06-01-2017, 01:23 AM | #1 |
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Silmarillion Re-Read
Not long ago I started a re-read of The Silmarillion. It's been years since I read it last.
At first, I thought maybe I'd add comments in the subforum on The Silmarillion Reading (or Research/Discussion) Project, done years ago. But... it seems like a stray comment here and there won't be of much use. I welcome others who re-read the Sil to add their own comments or note progress - and certainly everyone else is welcome to chime in. To date I've read: Ainulindale, Valaquenta, the first two chapters of The Silmarillion and started the third. Was just away for an extended weekend and didn't bring it, so I'm getting back to it now after not reading for a week or so.
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06-09-2017, 08:45 AM | #2 |
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I'm picking up a lot of details I had forgotten.
Also - forgot how short some of the early chapters are.
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07-14-2017, 09:24 AM | #3 |
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Had a couple trips that kept me away from it - and still reading slowly in odd moments. But comments here on two things that happen really fast:
1. After Morgoth returns to Middle Earth with the silmarils - he very quickly re-builds Angband, gathers the Orcs, and sends them off in two large detachments to attack Beleriand. All this before the Noldor begin to arrive! It seems awfully quick - especially with how slowly everything else seems to take in these ancient days. 2. I took note of this my first time reading the book - but Feanor dies RIGHT AWAY, after leading the Noldor from Aman and into Middle Earth. It seems so strange that he's gone so soon. And yet - all that he did (and how he did it) has such an influence on events throughout the rest of the First Age.
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07-16-2017, 01:36 PM | #4 |
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havent logged in for a longggg time.
I agree with you about the early chapters in the book. They are so full of imagery and info that they seem much more expansive in memory. Thats the bittersweet thing about that book; however in-depth and wonderful, each chapter could be its own novel. I want more about Feanor, Thingol and the Nauglamir, more about Fingolfin, Beren and Luthien. Even with all the Lost and Unfinished tales, I still want to know more.
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08-12-2017, 09:42 AM | #5 | |
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08-17-2017, 12:02 AM | #6 |
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I finished "The Silmarillion" proper the other day, and have started "Akallabeth"
Thoughts / Observations: I was often reading for just a few minutes each day - maybe 2-3 pages at a time. I picked that up substantially the closer I got to the end. Especially noticed when reading about Turin. Turin's story is just so, SO tragic. It seems like everyone he met, was connected to, was a rival or foe - all die in very sad, tragic circumstances. He goes through so many different living situations, in so many places, with so many people, under so many names. His story keeps making you think: No, no, no... don't do THAT! But he keeps doing it anyway. And yet - he is SO fearless. He is the first dragon-slayer, and slays the first dragon. In past times, I had a harder time keeping Feanor's sons straight. A bit surprising now to find that Maedhros - who early in the story seems the most sympathetic figure of the seven brothers - is the one who clings most strongly to the Oath at the end. I'll read the other sections in the book, and maybe move on back to Unfinished Tales - but having read this makes me want to re-read "Children of Hurin" again too - and "Athrabeth..." Interesting that at the very end - the remnants of the Edain join the forces of Valinor in the War of Wrath on Morgoth and his Armies - while the remnants of the Elves of Beleriand, whether Noldor or Sindar, do not. That's all I got for right now...
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08-17-2017, 12:10 AM | #7 | |
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08-23-2017, 09:48 AM | #8 |
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A couple more observations from "The Silmarillion" proper, as I get close to wrapping up "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" (I had forgotten how short the last two essays in the book are):
Much detail, which I thought I knew about the stories, was missing. Just yesterday I picked up "Unfinished Tales" - and saw that it contained more of those details than I remembered. I also remember how the story of Turin gets a little confusing - since we have three versions; Silmarillion's account, UT's "Narn I Hin Hurin" and the separate work, "Children of Hurin" - also, from a glance I see that the part of Tuor's story where he meets the two Elves who guide him toward Nevrast is entirely in UT. Throughout the Silmarillion account, maybe even more toward the ending, we keep getting the sense that - strive as they might - that ultimately the only hope of the Elves lies in the West. Christopher Tolkien has written about how his father became more concerned with the spiritual later in life - and so I see this aspect of The Silmarillion being reflective of what we hold as Christians. We strive as we can to seek what is good and right - but ultimately, it will be God who sets things to right.
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09-08-2017, 03:33 PM | #9 |
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BTW - having wrapped up the other essays in The Silmarillion, I read "Athrabeth..." (but not the notes), and have started in on Unfinished Tales.
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09-08-2017, 03:34 PM | #10 |
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Sometimes... it seems like the time between the rebellion of the Noldor and the End of the First Age should have been some thousands of years, instead of several hundred years. What do you think?
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09-20-2017, 10:58 AM | #11 |
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Well, with Elves, you never know. For them millennia may well be about the same as centuries, and especially in the First Age things seem to go on forever.
Which brings me to the next part. How on (Middle-) earth did they keep track of time for anything before the Sun rose? Sure, immortal beings don't need to watch time as much as mortal beings, but surely they needed something to know when to sow or when to expect the fishing ship to return? How did Cirdan knowfor instance when to deliver Thingol's yearly tribute? How do you track time when there's nothing to track it by? Frankly, it has been bugging me. I am planning a Silmarillion re-read soon, not in the least because after years I've finally started writing for sheer fun again and the first thing I've started is a First-Age-fanfic so I need the research anyway. |
09-20-2017, 04:14 PM | #12 |
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I was about to mention the difference between years of the Trees and years of the Sun - the former was about 144 times as long as the latter. Not that I really know what kind of cycle the Trees had other than their daily cycle.
But this only worked in Valinor, and it doesn't solve Middle-earths time keeping problems ... Could there be some kind of pattern in the stars?
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10-02-2017, 08:26 AM | #13 |
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I realize some folks don't like the idea, but even Tolkien had problems with the conception of a Middle-earth without a Sun.
In my opinion he solved this by characterizing the Silmarillion as a mostly Mannish text, though influenced by Elves. The Sun existed before the Elves awoke (see the 1950s Elvish Fairy-tale mixed with counting lore, The Awakening of the Quendi, The War of the Jewels) but in Mannish mythology, the Sun only arose when Men awoke, which gets mixed in with the Elvish tales of the Two Trees. The Silmarillion constructed by Christopher Tolkien does not include any framing device of course, but CJRT ultimately regretted this. In his defense, no one really knows how explicit Tolkien's "finished" legendarium was going to be concerning the multi-perspective approach... ... I think it would have been drawn by a peppering of notations "from the wise" coupled with details from more purely Elvish texts. I don't think there was going to be a contrasting "more Elvish" Quenta Silmarillion for example, but I do think two falls of Numenor (a Mannish account and a mixed account, Elvish and Mannish) were going to exist, solving Tolkien's other notable problem with flat versus round world conceptions. I think Earniel's reaction to a Sunless Middle-earth is exactly what Tolkien was concerned about here, and his solution, in my opinion, was to retain the "old" mythology for its beauty, but give an option for any minds who would be bugged by such questions. Incidentally the Mannish account of the Fall of Numenor, The Drowning of Anadune, contains, I think, a good example of how to slip in the Western Elvish perspective: in this account, noting that it's not hammered into the text all that much really, the Elves of the West teach the Numenoreans that the world is round before the fall, but many Men wouldn't accept this, therefore the myth arose among them that the World was made round after the fall. I mean, what else could have cause so much destruction Also, I agree that JRRT appears to have desired to alter the Valian Year to 144 Sun Years, however I'm not sure that he went over the Annals of Aman in detail to see if everything would "work well enough" if one simply changed the former, much lower number (roughly 10 years), with respect to the Rebellion of the Noldor, for example. A change from 10 to 144 is a notable lengthening of time! I'm not saying Tolkien rejected 144 itself (which incidentally agrees with the Elvish Long Year of the Appendices), again I'm just noting that I'm not sure he really plugged it into every area of the Annals of Aman as it still stood, originally written with "roughly 10" in mind. I think the Tale of Years (First Age) was going to replace the Annals of Aman and Grey Annals (of Beleriand) too, just to note it here. Or something |
10-03-2017, 05:58 PM | #14 |
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That's all VERY interesting Galin. Is it HOME-based, or do you get that from other sources? I've only scratched the surface of HOME myself.
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10-04-2017, 08:11 AM | #15 |
Elven Warrior
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Yep, muchly The History of Middle-Earth based.
Last edited by Galin : 10-04-2017 at 06:00 PM. |
10-05-2017, 04:28 PM | #16 | |
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With our Earth turning our vision of the nightsky keeps changing throughout the year, so yeah, I suppose the Elves very well could be using some more or less yearly cycle bases solely on the stars. Maybe the new year started everytime when Varda's Crown was in zenith above Menegroth or something...
No wonder the Elves loved the stars as much, clearly they'd go all kinds of spare without them. But then...I start pondering other things. With no Sun, no seasons, no migrations, no harvests. Most of Yavanna's creatures are supposed to be still napping until the Sun rises. What were the Sindar even eating in the meantime? Manna? Or if all the pre-sun-plants bore fruits and seeds at all times long before the advent of seasons, didn't all Elves go really, really hungry when the Sun rose and seasons kicked in? That must have been rough. The things one never realised until one is writing fanfic... Man I really got to start that re-read. Quote:
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10-06-2017, 07:55 AM | #17 | ||||||||||
Elven Warrior
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To be clear, some (at least seem to) argue that Tolkien abandoned statements like the following.
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There are other late characterizations of the Silmarillion being largely Mannish in perspective (see below the line of sleep if interested), and for me it begs the question why do this, if not, at least in part, to speak to concerns that had cropped up before (Tolkien was thinking about Round Word Mythology before The Lord of the Rings was published). Some also argue that this doesn't fit with the Bilbo tradition, as there were living Elves in Imladris to "correct" any somewhat garbled mannish accounts. I argue that that would be like someone given the task of faithfully translating some very old work of art in the Primary World, and "correcting it". Not the translator's job. Or it need not be so. Anyway I don't want to derail this thread (ahem, more than I have and am right now) with my theories, but it cheers me to read your commentary about "facts" and myth. While Tolkien was concerned about some big issues here (Sun and Moon, Shape of Earth, for examples) he did not want to tinker away at everything with science or facts. The "star imagines" of the Dome of Varda, for example, were, in my opinion, a beautiful addition to the more Elvish account of the early world, even if such a text (a completed, more Elvish Silmarillion) would never really be needed as part of a multi-perspective legendarium. In my opinion! Beware "the line of sleep" below. You have been warned __________________________________ Although in any larger discussion of transmission the mariner Elfwine would hardly be left out, here the focus is more on the role of Numenor and JRRT's statements concerning The Silmarillion. For instance, here's a hint of a Numenorean transmission dating from the early 1950s, in the preamble to a version of Annals of Aman (for a theoried date, see Myths Transformed Text I, note 3, Morgoth's Ring): Quote:
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Possibly as late as 1972, Last Writings Note 17: Quote:
"... before they came back into the Wide World. In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon; and afterwards they wandered in the great forests that grew beneath the sunrise. They loved best the edges of the woods." From 'Flies and Spiders', The Hobbit 1937, revised to... '... before some came back into the Wide World. In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the wood.' That one's really interesting I think, especially considering that it was published by JRRT. Last edited by Galin : 10-06-2017 at 08:00 AM. |
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