"GL1" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol05)

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
mean 'one loyal to the Valar, content with the bliss and prosperity
within the limits prescribed' and 'one loyal to friendship with the
High-elves'. It started with a father-son affinity between Edwin and
Elwin of the present, and was supposed to go back into legendary time
by way of an Eadwine and AElfwine of circa A.D.918, and Audoin and
Alboin of Lombardic legend, and so to the traditions of the North Sea
concerning the coming of corn and culture heroes, ancestors of kingly
lines, in boats (and their departure in funeral ships). One such Sheaf,
or Shield Sheafing, can actually be made out as one of the remote
ancestors of the present Queen. In my tale we were to come at last to
Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in Numenor, when it
fell under the domination of Sauron. Elendil 'elf-friend' was the
founder of the Exiled kingdoms in Arnor and Gondor. But I found my

(* This is Akallabeth, The Downfall of Numenor, posthumously published in
The Silmarillion, pp. 259-82.)



real interest was only in the upper end, the Akallabeth or Atalantie*
('Downfall' in Numenorean and Quenya), so I brought all the stuff I
had written on the originally unrelated legends of Numenor into
relation with the main mythnlogy.
I do not know whether evidence exists that would date the conversation
that led to the writing of Out of the Silent Planet and The Last Road, but