"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol10)

PART TWO.

THE
ANNALS
OF
AMAN.

THE ANNALS OF AMAN.

The second version (pre-Lord of the Rings) of the Annals of Valinor
(AV 2) has been given in V.109 ff. I mentioned there that the first part
of AV 2 was - years later - covered with emendation and new writing,
and that this new work was the initial drafting of the Annals of Aman.
In this case I shall spend no time on the original draft, apart from some
points arising in it which are mentioned in the notes. It does not
extend very far - not even so far as the bringing forth of the Two
Trees, and so far as it goes it is extremely close to the Annals of Aman;
but my father evidently very soon decided to embark on a wholly new
text.
Of the Annals of Aman, which I shall refer to throughout by the
abbreviation 'AAm', there is a good clear manuscript, with a fair
amount of correction in different 'layers'. Emendations belonging to
the time of composition, or soon after, were carefully made; and the
manuscript gives the impression of being a 'fair copy', a second text.
But while passages of drafting may have been lost, I very much doubt
that a complete 'first text' of the Annals existed (see further p. 121
note 17). The work undoubtedly belongs with the large development
and recasting of the Matter of the Elder Days that my father
undertook when The Lord of the Rings was finished (see p. 3), and it
stands in close relationship to the revision at that time of the
corresponding parts of the Quenta Silmarillion (V.204-43, referred to
throughout as QS), the text that had been abandoned at the end of
1937. Equally clearly it followed the last text of the Ainulindale (D).
There is an amanuensis typescript of AAm bearing some late
emendations and notes, together with its carbon copy bearing a very
few, but different, emendations; I am inclined to date this text to
1958, although the evidence for this is a matter of inference and
suggestion (see pp. 141 - 2, 300). There is also an interesting, divergent
typescript of the early part of the work, made by my father (pp. 64 - 8,
79-80).
I give the whole text of the Annals narrative, incorporating the
emendations made to it; where earlier readings are of interest they are
recorded in the notes. I number the paragraphs for subsequent
reference, and since the text is long I have divided it for convenience
into six sections. The sections are followed by numbered textual notes
(not in the case of section 2), and then by a commentary referenced to
the paragraph-numbers.

The dates of the annals of the Years of the Trees were changed very