"FOREWORD" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol12)

FOREWORD.

In my Foreword to Sauron Defeated I wrote that I would not
attempt a study of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings 'at
this time'. That was an ambiguous remark, for I rather doubted
that I would ever make the attempt; but I justified its postpone-
ment, at least, on the ground that 'my father soon turned
again, when The Lord of the Rings was finished, to the myths
and legends of the Elder Days', and so devoted the following
volumes to the later history of 'The Silmarillion'. My intentions
for the twelfth book were uncertain; but after the publication of
The War of the Jewels I came to think that since (contrary to my
original conception) I had included in The History of Middle-
earth a lengthy account of the writing of The Lord of the Rings
it would be a strange omission to say nothing whatever of the
Appendices, in which the historical structure of the Second and
Third Ages, based on a firm chronology, actually emerged.
Thus I embarked on the study of the history of these works,
of which I had little precise knowledge. As with the narrative
texts of The Lord of the Rings, those of the Appendices (and of
the Prologue) became divided, in some cases in a bewildering
fashion, at the time of the sale of the papers to Marquette
University; but I received most generous help, prompt and
meticulous, from Charles Elston, the Archivist of the Memorial
Library at Marquette, which enabled me to determine the
textual relations. It was only now that I came to understand that
texts of supplementary essays to The Lord of the Rings had
reached a remarkably finished form, though in many respects
far different from the published Appendices, at a much earlier
date than I had supposed: in the period (as I judge) immediately
following my father's writing of the last chapter of The Lord of
the Rings in 1948. There is indeed a total absence in these texts
of indications of external date; but it can be seen from many
points that when they were written the narrative was not yet in
final form, and equally clearly that they in fact preceded my
father's return to the First Age at the beginning of the 1950s,
as described in the Foreword to The War of the Jewels. A major
upheaval in the historical-linguistic structure was still to come:

the abandonment of their own tongue by the Noldor returning
out of the West and their adoption of the Sindarin of Middle-
earth.
In my account I have of course concentrated on these early
forms, which belong so evidently, in manner and air, with the
narrative itself. I have little doubt that my father had long con-
templated such a supplement and accompaniment to The Lord
of the Rings, regarding it as an essential element in the whole;
and I have found it impossible to show in any satisfactory way
how he conceived it at that time without setting out the early
texts in full, although this naturally entails the recital, especially