"Tolkien, J R R - Unfinished Tales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Complete Tolkien)
But whatever view may be taken of this question, for some, as for myself, there is a value greater than the mere uncovering of curious detail in learning that Vыantur the N·menєrean brought his ship Entulessы, the "Return", into the Grey Havens on the spring winds of the six hundredth year of the Second Age, that the tomb of Elendil the Tall was set by Isildur his son on the summit of the beacon-hill Halifirien, that the Black Rider whom the Hobbits saw in the foggy darkness on the far side of Bucklebury Ferry was Kham√l, chief of the Ringwraiths of Dol Guldur Ц or even that the childlessness of Tarannon twelfth King of Gondor (a fact recorded in an Appendix to The Lord of the Rings) was associated with the hitherto wholly mysterious cats of Queen Ber·thiel.
The construction of the book has been difficult, and in the result is somewhat complex. The narratives are all "unfinished," but to a greater or lesser degree, and in different senses of the word, and have required different treatment; I shall say something below about each one in turn, and here only call attention to some general features.
The most important is the question of "consistency," best illustrated from the section entitled "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn." This is an "Unfinished Tale" in a larger sense: not a narrative that comes to an abrupt halt, as in "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin," nor a series of fragments, as in "Cirion and Eorl," but a primary strand in the history of Middle-earth that never received a settled definition, let alone a final written form. The inclusion of the unpublished narratives and sketches of narrative on this subject therefore entails at once the accepнtance of the history not as a fixed, independently-existing reality which the author "reports" (in his "persona" as translator and redactor), but as a growing and shifting conception in his mind. When the author has ceased to publish his works himself, after subjecting them to his own detailed criticism and comparison, the further knowledge of Middle-earth to be found in his unpublished writings will often conflict with what is already "known"; and new elements set into the existing edifice will in such cases tend to contribute less to the history of the invented world itself than to the history of its invention. In this book I have accepted from the outset that this must be so; and except in minor details such as shifts in nomenclature (where retention of the manuнscript form would lead to disproportionate confusion or disproportionнate space in elucidation) I have made no alterations for the sake of consistency with published works, but rather drawn attention throughнout to conflicts and variations. In this respect therefore "Unfinished Tales" is essentially different from The Silmarillion, where a primary though not exclusive objective in the editing was to achieve cohesion both internal and external; and except in a few specified cases I have indeed treated the published form of The Silmarillion as a fixed point of reference of the same order as the writings published by my father himнself, without taking into account the innumerable "unauthorised" decisions between variants and rival versions that went into its making.
In content the book is entirely narrative (or descriptive): I have excluded all writings about Middle-earth and Aman that are of a priнmarily philosophic or speculative nature, and where such matters from time to time arise I have not pursued them. I have imposed a simple structure of convenience by dividing the texts into Parts corresponding to the first Three Ages of the World, there being in this inevitably some overlap, as with the legend of Amroth and its discussion in "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn." The fourth part is an appendage, and may require some excuse in a book called "Unfinished Tales," since the pieces it contains are generalised and discursive essays with little or no element of "story." The section on the Dr·edain did indeed owe its original inclusion to the story of "The Faithful Stone" which forms a small part of it; and this section led me to introduce those on the Istari and the Palantэri, since they (especially the former) are matters about which many people have expressed curiosity, and this book seemed a convenient place to expound what there is to tell.
The notes may seem to be in some places rather thick on the ground, but it will be seen that where clustered most densely (as in "The Disasнter of the Gladden Fields") they are due less to the editor than to the author, who in his later work tended to compose in this way, driving several subjects abreast by means of interlaced notes. I have throughout tried to make it clear what is editorial and what is not. And because of this abundance of original material appearing in the notes and appenнdices I have thought it best not to restrict the page-references in the Index to the texts themselves but to cover all parts of the book except the Introduction.
I have throughout assumed on the reader's part a fair knowledge of the published works of my father (more especially The Lord of the Rings), for to have done otherwise would have greatly enlarged the editorial element, which may well be thought quite sufficient already. I have, however, included short defining statements with almost all the primary entries in the Index, in the hope of saving the reader from constant reference elsewhere. If I have been inadequate in explanation or unintentionally obscure, Mr. Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-earth supplies, as I have found through frequent use, an admiraнble work of reference.
References to The Silmarillion are to the pages of the hardback ediнtion; to The Lord of the Rings by title of the volume, book, and chapter. There follow now primarily bibliographical notes on the individual pieces.
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PART ONE
I
Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin
My father said more than once that "The Fall of Gondolin" was the first of the tales of the First Age to be composed, and there is no evidence to set against his recollection. In a letter of 1964 he declared that he wrote it "'out of my head' during sick-leave from the army in 1917," and at other times he gave the date as 1916 or 1916-17. In a letter to me written in 1944 he said: "I first began to write [The Silmarillion] in army huts, crowded, filled with the noise of gramophones": and indeed some lines of verse in which appear the Seven Names of Gondolin are scribнbled on the back of a piece of paper setting out "the chain of responsiнbility in a battalion." The earliest manuscript is still in existence, filling two small school exercise-books; it was written rapidly in pencil, and then, for much of its course, overlaid with writing in ink, and heavily emended. On the basis of this text my mother, apparently in 1917, wrote out a fair copy; but this in turn was further substantially emended, at some time that I cannot determine, but probably in 1919-20, when my father was in Oxford on the staff of the then still uncompleted Dictionary. In the spring of 1920 he was invited to read a paper to the Essay Club of his college (Exeter); and he read "The Fall of Gondolin." The notes of what he intended to say by way of introducнtion of his "essay" still survive. In these he apologised for not having been able to produce a critical paper, and went on: "Therefore I must read something already written, and in desperation I have fallen back on this Tale. It has of course never seen the light before. . . . A complete cycle of events in an Elfinesse of my own imagining has for some time past grown up (rather, has been constructed) in my mind. Some of the episodes have been scribbled down. . . . This tale is not the best of them, but it is the only one that has so far been revised at all and that, insuffiнcient as that revision has been, I dare read aloud."
The tale of Tuor and the Exiles of Gondolin (as "The Fall of Gondolin" is entitled in the early MSS) remained untouched for many years, though my father at some stage, probably between 1926 and 1930, wrote a brief, compressed version of the story to stand as part of The Silmarillion (a title which, incidentally, first appeared in his letter to The Observer of 20 February 1938); and this was changed subsequently to bring it into harmony with altered conceptions in other parts of the book. Much later he began work on an entirely refashioned account, entitled "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin." It seems very likely that this was written in 1951, when The Lord of the Rings was finished but its publication doubtful. Deeply changed in style and bearings, yet retainнing many of the essentials of the story written in his youth, "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin" would have given in fine detail the which legend that constitutes the brief 23rd chapter of the published Silmarillion, but, grievously, he went no further than the coming of Tuor and Voronwe to the last gate and Tuor's sight of Gondolin across the plain of Tumladen. To his reasons for abandoning it there is no clue.
This is the text that is given here. To avoid confusion I have retitled it "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin," since it tells nothing of the fall of the city. As always with my father's writings there are variant readings, and in one short section (the approach to and passage of the river Sirion by Tuor and Voronwы) several competing forms; some minor editorial work has therefore been necessary.
It is thus the remarkable fact that the only full account that my father ever wrote of the story of Tuor's sojourn in Gondolin, his union with Idril Celebrindal, the birth of Eфrendil, the treachery of Maeglin, the sack of the city, and the escape of the fugitives Ц a story that was a central element in his imagination of the First Age Ц was the narrative composed in his youth. There is no question, however, that that (most remarkable) narrative is not suitable for inclusion in this book. It is written in the extreme archaistic style that my father employed at that time, and it inevitably embodies conceptions out of keeping with the world of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion in its published form. It belongs with the rest of the earliest phase of the mythology, "the Book of Lost Tales": itself a very substantial work, of the utmost interest to one concerned with the origins of Middle-earth, but requiring to be presented in a lengthy and complex study if at all.
II
The development of the legend of Turin Turambar is in some respects the most tangled and complex of all the narrative elements in the story of the First Age. Like the tale of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin it goes back to the very beginnings, and is extant in an early prose narrative (one of the "Lost Tales") and in a long, unfinished poem in alliterative verse. But whereas the later "long version" of Tuor never proceeded very far, my father carried the later "long version" of Turin much nearer completion. This is called Narn i Hюn H·rin, and this is the narrative that is given in the present book.
There are however great differences in the course of the long Narn in the degree to which the narrative approaches a perfected or final form. The concluding section (from The Return of T·rin to Dor-1єmin to The Death of T·rin) has undergone only marginal editorial alteration; while the first section (to the end of T·rin in Doriath) required a good deal of revision and selection, and in some places some slight compression, the original texts being scrappy and disconnected. But the central section of the narrative (T·rin among the outlaws, Mюm the petty-dwarf, the land of Dor-C·arthol, the death of Beleg at T·rin's hand, and T·rin's life in Nargothrond) constituted a much more difficult editorial problem. The Narn is here at its least finished, and in places diminishes to outlines of possible turns in the story. My father was still evolving this part when he ceased to work on it; and the shorter version for TheаSilmarillion was to wait on the final development of the Narn. In preparing the text of TheаSilmarillion for publication I derived, by necessity, much of this section of the tale of T·rin from these very mateнrials, which are of quite extraordinary complexity in their variety and interrelations.
For the first part of this central section, as far as the beginning of T·rin's sojourn in Mюm's dwelling on Amon R√dh, I have contrived a narrative, in scale commensurate with other parts of the Narn, out of the existing materials (with one gap, see p. 101 and note 12); but from that point onwards (see p. 110) until Turin's coming to Ivrin after the fall of Nargothrond I have found it unprofitable to attempt it. The gaps in the Narn are here too large, and could only be filled from the pubнlished text of TheаSilmarillion, but in an Appendix (pp. 158 ff.) I have cited isolated fragments from this part of the projected larger narrative.
In the third section of the Narn (beginning with The Return of T·rin to Dor-1єmin) a comparison with The Silmarillion (pp. 215-26) will show many close correspondences, and even identities of wording; while in the first section there are two extended passages that I have excluded from the present text (see p. 62 and note I, and p. 70 and note 2), since they are close variants of passages that appear elsewhere and are inнcluded in the published Silmarillion. This overlapping and interrelation between one work and another may be explained in different ways, from different points of view. My father delighted in re-telling on differнent scales; but some parts did not call for more extended treatment in a larger version, and there was no need to rephrase for the sake of it. Again, when all was still fluid and the final organisation of the distinct narratives still a long way off, the same passage might be experimentally placed in either. But an explanation can be found at a different level. Legends like that of T·rin Turambar had been given a particular poetic form long ago Ц in this case, the Narn i Hюn H·rin of the poet Dэrhavel Цand phrases, or even whole passages, from it (especially at moments of great rhetorical intensity, such at T·rin's address to his sword before his death) would be preserved intact by those who afterwards made condensations of the history of the Elder Days (as The Silmarillion is conceived to be).
PART TWO
I
A Description of the Island of N·menor
Although descriptive rather than narrative, I have included selections from my father's account of N·menor, more especially as it concerns the physical nature of the Island, since it clarifies and naturally accompanies the tale of Aldarion and Erendis. This account was certainly in exisнtence by 1965, and was probably written not long before that.
I have redrawn the map from a little rapid sketch, the only one, as it appears, that my father ever made of N·menor. Only names or features found on the original have been entered on the redrawing. In addition, the original shows another haven on the Bay of And·niы, not far to the westward of And·niы itself; the name is hard to read, but is almost certainly Almaida. This does not, so far as I am aware, occur elsewhere.
II
Aldarion and Erendis
This story was left in the least developed state of all the pieces in this collection, and has in places required a degree of editorial rehandling that made me doubt the propriety of including it. However, its very great interest as the single story (as opposed to records and annals) that survived at all from the long ages of N·menor before the narrative of its end (the Akallabъth), and as a story unique in its content among my father's writings, persuaded me that it would be wrong to omit it from this collection of "Unfinished Tales."
To appreciate the necessity for such editorial treatment it must be explained that my father made much use, in the composition of narraнtive, of "plot-outlines," paying meticulous attention to the dating of events, so that these outlines have something of the appearance of annal-entries in a chronicle. In the present case there are no less than five of these schemes, varying constantly in their relative fullness at different points and not infrequently disagreeing with each other at large and in detail. But these schemes always had a tendency to move into pure narrative, especially by the introduction of short passages of direct speech; and in the fifth and latest of the outlines for the story of Aldarion and Erendis the narrative element is so pronounced that the text runs to some sixty manuscript pages.
This movement away from a staccato annalistic style in the present tense into fullblown narrative was however very gradual, as the writing of the outline progressed; and in the earlier part of the story I have rewritten much of the material in the attempt to give some degree of stylistic homogeneity throughout its course. This rewriting is entirely a matter of wording, and never alters meaning or introduces unauthentic elements.
The latest "scheme," the text primarily followed, is entitled The Shadow of the Shadow: the Tale of the Mariner's Wife; and the Tale of the Queen Shepherdess. The manuscript ends abruptly, and I can offer no certain explanation of why my father abandoned it. A typescript made to this point was completed in January 1965. There exists also a typescript of two pages that I judge to be the latest of all these mateнrials; it is evidently the beginning of what was to be a finished version of the whole story, and provides the text on pp. 181-5 in this book (where the plot-outlines are at their most scanty). It is entitled IndisаiаХаKiryamo "The Mariner's Wife": a tale of ancient N·menorы, which tells of the first rumour of the Shadow.
At the end of this narrative (p. 215) I have set out such scanty indications as can be given of the further course of the story..
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