"GL1" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

THE FIRST PHASE.

I.
A LONG-EXPECTED PARTY.

(i)
The First Version.

The original written starting-point of The Lord of the Rings - its 'first
germ', as my father scribbled on the text long after - has been preserved:
a manuscript of five pages entitled A long-expected party. I think that it
must have been to this (rather than to a second, unfinished, draft that
soon followed it) that my father referred when on 19 December 1937 he
wrote to Charles Furth at Allen and Unwin: 'I have written the first
chapter of a new story about Hobbits - "A long expected party".' Only
three days before he had written to Stanley Unwin:
I think it is plain that... a sequel or successor to The Hobbit is called
for. I promise to give this thought and attention. But I am sure you will
sympathize when I say that the construction of elaborate and consis-
tent mythology (and two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the
Silmarils are in my heart. So that goodness knows what will happen.
Mr Baggins began as a comic tale among conventional Grimm's fairy-
tale dwarves, and got drawn into the edge of it - so that even Sauron
the terrible peeped over the edge. And what more can hobbits do?
They can be comic, but their comedy is suburban unless it is set
against things more elemental.
From this it seems plain that on the 16th of December he had not only not
begun writing, but in all probability had not even given thought to the
substance of 'a new story about Hobbits'. Not long before he had parted
with the manuscript of the third version of The Silmarillion to Allen and
Unwin; it was unfinished, and he was still deeply immersed in it. In a
postscript to this letter to Stanley Unwin he acknowledged, in fact, the
return of The Silmarillion (and other things) later on that day. None-
theless, he must have begun on the new story there and then.

When he first put pen to paper he wrote in large letters 'When M', but
he stopped before completing the final stroke of the M and wrote instead
'When Bilbo...' The text begins in a handsome script, but the writing
becomes progessively faster and deteriorates at the end into a rapid
scrawl not at all points legible. There are a good many alterations to the
manuscript. The text that follows represents the original form as I judge
it to have been, granting that what is 'original' and what is not cannot be
perfectly distinguished. Some changes can be seen to have been made at
the moment of writing, and these are taken up into the text; but others

are characteristic anticipations of the following version, and these are
ignored. In any case it is highly probable that my father wrote the
versions of this opening chapter in quick succession. Notes to this
version follow immediately on the end of the text (p. 17).