"J.R.R. Tolkien - The Unfinished Tales Of Middle-Earth And Nu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

have found through frequent use, an admirable work of reference.
References to The Silmarillion are to the pages of the hardback edition; to The Lord of the Rings by title of the
volume, book, and chapter. There follow now primarily bibliographical notes on the individual pieces.
 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 scribbled on
the back of a piece of paper setting out "the chain of responsibility 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 introduction 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, insufficient 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 retaining 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 Voronw├л) 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 E├дrendil, the treachery of Maeglin, the sack of the city, and the
escape of the fugitives тАУ a story that was a central element in his imagination of the First Age тАУ 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.