"GL5" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol10)

These Yavanna took, and then the Trees died, and their lifeless
stems stand yet in Valinor, a memorial of vanished joy. But the
flower and fruit Yavanna gave to Aule, and Manwe hallowed them;
and Aule and his folk made vessels to hold them and preserve their
radiance, as is said in the Narsilion, the Song of the Sun and Moon.
These vessels the gods gave to Varda, that they might become lamps
of heaven, outshining the ancient stars...
The grave and tranquil words cannot entirely suppress a sense that
there emerges here an outcropping, as it were, uneroded, from an
older level, more fantastic, more bizarre. As indeed it does: such was
the nature of the work, evolved over so many years. But it did not stand
in the work as an isolated myth, a now gratuitous element that could
be excised; for bound up with it was the myth of the Two Trees ('the
Elder Sun and Moon'), giving light through long ages to the land of
Valinor, while Middle-earth lay in darkness, illumined only by the
stars in the firmament of Arda. In that darkness the Elves awoke, the
People of the Stars; and after the death of the Trees the ancient Light
was preserved only in the Silmarils. In 1951 my father had written
(Letters no.131, p. 148):
There was the Light of Valinor made visible in the Two Trees of
Silver and Gold. These were slain by the Enemy out of malice, and
Valinor was darkened, though from them, ere they died utterly,
were derived the lights of Sun and Moon. (A marked difference here
between these legends and most others is that the Sun is not a divine
symbol, but a second-best thing, and the 'light of the Sun' (the world
under the sun) become terms for a fallen world, and a dislocated
imperfect vision.)
But: 'You cannot do this any more.' In the following pages will be seen
how, driven by this conviction, he attempted to undo what he had
done, but to retain what he might. It is remarkable that he never at this
time seems to have felt that what he said in this present note provided
a resolution of the problem that he believed to exist:



What we have in the Silmarillion etc. are traditions... 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.

It is tempting to suppose that when my father wrote that 'in
reconsideration of the early cosmogonic parts' he was 'inclined to
adhere to the Flat Earth and the astronomically absurd business of the
making of the Sun and Moon', he was referring to Ainulindale' C and
the Annals of Aman. If this were so, it might account for the
developments in Ainulindale' C discussed on pp. 27 - 9, where Arda
becomes a small world within the vastness of Ea - but retains the 'Flat
Earth' characteristics of Ilu from the Ambarkanta and before.