"FOREWORD" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

reconstituted three times before the hobbits ever left Hobbiton,
but the story then went all the way to Rivendell before the impulse
failed. My father then started again from the beginning (the
'second phase'), and then again (the 'third phase'); and as new nar-
rative elements and new names and relations among the characters
appeared they were written into previous drafts, at different
times. Parts of a text were taken out and used elsewhere. Alter-
native versions were incorporated into the same manuscript, so
that the story could be read in more than one way according to the
directions given. To determine the sequence of these exceedingly
complex movements with demonstrable correctness at all points is
scarcely possible. One or-two dates that my father wrote in are
insufficient to give more than very limited assistance, and refer-
ences to the progress of the work in his letters are unclear and hard
to interpret. Differences of script can be very misleading. Thus
the determination of the history of composition has to be based
very largely on clues afforded by the evolution of names and
motives in the narrative itself; but in this there is every possibility
of going astray through mistaking the relative dates of additions
and alterations. Exemplification of these problems will be found
throughout the book. I do not suppose for one moment that I have
succeeded in determining the history correctly at every point:
indeed there remain several cases where the evidence appears to be
contradictory and I can offer no solution. The nature of the
manuscripts is such that they will probably always admit of
differing interpretations. But the sequence of composition that I

propose, after much experimentation with alternative theories,
seems to me to fit the evidence very much the best.
The earliest plot-outlines and narrative drafts are often barely
legible, and become more difficult as the work proceeded. Using
any scrap of the wretched paper of the war years that came to hand
- sometimes writing not merely on the backs of examination
scripts but across the scripts themselves - my father would dash
down elliptically his thoughts for the story to come, and his first
formulations of narrative, at tearing speed. In the handwriting
that he used for rapid drafts and sketches, not intended to endure
long before he turned to them again and gave them a more
workable form, letters are so loosely formed that a word which
cannot be deduced or guessed at from the context or from later
versions can prove perfectly opaque after long examination; and
if, as he often did, he used a soft pencil much has now become
blurred and faint. This must be borne in mind throughout: the
earliest drafts were put urgently to paper just as the first words
came to mind and before the thought dissolved, whereas the
printed text (apart from a sprinkling of dots and queries in the face
of illegibility) inevitably conveys an air of calm and ordered
composition, the phrasing weighed and intended.

Turning to the way in which the material is presented in this