"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol09)

tially, the members of the Notion Club are fictions, and become more
obviously so in Part Two.

Scarcely a sentence remained entirely unchanged between text A
and text D of Part One, but in my notes all this development is largely
ignored when (as for the most part it is) it is a matter of improvement
in the expression or of amplification of the argument. Similarly, the
ascription of speeches to speakers underwent many changes in the
earlier texts, but in general I do not record them.
I do not enter in this book into any critical discussion of the topics
and issues raised in 'The Ramblings of Michael Ramer'. This is partly
because I am not well qualified to discuss them, but also because they
fall somewhat outside the scope and aim of The History of Middle-
earth, which is above all to present accurate texts accurately ordered
(so far as I am able) and to elucidate them comparatively, within the
context of 'Middle-earth' and the lands of the West. With very limited
time at my disposal for this book I have thought that I could better
devote it in any case to clarification of the complexities of the
'Numenorean' material. The notes are therefore very restricted in
scope and are often trivial in relation to the content of the discussion,
being mostly concerned with the elucidation of references that may be
obscure and not easily tracked down, with comparison of earlier
forms of certain passages, and with citation of other writings of my
father's. I do not suppose that many readers of this book will be
unacquainted with the novels of C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
(1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945), but I
have provided a few explanations and references.

Why my father abandoned The Notion Club Papers I do not know.
It may be that he felt that the work had lost all unity, that 'Atlantis'
had broken apart the frame in which it had been set (see pp. 281 - 2).
But I think also that having forced himself to return to The Lord of the
Rings, and having brought it to its end, he was then deflected into the
very elaborate further work on the legends of the Elder Days that
preceded the actual publication of The Lord of the Rings. However it
was, the Notion Club was abandoned, and with it his final attempt to
embody the riddle of AElfwine and Eadwine in a 'tale of time'. But
from its forgotten Papers and the strange figure of Arundel Lowdham
there emerged a new conception of the Downfall of Numenor,
embodied in a different tradition, which would come to constitute a
major element in the Akallabeth many years later.

NOTES.

1. In a note to this passage in my father's letter Humphrey Carpenter
remarks: 'Lewis's next published novel after That Hideous
Strength and The Great Divorce was The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe. Tolkien is, however, almost certainly referring to some
other book of Lewis's that was never completed.' The Great
Divorce was published in 1946; Lewis was reading it aloud in