Council of 🧝Elrond

[Eonwe]

sorry I gotta get in on this...

Greenwood says:

"I have also said that since these two works are finished works, published, and revised by Tolkien himself, the books published after his death are secondary to them and cannot be used to dispute material that is clear in The Hobbit and LOTR."

So let me understand things. We take LoTR and the Hobbit to be more definitive than the SIL or HoME etc...

When Gandalf says pop-gun, Balin says Bravo, Biblo writes about staying in inns all the way out to very near Rivendell, Bilbo talks about all the queer aspects of dragons (including how they boast, their sense of smell, their way of keeping one eye open, their knowledge of the fair price of everything but not really a knowledge of quality, how Smaug is stupid enough to ignore the hole in his armor) I am supposed to take these statements as more in line with what Tolkien really felt like vs. reading UT the Palantiri, reading HoME regarding Erendis, reading the conversation between Glaurung and Turin, etc? I mean, putting the Hobbit ahead of some of the writing in the Sil, and in UT especially concerning what is definitively from Tolkien in most/all cases?

Am I missing something? At least in published scientific work (which I admit may not be applicable at all) the most recent description is the one used, whether it is a letter, a published paper, a published accepted paper, etc.

I personally feel that calling only the Hobbit and LoTR definitive may be correct, but does not necessarily describe best practice in finding out the whole story on a particular subject. Saying that ME had guns because Gandalf describes them in the Hobbit is definitive?

And don't state its Bilbo's artistic license that causes the strangeness in the book, if Balin knows some French, well does he or not?

I don't think it is as clearly cut as you say Greenwood.

respectfully! Eonwe

 

[Greenwood]

Thorin

I have the first printing of the first edition of the American edition (1977) of The Silmarillion in my hand as I type this. On the title page, directly below the title, in the middle of the page, in large letters it says: edited by CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN [caps in the original].

I would suggest you read the Foreward (by Christopher Tolkien). It is only two and a half pages and not very challenging. In case you cannot lay your hands on a copy I will give some relevant excerpts here.

".... Indeed, although it was not then called The Silmarillion, it was already in being half a century ago; and in battered notebooks extending back to 1917 can still be read the earliest versions, often hastily penciled, of the central stories of the mythology. But it was never published (though some indications of its content could be gleaned from The Lord of the Rings), and throughout my father's long life he never abandoned it, nor ceased even in his last years to work on it. In all that time The Silmarillion, considered simply as a large narrative structure, underwent relatively little radical change; it became long ago a fixed tradition, and background to later writings. But it was far indeed from being a fixed text, and did not remain unchanged even in certain fundamental ideas concerning the nature of the world it portrays; while the same legends came to be retold in longer and shorter forms, and in different styles. As the years passed the changes and variants, both in detail and in larger perspectives, became so complex, so pervasive, and so many-layered that a final and definitive version seemed unattainable. [emphasis added]...... "

Christopher Tolkien continues:

"On my father's death it fell to me to try to bring the work into publishable form. It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book, the diversity of the materials -- to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century -- would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative. [emphasis added] ..... "

Christopher Tolkien continues:

" A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father's) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost. [emphasis added] ......"

Moving on to Unfinished Tales, which also lists Christopher Tolkien on the title page as editor, we have the following opening paragraphs of the Introduction by C. Tolkien:

"The problems that confront one given responsibility for the writings of a dead author are hard to resolve. Some persons in this position may elect to make no material whatsoever available for publication, save perhaps for work that was in a virtually finished state at the time of the author's death. In the case of the unpublished writings of J. R. R. Tolkien this might seem at first sight the proper course; since he himself, peculiarly critical and exacting of his own work, would not have dreamt of allowing even the more completed narratives in this book to appear without much further refinement. [emphasis added]

"On the other hand, the nature and scope of his invention seems to me to place even his abandoned stories in a peculiar position. That The Silmarillion should remain unknown was for me out of the question, despite its disordered state, and despite my father's known if very largely unfulfilled intentions for its transformation; and in that case I presumed, after long hesitation, to present the work not in the form of an historical study, a complex of divergent texts interlinked by commentary, but as a completed and cohesive entity." [emphasis added]


Thus, Thorin, whether you find it hard to believe or not, it is quite clear that all of Tolkien's posthumously published works are indeed partly Christopher Tolkien's work since he, as he said produced The Silmarillion by "selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce" the best narrative. They can in no way be placed on an equal footing with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Please stop telling me that I am wrong when I point out basic principles of literary research which are backed up by the author's son's own words.

Grond

To return to your earlier post, as you can see, even The Quenta Silmarillion published in The Silmarillion volume cannot be considered a definitive JRR Tolkien text since by Christopher Tolkien's own admission it was "selected and arranged" by him.

 

[Greenwood]

Eonwe

We were both typing things at the same time. Please see my post above with excerpts from Christopher Tolkien's introductions to both The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.

I am a professional scientiist and though research rules are similar the rules are not exactly the same because of the inherent differences in what is being studied. Even in science you go back to primary sources, not secondary sources. In science you are presumably trying to uncover some sort of objective fact or something that is reproducible by other workers. In dealing with a literary creation like the world of Middle Earth, there are no objective facts. Things are whatever JRR Tolkien said they were, and he was free to change his mind about any of it. Once an author dies, his published work in a sense becomes set in stone. You can perhaps find through unpublished writings, letters, notes, etc. that perhaps his thoughts about something he had already written were changing (for example the origin of orcs), but since he never had a chance to incorporate those changes into a later edition of a published work, they are of interest, but the published work remains the primary source. About the only exception to this would be if the author had completed work on a new edition prior to his death and this was published posthumously. This is not the case for any of Tolkien's works. As I have said repeatedly, Tolkien's posthumously published work are fascinating for a Tolkien fan and a literary scholar because they allow us to learn more about Tolkien's invented world of Middle Earth and to get a glimpse of the writer at work, but they are not equivalent to works he published in his own lifetime. It is a straight forward concept and I cannot fathom why some people cannot seem to grasp it. I am not denigrating the posthumously published work in any way. I am merely pointing out the irrefutable fact that it is different from material published during the author's lifetime, that he had the opportunity to approve, and that the posthumous material cannot be treated in the same way.

 

[Greenwood]

Nevertheless, let us not put our heads in the sand. Other material, when it sheds light on unrelated topics, or deepens our understanding of related topics is fair game for consideration. Only in the very narrow instance of direct contradiction should it be discounted.

Squeeky

Absolutely!! I could not agree more. The problem is that this is an ongoing debate with Thorin that go back over a number of threads and a number of weeks now. It started be cause he and some other self-proclaimed purists kept trying to claim that opinions by "Tolkien scholars" in secondary material and things in Tolkien's posthumously published works could be used to prove their interpretations when those interpretations went against Tolkien's clear meaning in LOTR. (See for example: http://thetolkien.forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2146 or http://thetolkien.forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1911 )

As far as scientific research is concerned, it is quite rare to go back to the first sources for cutting edge work. Scientific work is presumed to build upon former work so that the latest document is ideally the culmination of all prior work, along that thread, and is the most authoritative.

Once again, absolutely. You would not need to go back to Darwin's Origin of the Species in a modern paper about natural selection (unless you were involved in a history of science study). However, you would not rely solely on a review paper and that summarized someone else's work that your research was directly following on; you would go back to the original paper and subsequent papers by that researcher that were relevant. In my own field of ornithology there is currently a magnificent multi-volume work in progress on the birds of the world. It is a wonderful reference with an extensive bibliography. If I were writing a paper on some aspect of the physiology of a certain bird I might use this reference work to look up specific references on the topic at hand, but I would be expected to go to those original references, read and cite them in my work, and not just rely on this second party reference work.

 

[lilhobo]

i dont think u should agree with squeeky

squeeky = HARAD???

 

[Eonwe]

I would agree with the squeeky = Harad thing, except, I don't think Harad would pick a name like squeeky (sorry squeeky) He would pick something like cornhole

 

[Brown Ribbon]

Originally posted by Grond


All Christopher did to the Sil was to make the decision to include not only the Quenta Silmarillion but the Ainulindale and Valaquenta, Akallabeth and Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age. I'm not sure how JRRT originally had it packaged but surely CT did. Something everyone fails to realize is how actively involved CT was in the background. It was CT who drew many of the maps and his father bounced ideas off of him.

.

Grond.
I'm 90, though not 100 percent sure on this, but Christopher Tolkien wrote the chapter 'Of the Ruin of Doriath' in the Sil.
Not all of the Sil I would class as canon.

I am mystified as to why people would class the Council of Elrond as boring. For me it is a great chapter, the battleground for the war of the Ring islaidout here. We get a sense of how hopeless the situation is, how the Ring will divide Elves, Men and Dwarves and how even the wise see know clear way to victory.

 

[Brown Ribbon]

Originally posted by Eonwe
sorry I gotta get in on this...

Greenwood says:

"I have also said that since these two works are finished works, published, and revised by Tolkien himself, the books published after his death are secondary to them and cannot be used to dispute material that is clear in The Hobbit and LOTR."

So let me understand things. We take LoTR and the Hobbit to be more definitive than the SIL or HoME etc...

When Gandalf says pop-gun, Balin says Bravo, Biblo writes about staying in inns all the way out to very near Rivendell, Bilbo talks about all the queer aspects of dragons (including how they boast, their sense of smell, their way of keeping one eye open, their knowledge of the fair price of everything but not really a knowledge of quality, how Smaug is stupid enough to ignore the hole in his armor) I am supposed to take these statements as more in line with what Tolkien really felt like vs. reading UT the Palantiri, reading HoME regarding Erendis, reading the conversation between Glaurung and Turin, etc? I mean, putting the Hobbit ahead of some of the writing in the Sil, and in UT especially concerning what is definitively from Tolkien in most/all cases?

Am I missing something? At least in published scientific work (which I admit may not be applicable at all) the most recent description is the one used, whether it is a letter, a published paper, a published accepted paper, etc.

I personally feel that calling only the Hobbit and LoTR definitive may be correct, but does not necessarily describe best practice in finding out the whole story on a particular subject. Saying that ME had guns because Gandalf describes them in the Hobbit is definitive?

And don't state its Bilbo's artistic license that causes the strangeness in the book, if Balin knows some French, well does he or not?

I don't think it is as clearly cut as you say Greenwood.

respectfully! Eonwe

I always imagined that Bilbo COULD have stayed in inns until not too far off Rivendell. I forget the exact quote, but it was something about inns becoming 'less frequent and welcoming', as secrecy was not an issue for the Dwarves, they could have drunk in Bree, Archet, over as far as The Forsaken Inn, halfway from Bree to Rivendell.
I also see nothing in the profile of Glaurung to necessarily contradict Bilbo's description of Smaug.

 

[Eonwe]

Hi Brown Ribbon!

"I also see nothing in the profile of Glaurung to necessarily contradict Bilbo's description of Smaug"

Um I would beg to differ, and would be glad to offer comparisons??

 

[Snaga]

I think a Comparitive Dragon Studies thread sounds great Eonwe - go for it!

On the CoE chapter, we shouldn't forget that many (most?) first time readers read LotR as an action adventure. Lets not forget that LotR is multi-layered which is why it draws people in so much. Given this, it is not surprising if some people find it a slow chapter. But once you read it again, these chapters really come into their own.

By contrast, the Hobbit can really only be read as a childrens amusement, with just glimpses of the wider world of Middle Earth peeping through. As a result, the pace is kept far more even all the way through. There are really no 'scene setting' passages, beyond the Unexpected Party.

 

[WackerBacker]

It's just a story, as epic and detailed as it is. Who cares if there's some discrepancies in four different books written over the span of an adult lifetime? Take Chris's paraphrased advice and get over it and just read the books.

 

[Grond]

Originally posted by WackerBacker
It's just a story, as epic and detailed as it is. Who cares if there's some discrepancies in four different books written over the span of an adult lifetime? Take Chris's paraphrased advice and get over it and just read the books.

Hail and well met WackerBacker. Your point is well taken but our problem is when discussing the deeper aspects of the works, these inconsistencies will drive you crazy. We who have long studied Tolkien lore are not satisfied to merely read the works. We want to study and learn the works. Call us fanatics or lunatics but a prime example is the debate we are currently having in another thread on the Uruk-hai. Were they merely Great Orcs or something more with more Human genes cloned in? That makes for lively discussion. Like it or no.

 

[Eonwe]

Thanks Greenwood. I understand where you are coming from.

By the way, I don't consider myself a NPW. Can I be a NSNPW?

 

[Greenwood]

NSNPW?

new-style NPW?
non-specific NPW?
non-speaking NPW?
neo-Stalinist NPW?
nit-slaying NPW?
near-semi NPW?

???

 

[Grond]

I think Eonwe is referring to a not so nit picking weenie which I also consider myself to be.

 

[Eonwe]

very good! a buttered-scone for Grond (sorry all out of bmws)

 

[Walter]

Interesting thread that must've slipped my attention so far. It starts by discussing whether the CoE was boring or not and ends up in a sophisticated debate about how definite which works of J.R.R. or C. Tolkiens works are.

----
IMO the CoE was not at all boring, just because there was "No action". It revealed all the background information that was - from Tolkiens point of view - necessary for the reader to understand the ongoings.

----
As many of You might know by now, Tolkien had a somewhat strange sense about "finishing" a written work and "making it definite" by offering it for publication. It strikes me funny that a Philologist, Professor at Oxford, barely has anything of his "professional work" published anywhere, considering what an engaged and qualified scholar he was. He always hesitated "finishing" a piece of written work, often he would start to do a "final editing" of something and end up more or less re-writing the whole thing only to stop again when it was about to be finsihed.

There's a funny anecdote in the biography that mentions that he once started writing a diary. The text was in english, but he used one of his "self-invented" Alphabets to write it. After a week or so he started to change the meanings of letters in his Alphabet - which he constantly went on to do - only to finally having to find out that the elder entries in the diary are somewhat "hard to read"...

Even those works that had been finally published were not "sacrosanct" to him - see the Hobbit - I don't think a published work actually meant more to him than a "snapshot" of his view of things at the moment he finally sent it off for publication.

So - what we may call "definite works", does IMO mean they represent his ideas a certain moment in his life, not necessarily his "final ideas" about a certain topic, hence I wouldn't dare saying the books published posthumously - and eventually edited by C.T - are less definite...

 

[Brown Ribbon]

Originally posted by Eonwe
Hi Brown Ribbon!

"I also see nothing in the profile of Glaurung to necessarily contradict Bilbo's description of Smaug"

Um I would beg to differ, and would be glad to offer comparisons??

Deffo!
The only thing I can find (and I had a glance at Of Turin Turmbar last night) that is necessarily contradictory is the fact that Smaug is a little thick.
I am only basing this on Sil versus Hobbit...

 

[Greenwood]

I think Eonwe is referring to a not so nit picking weenie which I also consider myself to be.

Grond

Thank you. Clearly I was floundering at a loss. Gotta get more sleep.


Walter

For the most part I agree with you fully. Of course Tolkien's work published during his lifetime represents a snapshot of his thinking at that time, and of course he was free to change that snapshot in later editions, as he did. The point, however, is that he had the opportunity to at least tacitly, if not explicitly approve that it was a true snapshot, by approving its publication. He had no such opportunity for The Simarillion and later published works which represent his son's "edited" snapshot.

I do not know if you are familiar with the great American photographer Eliot Porter. His photograhs, most in black-and-white, are magnificent. He did not stop however, with taking the picture in the field and then printing it. He did considerable darkroom work (he worked before the advent of PhotoShop and other such computer photo retouching programs) to get just the light balance and cropping and shades of light and shadow, etc., he wanted before publishing his pictures or showing them publicly. If I were to take one of Eliot Porter's photo negatives put it in a computer photo processing program and modify it, even if I was working from notes made by Porter about what his thoughts were about how he was thinking the final print should be, the print that resulted would still not be as definitive as if Porter himself made the changes. The print would be my idea of what Porter wanted. That, as best as I can express it right now, is how I see the difference between Tolkien's work published in his lifetime and the posthumously published work. Yes it is all JRR Tolkien at some level, but the posthumous material is at least partly not his, but his son's view of his father's ideas, and is in a form that JRR himself never approved for public view. No one can claim to have perfect knowledge and understanding of a another person's thoughts, no matter how close they may be to each other. Tolkien's habit of constant revision makes the job that much more impossible. I am not saying as others have claimed that I am arguing that the posthumously published material should be ignored, just that we always remember the limitations involved.

 

[Grond]

Greenwood, what you are saying is if the author says Smaug was the last of the great worms of Middle-earth in the Hobbit and that is not contradicted by the text of LotR; then, the author amplifying his thoughts in HoMe or UT or Sil by saying that more existed in the Withered Hearth would not be substantiated. Whew! Is that the meat of it?