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

II
The Tale of the Children of H├║rin

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 H├оn 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-1├│min 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, M├оm 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 The Silmarillion was to wait
on the final development of the Narn. In preparing the text of The Silmarillion for publication I derived, by necessity,
much of this section of the tale of T├║rin from these very materials, 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 M├оm'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 published text of The Silmarillion, 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-1├│min) 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 included 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 different 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 тАУ in this case, the Narn i H├оn H├║rin of the poet D├нrhavel тАУand 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 existence 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