"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol05)

QS, i.e. Quenta Silmarillion or History of the Silmarils.
These five works form a later group (though I do not mean to imply
that there was any significant gap in time between them and the earlier);
a convenient defining mark of this is that they have Noldor where the
earlier have Noldoli.
Although I have said (IV. 262) that there seems no way of showing
whether the Ambarkanta was earlier or later than the earliest version of
the Annals of Valinor, it now seems clear to me that the Ambarkanta
belongs with the later group of texts. This is shown, I think, by the fact
that its title-page is closely similar in form to those of the Ainulindale' and
the Lhammas (all three bear the Elvish name of the work in tengwar);
moreover the reappearance in the Ambarkanta of Utumna as the name of
Melko's original fortress (see IV. 259 - 60) seems to place it later than
AB 2, which still names it Angband (but AV 2 has Utumna).
On the whole, I would be inclined to place these texts in the sequence
AB 2, AV 2, Lhammas, QS; the Ambarkanta at any rate after AB 2, and
the Ainulindale demonstrably before QS. The Fall of Numenor was
later than the Ambarkanta (see p. g and IV. 261). But a definitive and
demonstrable sequence seems unattainable on the evidence; and the
attempt may in any case be somewhat unreal, for my father did not
necessarily complete one before beginning another. Certainly he had
them all before him, and as he progressed he changed what he had
already written to bring it into line with new developments in the stories
and in the names.

II.
THE LATER ANNALS OF
VALINOR.

The second version of the Annals of Valinor (A V z) is a fluent and legible
manuscript in my father's ordinary handwriting of that time, with very
little alteration during composition and very few subsequent changes in
the early period - as opposed to wholesale rewriting of the earlier annals
in the time after The Lord of the Rings: this being the initial drafting of
the major later work, the Annals of Aman, and at almost all points clearly
distinct from the emendations made many years before.
AV 2 shows no great narrative evolution from AV 1 (IV. 262 ff.), as
that text was emended; on the other hand there are some noteworthy
developments in names and conceptions. A curious feature is the
retention of the original dates between the destruction of the Trees and
the rising of the Sun and Moon, which in AV 1 were greatly accelerated
by later pencilled changes: see IV. 273 - 4 and the commentary on annal
2992 below. Thus for example in AV 1 as originally written, and in AV 2,
some ten years of the Sun (one Valian Year) elapsed between the Battle of
Alqualonde and the utterance of the prophecy of the North, whereas in
AV 1 as emended only one year of the Sun passed between the two
events.
In the brief commentary I treat A V r as including the emendations to
it, fully recorded in IV. 270 - 4, and discussed in the commentary on that
text. Later changes of the early period are recorded in the notes; these are