18 How does _The Silmarillion_ as published differ from what Tolkien intended?
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This article is from the Tolkien Newsgroups FAQ, by Steuard Jensen sbjensen@midway.uchicago.edu with numerous contributions by others.
18 How does _The Silmarillion_ as published differ from what Tolkien intended?
This is a complicated question that is essentially unanswerable:
despite his lifelong effort, Tolkien never came close to completing
_The Silmarillion_. At Tolkien's request, after his death his son
Christopher (with some help from Guy Kay) worked to "bring the work
into publishable form"; Christopher discusses the difficulties involved
in the book's Foreword. To understand why _The Silmarillion_ took the
form that it did (any why it is rarely considered "canonical", as
mentioned in question III.A.2), it is worth exploring those editorial
changes. [The full story can be found in the "History of Middle-earth"
books, particularly _Morgoth's Ring_ and _The War of the Jewels_
(volumes X-XI).]
The most basic editorial decision was which writings to include in
the book at all. The "Quenta Silmarillion" is of course the central
text, but Tolkien also wrote numerous associated stories and essays.
Charles Noad explored this question as part of his essay "On the
Construction of 'The Silmarillion'" (published in _Tolkien's
Legendarium_; see question III.A.5), where he suggests an "outline for
'The Silmarillion' as Tolkien may have intended it". In addition to the
texts in the published book, Noad includes expanded versions of four
stories: "The Lay of Leithian" (possibly in poetic form), "Narn i Chin
Hurin", "The Fall of Gondolin", and "Earendil the Wanderer" (which
Tolkien never even fully sketched). He also includes five
"Appendices": writings about Middle-earth and its inhabitants such as
"Laws and Customs among the Eldar" and the "Athrabeth Finrod ah
Andreth" (most of these were published in HoMe X-XI). Sadly, a book
with this outline could never be made satisfying with just the texts
that Tolkien left us.
Moving on to the texts that were actually included in _The
Silmarillion_ as published, there were three types of problems to
overcome. In the worst cases, there were crucial gaps in the narrative
where Tolkien had never written more than an outline of the story (or
where the most recent version was hopelessly outdated). Much more
frequently, Tolkien's years of revisions led to factual inconsistencies
between stories written at various times (especially between writings
before and after _The Lord of the Rings_). And finally, Tolkien's
writings differed markedly in tone, ranging from vivid narratives to
terse annals to philosophical essays. To assemble a single text,
consistent in style and detail, from such a range of source material
clearly required substantial editing.
Despite that pessimistic assessment, the vast majority of the
published _Silmarillion_ is taken directly from Tolkien's work and
seems to come quite close to what he intended, as far as it goes. (None
of the "expanded" tales were ever completed, but what exists of them
can be found for the most part in _Unfinished Tales_, _The Lays of
Beleriand_, and the other "History of Middle-earth" books mentioned
above.) Still, mild editing is not uncommon, and can be difficult to
identify even by comparison to the source texts as published in HoMe.
Thus, _The Silmarillion_ is often not treated as a final authority in
scholarly discussions of Middle-earth. (A classic example is its
mistaken ancestry of Gil-galad, as discussed in question III.B.8.)
The greatest concern, of course, comes from those few cases where
large gaps had to be filled by the editors. This happened to some
extent for "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin" and "Of the Voyage of
Earendil and the War of Wrath", but the most substantial editorial
"invention" came in the chapter "Of the Ruin of Doriath". The episode
was of crucial importance and thus could not be left out or glossed
over, but Tolkien had written almost no description of the event since
1930 (long before even _The Hobbit_ was published) and the mythology
had changed drastically since then. Moreover, Tolkien was never happy
with some aspects of the story, in particular with the question of how
the Dwarves could invade Doriath despite the Girdle of Melian. The
published version was directly inspired by some of Tolkien's drafts of
the tale (those which seemed easiest to reconcile with the rest of the
story), but was essentially rewritten to be consistent with the rest of
the book and to include a few ideas from Tolkien's later writings.
That meant some major changes: for example, in Tolkien's own drafts,
the Nauglamir did not exist before it was made to hold the Silmaril
(out of raw gold from Nargothrond), and Thingol was not slain until the
full Dwarvish army attacked.
In his comments on "Of the Ruin of Doriath" (an appendix to "The
Tale of Years" in _The War of the Jewels_), Christopher Tolkien
concludes with the regret that "the undoubted difficulties could have
been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the
bounds of the editorial function." Elsewhere in that book, at the end
of the section "The Wanderings of Hurin", he speaks of other omissions
and alterations, and says,
it seems to me now, many years later, to have been an excessive
tampering with my father's actual thought and intention: thus
raising the question, whether the attempt to make a 'unified'
_Silmarillion_ should have been embarked on.
Whatever failings _The Silmarillion_ as published may have, I think
that most of its readers are grateful to have it, and would assure
Christopher Tolkien that his work was worthwhile. He undertook a great
task in bringing it to print, and despite his later misgivings I think
most would agree that he did an excellent job.
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