More! More! More!

[Boromir88]

I can never figure out how to open a thread, so I think I'm just going to delve right into this. Basically I want to ask is it better for you to only read about 'glimpses' of stories (The Lord of the Rings) or are you driven by a curiosity for 'more?'

In the late 1930's Tolkien had wanted to publish The Silmarillion along with the Lord of the Rings. But, as his publisher Rayner Unwin later explained The Silmarillion was not in a 'presentable publishing format.' And only the Lord of the Ring's was published. And after the Lord of the Rings gets out to the public, there is an outcry for more. They want to hear more...because the Lord of the Rings is filled with 'glimpses,' glimpses of past stories, we get brief looks of the past. So, with the outcry Tolkien starts to revise, revise, and more revising, on the Silmarillion, trying to get it all inmeshed and tied into the Lord of the Rings. A big intricate web, making sure everything fits into the story and there's no big glaring contradictions. However, around in the 1960's he just abandons it. He just stops and leaves The Silmarillion to rest. I've always found this curious, as he had pushed to get it published with the Lord of the Ring's, than spent years and years trying to get it to all fit together, but then he just stops and abandons it.

Tolkien began to doubt this undertaking of revising the Silmarillion, and it seemed he started to grow weary of 'getting it ready.' In a letter dated September 20, 1963:

I am doubtful myself about the undertaking [to write The Silmarillion]...'

And earlier in this same letter:

I am afraid all the same that the presentation will need a lot of work, and I work so slowly. The legends have to be worked over (thy were written at different times, some many years ago) and made consistentl and they have to be integrated with the L.R.; and they have to be given some progressive shape. No simple device, like a journey and a quest, is available.

Lay all of that on top of the unceasing amount of Letters he got of all kinds of people wanting 'more, more, more'...in a letter to H. Cotton Minchin:

... while many like you demand maps, others wish for geological indications rather than places; many want Elvish grammars, phonologies, and specimens; some want metrics and prosodies.... Musicians want tunes, and musical notation; archaeologists want ceramics and metallurgy; botanists want a more accurate description of the mallorn, of elanor, niphredil, alfirin, mallos, and symbelmynë, historians want more details about the social and political structure of Gondor; general enquirers want information about the Wainriders, the Harad, Dwarvish origins, the Dead Men, the Beornings, and the missing two wizards (out of five).

Compounding everyone's desires for 'more, more, more' it appears Tolkien came to the realization that this would actually 'destroy the magic' of the stories. And is remarked by Tom Shippey:

'One quality which [The Lord of the Rings] has in abundance is the Beowulfian 'impression of depth', created just as in the old epic by songs and digressions like Aragorn's lay of Tinuviel, Sam Gamgee's allusions to the Silmaril and the Iron Crown, Elrond's account of Celebrimbor, and dozens more. This, however, is a quality of The Lord of the Rings, not of the inset stories. To tell these in their own right and expect them to retain the charm they got from their larger setting would be a terrible error, an error to which Tolkien would be more sensitive than any man alive.'

And following along Shippey's thoughts, going back to the September 20th Letter:

'Part of the attraction to The L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city glaming in the sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new attainable vistas are revealed.'

Lord of the Ring's is filled with glimpses of the past, and that drove a desire for readers of 'more, more, more.' But, I think Tolkien felt like the 'unknown' is the greatest magic. We have these brief looks into the past, through songs, poems, accounts, and that right there is the attraction. And to actually go there, and explore those stories further, would 'destroy the magic.' This is exactly what he was doing with the Silmarillion, it was to explain more, and give more, to his readers of LOTR, wanting to hear more about the stories of Beren and Luthien...etc.

So, are you somebody who likes the 'glimpses' we get in LOTR? Is that what makes the story 'magical.' Or are you driven to wanting 'more, more, more' , because of these 'glimpses?' And after reading the Silmarillion, 'going to the untold places, people...etc' did it destroy that magic (for you) that is established in The Lord of the Rings?

[Kuruharan]

We sort of touched on this in the "Wrong Kind of Details" thread of many moons ago.

The short answer to the question is "yes, I think the glimpses are one of the best qualities of the works." It is important they be glimpses and not expositions for a few reasons. First, the glimpses help maintain that air of mystery and excitement. Second, and more important from a storytelling perspective, you don't want full-on expositions of unnecessary background information distracting you from the main story.

On the other hand, if I were satisfied with just these glimpses I probably would not be here right now.

did it destroy that magic (for you) that is established in The Lord of the Rings?

That has never been my experience. Obviously my interest in Tolkien's work waxes and wanes over the years but I've never found them to be less magical the more I've come to understand them.

And there will always be material about which we cannot arrive at a definitive answer.

[Lalaith]

The glimpses were definitely not enough for me, and I first read LotR as a seven-year-old.
I was desperate to know more about Valinor and Elbereth, about Feanor's hands at work, about Numenor before its fall, about the Elf-friends of old, the First Age and everything that happened there. I got some from getting a copy of Return of the King from the library with all appendixes complete (my paperback only had the Arwen and Aragorn appendix) but I wasn't truly satisfied until I got hold of the Silmarillion. I was a bit put off when it plunged first into the Ainulindale, (well, I was very young!) but I was delighted by all the stories of the Quenta Sil.
The Unfinished Tales I read much later, and while I really enjoyed them, I didn't have the same sense of urgency, I now knew the answers to most of what I really *needed* to know.

I never got that feeling of wanting more from the Hobbit, however. (Which was the first Tolkien I read) Yes, there was that paragraph about Deep-Elves and Sea-Elves etc, also the swords from Gondolin, but these references didn't have the same glamour, somehow.

But it is interesting, why Tolkien abandoned the attempt to edit the Sil for publication? Was it a classic case of scholarly procrastination - a touch of the Casaubons - or did Allen & Unwin not encourage him as much as they could have done, that the work would have a ready market, which might have put him off?

[Boromir88]

Great posts, Lal and Kuru.

On the other hand, if I were satisfied with just these glimpses I probably would not be here right now.

Neither would I.

And it's indeed these glimpses that make LOTR so attracting. We have the main story of this quest motif, filled with stories, songs, and poems of the past. And I think what makes it magical, at least for me, is that it left me with a sense of wanting more. It feuled me into reading more. It was sort of like someone was teasing me feeling...you know, like here's a little bit, but you never got enough.

I think with the Silmarillion it was harder to do that...because with the Silmarillion, he had to write something from the beginning, there were no 'back stories.' And he wasn't able to create this simplistic 'quest/journey' as he puts it, because it all had to tie in and progress to LOTR.

That's also kind of why we had Christopher too, or why Christopher did what he did. In the Foreward to Book of Lost Tales, he talks about all his long hours of putting The Silmarillion together, and all his fathers other writings, was for those who were like him and felt the desire to want more and know more.

I never got that feeling of wanting more from the Hobbit, however.

That's interesting...I wouldn't know though, I think that's because I read LOTR first, then I went to The Hobbit.

But it is interesting, why Tolkien abandoned the attempt to edit the Sil for publication? Was it a classic case of scholarly procrastination - a touch of the Casaubons - or did Allen & Unwin not encourage him as much as they could have done, that the work would have a ready market, which might have put him off?

It was probably a bunch of stuff. He knew that revising the Silmarillion to fit with LOTR was going to be a daunting task, especially since many of his stories were written at different times. Also, he seemed to have been a sickly guy and would remark a lot about falling 'under the weather' and his health began to decline in his later ages...and this really starts effecting him a lot around the time he just kind of let the Silmarillion go:

I never recovered form the confusion of my affairs when I had a terrible bout of fibrositis and neuritis of the arm last October.~Letter 22, (1952)

…my wife’s in creasing ill-health ..has involved me in various distresses since November…In addition the ill will of Mordor decreed that I should lose most of the vital Christmas vacation being ill.~Letter 133 (1953)

In 1959 he retires, and is followed by more health problems:

I am glad to say that we are both rather better this year….I had some treatment last September, and have been free and easy on the legs since, though my usual lumbago afflicted me in June.~Letter 236 (1961)

Then once he reaches the age of 70, in Letters 245, 247, 248, and 250, he talks about his rheumatism in his right arm and hand, and he becomes as 'unbendable as an Ent.'

I don't think he ever lost love for his stories, or a desire to write more. Because in Letter 250, he talks about his health, but rather jokingly compares his 'old/unbendable bones' to the Ents. But, I think getting the Silmarillion ready and out there to get published, compounded with his ailing health, and answering his Letters, he just got more or less tired and bogged down.

(Cross-posted with Squatter)

[alatar]

This post may or may not make a point, obscure or otherwise; be warned.

• Anyone with access to time-travel technology please take a laptop back to the good Professor, one preferably with speak/write and word processing software installed. Ever think what we would have today if we weren't limited by the physical writing process?

• Maybe, after devoting much of his life to Middle Earth, Tolkien wanted to get away from fulfilling the insatiable fan requests and simply just write greeting card text.

• Do we truly want more, or is it that we just want that feeling back that we had when we first read LotR, when we were innocent and Middle Earth was brand new? Is this feeling nothing more than the adrenaline rush that we got when we first walked across Middle Earth with Frodo? Does that not mean that the amount of text that is or could have been provided meaningless as it would never bring back that chemical rush of the 'first time?' Surely if the appendices or the Silmarillion were rubbish, we would lose all hope and possibly move on, but they weren't and so we got strung along a bit longer than usual, letting the addiction/desire gain a better foothold on our hearts. I think that, even if we knew what Beren had for breakfast on the morning that he lost his hand, it still wouldn't be enough.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by alatar

Do we truly want more, or is it that we just want that feeling back that we had when we first read LotR, when we were innocent and Middle Earth was brand new? Is this feeling nothing more than the adrenaline rush that we got when we first walked across Middle Earth with Frodo?

Good point, alatar, on whether we want to get back to the garden. But in a post-lapsarian world, what are we to do?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and hope it is an entish limb that will catch me should I fall.

To be entirely honest, it wasn't any of Tolkien's glimpses that got me reading more, nor was it Middle-earth itself (herself?). Nor was it the hobbits, who are so endearing, nor Gandalf, who as the Grey is one of the bestest wizards ever. There are two things that have compelled me to delve deeper into Tolkien lore, ever watchful for balrogs along the way.

First, it was Tolkien's essay On Fairie Stories that intrigued me so much I wanted to know more of his brand of fairie. That got me reading the Minor Works and rereading TH. And, then, it was this forum which prompted me to read on, read on. Had I not seen the enthusiasm for the Legendarium and the intense curiosity for The Silm which many of you Downers passionately declare, I might never have bothered to finish The Silm, which I treat as an encyclopedia rather than a story. Even now it remains for me a bit of a curiosity piece rather than a good old fashioned page-turner, which LotR and TH are, for me.

So credit must rightfully belong to you Downers and not only The Professor. It is you also who fuel the magic.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I feel much the same, Kuruharan. I have never found LR to lose any of its appeal when I learn more about its world. On the contrary, I find the references more appealing as compressed meaning, evoking by allusion entire legends and poems. Authors writing in the realistic mode constantly make allusions to real-world myths and history, which can be followed up and used to gain a better understanding of their work, and a knowledge of Tolkien's wider legendarium does no more or less for a reader of The Lord of the Rings. In fact, the tantalising[1] glimpses that Tolkien gives us of wider vistas stimulate our natural inquisitiveness, so that it seems inevitable that we should always want to know more. Significantly, Tolkien himself approached his fiction in the same way. It's possible for a skilled author to refer to a wider body of knowledge which need not necessarily exist, and Tolkien could easily have done just that. The fact that he fleshed out the story of Queen Beruthiel, and wrote about the Five Wizards implies to me that he asked himself N&N questions about who they were, and answered them for his personal amusement. He may have seen the power of unexplored landscapes, but nevertheless he constantly set out to explore them. Fortunately, as I'm sure he realised, each new exploration simply opens up many more distant horizons, and eventually even his own prolific imaginings come to an end without the effect being spoiled.

It's natural that Tom Shippey should refer to Beowulf, since that poem looms large over his and Tolkien's area of professional interest. However, as I am sure that Professor Shippey is aware, the effect which the Beowulfian digressions have on a modern audience is not that which its author intended. When the Beowulf poet refers to the tragedy of Finnsburh or the destruction of Heorot, he is alluding to stories well known to his intended audience, just as a modern poet might refer to the death of Arthur or Robin Hood's last arrow. Tolkien himself awards Heorot a place in Germanic legend similar to that of Camelot, and many scholars, Tolkien and Shippey among them, have spent much study and thought in attempts to follow the references in Beowulf. Tolkien's own theories on the Finnsburh digression have been published relatively recently as Finn and Hengest, and some of his theories about other aspects of Beowulfian mythology are published in HoME V, from which it seems clear that he was fascinated by the unexplored vistas left so quite accidentally by the Anglo-Saxon poet. The very phrase terra incognita practically invites at the very least an immediate aerial survey.

A 1954 Silmarillion would have changed the effect of the LR references from that of Beowulf today to that of Beowulf in , for the sake of argument, 750 a.d. As I said in littlemanpoet's thread on the wrong kind of details, it's not so much detail as irrelevant detail, or detail clumsily introduced that really ruins a good fantasy story. Characters who know more than they ought to know, and explain it at more length than necessary; long, rambling digressions about social and political history: these are the killers of a good tale. Tolkien's solution is typically academic: simply add all of the details as a scholarly appendix and free up the narrative for storytelling. Since he did this, and even considered defecting to Collins so that LR and The Silmarillion could be published as companion volumes, it seems to me that at least in the late 1940s he still felt that he had left enough vistas unexplored to preserve the effect in his novel, even with the legends of the Elder Days in print. Even the posthumous material released by Christopher Tolkien raises many more questions than it answers, and Tolkien left us more of that than we could reasonably expect of him. That the Silmarillion was never completed seems to me more a result of despair, perfectionism and restless creativity in equal measure: despair that it would ever be accepted for publication, the desire to create the best possible version and a creativity that simply had to adapt and expand his earlier ideas. In the 1940s a definitive, complete Silmarillion seemed a realistic goal; by the end of his life, he had made so many major changes of direction that his latest thoughts could not be reconciled with his earlier publications. I don't think it had anything to do with preserving the magic, but it had a lot to do with Tolkien's character, and his working methods or lack thereof.

Besides, how would we have had so many threads if there weren't whole books of rejected, abandoned or otherwise unreleased fragments? When it comes to information about Middle-earth, more is more.

[1] This word is itself an allusion to the Greek myth of Tantalus. You don't need to know that to understand the sentence, but it's interesting, isn't it?