Why is it so difficult?

[Bêthberry]

Good ideas and suggestions from everyone here!

One point which I don't think has been mentioned is the postumous nature of the book. The Silmarillion never existed as a single, comprehensive text in The Professor's lifetime. What we have is a selected edition from his literary executor, his son, Christopher, with help from Guy Kay.

Now before anyone jumps up to say this is another razz at the son, let me quote a bit from the Foreward.

Originally Posted by The Foreword, Christopher Tolkien

It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book, the diversity of the materials--to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century--would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative. . . . A complete consistency . . . is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost.

The text that we have as The Silm is a highly edited text, and it is put together by a scholar whose intent was to provide some kind of comprehensive format of a very long process. While CT followed his father's intent, it is very possible that that scholarly overview was very different from how a creative writer would have combined the disparate and changing stories. JRRT wrote according to his notions and ideas of what makes a good story. CT edited with notions of how to make a consistent redaction. Those two aims produce very different styles.

This is in addition to the conception of the materials which JRRT had: that The Silm is

Originally Posted by Foreward, CT

a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity ... that had survived in agelong traditon, and this conception has indeed its parallel in the actual history of the book.

So in conception The Silm differs from LotR, as well as in the format in which we have it. CT was not attempting, as his father was, to write a good story, but to provide a text consistent with scholarly procedures and aims, as was his responsiblity as Literary Executor.

For years I've used The Silm as a sort of encyclopedia, delving in at various stories and stages where I needed or wanted some information about those old sources. I've come to appreciate Tolkien's Legendarium much more from reading, for instance, BoLT, so I guess I read The Silm as an historical document itself rather than as a ripping good yarn. I like to think I am reading it consistently with JRRT's idea of ancient sources.

[Galadriel55]

I haven't yet read BOLT - or any HOME books, for that matter - and I enjoy reading The Sil very much. I think that the ajor reason for it being a bit difficult at first is that it's trying to fit a lot of material into a small space (like it says in the quote that Bethberry provided). After rereading it, though, it became very clear for me, and VERY enjoyable.

[blantyr]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

The text that we have as The Silm is a highly edited text, and it is put together by a scholar whose intent was to provide some kind of comprehensive format of a very long process. While CT followed his father's intent, it is very possible that that scholarly overview was very different from how a creative writer would have combined the disparate and changing stories. JRRT wrote according to his notions and ideas of what makes a good story. CT edited with notions of how to make a consistent redaction. Those two aims produce very different styles.

This almost makes me wonder if a 'good parts' version of the Silmarillion ought to be written. Spider Robinson wrote a posthumous Heinlein novel, Variable Star, based on Heinlein's outline and notes from 1955. We have a scholarly presentation version of Silmarillion. Is there a modern writer anyone would trust to turn it into fiction?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by blantyr

This almost makes me wonder if a 'good parts' version of the Silmarillion ought to be written.

A Silmarillion for Simpletons? No thanks.

[Anguirel]

I note with concern, astonishment and admiration, Durelin, that you wrote an excellent Thuringwethil in Treachery of Men without having read her story!

[Durelin]

Aw, thanks....actually I *did* read (some of?) her parts. Including her run-in with Luthien at one point a looong time ago...(er, right?)

And I did research for your RP, Ang!

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by blantyr

This almost makes me wonder if a 'good parts' version of the Silmarillion ought to be written. Spider Robinson wrote a posthumous Heinlein novel, Variable Star, based on Heinlein's outline and notes from 1955. We have a scholarly presentation version of Silmarillion. Is there a modern writer anyone would trust to turn it into fiction?

Eh, I think what we've got works well enough as fiction– is fiction, actually. I could wish Tolkien had completed some of the longer and fuller versions of the stories, though, but that's not to say a modernised pastiche would answer. As for the specific example you mention, it seems to me quite a different case, as it looks like Robinson had very little material to work from in the first place.

[Galin]

This almost makes me wonder if a 'good parts' version of the Silmarillion ought to be written. Spider Robinson wrote a posthumous Heinlein novel, Variable Star, based on Heinlein's outline and notes from 1955. We have a scholarly presentation version of Silmarillion. Is there a modern writer anyone would trust to turn it into fiction?

Not that you say otherwise, but there isn't much in the 1977 Silmarillion that cannot be traced to Tolkien's own writings.

Very briefly described: after writing a very brief 'sketch' of what would turn out to be the First Age, Tolkien wrote a complete and finished version of 'a Silmarillion' in 1930 (Qenta Noldorinwa or QN), then wrote an expanded version in the mid to later 1930s, but left a gap as he jumped to the end (Quenta Silmarillion or QS). There were also the Annals: briefer accounts of the same history covered by QN and QS.

Tolkien sought to publish the Silmarillion at this time, but (long story made short) it was rejected. He then works for a long time on The Lord of the Rings, and in the early 1950s, hoping that the Silmarillion will be published along with The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien expands and updates parts of QS and the Annals (taking up again the long prose versions of the Three Great Tales)

That's really a very simplified description, but anyway, the point is that perhaps there is more extant text than some who have not read The History of Middle-Earth might think. Anyway, when Christopher Tolkien took up the task of making the material public, he began with a different kind of presentation in mind. Guy Kay explained...

'As much as anything else the invitation [to help Christopher] grew out of his perception that the editing would be essentially a 'scholarly' exercise and the model in his mind, I suspect, was that of the academic and his graduate student assistant. The actual process turned out to be radically otherwise…'

'The irony is that the Silmarillion editing ended up being at least as much if not significantly more a creative exercise than a scholarly one. The purely scholarly books are the ones that he's been producing subsequently. The difference between those two is a measure of the difference in the nature of what the editing was all about.'

And Charles Noad explains (with respect to Christopher Tolkien's initial idea to present a scholarly edition of the Silmarillion papers):

This would have resulted in a massive volume, some 1300 printed pages long, say (about the size of the Scull and Hammond Reader's Guide to Tolkien), and two chapters in this style had already been produced when Kay arrived. However, Kay felt strongly that what was needed was a straightforward narrative, shorn of academic apparatus, which advice was eventually adopted by Christopher Tolkien. This approach was tried with 'The Coming of the Elves' where it was felt to work so well that Kay's approach was thereafter adopted. ('A Tower in Beleriand', Charles E. Noad, Amon Hen 91, May 1988, pp.16-18.) It may indeed have worked well, but such a procedure served to give a finished appearance to what was very often disparate and unfinished material.

(...) The process of producing a finished narrative requires a slightly different set of skills than those required for producing an edited text of initially 'inchoate' papers. The latter needs a great deal of analytical intelligence together with specific skills in understanding the relationships between texts, the ability to decipher handwriting sometimes verging on illegibility, a sensitivity of judgement, and the like, qualities which, I feel, any reasonable judge would concur that Christopher Tolkien abundantly displays in The History of Middle-earth. But producing a finished narrative from the results of having edited the texts into legibility and comprehensibility is a slightly different matter. It requires, or at least may require depending on the state of the material being edited, a degree of creativity.

Here I think is where Guy Gavriel Kay enters the picture. Starting with The Fionavar Tapestry (1985-6), Kay has shown himself to be one of the leading authors of literate high fantasy. He is a full-fledged professional writer of fiction in a way that Christopher Tolkien isn't and even his father wasn't. (...) Given that it was Kay's idea to produce a finished narrative rather than a scholarly version (indeed, he has since gone on record as being against the publication of Tolkien's unfinished texts in the History), I would submit that the published Silmarillion owes a good deal in the matter of editorial decision-making to his input. Let me be clear here. I am not saying that we can lay all the presumed 'failings' of the published Silmarillion at Kay's feet, thereby removing all responsibility for its apparent 'defects' from Christopher Tolkien. But I am saying that the presence at a critical juncture in preparing the publication of the 'Silmarillion' material of this creatively gifted young man had a significant effect on the shaping and editing of that material. One would like to know more.

One would like to know more about this, but I think Christopher Tolkien also now approached a one volume version for readers with his own measure of creativity as well, just as he did with The Children of Hurin.

With respect to the ruin of Doriath we find a level of creativity that even Christopher Tolkien came to regret, as the story here contains elements that actually cannot be traced to any of JRRT's writing. Due to the fact that this part of the tale had been skipped in the Quenta Silmarillion of the later 1930s (the 'gap' I referred to), and the fact that The Wanderings of Hurin was abandoned too soon, the 'Silmarillion account' of the Ruin of Doriath still dated from 1930 (QN)!

Even Christopher Tolkien later noted that he probably could have stuck better to his father's intent, but as an example of CJRT's opinion of the story as it stood in Quenta Noldorinwa, he noted that it ruins the gesture if Hurin asks for Thingol's aid to carry the treasure to Menegroth -- the very treasure Hurin will then use to cast at Thingol's feet to try to humiliate the Elf. That's a creative decision in my opinion, even though it went against the actual story as it stood in 1930 (thus in the 1977 Silmarillion, Hurin alone brings the Nauglamir to Thingol, without need of aid, not the treasure from which the Nauglamir is later made).


In any case, here is a notable reference to something that hails from the relevant part of the story.

There is one point where Kane attempts a justification for a book such as this one. He notes (Kane, p. 216) that in The Road to Middle-earth Tom Shippey cites 'Thingol's death in the dark while he looks at the captured Light' (of the Silmaril) as an example of Tolkien's genius for creating compelling images. However, 'Thingol's death in the dark recesses of Menegroth was completely an invention of the editors', hence 'The fact that as renown[ed] a Tolkien scholar as Shippey would have this kind of mistaken impression is a strong indication of the need for a work like the present one.'

Well now, catching out Shippey must count as pretty neat, but one might admire the editors for so well creating, out of the requirements of the reconstructed narrative, so Tolkienian an image. It must prove something.'

Charles Noad review of Doug Kane's Arda Reconstructed

Sorry for the length, but I think Mr. Noad raises some interesting points here.