"GL5" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol10)

p. 300).

This descends from the oldest forms of the mythology - when
it was still intended to be no more than another primitive
mythology, though more coherent and less 'savage'. It was
consequently a 'Flat Earth' cosmogony (much easier to manage
anyway): the Matter of Numenor had not been devised.
It is now clear to me that in any case the Mythology must
actually be a 'Mannish' affair. (Men are really only interested in
Men and in Men's ideas and visions.) The High Eldar living and
being tutored by the demiurgic beings must have known, or at
least their writers and loremasters must have known, the 'truth'
(according to their measure of understanding). What we have in
the Silmarillion etc. are traditions (especially personalized, and
centred upon actors, such as Feanor) handed on by Men in
Numenor and later in Middle-earth (Arnor and Gondor); but
already far back - from the first association of the Dunedain
and Elf-friends with the Eldar in Beleriand - blended and
confused with their own Mannish myths and cosmic ideas.
At that point (in reconsideration of the early cosmogonic
parts) I was inclined to adhere to the Flat Earth and the
astronomically absurd business of the making of the Sun and
Moon. But you can make up stories of that kind when you live
among people who have the same general background of
imagination, when the Sun 'really' rises in the East and goes
down in the West, etc. When however (no matter how little
most people know or think about astronomy) it is the general
belief that we live upon a 'spherical' island in 'Space' you cannot
do this any more.
One loses, of course, the dramatic impact of such things as
the first 'incarnates' waking in a starlit world - or the coming
of the High Elves to Middle-earth and unfurling their banners at
the first rising of the Moon.

I have given this first, because - though jotted down at great speed-
it is an express statement of my father's views at this time, in three,
major respects. The astronomical myths of the Elder Days cannot be
regarded as a record of the traditional beliefs of the Eldar in any pure
form, because the High-elves of Aman cannot have been thus

ignorant; and the cosmological elements in The Silmarillion are
essentially a record of mythological ideas, complex in origin, prevailing
among Men.(1) In this note, however, my father appears to have accepted
that these ideas do not in themselves necessarily lead to great upheaval
in the essential 'world-structure' of The Silmarillion, but on the
contrary provide a basis for its retention ('At that point ... I was
inclined to adhere to the Flat Earth'). The conclusion of this brief
statement appears then to be a further and unconnected step: that
the cosmological myth of The Silmarillion was a 'creative error' on the
part of its maker, since it could have no imaginative truth for people