The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1. Christina Scull

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СКАЧАТЬ living in the woods; the killing one by one of Finrod and Beren’s companions ‘is strongly reminiscent of the sons of King Völsung being killed one each night until only Sigmund survives’; Sauron’s shape-shifting recalls the Norse god Loki and the Greek Nereus; Carcharoth biting off Beren’s hand recalls Fenris Wolf and Tyr; Huan plays the same role as the magical helper in many fairy-tales; Lúthien in her pleading before Mandos ‘reenacts the descent into the underworld of Orpheus in Greek mythology or of Ishtar in Babylonian to recover a loved one, but with a happier result: much as in the Middle English *Sir Orfeo …’ (p. 265).

      In another essay, ‘“And She Named Her Own Name”: Being True to One’s Word in Tolkien’s Middle-earth’, Tolkien Studies 2 (2005), Richard C. West points out that whereas in early versions of the story both Lúthien and Beren occasionally lie, and this is justified by the narrator, in the latest version Lúthien’s speaks only truth. He connects this with a common theme in Tolkien’s fiction, ‘that it is dangerous to use the weapons employed by evil even with good intentions’ (p. 4).

      Randel Helms briefly discusses the development of the Beren and Lúthien story in his Tolkien and the Silmarils (1981), arguing that ‘its chief written source’ is the tale of ‘Culwch and Olwen’ in The Mabinogion (p. 15). Granted, as Carl Phelpstead does in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), that ‘Tolkien’s use of Culhwch and Olwen seems incontrovertible’ (p. 73), Helms’s assertion is perhaps too bold, considering the number of other possible sources, not to mention original invention by Tolkien.

Beren and Lúthien. Edition of texts relating the story of Beren and Lúthien from *‘The Silmarillion’, edited by *Christopher Tolkien. First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins, London, and in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, in June 2017.

      The core of this book is not a single or composite telling of the story of Beren and Lúthien, but a collection of texts or extracts arranged to show its evolution over a long period. Christopher Tolkien provides a biographical and literary introduction (‘Notes on the Elder Days’), as well as a framework, in which he introduces each text and briefly gives relevant information about its source and how it fits into the wider mythology. (In the Reader’s Guide the development of the story of Beren and Lúthien is discussed mainly in the preceding article, *‘Of Beren and Lúthien’, and partly in *‘Of the Ruin of Doriath’ and *‘The Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath’. Each of these begins with a summary of the chapter in *The Silmarillion, then the story as told in *The Book of Lost Tales, followed by an account, text by text, of what was changed or added over the years. Each of the component texts also has its own entry in the present book.)

      SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS

      Two extracts from the *Quenta Noldorinwa (1930) (*The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 88, 85) describe the making of the Silmarils and the meeting of Lúthien’s parents, Melian the fay and Thingol, one of the leaders of the Elves. An extract from *The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (pp. 9, 10) then tells how Gwendeling and Tinwelint (Melian and Thingol) established a guarded realm; and this is followed by the complete ‘Tale of Tinúviel’ from The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (pp. 10–41).

      A synopsis of the story as it appeared in the *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926; The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 24–5) illustrates that Thû the hunter had now replaced Tevildo, and Beren was now a man, son of Barahir, a chieftain of Men. Next, an extract from the *Lay of Leithian (Canto II, lines 151–400; *The Lays of Beleriand, pp. 162–8) tells how Beren and Barahir’s refuge was betrayed to Morgoth by Gorlim, one of their companions, and how Beren, absent at the time of the attack, recovered a ring taken from his dead father’s hand.

      From the Quenta Noldorinwa, one extract (The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 104–6) explains the importance of the ring of Barahir, how the chieftain saved the life of a Noldorin prince, Felagund, who swore undying friendship and aid in time of need, and how Felagund founded the stronghold of Nargothrond; while a second (pp. 109–10) tells the story of Beren and Lúthien from the beginning, including Beren’s request to Felagund for aid, as far as the imprisonment of Beren, Felagund, and their companions by Thû. Another extract from the Lay of Leithian (Canto VI, lines 1678–1923 and Canto VII, lines 1924–2237; The Lays of Beleriand, pp. 212–18, 224–32) relates the same events at greater length and in more detail.

      The story first told in the Quenta Noldorinwa is now taken up until its end, with Lúthien becoming mortal so that she would not be separated from Beren (The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 110–15); and the story told in the Lay of Leithian (Cantos VIII–XIV; The Lays of Beleriand, pp. 235ff.) is then continued to the point where Tolkien abandoned the poem in 1931, just as Beren and Lúthien flee Angband and the wolf, Carcharoth, devours the Silmaril in Beren’s hand. This is accompanied by a short separate text, headed ‘a piece from the end of the poem’, which seems to refer to the Halls of the Dead in Valinor (The Lays of Beleriand, pp. 308–9).

      At this stage Tolkien turned his efforts to a new, longer prose version of the ‘Silmarillion’, entitled *Quenta Silmarillion. After he had written the tale of Beren and Lúthien as far as the point at which Felagund gives his crown to Orodreth, he stopped because of its length and made a rough draft of the full story; and on the basis of this draft he made a second, shorter version which had reached the death of Beren by mid-December 1937, when Tolkien laid aside ‘The Silmarillion’ and began *The Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien draws on both versions for the text in an explanatory bridging passage, while a brief extract from the published Silmarillion (pp. 182–3) brings Beren and Lúthien back to the borders of Doriath.

      Christopher then looks back on the evolution of the story and raises one aspect he believes was of primary significance to his father: the fates of Beren and Lúthien after Beren’s death. He cites again their fates when both were Elves in The Book of Lost Tales, adding information about their return to Middle-earth (The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 40), and contrasting this with the fate decreed for Elves in ‘The Coming of the Valar’ (The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 76) hinted at in the separate piece from the end of the Lay of Leithian. He discusses later ideas of the fate of the Elves and the choices offered to Beren and Lúthien in later versions of their story, citing The Silmarillion (p. 42), the Quenta Noldorinwa (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 115), and the Quenta Silmarillion (draft for the ‘short’ version of text, in *The Lost Road and Other Writings, pp. 303–4), and finishes with a summary of the version published in The Silmarillion, p. 187, in which the choice rested with Lúthien alone.

      Although the Quenta Silmarillion and other works remained unfinished, Christopher Tolkien returns to earlier, usually brief accounts for the later history of the Silmaril with which Beren and Lúthien were concerned. He pieces together an account relating the return of Beren and Lúthien, the setting of the Silmaril in the Nauglafring (the necklace of the Dwarves), how possession of the necklace led to the death of Thingol and the son and grandsons of Beren and Lúthien, and how by its power Eärendil, husband of Elwing, granddaughter of Beren and Lúthien, was able to reach Valinor and obtain aid from the Valar against Morgoth. For these, Christopher uses extracts from the Quenta Noldorinwa (The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 132–4), The Silmarillion (p. 236), ‘The Nauglafring’ in The Book of Lost Tales (The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, pp. 236–8), the Quenta Noldorinwa again (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 134), ‘The Nauglafring’ again (The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, pp. 239–40, 242), and the Quenta Noldorinwa once more (The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 148–50). The end of the latter was superseded by the Quenta Noldorinwa (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 153) and essentially reached the form of the published Silmarillion (pp. 247–50). The account proper ends with a brief quote from the Quenta Silmarillion: ‘None saw Beren and Lúthien СКАЧАТЬ