I was going to wait for Christopher
Tolkien's birthday to post this, but since that was way back in November of 1924, I missed it. And if I said anywhere that I wasn't going to pursue this topic, I was wrong. Anyway, on with it
Elthir, you smelly (it's a good smell in my opinion) pedantic beast!
Q: Did Christopher Tolkien "abandon" the
Dagor Dagorath? Meaning did Christopher Tolkien claim that the Dagor Dagorath was not to be viewed as canon?
A: My answer: no.
My two main reasons are
A) the conflation (by readers) of the Second Prophecy of
Mandos with its content (
it content being Dagor Dagorath and the Rekindling of the Trees), and
B) the argument that the constructed Silmarillion is not, nor was ever meant to be, a representation of canon.
With respect to
A, I can certainly understand why people conflate the disappearance of the Second Prophecy with its content, after all, the very content is what the Prophecy is about! But to my mind, this can't be what Christopher Tolkien means, given that, for example. . .
. . . in the same general time period [phase of writing] in which JRRT Tolkien re-characterizes the content as a
Mannish Myth, it is Christopher Tolkien who points this out!
"The Second Prophecy of Mandos (V. 333) had now therefore definitively disappeared."
This is based on his father's statement:
"the marring be amended, Manwe and Varda may know;
but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos."
Prophecy gone. And, its content being recharacterized as a Mannish myth by JRRT himself, means (again)
prophecy gone. Full stop.
In other words:
JRR Tolkien wrote that Mandos will not deliver a prophecy concerning
Arda Marred.
JRR Tolkien wrote that the content, no longer a prophecy from a "
god", was a mannish myth.
Christopher Tolkien is the messenger here.
With respect to
B above, generally speaking, simply because something does not appear in the constructed Silmarillion (1977), does not mean Christopher Tolkien is stamping "abandoned" or
"not canon" on it.
This is demonstrable with respect to various examples. An easy one: the longer history of the
Helm of Hador for instance, which does not appear in the 1977 Silmarillion, nor the much later constructed Children of
Hurin. Another one might be a late idea in which one of
Feanor's sons burns in a ship.
Christopher Tolkien knew his father had not abandoned the longer history of the
Helm idea, but its lack in the constructed works is not a statement about it being "abandoned" by his father, nor is he abandoning it for that reason.
I also believe Christopher Tolkien was too humble to tell Tolkien's readership what is canon and what is not; and
The History of Middle-Earth is, again in my opinion, part testimony to that. Not to mention that Christopher Tolkien's first desire was to produce a "HOME type" version of
the Silmarillion, rather than a one volume version for readers!
Okay. I said it.
I could go on about why I think it's still
uncertain if even the Mannish Myth was to be retained in any "final" Tolkien-published text (that now can never be), but I won't.
For now.
