"J.R.R. Tolkien - The History of Middle-Earth - 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

deliberate collison (far more than a matter of styles) as that
produced in the meeting between King Theoden and Pippin
and Merry in the ruins of Iseagard:
'Farewell, my hobbits! May we meet again in my house!
There you shall sit beside me and tell me all that your
hearts desire: the deeds of your grandsires, as far as you
can reckon them...'
The hobbits bowed low. 'So that is the King of Rohan! ' said
Pippin in an undertone. 'A fine old fellow. Very polite.'
In the second place, '
Where TheSilmarillion differs from Tolkien's earlier works is
in its refusal to accept novelistic convention. Most novels (in-
cluding The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) pick a char-
acter to put in the foreground, like Frodo and Bilbo, and then
tell the story as it happens to him. The novelist of course is
inventing the story, and so retains omniscience: he can ex-
plain, or show, what is 'really' happening and contrast it with
the limited perception of his character.
These is, then, and very evidently, a question of literary
'taste' (or literary 'habituation') involved; and also a question
of literary 'disappointment' -- the '(mistaken) disappoint-
ment in those who wanted a second Lord of the Rings' to
which Professor Shippey refers. This has even produced a
sense of outrage -- in one case formulated to me in the words
'It's like the Old Testament!': a dire condemnation against
which, clearly, there can be no appeal (though this reader
cannot have got very far before being overcome by the com-
parison). Of course, 'The Silmarillion' was intended to move
the heart and the imagination, directly, and without peculiar
effort or the possession of unusual faculties; but its mode is
inherent, and it may be doubted whether any 'approach' to
it can greatly aid those who find it unapproachable.
There is a third consideration (which Professor Shippey
does not indeed advance in the same context):
One quality which [The Lord of the Rings] has in abundance
is the Beowulfian 'impression of depth', created just as in the
old epic by songs and digressions like Aragorn's lay of Tinu-
viel, Sam Gamgee's allusions to the Silmaril and the Iron
Crown, Elrond's account of Celebrimbor, and dozens more.
This, however, is a quality of The Lord of the Rings, not of
the inset stories. To tell these in their own right and expect
them to retain the charm they got from their larger setting
would be a terrible error, an error to which Tolkien would be
more sensitive than any man alive. As he wrote in a revealing
letter dated 20 September 1963:
I am doubtful myself about the undertaking [to write The
Silmarillion]. Part of the attraction of The L.R. is, I think,
due to the glimpses of a large history in the background:
an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island,
or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit