is possible to come - that Tolkien intended. It, as Flieger states, was never intended to be a single story thread, but rather a collection of different accounts by different hands in different forms from different perspectives. The 'Silmarillion' that was (kind of) 'complete' before LotR was written was not The Silmarillion, but rather one version of it. It wasn't so much that he kept on trying different approaches/producing different versions till he 'got it right' (though this was part of his motivation) - the different versions were differing accounts, often intended to stand alongside each other. The fact that he kept all his different versions rather than throwing them away, shows, I think, that it was not a case of later versions simply replacing, & so making redundant, earlier ones. From this perspective, the Book of Lost Tales is equally as 'valid' as the 'Silmarillions' of the 1930's & 1950's.

In terms of their power to 'enchant' on the other hand, some of the versions are more successful than others - but that could be said of the variants of primary world mythologiest that we have recieved.

In short, there isn't A Silmarillion in the way that there is A Lord of the Rings, because there was never intended to be. There was a version of it available in the 30's which could have been brought into publishable form - if any publisher had wanted it, but because of the nature of the 'project' Tolkien would have carried on working on the other versions.

So, in answer to your original question, the rejection of The Sil by A&U wasn't the 'tragedy' you imply. Publication of that version wouldn't necessarily have 'freed Tolkien up' to write other stories. He would very probably have carried on writing the other 'Silmarilions'.

None of this is to deny the great disappointment he felt at its rejection, but as he himself put it 'The Silmarils are in my heart'....

[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...