The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ & consequent opening up of new fields of ideas, should more than compensate for any blunting of our capacity for imaginative appreciation of certain aspects of nature, as compared with the ancients’ (Exeter College archives).

      26 November 1919 In the evening, Tolkien attends a meeting of the Exeter College Essay Club at which E.C. Dickinson reads a paper, The Aesthetic Value of the Ballad. As Critic, Tolkien opens the discussion, touching on the origin of the ballad, and maintains that because of a different origin, the so-called modern ballad is not really a ballad at all.

      6 December 1919 Michaelmas Full Term ends.

      Winter 1919 Tolkien will later write in his diary that this winter ‘found me still pegging away at tutoring in Oxford, still with the glossary [to Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose] hanging over me’ (quoted by Christopher Tolkien in private correspondence).

1920

      1920s (by June 1927) Tolkien writes four poems inspired by medieval bestiaries: *Fastitocalon, Iumbo, or ye Kinde of ye Oliphaunt (*Oliphaunt), Monoceros, the Unicorn, and Reginhardus, the Fox.

      1920s or 1930s Tolkien writes a poem, Vestr um haf (Old Norse ‘west over sea’). Much later, he will revise it as *Bilbo’s Last Song (at the Grey Havens).

      c. 1920–c. 1924 On one or more occasions during this period Tolkien revises the first section of the Eärendel poem he had written in ?late 1914. In the latest text he gives it the title The Bidding of the Minstrel, from the Lay of Eärendel.

      18 January 1920 Hilary Full Term begins.

      10 March 1920 In the evening, Tolkien attends a meeting of the Exeter College Essay Club and reads a shortened version of The Fall of Gondolin. Present in the audience are *Nevill Coghill (see note) and *H.V.D. ‘Hugo’ Dyson, who will become friends and fellow members of the *Inklings. Tolkien has worked hard on an introduction: his notes have many deletions and hesitations. In one deleted passage he mentions that his ‘cycle’ (mythology) concerns ‘the coming of the mariner Eriol to the Lonely Island’. He declares that

      the conventional apology of readers for their papers was never more due to the Club than tonight; but I must plead circumstances and a Secretary too strong for me. Circumstances have prevented me writing a critical paper; and the Secretary who had somehow entrapped me into ‘reading something’ this term, would not release me from my promise. Therefore I must read something already written, and in desperation I have fallen back on this Tale. It has, of course, never seen the light before but it was not written maliciously for your annoyance but in past days for my own amusement. A complete cycle of events in an Elfinesse of my own imagining has for some time past grown up (rather than been constructed) in my mind. Some of the episodes have been scribbled down (at great length – a length due to their interest for myself which can hardly be shared). This tale is not the best of them but it is the only one that has so far been revised at all and insufficient as that revision has been, I dare read aloud. It will take a longish time – please depart when you want to: perhaps (I may console myself by reflecting) too long for anyone to be left to tear me to pieces at the end. I have not the time or cheek to give a resume of the cycle so that you must please bear with the incidental allusions to other tales. [courtesy of, and corrected by, Christopher Tolkien; cf. Unfinished Tales, p. 5]

      But the members of the Essay Club enjoy the reading. The Club Secretary will record in the minutes:

      As a discovery of a new mythological background Mr Tolkein’s [sic] matter was exceedingly illuminating and marked him out as a staunch follower of tradition, a treatment indeed in the manner of such typical Romantics as William Morris, George Macdonald, de la Motte-Fouquet [sic, for Fouqué] etc. We gathered likewise that the reader’s acquaintanceship with Scandinavian saga and legend was not a little…. The battle of the contending forces of good and evil as represented by the Gongothlim [i.e. Gondothlim] and the followers of Melco [i.e. Melko] was very graphically and astonishingly told, combined with a wealth of attendance to detail interesting in extreme. At the conclusion as the hour had grown very late the president moved the omission of discussion, and the society adjourned after the customary vote of thanks to host and reader. [Exeter College archives; cf. Letters, pp. 445–6]

      Although Tolkien’s ‘apology’ states that The Fall of Gondolin is the only one of his tales ‘that has so far been revised at all’, this is not strictly true: the tales of Beren and Lúthien and of Túrin Turambar had also been rewritten. It may be that Tolkien means recently revised; an extant slip giving directions for the shortening of The Fall of Gondolin when delivered orally is almost certainly related to this reading, and alterations on similar slips show developments in the mythology subsequent to the work apparently completed in June (The Book of Lost Tales).

      ?March or later 1920 Tolkien writes a short prose work, Ælfwine of England (*Eriol and Ælfwine), in part reusing the paper of letters sent to him in February 1920. ‘Ælfwine’ (‘Elf-friend’) now, for a time, is the name of the mariner of his tales, who was still called ‘Eriol’ in the deleted introductory remark to The Fall of Gondolin mentioned above (10 March 1920). A related plot-outline for the work dates from around the same time, and not long after writing the first version of Ælfwine of England Tolkien rewrites it, introducing much new matter. ‘It seems likely that Ælfwine of England was to be the beginning of a complete rewriting of the Lost Tales’ (Christopher Tolkien, The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 322). Two outline schemes for The Book of Lost Tales, in both of which the mariner is called Ælfwine, apparently also belong to this time: one scheme is cursory though not without additions, while the other seems to be a projected (but unrealized) revision of the Lost Tales, preserving their general plan but with notes that some tales should be abridged or recast, with the names of certain characters changed and Tol Eressëa no longer identified with England, and with the role of the mariner diminished.

      13 March 1920 Hilary Full Term ends.

      17 March 1920 Tolkien replies to a request from a Miss Duncan at Somerville College, Oxford for guidance on questions that she might face in the Old English paper of her examination. He sends her fifty possible questions, many taken from past papers. He remarks that he hopes some time to produce a select bibliography, but will have no time to do so in the forthcoming vacation.

      25 April 1920 Trinity Full Term begins.

      Trinity Term 1920 Tolkien teaches a class on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Saturdays at 10.00 a.m. at 40 Broad Street, beginning 1 May. See note. – He is an honorary member of the Exeter College Essay Club.

      11 May 1920 Oxford University grants women full membership. They are now eligible for all degrees except the Bachelor of Divinity and the Doctor of Divinity. Attempts to exclude women dons from faculty boards and from acting as examiners are overwhelmingly defeated.

      End of May 1920 Tolkien ceases to work for the Oxford English Dictionary.

      June 1920 Tolkien’s poem The Happy Mariners (first composed in July 1915) is published in the Stapeldon Magazine for June 1920, with only a few minor changes from the version rewritten on 9 September 1915. – Probably some time this month, informed of the opening by Kenneth Sisam, Tolkien applies for the post of Reader in English Language at the University of *Leeds.

      Late June 1920 Tolkien СКАЧАТЬ