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

This section of the book differs from the others (save those in Part Four) in that there is here no single text but
rather an essay incorporating citations. This treatment was enforced by the nature of the materials; as is made clear in
the course of the essay, a history of Galadriel can only be a history of my father's changing conceptions, and the "un-
finished" nature of the tale is not in this case that of a particular piece of writing. I have restricted myself to the
presentation of his unpublished writings on the subject, and forgone any discussion of the larger questions that underlie
the development; for that would entail consideration of the entire relation between the Valar and the Elves, from the
initial decision (described in The Silmarillion) to summon the Eldar to Valinor, and many other matters besides,
concerning which my father wrote much that falls outside the scope of this book.
The history of Galadriel and Celeborn is so interwoven with other legends and histories тАУ of Lothl├│rien and the
Silvan Elves, of Amroth and Nimrodel, of Celebrimbor and the making of the Rings of Power, of the war against
Sauron and the N├║men├│rean intervention тАУ that it cannot be treated in isolation, and thus this section of the book,
together with its five Appendices, brings together virtually all the unpublished materials for the history of the Second
Age in Middle-earth (and the discussion in places inevitably extends into the Third). It is said in the Tale of Years given
in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings: "Those were the dark years for Men of Middle-earth, but the years of the glory
of N├║menor. Of events in Middle-earth the records are few and brief, and their dates are often uncertain." But even that
little surviving from the "dark years" changed as my father's contemplation of it grew and changed; and I have made no
attempt to smooth away inconsistency, but rather exhibited it and drawn attention to it.
Divergent versions need not indeed always be treated solely as a question of settling the priority of composition;
and my father as "author" or "inventor" cannot always in these matters be distinguished from the "recorder" of ancient
traditions handed down in diverse forms among different peoples through long ages (when Frodo met Galadriel in
L├│rien, more than sixty centuries had passed since she went east over the Blue Mountains from the ruin of Beleriand).
"Of this two things are said, though which is true only those Wise could say who now are gone."
 In his last years my father wrote much concerning the etymology of names in Middle-earth. In these highly
discursive essays there is a good deal of history and legend embedded; but being ancillary to the main philological
purpose, and introduced as it were in passing, it has required extraction. It is for this reason that this part of the book is
largely made up of short citations, with further material of the same kind placed in the Appendices.


PART THREE

I
The Disaster of the Gladden Fields
This is a "late" narrative тАУ by which I mean no more, in the absence of any indication of precise date, than that it
belongs to the final period of my father's writing on Middle-earth, together with "Cirion and Eorl," "The Battles of the
Fords of Isen," "the Dr├║edain," and the philological essays excerpted in "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn," rather
than to the time of the publication of The Lord of the Rings and the years following it. There are two versions: a rough
typescript of the whole (clearly the first stage of composition), and a good typescript incorporating many changes that
breaks off at the point where Elendur urged Isildur to flee (p. 286). The editorial hand has here had little to do.

II
Cirion and Boil and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan
I judge these fragments to belong to the same period as "The Disaster of the Gladden Fields," when my father
was greatly interested in the earlier history of Gondor and Rohan; they were doubtless intended to form parts of a
substantial history, developing in detail the summary accounts given in Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings. The
material is in the first stage of composition, very disordered, full of variants, breaking off into rapid jottings that are in
part illegible.

III
The Quest of Erebor