More on round-world vs flat-world

[Huinesoron]

A transcript which matches Galin's can be found here.

A quick skim shows that the passage in question is one of the least coherent in the whole transcript, and the transcriber clearly had some trouble! I think this bit got tangled the most, and have tried to fix it up:

"I also wanted to give the Fall of Atlantis some universal application. The point is really, I ['m using this [???]] language, as they get to the, you suddenly see the real curvature of the world going down like a bridge. You are on a line that leads to what was."

(I think he also says 'get to sail to America' earlier on, not 'to South America'.)

So: interesting! You can practically hear him skipping mental tracks when he goes from 'the world becomes a vast globe' to 'you see, it always had been'. I think this comes from a time when Tolkien was still transitioning between the two concepts; he initially presents the old Flat-World mythology, but corrects himself mid-thought. That might even be why he gets so incoherent right here.

The whole Time thing is his attempt to retain the Straight Road, which now obviously makes no sense (because it never was a straight path). Now, Valinor is a sort of crystallised memory - a physical incarnation of an earlier point in Time, still accessible but not exactly in the Present. But also not time travel. It's all very mystical.

hS

[Erendis of Numenor]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

"I also wanted to give the Fall of Atlantis some universal application. The point is really, I ['m using this [???]] language, as they get to the, you suddenly see the real curvature of the world going down like a bridge. You are on a line that leads to what was."

A Welsh friend of mine (and her Welsh mother) understood this :

"I also wanted to give them the form that lent it some universal application"

I'm from Brittany, so English is not a natural language for me. :/

What do you think about this possibility ?

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Just re-listened for the first time in forever to Tolkien's 1966 radio interview.

And I thought the interview dated of 1964, not 1966 :
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/1964_BBC_Interview