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

[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.)

[mhagain]

JRRT's will essentially gave CJRT the right to do whatever he wanted with the unpublished material; he could:

publish edit alter rewrite or complete any work of mine which may be unpublished at my death or to destroy the whole or any part or parts of any such unpublished works as he in his absolute discretion may think fit and subject thereto

(Source: http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2009/12/tolkiens-will.html)

Based on that I don't think we've much choice but to accept the published Silmarillion as being anything other than in accordance with JRRT's wishes, which distils the debate down to whether or not it's what JRRT would have done had he lived.

I personally don't think that JRRT would have ever completed the Silmarillion. He'd become too distracted by cosmological and philosophical matters, and his apparent preferred direction would - IMO have destroyed the myth of the Trees. I think CJRT made the right decisions here.

I'm not sure if I'm in a minority or if this is a controversial statement, but I also hugely approve of what CJRT did with the Ruin of Doriath. The image of Thingol's death is one of the most abiding (and saddest) memories from my first reading, and I even think JRRT would have given it the nod as "what really happened" (and no doubt niggled endlessly over some of the finer points).

In the end I view the published Silmarillion as being in the legendary world what it also is in the real world - a compilation of divergent material from different sources, some historical, some mythical, but not all necessarily accurate. View it as a way of saying "according to one version of the mythology this is what happened, but there are other versions and they may or may not say different". In the end it is mostly dealing with a mythical age, preserved in various traditions but mostly recorded later and filtered through poor understanding and whatever scraps survived the various Disasters. It's as if there were 12 Homers each of who wrote their own Iliad, then a later author assembles them into an account which is neither wholly accurate to the 12 sources nor reflective of an actual historical Trojan War.

I think that view is actually quite representative of JRRT's own, and may be one reason why CJRT is happy to let the published work stand, even if dissatisfied with much of what he did in constructing it.