"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol12)

writer. These texts are, very clearly, entirely ab initio; they are not
developments and refinements of earlier versions, and they were not
themselves subsequently developed and refined. The ideas, the new
narrative departures, historical formulations, and etymological con-
structions, here first appear in written form (which is not to say, of
course, that they were not long in the preparing), and in that form,
essentially, they remain. The texts are never obviously concluded, and
often end in chaotic and illegible or unintelligible notes and jottings.
Some of the writing was decidedly experimental: a notable example is
the text that I have called The Problem of Ros, on which my father
wrote 'Most of this fails', on account of a statement which had
appeared in print, but which he had overlooked (see p. 371). As in that
case, almost all of this work was etymological in its inspiration, which
to a large extent accounts for its extremely discursive nature; for in no
study does one thing lead to another more rapidly than in etymology,
which also of its nature leads out of itself in the attempt to find expla-
nations beyond the purely linguistic evolution of forms. In the essay
on the river-names of Gondor that of the Gwathlo led to an account
of the vast destruction of the great forests of Minhiriath and Ened-
waith by the Numenorean naval builders in the Second Age, and its
consequences (Unfinished Tales pp. 261-3); from the name Gilrain
in the same essay arose the recounting of the legend of Amroth and
Nimrodel (ibid. pp. 240 - 3).
In the three texts given here will be found many things that are
wholly 'new', such as the long sojourn of the People of Beor and the
People of Hador on opposite sides of the great inland Sea of Rhun in
the course of their long migration into the West, or the sombre legend
of the twin sons of Feanor. There will also be found many things that
run counter to what had been said in earlier writings. I have not
attempted in my notes to make an analysis of every real or apparent
departure of this kind, or to adduce a mass of reference from earlier
phases of the History; but I have drawn attention to the clearest and
most striking of the discrepancies. At this time my father continued
and intensified his practice of interposing notes into the body of the
text as they arose, and they are abundant and often substantial. In the
texts that follow they are numbered in the same series as the editorial
notes and are collected at the end of each, the editorial notes being dis-
tinguished by placing them in square brackets.

X.

OF DWARVES AND MEN.

This long essay has no title, but on a covering page my father wrote:
An extensive commentary and history of the interrelation of the
languages in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, arising
from consideration of the Book of Mazarbul, but attempting
to clarify and where necessary to correct or explain the references
to such matters scattered in The Lord of the Rings, especially in
Appendix F and in Faramir's talk in LR II.