Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
- Publisher: Del Rey
- Edition: Paperback (April 1992)
- Average Customer Rating:
Book of Lost Tales one
- This is a very difficult story to follow sometimes but rewarding if you are a Tolkien nut like me.It leads to alot of insight as to how he formulated his stories in the beginning and what his ideas were also how they evolved into the last stories which are the ones most of us read anyway I think its great!
`Tell me,' said Eriol, `for I long to learn, what was the Music of the Ainur?'
- When the English seafarer Eriol (or Ælfwine) sails across the westward ocean, he discovers the Elvish island of Tol Eressea. Eriol is enchanted by the magical land and welcomed by the blessed Elves, who reveal to him the true history of Arda, the World. This framework links various myths; between each tale Eriol reacts and requests greater knowledge.
Tolkien originally intended to release his mythologies of Middle Earth as the Book of Lost Tales, but the project never reached a publishable state. After publishing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's popularity grew, and he returned to his myths of Elder Days. He spent the rest of his life revising and linking these legends, which he intended to publish as the Silmarillion. Along the way he abandoned the narrative framework of Eriol's sojourn upon the Lonely Isle.
Tolkien died before completing the Silmarillion, leaving behind a chaotic collection of material. His stories were written out of order upon notebooks and loose papers. Over the years, much of the penciled writing became unreadable. Often multiple drafts of a story were written, and there was no indication as to which draft was made last.
J.R.R. Tolkien left a difficult task for his successor. Fortunately, his diligent son Christopher Tolkien was up to the challenge. With scholarly precision he delved into the myths and completed his father's work on The Silmarillion. He had to choose between many conflicting versions of the legends. Later he wrote The Book of Lost Tales to reveal what he had left out and to shed some light on his father's intentions.
Lost Tales shows the evolution of many parts in The Silmarillion. Often Lost Tales has much greater detail - it details the powers and limitations of the gods, as well as the construction of the ships of the Sun and Moon - while the Silmarillion gives briefer, more poetic descriptions, maintaining an air of mystery. Early drafts are often shockingly different; for instance, dwarves were evil beings allied with Orcs, and Beren was an Elf. In the revived Eriol story, Tolkien explicitly links Middle Earth to our Earth; for example, he spells out the origins of England and Ireland and mentions Rome, Babylon, and Troy. Each revelation is fascinating.
J.R.R. Tokien's dedication to his work becomes increasingly evident as Christopher details the evolution of his legendarium. J.R.R. would change a character's name multiple times within a draft, redraft with a new name, and then revert to the original. A single syllable of a hero's name had great significance. Each name was derived from an appropriate word, and for Tolkien language was inseparable from mythology. The lexicon included in the book demonstrates his devotion to perfecting aesthetic and consistent languages.
This amazing book will appeal to a narrow range of people: namely, those who have read and thoroughly appreciated The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and perhaps Unfinished Tales. It is not meant for casual readers. It is a very different work than The Lord of the Rings, with a slower pace. Patient Tolkien fans will love the father's beautiful prose and the son's careful analysis. The Book of Lost Tales is an astounding creation.
The World on the other side of Tolkien's looking glass
- `The Book of Lost Tales, Part One and Part Two' by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by son, Christopher Tolkien, is, according to the editor's Foreword, some of the very earliest works written by Tolkien on the mythology of Middle Earth. Many, it is stated, were drafted in the 1920s, nearly ten years before the start of `The Hobbit'.
This is an important fact, as it means that they were not written to `fill in' details of references made in either `The Hobbit' or `The Lord of the Rings' (LOTR). It means that both of these published novels were narratives of a preexisting world of Middle Earth with a history stretching back thousands of years, to the very creation of the world. This supports the sense of historical depth one has when you read both novels. Early in the Foreword, editor Tolkien addresses this very aspect and the danger that the great depth of history felt in the novels may not transfer to documents that lay out that history. I personally do not sense that danger when I read these works. The intellectual effort required to understand the text and tie it together with all the Tolkienania that has gone before is more than enough to keep me busy. This is the basis of my title for this review, `Fantasy for Grown-ups'.
My experience is that neither `The Hobbit' nor `LOTR' books or movies had a strong appeal to the same audience as the literal and virtual comic book works such as Spiderman, Superman, Batman, Star Wars, Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), or even Indiana Jones. The world in which Middle Earth is set is much more subtly different from our world or the world of `Long ago, and far, far, away...' Even in `The Hobbit' one gets hints that the world of Middle Earth is not our comfortable sphereical planet with a different geography but the same physics, chemistry, and biology. One gets the sense that while the great `Gandalf the Gray' may be called a `wizard', he is not a wizard in the same sense as Merlin or a wizard of `Dungeons and Dragons'.
The most important difference between Middle Earth and our world is that this continent is in the center of a great disk surrounded by seas across which are the undying lands including the Elven island of Eressea and Valinor. The next major difference is that there are beings, primarily elves, which walk the earth and which are literally immortal. That is, they cannot die by natural causes. They can, however, be killed in battle, as seen in `The Two Towers' movie with the death of the elven archer allies helping to defend the Hornburg with Aragorn, Theoden, and the Rohrrim. It is also interesting to see that Gandalf possesses an immortality of an entirely different order, as he survives the great battle with the Balrog in the mines of Moria, a battle that would have killed any ordinary immortal elf.
It would have been interesting to see Tolkien deal with immortality in the same way that John Boorman did in his script for the movie `Zardoz', an easily underestimated movie. (Oddly enough, Gandalf is most like the characterization of Merlin in Boorman's movie, `Excalibur').
Another big difference is that the physics of this world is different from our world. Light, for example, simply does not behave like our notions of light. It is much more like a liquid that can be captured in the Silmarils or in the vial give by Galadrial to Frodo in Lorien. This is part of the reason neither Gandalf nor any other character, even Sauron, seems to use much `magic'. What may appear to us as magic is simply bending the different laws of physics to the will of the magician, as Sauron does in creating the One Ring.
These two books are yet another step removed from the `popular fiction' of `LOTR'. `The Silmarillion' was one step removed in being much more like Hesiod's mythology than Homer's epics. The `Unfinished Tales' were another step removed in that they were close to being stories with extensive editorial annotations. These two volumes, which are really one work in two books are reconstructions of even cruder material. Reading them may be about as much fun as reading Frazier's `The Golden Bough'.
Now, reading `The Golden Bough' can be fun for a particularly intellectual interest, but it takes just a bit extra to gain the same pleasure from these works, as they are not stories from a historical mythology which may explain genuine primitive thought and beliefs. They are make believe! They just happen to be of a type of make believe which is more different than just about any other fiction you can imagine.
The greatest insight I get from these myths on the early history of Middle Earth is on the origins of Tom Bombadil and the Ents. While neither is mentioned, there are ample hints that both are beings who sprung up from the bones of Middle Earth itself, independent of any efforts by the Valar. This explains the total difference between Bombadil and every other character in `LOTR' aside from Treebeard and the Ents. The Elves, the Wizards, Sauron, dragons, and probably dwarves, hobbits, and men all arose out of immigrants from `The Undying Lands' or were created by the Valar.
I find the single most interesting character in these pre `LOTR' stories to be the Noldor (elven) leader Feanor. He seems to have the air of Prometheus about him in that he defies the gods (the Valar) without being an evil force like Melkor / Morgoth or Sauron. When Feanor is not on the stage, my interest drops several notches.
These are the first two volumes of the twelve volume `The History of Middle Earth'. While several of the volumes seem independent, I would not venture to read any of them without having read `The Silmarillion'. They will make very little sense without this background in hand.
|
