Abhijeet Borkar recommends role-playing reading The Silmarillion as though you're a 16 year old elf having a history lesson in Rivendell. Stephen Phillips sent me the audiobook, insisting that it should be heard, not read. Both are correct. The narration by Martin Shaw (a.k.a. Judge John Deed http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0789864/) is just swoon-inducing. At one point I stopped being able to read scientific papers because I kept getting Shaw's narration voice in my head, which was no bad thing except that it's very distracting. Honestly he could be talking about his favourite textile patterns and I'll still be listening. Why isn't there a Shaw-themed text-to-speech program ? I want one.
But he isn't talking about his favourite textile patterns here, he's talking about elves and dark lords and dragons and epic tales of darkness and woe. It's a glorious, bizarre book, at times as dramatic as anything you'll ever read; at other times like the really boring bits in the Bible ("and so-and-so begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so the yellow-bearded, who was afterwards called Milibobolovian by the Eldar but Nenugaranthian The Unwieldy by mortal men...."). It really does help to pretend it's a dramatised history lesson, not a story.
And I have to say that Tolkein should have just hired external help for names. Yes, I know he was a linguistic expert, but I don't care : he was bloody rubbish* at naming things ! I completely gave up trying to remember which elf with a silly name beginning with an F he was on about. Let's not even mention Gothmog. I mean, for the lord of the Balrogs we get a gothic cat, for heaven't sake.
* With notable exceptions.
What this needs is a full-on illustrated companion. A full atlas showing the routes of various people's over the many ages of Arda. Family trees of the major families. Short biopics of every character so that I can remember who the hell everyone is. That sort of thing.
I had to listen to (pretty much) everything twice to understand what the hell was going on. But now I've finished it, and this displeases me because it's bloody good. Can't help but think that George R. R. Martin is nothing but a hack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cewrXmpA2hc
I agree with most of the stuff you've said. Most of the criticism that you have mentioned was also on the mind of Tolkien (except names of course 😁) and he tried rewriting the same story many times, in many different formats, but never finished any (even this version, the Published Silmarillion was completed by his son).
ReplyDeleteI wish he had a better editor/someone to push him to finish all the stories properly, so that he could write all these stories in the expansive style of the LotR.
Also, re: names, you should definitely read the History of Middle Earth for some fantastic names, such as Tivildo Prince of cats, Thu and Trotter.
ReplyDeleteI had a brief correspondence with Christopher Tolkien not long after his father's death, through the good offices of the Marquette University's Special Collections here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was then in France, going through his father's trove of papers, despairing of ever getting things in order.
ReplyDeleteThat genealogy would have been a monstrous undertaking. Middle Earth was like those Da Vinci paintings, especially Virgin on the Rocks, with the sfumato landscapes. And like Da Vinci, who said "art is never finished, only abandoned", JRRT was never done with his backstory.
I used to joke with LOTR people who were put off by Silmarillion , saying "It's like Moby Dick; if you can get through all that bit about the ship's rigging, it turns into a fine story."
The names JRRT gave his creations all had meanings. Tolkien saw the need for an epic in English, so he wrote one.
Sindarin: goth == dread , mog/mawg == oppression. Primitive Elvish.
The problem is that mog = cat. This has been beaten in to me over many, many years.
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And also :
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Unlike Moby Dick, though, which needs to have whole swathes cut out, burned and their ashes scattered to the four winds (or possibly fed to a whale in the interests of poetic justice), the Silmarillion feels like it needs to be about ten times longer.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor YES!! The Silmarillion is in a short summary format since the 1930- Quenta Silmarillion version, and some of the stories did not get any attention or rewrite attempt since early 20s.
ReplyDeleteMog: (n) a beastly cat. Etym. Etruscan moggos, mythical, a furry pig, a bed lump.
ReplyDelete.. for those who want JRRT's rueful perspective on the mess he knew perfectly well he was making with his legendaria:
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Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword also sounds better read aloud than read silently.
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