Silmarillion

Sweet, sad, Silmarillion. 

The Wikipedia entry refers to The Silmarillion as a mythopoetic collection of stories. I had to look that one up; and I kind of like it. The tone the stories are told in is a little reserved. Some of the early ones, chronologically speaking, read like bible entries. But when you’re talking about the birth of the Earth—or Ea, Tolkien calls it—then I guess biblese seems appropriate. 

As I understand it, Tolkien felt the absence of a traditional English mythology beyond the tall tales of Arthur Pendragon and his ilk. Something of the scope and depth of the kind the Greeks, Romans, and Norse cultures have; stories that underlay their culture and belief systems, and tie them to their spiritual past. A careful look at what Tolkien has done shows that. From his proto-nursery rhymes, to the linguistic underpinnings of English, present in the early languages of the Quendi, the Elves. 

The Silmarillion is Tolkien’s unfinished backstory, the framework of his world building upon which he built the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. But it’s more than that; it’s his notes on dozens of other stories that he didn’t get the chance to finish. Christopher Tolkien did a great job, organizing, editing and releasing many of these work in the decades after his father’s death. Working, as he says he did when his father was alive, as a kind of amanuensis. One can only imagine what kind of works Tolkien may have produced had he had access to modern word processing or even speech-to-text technology. 

Tolkien described the creation of the world as the first collective music of the Ainur, made manifest by the one god Illuvatar, with all of the good, the bad, and the ugly of a first run, still in there. It’s like a proud papa pasting his kid’s first crayon drawing on the fridge... and then asking us all to live there for eons. augh, I don't wanna live in a first draft. Melkor is licking his finger and touching me! But don’t worry, says Eru, the big man, this is like a dry run. We’ll work out the bugs then bang out a fresh one all fixed up!*

What? Yeah, this ones probly gonna suck, for you guys and everyone else down there, but screw it, right? You guys made it, let’s see what happens!**

In here we find everything from the beginning of the world to the creation myths of the sun, the moon, and the stars; from the origins of elves, dwarves, and men, to the flat world theory; from the flood story to the making of dragons; and from the invention of war, to the making of rings. That last one was inspired, by the way, by the same fables and myths that inspired Wagner and his Der Ring des Nibelungen, "The Ring of the Nibelung," often referred to as the Ring Cycle. Tolkien was also inspired by the Edda, as was Wagner. 

 

This isn't the first time I've read this book, and it won't be the last. My last time through was nearly ten years ago. That review is maybe better than this one. If you want to know why you should read The Silmarillion, or even some pointers on how to read it, check out my earlier review.

Either way, read this book.

 

* I'm paraphrasing, nerds

** Yep, paraphrasing again