The Silmarillion
Lúthien Tinúviel 's emblems. | ||
Editor | ||
---|---|---|
Author | J. R. R. Tolkien | |
Illustrator | Christopher Tolkien (maps) | |
Cover artist | J. R. R. Tolkien (device) | |
Country | United Kingdom | |
Language | English | |
Subject | Tolkien's legendarium | |
Genre | ||
Publisher | LC Class PZ3.T576 Si PR6039.O32 | |
Followed by | Unfinished Tales |
The Silmarillion (
The Silmarillion has five parts. The first,
The book shows the influence of many sources, including the Finnish epic Kalevala, Greek mythology in the lost island of Atlantis (as Númenor) and the Olympian gods (in the shape of the Valar, though these also resemble the Norse Æsir).
Because J. R. R. Tolkien died leaving his legendarium unedited, Christopher Tolkien selected and edited materials to tell the story from start to end. In a few cases, this meant that he had to devise completely new material, within the tenor of his father's thought, to resolve gaps and inconsistencies in the narrative,[4] particularly Chapter 22, "Of the Ruin of Doriath".[5]
The Silmarillion was commercially successful, but received generally poor reviews on publication. Scholars found the work problematic, not least because the book is a construction, not authorised by Tolkien himself,
Synopsis
The events described in The Silmarillion, as in
Age |
Duration years |
Silmarillion Section / description |
---|---|---|
Creation | ——— | Ainulindalë (The Music of the Ainur) Valaquenta (on the pantheon of the Valar) |
Years of the Lamps |
33,573 | Quenta Silmarillion Aman and Middle-earth createdThe Valar move to Aman |
Years of the Trees |
14,373 | Quenta Silmarillion |
First Age (cont'd) | 590 | Quenta Silmarillion Elves fight Morgoth in Beleriand
|
Second Age | 3,441 | Akallabêth: Númenor drowned |
Third Age | 3,021 | Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age (summary of The Lord of the Rings) |
Fourth to Sixth Ages | over 6,000 | (To present day, modern life[T 5]) |
Ainulindalë and Valaquenta
Ainulindalë (
Many Ainur accepted, taking physical form and becoming bound to that world. The greater Ainur became the
Valaquenta ("Account of the Valar"[T 6]) describes Melkor, each of the fourteen Valar, and a few of the Maiar. It tells how Melkor seduced many Maiar—including those who would eventually become Sauron and the Balrogs—into his service.
Quenta Silmarillion
Quenta Silmarillion (Quenya: "The History of the Silmarils"
The Valar attempted to fashion the world for Elves and Men, but Melkor continually destroyed their handiwork. After he destroyed the two lamps, Illuin and Ormal, that illuminated the world, the Valar moved to
In Aman, Melkor, who had been held captive by the Valar, was released after feigning repentance.
Fëanor swore an oath of vengeance against Melkor and anyone who withheld the Silmarils from him, even the Valar, and made his seven sons do the same. He persuaded most of the Noldor to pursue Melkor, whom Fëanor renamed Morgoth, to Middle-earth. Fëanor's sons seized ships from the Teleri, killing many of them, and betrayed others of the Noldor, leaving them to make a perilous passage on foot across the dangerous ice of the Helcaraxë. The elves who did not go to Valinor, the Sindar, settled in Beleriand and traded with the dwarves. The Maia Melian set a magical protection, the Girdle of Melian, around the realm of Doriath.
Upon arriving in Middle-earth, the Noldor defeated Melkor's army, though Fëanor was killed by Balrogs. After a period of peace, Melkor attacked the Noldor but was placed in a tight siege, which held for nearly 400 years.
The Noldor built up kingdoms throughout Beleriand. Fëanor's firstborn
After the destruction of the Trees and the theft of the Silmarils, the Valar created the moon and the sun; they were carried across the sky in ships. At the same time, Men awoke; some later arrived in Beleriand and allied themselves to the Elves.
The Noldor, emboldened by the couple's feat, attacked Melkor again, with a great army of Elves,
Huor's son,
Eärendil and Elwing had two children: Elrond and Elros. As descendants of immortal elves and mortal men, they had the choice of lineage: Elrond chose to be an Elf, his brother a Man. Elros became the first king of Númenor, and lived to be 500 years old.
Akallabêth
Akallabêth ("The Downfallen"
The Númenóreans moved against Sauron. They were so powerful that Sauron perceived that he could not defeat them by force. He surrendered himself to be taken as a prisoner to Númenor. There he quickly enthralled the king, Ar-Pharazôn, urging him to seek the immortality that the Valar had apparently denied him, fanning the envy that many of the Númenóreans had begun to hold against the Elves of the West and the Valar. The people of Númenor strove to avoid death, but this only weakened them and sped the gradual diminishing of their lifespans. Sauron urged them to wage war against the Valar to seize the immortality denied them. Ar-Pharazôn raised the mightiest army and fleet Númenor had ever seen, and sailed against Aman. The Valar and Elves of Aman, stricken with grief over their betrayal, called on Ilúvatar for help. When Ar-Pharazôn landed, Ilúvatar destroyed his forces and sent a great wave to submerge Númenor, killing all but those Númenóreans who had remained loyal to the Valar. The world was remade, and Aman was removed beyond the Uttermost West so that Men could not sail there to threaten it.
Sauron's physical manifestation was destroyed in the ruin of Númenor. As a Maia, his spirit returned to Middle-earth, though he was no longer able to take the fair form he had once had. The loyal Númenóreans reached the shores of Middle-earth. Among these survivors were Elendil, their leader and a descendant of Elros, and his sons Isildur and Anárion, who had saved a seedling from Númenor's white tree, the ancestor of that of Gondor. They founded two kingdoms: Arnor in the north and Gondor in the south. Elendil reigned as High King of both kingdoms, but committed the rule of Gondor jointly to Isildur and Anárion. The power of the kingdoms in exile was greatly diminished from that of Númenor, "yet very great it seemed to the wild men of Middle-earth".
Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
The concluding section of the book, comprising about 20 pages, describes the events that take place in Middle-earth during the Second and
Illustrations
The inside title page contains an English inscription written in
Inside the back cover is a
Publication
While the writings were authored by Tolkien himself, they were published posthumously by his son, Christopher. Christopher selected the most complete stories and compiled them into a single volume, in line with his father's desire to create a body of work that spanned from the Creation of the World to the destruction of the One Ring. Due to this circumstance, the volume sometimes exhibits inconsistencies with "The Lord of the Rings" or "The Hobbit," with varying styles and featuring fully developed stories like Beren and Lúthien, or more loosely outlined ones, such as those dedicated to the War of Wrath.[7]
The first edition was brought out in hardback by Allen & Unwin in 1977. HarperCollins published a paperback edition in 1999, and an illustrated edition with colour plates by Ted Nasmith in 2008.[8] It has sold over a million copies, far fewer than The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which have each sold over 100 million copies.[9][10] Its sales were sufficient for it to reach the top of the October 1977 lists. It has since been translated into at least 40 languages.[11]
Concept and creation
Development
Tolkien began working on the stories that would become The Silmarillion in 1914.[T 8] He intended them to become an English mythology that would explain the origins of English history and culture.[T 1] Much of this early work was written while Tolkien, then a British officer returned from France during World War I, was in hospital and on sick leave.[T 9] He completed the first story, "The Fall of Gondolin", in late 1916.[T 10]
He called his collection of nascent stories The Book of Lost Tales.
The first version of The Silmarillion was the "Sketch of the Mythology" written in 1926
In 1937, encouraged by the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien submitted to his publisher
In the late 1950s, Tolkien returned to The Silmarillion, working mostly with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of the work rather than with the narratives. By this time, he had doubts about fundamental aspects of the work that went back to the earliest versions of the stories, and it seems that he felt the need to resolve these problems before he could attempt a "final" version.
Posthumous publication
For several years after his father's death, Christopher Tolkien worked on a Silmarillion narrative. He tried to use the latest writings of his father's and to keep as much internal consistency (and consistency with The Lord of the Rings) as possible, given the many conflicting drafts.
by its posthumous publication nearly a quarter of a century later the natural order of presentation of the whole 'Matter of Middle-earth' was inverted; and it is certainly debatable whether it was wise to publish in 1977 a version of the primary 'legendarium' standing on its own and claiming, as it were, to be self-explanatory. The published work has no 'framework', no suggestion of what it is and how (within the imagined world) it came to be. This I now think to have been an error.[T 22]
In October 1996, Christopher Tolkien commissioned the illustrator Ted Nasmith to create full-page full-colour artwork for the first illustrated edition of The Silmarillion. It was published in 1998, and followed in 2004 by a second edition featuring corrections and additional artwork by Nasmith.[T 23]
Influences
The Silmarillion was influenced by many sources. A major influence was the
The
Scholars such as
Reception
At the time of release, reviews of The Silmarillion were generally negative.
The Silmarillion was criticized for being too serious, lacking the light-hearted moments that were found in The Lord of the Rings and especially The Hobbit.[25][26][27] Time magazine lamented that there was "no single, unifying quest and, above all, no band of brothers for the reader to identify with".[25] Other criticisms included difficult-to-read archaic language[28][29][30] and many difficult and hard-to-remember names.[28][31] Robert M. Adams of The New York Review of Books called The Silmarillion "an empty and pompous bore" and "not a literary event of any magnitude". He suggested that the main reason for its "enormous sales" was the "Tolkien cult" created by the popularity of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and predicted that more people would buy The Silmarillion than would ever read it.[28][32] The School Library Journal called it "only a stillborn postscript" to Tolkien's earlier works.[27] Peter Conrad of the New Statesman stated that "Tolkien can't actually write" and was deficient in imagination.[33][b]
A few reviewers praised the scope of Tolkien's creation.
In a 2019 article, Le Monde called The Silmarillion a "cornerstone of Tolkien's imagination" and "the book by J. R. R. Tolkien that rules them all".[36]
Analysis
A challenge to complete
Academic criticism of Christopher Tolkien's 1977 text concentrated on his father's intention to complete the work: Since he did not do so, his plans for the overall narrative, out of the large collection of draft texts, were not clearly discernible. That in turn meant, argued the Tolkien scholar Charles Noad, that Silmarillion criticism ought first to "evolve approaches to this textual complex as it [was], including Christopher Tolkien's 1977 Silmarillion".[37]
Gergely Nagy writes that The Silmarillion is long both in Middle-earth time and in years of Tolkien's life; and it provides the impression of depth for both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is however in his view "immensely problematic"[3] as it is not a "work" as usually understood: "The Silmarillion" (in roman) is the enormous corpus of documents and drafts that J. R. R. Tolkien built up throughout his creative life, while "The Silmarillion" (in italics) is the 1977 book that Christopher Tolkien edited. The corpus is now published in the twelve volumes of Christopher Tolkien's The History of Middle-earth.[38] The corpus is not a single work but many versions of many works, while the book "is often regarded as not an authentic 'Tolkien text'".[3] Tolkien did not authorise the 1977 text; he did not even write all of it; and he did not define the frame in which it was to be presented.[3] Nagy notes that in 2009, Douglas Charles Kane published a "hugely important resource", his Arda Reconstructed,[39] which defines "exactly from what sources, variants, and with what methods" Christopher Tolkien constructed the 1977 book.[3]
A presented collection
Themes
The Silmarillion is thematically complex. One key theme is its nature as a mythology, with multiple interrelated texts in differing styles;[41] David Bratman has named these as "Annalistic", "Antique" and "Appendical".[42][3] All of these are far from the approachable novelistic styles of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, lacking a single narrative thread, and without the benefit of Hobbits as guides, as Tolkien noted in a letter.[T 29][3]
Another major theme is sensitively
The
Silmarillion element | Biblical element |
---|---|
Ainulindalë | Creation myth |
Ilúvatar |
The One God |
Melkor/Morgoth | Satan |
Elves | Men |
Quenta Silmarillion | Fall of man |
A further theme is that of secondary creation or mythopoeia, linking Tolkien's beliefs about mythology, language and art, including music with his Catholicism: the fictional "Secondary World" can be beautiful because it mirrors God's creation. The Ainulindalë directly describes the creation of Arda as an artistic process, the Music of the Ainur having its own beauty but also awakening the world into being.[3]
Influence in music
In 1998, the German power metal band Blind Guardian released a concept album about the events in the book titled Nightfall in Middle-Earth. All 25 of its tracks detail events from The Silmarillion, and have titles that allude to those events. For example, track 7 is titled "The Curse of Fëanor".[48]
The Norwegian classical composer Martin Romberg has written three full-scale symphonic poems, "Quendi" (2008), "Telperion et Laurelin" (2014), and "Fëanor" (2017), inspired by passages from The Silmarillion. The works were premiered by orchestras in Southern France between 2009 and 2017.[49][50]
The British rock band Marillion[51] and the French black metal band Hirilorn (later, Deathspell Omega)[52] took their names from the book, as did the Swedish death metal band Amon Amarth, which translates to "Mountain of Doom" in Sindarin.[53]
Notes
- ^ Tolkien is widely agreed by scholars to have conducted Mythopoeia, the creation of myths. See that article, and e.g. Nagy's book cited here.[3]
- ^ Additional 1977 criticisms can be read in Wayne G. Hammond's summary "The Critical Response to Tolkien's Fiction".[23]
References
Primary
- ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #131 to Milton Waldman, late 1951, #180
- ^ a b Tolkien 1977, Foreword
- Houghton Mifflin Co., 1955, #211 to Rhona Beare, 14 October 1958
- ^ a b c d Tolkien 1984, Foreword
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #211 to Rhona Beare, 14 October 1958, last footnote
- ^ a b c d Tolkien 1977, Index of Names
- ^ Tolkien 1977, pp. 15, 329
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #115 to Katherine Farrer, 15 June 1948
- Houghton Mifflin Co., 1955, #180 to Mr Thompson, 14 January 1956, #282 to Clyde S. Kilby, 18 December 1965
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #163 to W. H. Auden, 7 June 1955, #165 to Houghton Mifflin Co., 1955
- ^ Tolkien 1984, ch. 1 "The Cottage of Lost Play"
- ^ a b Tolkien 1985, ch. 1 "The Lay of the Children of Húrin"
- ^ a b Tolkien 1986, Preface
- ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #19 to Stanley Unwin, 16 December 1937
- ^ Tolkien 1987, Part 2, ch. 6 "Quenta Silmarillion"
- ^ a b c d Tolkien 1993 Foreword
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #124 to Sir Stanley Unwin, 24 February 1950
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #133 to Rayner Unwin, 22 June 1952
- ^ Tolkien 1984, pp. 433–434
- ^ Tolkien 1980, "Introduction"
- ^ Tolkien 1994, Part 3, ch. 5 "The Tale of Years"
- ^ a b Tolkien 1984, "Foreword"
- OCLC 241016297. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #154 to Naomi Mitchison, 25 September 1954, #227 to Mrs E. C. Ossen Drijver, 5 January 1961
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #107 to Sir Stanley Unwin, 7 December 1946
- ^ Tolkien 1993, "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth"
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #144 to Naomi Mitchison, 25 April 1954
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #141 to Allen & Unwin, 9 October 1953
- Houghton Mifflin, 1956
- ^ Tolkien 1954a, "The Council of Elrond"
Secondary
- ^ Rayner Unwin (1978), in Amon Hen, bulletin of the Tolkien Society, no. 32 p. 13.
- ^ a b "The Locus Index to SF Awards". Archived from the original on 1 December 2008. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-119-65602-9.
- ^ "The Silmarillion". Tolkien Estate.
- ^ Rérolle, Raphaëlle (5 December 2012). "My father's "eviscerated" work – son of Hobbit scribe J.R.R. Tolkien finally speaks out". Le Monde. Archived from the original on 23 April 2017. Retrieved 22 April 2017.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), - ^ Smith, Daniel S. "Silmarillion - Title Page Inscription". Tolkien Online. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
- ^ "O Silmarillion (Livro): Resumo, 5 Ideias, Personagens e Resenha". casadoestudo.com (in Brazilian Portuguese). 11 September 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
- ^ "ti:The Silmarillion au:J. R. R. Tolkien". WorldCat. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
- ^ Wagner, Vit (16 April 2007). "Tolkien proves he's still the king". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 9 March 2011. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
- ^ "Tolkien's Hobbit fetches £60,000". BBC News. 18 March 2008. Retrieved 6 June 2008.
- ^ Bayley, Sian (25 March 2022). "HarperCollins to publish new edition of The Silmarillion illustrated by Tolkien". The Bookseller. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
- OCLC 152581042.
- ^ Flood, Alison (29 October 2014). "Guy Gavriel Kay: 'I learned a lot about false starts from JRR Tolkien'". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-89870-948-3.
- ISBN 978-1-4039-6025-2.
- Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. Houghton Mifflin. p. 86.
- ^ a b Chance 2004, p. 169
- ^ Chance 2001, p. 192
- ISBN 0-86554-851-X.
- ^ Flieger 2005, ch. 1 "The Motives".
- JSTOR 30035484.
- ISBN 978-1-4976-4891-3.
Christopher Tolkien did mention the negative criticism, though, in his foreword to The Book of Lost Tales
- ^ a b Hammond, Wayne G. (1996). "The Critical Response to Tolkien's Fiction". Mythlore. 21 (2).
- ^ "New York Times Adult Hardcover Best Seller Number Ones Listing Fiction By Title". Hawes. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
- ^ a b c Foote, Timothy (24 October 1977), "Middle-earth Genesis", Time, vol. 110, p. 121, archived from the original on 15 December 2008
- ^ a b Gardner, John (23 October 1977). "The World of Tolkien". The New York Times Book Review.
- ^ a b Hurwitz, K. Sue (December 1977). "The Silmarillion (Book Review)". School Library Journal. 24 (4): 66.
- ^ a b c Adams, Robert M. (24 November 1977). "The Hobbit Habit". The New York Review of Books. 24 (19): 22.
- ^ Brookhiser, Richard (9 December 1977). "Kicking the Hobbit". National Review. 29 (48): 1439–1440.
- ^ Jefferson, Margo (24 October 1977), "Fool's Gold", Newsweek, vol. 90, p. 114
- ^ Yamamoto, Judith T. (1 August 1977). "The Silmarillion (Book)". Library Journal. 102 (14): 1680.
- ^ Adams, Robert M. "The Hobbit Habit". New York Review of Books, 24 November 1977. Quoted in Johnson J.R.R. Tolkien: six decades of criticism (1986), p. 162
- ^ Conrad, Peter (23 September 1977). "The Babbit". New Statesman. Vol. 94. p. 408.
- Horn Book Magazine. Vol. 54. p. 196.
- ^ Batchelor, John Calvin (10 October 1977). "Tolkien Again: Lord Foul and Friends Infest a Morbid but Moneyed Land". The Village Voice.
- ^ Thévenet, Elisa (28 October 2019). "'Le Silmarillion' : aux origines du livre de J. R. R. Tolkien qui les gouverne tous" ['The Silmarillion': On the origins of the book by J. R. R. Tolkien that rules them all]. Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 17 January 2020.
- OCLC 41315400.
- ^ Tolkien 1983–2002.
- ISBN 978-0-9801496-3-0.
- ^ Flieger 2005, pp. 87–118.
- ^ Flieger 2005, pp. 55–77, and throughout.
- OCLC 41315400.
- ^ Flieger 1983.
- ^ Flieger 1983, pp. 44–49.
- ^ Flieger 1983, pp. 6–61, 89–90, 144-145 and passim.
- ^ a b c Shippey 2005, pp. 267–268.
- ^ Rosebury 2008, p. 113.
- ISBN 978-0786456604.
- ^ "Concert Review Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice 2017, Fëanor". France 3. 29 September 2017.
- ^ "Martin Romberg at Orchestre régional Avignon-Provence". Orchestre régional Avignon-Provence. Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ Silveyra, Marcelo (2002). "Chapter 1 – Writing Down The Script". Progfreaks. Archived from the original on 4 June 2008.
- ^ "Hirilorn" (PDF). Metal-Archives. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
Hasjarl and Shaxul teamed up in Deathspell Omega after the split of Hirilorn in 1999. "Hirilorn" was a large beech tree used as a prison for the princess Luthien in JRR Tolkien's Silmarillion.
- ^ "Tolkien: Quem Foi, Biografia, Frases, Livros e Pensamento". casadoestudo.com (in Brazilian Portuguese). 23 April 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0-35-865298-4.
- ISBN 978-0-8131-9020-4.
- Chance, Jane (2004). Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader. ISBN 978-0-8131-2301-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8028-1955-0.
- Flieger, Verlyn (2005). Interrupted Music: The Making Of Tolkien's Mythology. ISBN 978-0-87338-824-5.
- ISBN 978-1-60413-146-8.
- ISBN 978-0261102750.
- OCLC 9552942.
- ISBN 978-0-395-25730-2.
- ISBN 978-0-395-29917-3.
- Tolkien, J. R. R. (1983–2002). ISBN 978-0-00-825984-6.
- ISBN 0-395-35439-0.
- ISBN 0-395-39429-5.
- ISBN 978-0-395-42501-5.
- ISBN 0-395-45519-7.
- ISBN 0-395-68092-1.
- ISBN 0-395-71041-3.