Tolkien and Negative Capability

[Findegil]

To me, treating the Amroth contradictions as equivalent to what Tolkien was doing with the Elessar-stone (again no matter his motive to do it, he was fully aware of how it would play as part of the legendarium) is helping to muddle the picture a bit.

That was not what I intended, for sure. I only wanted to add some additional piont of view. (Which is, if looked closer, exactly what is 'muddling the picture'. But aren't discussion exactly for that?)

It obviously does a lot if you're trying to construct something like the New and Definitive Silmarillion (and if I'm not mistaken, both of you are among our Translators from the Elvish, aren't you?), coming as close as possible to what a final authoritative text might have looked like if the Prof had ever got around to publishing it himself. But otherwise?

I am one of the 'Translators' as you liked to call it, even so there was near to no activity in the last 2 years. But anyway working in this project is rather a result of then a reason for thinking as I do.

To sum it up, I've discovered that, as a reader of Tolkien, I find the process of his subcreation at least as fascinating as the result, and looking at all the various transmutations of the Legendarium from BoLT to Myths Transformed, I'm rather more interested in observing his mind and imagination at work, seeing him trying out and rejecting different names and stories as he struggled to 'find out what really happened' (as he'd no doubt have put it) than I am in 'finding out what really happened' myself, ...

Well, thanks God, poeple are diffrent. For me it is just the other way around. I am more interetsed in finding out 'what really happend'. That said it is of course interisting to see the author strugle at that task, but the result or intended and unitended uncertainties are far more fazinating for me. This does not neccessarly mean that I try to find out what were Tolkiens last ideas of any given issue in Middle-Earth. There can be and certainly are often enough quite diffrent creteria that decide what is seems for me to be the most reasonable picture of Middle-Earth.

If I use Qenta Noldorinwa to answer questions about the Elder Days I will (no doubt) be 'corrected' about certain 'facts' all over the web, in any forum I choose to do this -- such facts as were clearly enough rejected in the 1950s and 1960s, although no version of Quenta Silmarillion was ever published by the creator of Middle-earth. Can I simply respond: though unintended by Tolkien, Qenta Noldorinwa can represent a variation of the Silmarillion tale, and can carry just as much weight as 1950s (and post 1950s) unpublished texts.

If you would put done reasons why you place more weight on the Qenta Noldorinwa then on the later texts, you would at least have some good discussions about these reasons, that's sure. E.g. if I consider a unique text from the Legendarium that was written contemproary with the Qenta Noldorinwa, it would be a very good idea to put the most weight on that text an consider earlier and later texts only in sofare as they show the development.
But of course you are right, there would be in each Forum imagianable one guy how would take out his blunderbuse and fire the rubish on you that he has grabed here and there. And he will be bold enough to call the result that he hope might kill your argument 'cannon'. But we both know that the harm he would do, would not be more then the one Giles did to the Giant. And as Giles did find out the cane of worms that is opened by fireing that blunderbuse might be wroth.
Or would you shriek back from a 'cannon'-discussion?

Respectfuly
Findegil

[Galin]

Well, in my theoretical there isn't any real reason besides the approach, that is: characterizing Qenta Noldorinwa as not an old, abandoned version of later Quenta Silmarillion texts (where they overlap at least), but as an internal variation of 'another' Quenta Silmarillion -- in other words, of the same nature as the Drowning of Anadune compared to AK.

And from that characterization alone, I then argue a different family tree existed, for example, because 'now' I have two internal competing texts. That's the analogy to the Amroth matter that made me jump in here in the first place: unintended uncertainty? yes unintended, and thus external.



But, for example, I can (and have) used DA in round versus flat world discussions, because DA is not an older abandoned version of AK, but a variation of the same tale within the legendarium.


If I characterize QN as internal, I think that is going to be the first target of the blunderbuss... and how would you suggest one ignore that theoretical sting?