"GL1" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol05)

the former was finished by the autumn of 1937, and the latter was
submitted, so far as it went, to Allen and Unwin in November of that
year (see 1 II.364).
The significance of the last sentence in the passage just cited is not
entirely clear. When my father said 'But I found my real interest was only
in the upper end, the Akallabeth or Atalantie' he undoubtedly meant that
he had not been inspired to write the 'intervening' parts, in which the
father and son were to appear and reappear in older and older phases of
Germanic legend; and indeed The Lost Road stops after the introductory
chapters and only takes up again with the Numenorean story that was to
come at the end. Very little was written of what was planned to lie
between. But what is the meaning of 'so I brought all the stuff I had
written on the originally unrelated legends of Numenor into relation with
the main mythology'? My father seems to be saying that, having found
that he only wanted to write about Numenor, he therefore and only then
(abandoning The Last Road) appended the Numenorean material to 'the
main mythology', thus inaugurating the Second Age of the World. But
what was this material? He cannot have meant the Numenorean matter
contained in The Lost Road itself, since that was already fully related to
'the main mythology'. It must therefore have been something else, already
existing when The last Road was begun, as Humphrey Carpenter assumes
in his Biography (p. 170): 'Tolkien's legend of Numenor... was prohably
composed some time before the writing of "The Lost Road", perhaps in
the late nineteen-twenties or early thirties.' But, in fact, the conclusion
seems to me inescapable that my father erred when he said this.
The original rough workings for The Lost Road are extant, but they are
very rough, and do not form a continuous text. There is one complete
manuscript, itself fairly rough and heavily emended in different stages;
and a professional typescript that was done when virtually all changes
had been made to the manuscript. f The typescript breaks off well before

sliding, falling down', of which atalantie is a normal (in Q) noun-formation,
should so much resemble Atlantis. [Footnote to the letter.] - See the
Etymologies, stem TALAT. The very early Elvish dictionary described in I. 246 has
a verb talte 'incline (transitive), decline, shake at foundations, make totter, etc.'
and an adjective talta 'shaky, wobbly, tottering - sloping, slanting.'
+'This typescript was made at Allen and Unwin, as appears from a letter from
Stanley Unwin dated 30th November 1937: The Lost Road: We have had this
typed and are returning the original herewith. The typed copy will follow when
we have had an opportunity of reading it.' See further p. 73 note 14.

the point where the manuscript comes to an end, and my father's
emendations to it were very largely corrections of the typist's errors,
which were understandably many; it has therefore only slight textual
value, and the manuscript is very much the primary text.
The Lost Road breaks off finally in the course of a conversation during
the last days of Numenor between Elendil and his son Herendil; and in
this Elendil speaks at length of the ancient history: of the wars against
Morgoth, of Earendel, of the founding of Numenor, and of the coming

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