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on: February 26, 2018 04:39
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Gandolorin said: The Sil as mannish tradition to rescue his Elves from mannish pre-Copernican ignorance. (...) Unfortunately, to my imagination, he hardly spent any thought on how such a transmission could have taken place to end up with the declared principal authors of The Red Book of Westmarch, Bilbo, Frodo and Sam, or the “Translations from the Elvish” by Bilbo.
I'm not sure how detailed the general scenario needs to be; although we do get (what I consider) some nice detail with respect to individual accounts that fall into the general scenario (see below).
Elthir “… Mannish influence and confusion starts in Beleriand, in the First Age, …”
Gandolorin Taking “Morgoth’s Ring”, HoME vol. 10, “Arthrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth”, the confusion started among men quite a bit earlier.
I was referring there to the confusion in the First Age due to association with the Dunedain and the Eldar in Beleriand, essentially referring back to what Tolkien himself said in MT text I, quoted earlier. Mannish "influence" on Eldarin matter, starting well before Sauron entered Numenor (considering my fuller sentence). If that wasn't clear, that's what I meant anyway...
... but yes, even our world today has variant legends and mythologies of course, hailing from various Men.
Anyway, men first appeared in Beleriand about 85 years before the Battle of Sudden Flame in FA 455 (edt for brevity) From the descriptions, they were way below the level of “civilization” of the Éothéod, never mind the later Eorlingas / Rohirrim. What kind of “mannish tradition” could these depleted remnants have taken to Númenór?
Men blending Elven tales with their own cosmic ideas can include oral traditions, but anyway we know, as more fully posted above, that: "... The Children of Hurin was probably composed already in Beleriand in the First Age." JRRT, note 17 Shibboleth of Feanor
Close to nothing. The three Great Tales involving human Heroes, Beren, Turin and Tuor, were all remembered and written by Elves.
Well, who wrote these texts is the matter under discussion
Only Turin’s last exploits in Brethil had human witnesses, but that tradition, I would guess, was rather transmitted by Hurin’s coming to Doriath after having been released by Morgoth; I doubt that there were many survivors of Brethil who made it to Númenór. These are the three greatest (one tragic) human heroes, but what made them heroic was remembered by the Elves, who were the ones to witness their (tragic) heroism who then returned to Tol Eressëa, not the humans who were granted Númenór.
Here's a little detail fer ya:
JRRT wrote: "For such was Dirhaval. He came of the House of Hador, it is said, and the glory and the sorrow of that House was nearest to his heart. Dwelling at the Havens of Sirion, he gathered there all the tidings and lore that he could, for in the last days of Beleriand there came thither remnants out of all the countries, both Men and Elves: from Hithlum and Dor-Lomin, from Nargothrond and Doriath, from Gondolin and the realms of the Sons of Feanor in the east."
Although this comes from the later 1950s and the seeming last vestiges of Elfwine, I'll point again to Tolkien's later note about this tale being composed in Beleriand. Dirhaval, using the Grey-elven tongue, crafting his tale from a variety of sources...
... keeping in mind, in any case: how much of the Turin saga deals with a sunless Arda? Or the original shape of the world?
So what can survive of “mannish” tradition from Númenór? Practically nothing, again assuming the Faithful did not record the abominable doings of the King’s party just for the sake of recording as a warning to later generations.
Why can't a compilation made in Numenor called The Silmarillion survive? Here's an interesting description, I think.
Tolkien wrote: "The following account is an abbreviation of a curious document, preserved in the archives of Gondor by strange chance (or by many such chances) from the Elder Days, but in a copy apparently made in Númenor not long before its downfall: probably by or at the orders of Elendil himself, when selecting such records as he could hope to store for the journey to Middle-earth. This one no doubt owed its selection and its copying, first to Elendil's own love of the Eldarin tongues and of the works of the loremasters who wrote about their history; but also to the unusual contents of this disquisition in Quenya: Eldarinwe Leperi are Notessi: The Elvish Fingers and Numerals. It is attributed, by the copyist, to Pengoloð (or Quendingoldo) of Gondolin, and he describes the Elvish play-names of the fingers as used by and taught to children."
Eldarin Hands, Fingers and Numerals, and Related Writings
(part two), Vinyar Tengwar 48
In short, if Tolkien desires this account to be included in the legendarium, at least here he (and not that surprisingly in my opinion) invents an explanation for it surviving.
And for all “mannish” muddle-mindedness, for whatever reason, the Faithful must have access to unpolluted Elvish sources.
You say that, but what makes it necessarily so that the Faithful must have an Elvish Silmarillion? Or what makes the Silmarillion, as a Numenorean compilation, necessarily a work of the King's party? Again, Tolkien's preamble to The Annals of Aman includes: "... those parts which we learned and remembered were thus set down in Numenor before the Shadow fell on it."
Say the same or similar about the Grey Annals, and you encompass the First Age. In the external scenario, Christopher Tolkien argues that the Annals themselves were becoming more like Quenta Silmarillion -- and so he used them in his construction of the 1977 Silmarillion (the tradition of the Annals possibly being replaced by a Tale of Years).
And as I mentioned, living “Encyclopedia Britannicas”, like Elrond. And never mind a living “Library of Congress” like Cirdan. Beings who could correct our wild guesses about ancient times by sheer (and very much superhuman) personal memory.
Yes you mentioned this, as I have mentioned that I think it hardly matters, while giving some modern day analogies. Here's another: if I ever learn Old English, and then ever get hired to translate The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, I wouldn't care a whit if it's arguably "biased" in certain entries, or incorrect about something, compared to some other account.
And as a Christian who enjoys Northern myths, I'd enjoy translating a reference to the god Woden too (going by memory, I think the name occurs in certain genealogies in the ASC, but can't recall if he is specifically called a god, or suggested to be one, or whatever).
And I quoted Zigur about this as well, as I think he had said much the same thing already.
And last (the Advocatus Diaboli finally breaks through!): JRRT wanted to preserve his Elves from being “pre-Copernican” ignorant.
Not all Elves, but for example, those who had had contact with the Valar, yes. Although even the start of the more Elvish Silmarillion in Myths Transformed was not wholly "scientific", and contains, for instance, Varda's Dome and her wonderful "star imagines".
Erm … why stop there (and why the intrusion of the primary world into the secondary at all?). Shouldn’t the Elves (and never mind Maiar and Valar) know their Newton? Gauss? Faraday? Darwin? Planck? Einstein? Heisenberg? Oppenheimer??? Hawking? Or before I forget, that horrible man Wegener with his continental drift, corrected and expanded to plate tectonics?
Mh, OK, I’ll go to work on LoTR with such a mindset. Out go: Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs, Wargs, Ents, Dragons, Palantiri, all “magic” rings, Barrow-wights, Nazgûl,, the Balrog, Sauron, all Istari, Tom Bombadil & Goldberry, Gollum, Beorn, huge talking Eagles, Mithril, the Mearas … What is then left of LoTR? Tattered shreds.
I personally don't believe that the Mirdain gave Durin III one of the Seven, despite that the Dwarves of Durin's folk held this to be so (Appendix A, Durin's Folk).
I still believe in Elven-smiths (and Elves of course) and Dwarves though; and if a given reader does believe this Dwarvish version, then maybe Of The Rings Of Power And The Third Age simply skips this detail due to arguable brevity -- a brevity that even seems to relate that Frodo himself destroyed the One! Brilliant!
JRRT had a few major concerns that he felt some people would not accept, which, if so, would arguably pull them out of the "spell" he could put them under. What reason do folks have to think that Elves and Ents didn't really exist in Middle-earth? Because there are seemingly brief, in world, conflicting statements concerning the original shape of the world?
JRRT, as my vague memory tells me, once sent flat-earth and round-earth variants of what might become the Sil to someone whose judgement he respected. She (?) firmly voted for the flat-earth variant. I herewith firmly register my vote of approval!
Tolkien sent flat and round variants of Ainulindale to someone, yes. And years later, on an envelope containing the text of The Drowning of Anadune, he noted:
JRRT wrote: Contains very old version (in Adunaic) which is good -- in so far as it is just as much different (in inclusion and omission and emphasis) as would be probable in the supposed case:
(a) Mannish tradition
(b) Elvish tradition
(c) Mixed Dunedanic tradition
Christopher Tolkien reflects upon the versions of DA:
"Where could such ignorance of the Elves be found but in the minds of Men at a later time? This, I believe, is what my father was concerned to portray: a tradition of Men, through long ages become dim and confused. At this time, perhaps, in the context of The Notion Club Papers and of the vast enlargement of his great story that was coming into being in The Lord of the Rings, he began to be concerned with questions of traditions and the vagaries of tradition, the losses, confusions, simplifications and amplifications in the evolution of legend, as they might apply to his own -- within the always enlarging compass of Middl-earth"
And then he refers to the later "envelope note" by his father (that I just quoted above).
By the way, another late move by JRRT with respect to an author-published change: for The Hobbit Third Edition (1960s), Tolkien revised a rather explicit mention of Elves living in Middle-earth before the Sun existed.
I can gather up the citations for comparison, if you like
[Edited on 02/27/2018 by Elthir]
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Evil~ShieldmaidenGames Moderator, and Chief Corrupted Weaver of VairëPosts: 36021 Send Message |
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