"J.R.R. Tolkien - The History of Middle-Earth - 12" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

names) be left unturned, that characterises, perhaps excessively,
The History of Middle-earth. Unfinished Tales, on the other
hand, was conceived entirely independently and in an essen-
tially different mode, at a time when I had no notion of the
publication of a massive and continuous history; and this con-
stitutes an evident weakness in my presentation of the whole
corpus, which could not be remedied. When Rayner Unwin, to
whom I am greatly indebted, undertook the uncertain venture



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of publishing my work on the history of 'The Silmarillion' (in
form necessarily much altered) I had no intention of entering
into the history of the Later Ages: the inclusion of The Lost
Road, The Drowning of Anadune, The Notion Club Papers,
and above all the history of the writing of The Lord of the
Rings, extending the work far beyond my original design, was
entirely unforeseen.
Thus it came about that the later volumes were written and
published under much greater pressure of time and with less
idea of the overall structure than the earlier. Attempting to make
each book an independent entity in some degree, within the
constraints of length, I was often uncertain of what it would or
could contain until it was done; and this lack of prevision led to
some misjudgements of 'scale' - the degree of fulness or con-
ciseness that would ultimately prove appropriate to the whole.
Thus, for example, I should have returned at the end of my
account of the writing of The Lord of the Rings to give some
description, at least, of the later developments in the chapters
The Shadow of the Past and The Council of Elrond, and the
evolution in relation to these of the work Of the Rings of Power
and the Third Age. However, all the stories and all the histories
have now been told, and the 'legendarium' of the Elder Days has
been very fully mined.
Since the ceaseless 'making' of his world extended from my
father's youth into his old age, The History of Middle-earth is in
some sense also a record of his life, a form of biography, if of a
very unusual kind. He had travelled a long road. He bequeathed
to me a massive legacy of writings that made possible the
tracing of that road, in as I hope its true sequence, and the un-
earthing of the deep foundations that led ultimately to the true
end of his great history, when the white ship departed from the
Grey Havens.
In the twilight of autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the
seas of the Bent World fell away beneath it, and the winds of
the round sky troubled it no more, and borne upon the high
airs above the mists of the world it passed into the ancient