"J.R.R. Tolkien - The History of Middle-Earth - 05" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

Extension map was substituted for the photocopy. (Photocopies
were also used for diagram III on p. 247 and map V on p. 251,
where the originals are in faint pencil.)




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 I.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE
LEGEND.

In February 1968 my father addressed a commentary to the authors of
an
article about him (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien no. 294). In the
course
of this he recorded that 'one day' C. S. Lewis said to him that since
'there
is too little of what we really like in stories' they would have to try to
write
some themselves. He went on:
We agreed that he should try 'space-travel', and I should try
'time-
travel'. His result is well known. My effort, after a few
promising
chapters, ran dry: it was too long a way round to what I really
wanted
to make, a new version of the Atlantis legend. The final scene
survives
as The Downfall of Numenor.*
Afewyearsearlier, in a letter of July 1964 (Letters no. 257), he gave
some
account of his book, The Lost Road:
When C. S. Lewis and I tossed up, and he was to write on space-
travel
and I on time-travel, I began an abortive book of time-travel of
which
the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of
Atlantis.
This was to be called Numenor, the Land in the West. The thread
was
to be the occurrence time and again in human families (like
Durin
among the Dwarves) of a father and son called by names that could
be
interpreted as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend. These no longer
understood
are found in the end to refer to the Atlantid-Numenorean situation
and