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why can't Bilbo finish his book?
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noWizardme
Half-elven


Nov 21 2014, 11:51am

Post #1 of 29 (1629 views)
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why can't Bilbo finish his book? Can't Post

A few times in LOTR, Bilbo mentions finishing his book, but the achievement seems to elude him.

I was thinking: in some ways being a house guest in Rivendell ought to be perfect for an author with Bilbo's interests; but in other ways, it's probably a disaster.

On the plus side: it seems like Bilbo is a well-looked-after visitor, with lots of leisure, and a willing audience on which to try out his work. And Rivendell must have near-ideal resources for sources (including of course, the opportunity still to collect eye-witness accounts of long-distant events) .

On the other hand: visitors seem to be affected by the timelessness of the place. It's a place for reflection rather than action - maybe it's the world's greatest place to think about your story or to collect more material, and one of the worst environments to complete that actual first draft. Smile

~~~~~~

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"

This year LOTR turns 60. The following image is my LOTR 60th anniversary party footer! You can get yours here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=762154#762154


squire
Half-elven


Nov 21 2014, 12:36pm

Post #2 of 29 (1320 views)
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He kept changing his story. // [In reply to] Can't Post

 



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Bracegirdle
Valinor


Nov 21 2014, 2:12pm

Post #3 of 29 (1295 views)
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Nor Frodo - the tale goes on and on. // [In reply to] Can't Post

 

"You cannot pass!
You didn't say 'Simon says.'"

Only those in the know will know.



noWizardme
Half-elven


Nov 21 2014, 2:41pm

Post #4 of 29 (1299 views)
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The Take goes ever on and on.... [In reply to] Can't Post

Yes, I see what you mean - there certainly is that idea that the Great Tales go on and on, whereas characters come and go , even if they are temporarily the hero.

Interesting - I'd imagined , that Frodo hands over what will become The Red Book of Westermarch to Sam with his (Frodo's) account of the War of the Ring complete. Sam (I had imagined) adds at least the Grey Havens bit. The book then passes through other hands and translations and copyists - one JRR Tolkien claiming on the title pages of LOTR that he is a translator, not the author.

But that is, of course all speculation - if we were somehow to recover the manuscript as left to Sam by Frodo, it might be much less like LOTR than I had been imagining....

~~~~~~

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"

This year LOTR turns 60. The following image is my LOTR 60th anniversary party footer! You can get yours here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=762154#762154


noWizardme
Half-elven


Nov 21 2014, 6:00pm

Post #5 of 29 (1304 views)
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It's a bit tempting to think Tolkien is also having a gentle dig at himself... [In reply to] Can't Post

It's a bit tempting to think Tolkien is also having a gentle dig at himself, and his struggles to complete LOTR (let alone the "Translations from the Elvish" - the Silmarillion)

~~~~~~

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"

This year LOTR turns 60. The following image is my LOTR 60th anniversary party footer! You can get yours here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=762154#762154


CuriousG
Half-elven


Nov 21 2014, 7:30pm

Post #6 of 29 (1285 views)
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I wonder the same thing. [In reply to] Can't Post

If Bilbo is channeling JRR's personal thoughts and frustrations, sitting in a study full of half-finished volumes, always starting something new and struggling to wrap up old projects. He's not the only writer with that dilemma.


Bracegirdle
Valinor


Nov 21 2014, 7:57pm

Post #7 of 29 (1280 views)
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Agreed noWiz - The Road.. er Tale goes ever ever on.. [In reply to] Can't Post

I have always thought the sequence went something like: (Firstly of course all writers had to have input from other sources as no one was witness to all events.)

Bilbo wrote ‘The Hobbit’ titled “There and Back Again”, and fairly completed ‘Translations from the Elvish’ (which I never thought of as part of the ‘Redbook of Westmarch’).

Frodo wrote most of LOTR except ‘The Grey Havens’ which most likely was Sam. (Interesting aside: The wording of Sam’s description of Frodo’s arrival (or near arrival) at Aman so resembles Frodo’s dream at Bombadil’s that one could perhaps assume that Frodo told Sam about this dream?)

Frodo gave Sam all the ‘Redbook’ and Bilbo’s ‘Translations’ which I’m sure Sam appended somewhat (the ‘Redbook’).
Sam gave all the books to Elanor and they passed to the Fairbairns of the Tower Hills.

Sometime later a copy was given to the King (Aragorn’s son I believe), and his scribe (name?) made a copy with some additions, and it was returned to the Shire (where I’m sure the dabblings go forever on and on); and this is the copy that Tolkien mysteriously found (though he never tells us where he found it) and translated.


In Reply To
. . . if we were somehow to recover the manuscript as left to Sam by Frodo, it might be much less like LOTR than I had been imagining....

Y.. You mean Tolkien may have revised and tinkered! – NAW!! Mad

"You cannot pass!
You didn't say 'Simon says.'"

Only those in the know will know.



squire
Half-elven


Nov 21 2014, 8:42pm

Post #8 of 29 (1276 views)
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'Translation' is a rough term in this conceit, I think [In reply to] Can't Post

Given how thoroughly modern the prose style and cultural references are, I've always thought Tolkien more or less 'adapted' the Red Book for modern audiences by rewriting the story novelistically, rather than literally translating it in any usual sense.



squire online:
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squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary


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noWizardme
Half-elven


Nov 21 2014, 10:03pm

Post #9 of 29 (1257 views)
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Certainly neither TH or LOTR reads like autobiography... [In reply to] Can't Post

...so if the putative original Bilbo and Frodo/Sam sources were like that, +someone+ has adapted them. Maybe that's supposed to be Tolkien; or maybe a series of compilers, translators and adaptors of Middle-earth did that earlier, leaving him with a Westron version of LOTR that he translated into English. I don't know whether he imagined the conceit in that kind of detail?

Certainly the writing style of LOTR varies (but not in a manner that suggests the author was doing this by accident). It's easy to pretend that successive compilers have been at work re-phrasing and re-referencing.

So I think Tolkien is setting up in fiction the situation he was used to when dealing with Beowulf, Gawain and the like in his day job. So I imagine him as imagining himself as the latest of a long series of minds,voices and pens through which the tale has travelled to us., and linking us back to original sources which can't now be reconstructed with much certainty.

~~~~~~

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"

This year LOTR turns 60. The following image is my LOTR 60th anniversary party footer! You can get yours here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=762154#762154


Bracegirdle
Valinor


Nov 21 2014, 10:08pm

Post #10 of 29 (1253 views)
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We could be in agreement... [In reply to] Can't Post

Yes a 'literal' translation is not viable. But I don't believe he 'rewrote the story'. The plot, characters, events, etc. would not change - not be rewritten - just reworded for our reading pleasure. And he often strayed from a 'thoroughly modern prose style', e.g. the Eotheod for one.

Just as you have just made a statement above and I have taken you somewhat out of context, or chosen to put my interpretation on your words, the plot (our thinking) is most likely fairly in sync.

"You cannot pass!
You didn't say 'Simon says.'"

Only those in the know will know.



dreamflower
Lorien

Nov 22 2014, 2:37am

Post #11 of 29 (1236 views)
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That was my first thought [In reply to] Can't Post

Bilbo, like Niggle, (and like the creator of both of them) just never finished tinkering with his work.


Elthir
Grey Havens

Nov 22 2014, 6:21pm

Post #12 of 29 (1240 views)
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the Epilogue [In reply to] Can't Post

I wonder if the tale in Frodo's hand was crafted into a story. In the Epilogue (second version) Sam is writing out questions and answers, and explains to Elanor:

"Well dear," said Sam, "this top page, this is only today's batch." He sighed. "It isn't fit to go in the Book like that. It isn't a bit like the story as Mr. Frodo wrote it. But I shall have to make a chapter or two in proper style, somehow. Mr. Meriadoc might help me. He's clever at writing, and he's making a splendid book all about plants."

I don't imagine a book about plants is a story in the same way the modern Lord of the Rings is, but on the other hand Sam reads the book to his children, reading aloud on 'great days', with some omissions that he had thought advisable.

In any case, it's interesting that Elanor suggests what Sam's last chapter should be: 'Write down our talk together -- but not tonight."

(Elanor had already advised that Sam not work any more that night).


squire
Half-elven


Nov 23 2014, 12:11am

Post #13 of 29 (1219 views)
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Tolkien never took better advice than not to publish that epilogue [In reply to] Can't Post

Unless it was not to revise The Hobbit to make it fully consistent with The Lord of the Rings.

As for a book about plants being a story, I'm pretty sure that reference to "Mr. Meriadoc" and his book about plants is the Tolkienian in-joke that Christopher explicates in his commentary on the writing of LotR in History of Middle-earth. Tolkien tended to invent his world as he wrote his story, and large sections of the drafts of "The New Hobbit" are filled with explanatory narrative, or cute dialogue, about the lives and folkways of the hobbits (which are barely mentioned in The Hobbit, as few people seem to remember, so Tolkien was having a lot of fun making it all up as he went along).

One such bit was Merry's discourse on the origins of pipeweed, to Theoden at Isengard. As published, the scene is humorous and significant in developing the relationship between the king and the hobbit, but originally it was much longer; Gandalf cuts it short with his arch command,
"Some other time would be more fitting for the history of smoking." (LotR III.8)
Gandalf spoke for Tolkien, as he so often does. Most of Merry's lecture was cut from the chapter, and "some other time" turned out to be the Prologue in the voice of the narrator/editor, where it appears under the heading "Concerning Pipe-weed", a peculiar part of hobbit-lore to focus on which the narrator excuses by claiming it "must be mentioned". Uh-huh. As so often happens, the form of the story within the book echoed the story of writing the book.

And thus began the thread that led to Merry being the Shire's authority on herb-lore, Anyway, Tolkien's gift for turning mock-history into story being what it is, I'll let you be the judge of whether a 'book about plants is a story in the same way the modern LotR is."



squire online:
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squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary


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Escapist
Gondor


Nov 23 2014, 12:38am

Post #14 of 29 (1207 views)
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Perhaps [In reply to] Can't Post

he was able to pare down to a consolidated writing list
and at least get a good start in the right direction
...
The layers of story and "story about story" being in-synch is interesting.
In my case that would involve something different ... making secret copies of things, sabotaged disorganization masking bits that someone didn't want anyone else to ever find ...


noWizardme
Half-elven


Nov 23 2014, 11:30am

Post #15 of 29 (1196 views)
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I expect it is very difficult to decide what to leave out [In reply to] Can't Post

...sometimes much better to move material to real or imagined appendices than slow up the story. On the other hand, I think readers have a keen nose for fake mysteries (where the author is trying to be mysterious for literary effect but isn't managing it well).

Tolkien's Unfinished Tale Disaster of the Gladden Fields is an interesting one to think about here: the material that appears to be notes (to whom?) comes to more pages than the material that appears to be story. In that draft story, Tolkien puts a lot of effort into military tactics and terminology, and into figuring out how people in Fourth Age Gondor might have been able to re-create Isuldur's last moves in the absence of any surviving eye-witnesses.

~~~~~~

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"

This year LOTR turns 60. The following image is my LOTR 60th anniversary party footer! You can get yours here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=762154#762154


noWizardme
Half-elven


Nov 23 2014, 11:44am

Post #16 of 29 (1206 views)
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Different ways to mine the creative mind [In reply to] Can't Post

I think that people working on creative projects have to find their own ways of mining their creative ability - and are sometimes bound to find ways that work for them but sound odd to others. For example, PaulMcCartney

Quote
We were fed up with being the Beatles. ...

Then suddenly on the plane I got this idea. I thought, Let's not be ourselves. Let's develop alter egos so we're not having to project an image which we know. It would be much more free. What would really be interesting would be to actually take on the personas of this different band. We could say, 'How would somebody else sing this? He might approach it a bit more sarcastically, perhaps.' So I had this idea of giving the Beatles alter egos simply to get a different approach; then when John came up to the microphone or I did, it wouldn't be John or Paul singing, it would be the members of this band. It would be a freeing element. I thought we can run this philosophy through the whole album: with this alter-ego band, it won't be us making all that sound, it won't be the Beatles, it'll be this other band, so we'll be able to lose our identities in this.
http://www.beatlesbible.com/...ly-hearts-club-band/


I don't think Tolkien had actually create a Red Book & then put it through some fast-forward chinese-whispers system though: in his case he was a professional at deducing what the original sources might have been like by using various scholarly tools on the available written sources. Part of his creative process was to do that kind of thing with his own writing (I think).

~~~~~~

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"

This year LOTR turns 60. The following image is my LOTR 60th anniversary party footer! You can get yours here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=762154#762154


Elthir
Grey Havens

Nov 23 2014, 3:55pm

Post #17 of 29 (1195 views)
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Sam's children [In reply to] Can't Post


Quote
And thus began the thread that led to Merry being the Shire's authority on herb-lore, Anyway, Tolkien's gift for turning mock-history into story being what it is, I'll let you be the judge of whether a 'book about plants is a story in the same way the modern LotR is."




Well as I say, or tried to anyway, I don't imagine that Merry's book would be the same in style as the modern LOTR, or even 'a story' -- depending upon how one defines this anyway. But that said I think the point could be more general: Sam generally wants help with writing and he is thinking about style, or thinking about matching Frodo's part in style.

Abandoned or not, according to the Epilogue the book as Frodo wrote it seems to be enjoyed by Sam's children, or at least those old enough to hear all, or most of it -- noting too Bilbo's statement in The Lord of the Rings about his proposed ending (something like: happily ever after and so on... at least sounds like a way to end 'a story').

I do think the modern version is due to Tolkien not just as (fictional) translator but also as a modern story-teller himself, but for another possible example the number of 'chapters' (Grey Havens) seems to be deliberately echoing the modern book, and I'm wondering if Frodo, and Bilbo, had already written their tales in story form...

... although granted then we might wonder just what is needed in the original to say 'in story form'. I don't really know. I'm not sure there is evidence to squash the idea either (that I recall at the moment anyway), not having looked hard enough at the matter so far.


(This post was edited by Elthir on Nov 23 2014, 4:07pm)


squire
Half-elven


Nov 23 2014, 6:16pm

Post #18 of 29 (1188 views)
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What is the evidence LotR is a translation, besides the author's occasional claim that it is one? [In reply to] Can't Post

I was thinking about this question, and I idly devised an insanely complex plan to analyze all the story elements of The Lord of the Rings as published (plot, style, dialogue, structure, vocabulary, setting, etc.) and compare them to the parallel elements in the stories told by all other cultures in the past and present for which we have examples of literature and story-telling. There would probably be a lot of correlations, and a lot of discrepancies: this culture never has first person dialogue; this culture never writes in prose, only verse; this culture never describes the setting; this culture never avoids the sexual element; this culture never tells us what a character is thinking; this culture never acknowledges the role of language in a society; etc.

The result would seem to be a very good guide as to just what kind of society produced the original tale that was "translated" by Tolkien. Since Middle-earth doesn't exist, of course, we should hardly expect to find a match (!), but I think the exercise would tend to show more clearly the degree to which Tolkien was adhering to a goal of presenting a 'translation' or even 'rewriting' of an imagined ancient manuscript produced by many hands over time. I suspect he was thinking of it very little during the actual writing ("to try his hand at a really long story" was his impulse, he said once). I am almost certain the result would land LotR flat-out in the modern era and not just because it's written in modern English, simply because a text inevitably contains the culture that produced it in far more ways than the simple question of what language it is written in. For instance, I have read excerpts from various English translations, going back a hundred years or so, of older narratives like the Iliad or Beowulf or the Bible. Like the hairstyles and costumes in period movies, which change according to the decade the film is produced in, I began to see that a translation says as much or more about the translator's time and place as it does about the original setting and language of the work.



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Elthir
Grey Havens

Nov 23 2014, 6:55pm

Post #19 of 29 (1177 views)
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the conceit [In reply to] Can't Post

Good points.

If we accept the translation conceit, the 'Hobbit poetry' about Perry-the-Winkle and the Troll (supposed to be in the margin of the Red Book), seems to me to be a little story put to verse, for example. And I don't know if the following will shed any light (and not that you are unaware of it), but in the original Foreword...


Quote

"This tale, which has grown almost to be a history of the great War of the Ring, is drawn for the most part from the memoirs of the renowned Hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, as they are preserved in the Red Book of Westmarch. This chief monument to Hobbit-lore is so called because it was compiled, repeatedly copied, and enlarged and handed down in the family of the Fairbairns of Westmarch, descended from that Master Samwise of whom this tale has much to say.


I have supplemented the account of the Red Book, in places, with information derived from the surviving records of Gondor, notably the Book of the Kings; but in general, though I have omitted much, I have in this tale adhered more closely to the actual words and narrative of my original than in the previous selection from the Red Book, The Hobbit. That was drawn from the early chapters, composed originally by Bilbo himself. If 'composed' is a just word. Bilbo was not assidious, nor an orderly narrator, and his account is involved and discursive, and sometimes confused: faults that still appear in the Red Book, since the copiers were pious and careful, and altered very little." (JRRT, from the Foreword, first edition)




Anyway, since we do not have the actual original sources to compare to, can we have the Hobbits crafting something that they would characterize as 'in story form' compared to say, a listing of days and events, like some modern journals perhaps.

Although Tolkien does use 'memoirs' as above.


(This post was edited by Elthir on Nov 23 2014, 7:00pm)


squire
Half-elven


Nov 23 2014, 7:22pm

Post #20 of 29 (1174 views)
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"drawn from" is a key phrase there [In reply to] Can't Post

The first Foreword was replaced partly because Tolkien was unsure he wanted to so baldly assert the 'translation' conceit. But what I really noticed this time around is his assertion that the "tale" of LotR was primarily "drawn from" the memoirs in the Red Book, which is quite a broad brush to paint with - to mix metaphors a bit. Drawn from, as in based on or written up from. Nothing here about a translation, folks.

I also notice this curious wording:
"I have in this tale adhered more closely to the actual words and narrative of my original than in the previous selection from the Red Book, The Hobbit." [bold by squire]

What does "my original" mean here? At first I thought he is admitting he wrote the Red Book itself, but that actually doesn't make sense. I think it must be a scholarly term, in which 'my original' is shorthand for "the original work which I have been studying" - which, by implication, may have textual differences from a manuscript of the same text that a fellow scholar might be working from. Thus 'my original' manuscript may differ from 'your original', but I will stick to what I find in 'my original'.

Can anyone else bring more than my guesswork to that phrase?

And I'd love to know where the heck Prof. Tolkien is supposed to have found the "surviving records of Gondor"! Same dusty antiquarian bookstore on the Left Bank where he found the Red Book, I suppose? Or perhaps in the back stacks of the Bodleian?



squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd & 4th TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion and NOW the 1st BotR Discussion too! and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary


= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.


Elthir
Grey Havens

Nov 23 2014, 8:09pm

Post #21 of 29 (1162 views)
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I can't bring any more than my interpretation... [In reply to] Can't Post

... but I took that to mean: the 'original' that is 'mine' in the sense that: Tolkien alone found such documents (somewhere, but I note the finding of documents in The Notion Club Papes too), and Tolkien alone is working with them, presenting them to the modern reader... based in part upon the original Foreword again...


Quote

I am surprised and delighted to find from numerous letters that so many people, both in England and across the Water, share my interest in this almost forgotten history; but it is not yet universally recognized as an important branch of study. It has indeed no obvious practical use, and those who go in for it can hardly expect to be assisted.
Much information, necessary and unnecessary, will be found in the Prologue.

To complete it some maps are given, including one of the Shire that has been approved as reasonably correct by those Hobbits that still concern themselves with ancient history. (...) Care has been given to their transcription from the original alphabets and some notes are offered on the intentions of the spelling adopted* But not all are interested in such matters, and many who are not may still find the account of those great and valiant deeds worth the reading. It was in that hope that I began the work of translating and selecting the stories of the Red Book, part of which are now presented to Men of a later Age, one almost as darkling and ominous as was the Third Age that ended with the great years 1418 and 1419 of the Shire long ago.



Here we have selecting the 'stories' anyway.

Christopher Tolkien notes 'On one of his copies of the First Edition my father wrote beside it: 'This Foreword I should wish very much in any case to cancel. Confusing (as it does) real personal matters with the 'machinery' of the Tale is a serious mistake.'" The Peoples of Middle-earth

I feel like I am misunderstanding Tolkien here, as I don't see the confusion in the original Foreword.


To my mind Tolkien 'as translator' of parts of The Red Book can himself have children of course, be friends with Inklings and even comment on whether or not the present translation is a children's story or has been given the quality of one, subjective as that might be. And a translator can be in part author of the modern book, which can explain some modern references anyway, like a 'train' for example.

I think it's a bit fanciful to say that the Shire map was approved by Hobbits, but then again English speaking Hobbits who preserved knowledge of Westron and the Tengwar would go some way to explaining how Tolkien translated the original [if Elfwine's Old English translation of The Silmarillion was 'out' of the picture for good].


Plus fanciful isn't bad. Are there Hobbits in Oxford? Why not. Perhaps they were rustic and 'wild', and shorter, than in days long past, but where did JRRT lay his hands on a copy of the Red Book in the first place?

Or something Smile


noWizardme
Half-elven


Nov 23 2014, 10:25pm

Post #22 of 29 (1160 views)
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Well, I think he made it up, actually, and only pretended to be a translator... [In reply to] Can't Post

But I think the pretending to be a translator was important to the Author, in some way...

~~~~~~

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"

This year LOTR turns 60. The following image is my LOTR 60th anniversary party footer! You can get yours here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=762154#762154


Elizabeth
Half-elven


Nov 24 2014, 6:50am

Post #23 of 29 (1148 views)
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So, jackson's films are "drawn from" Tolkien's books? // [In reply to] Can't Post

 








(This post was edited by Elizabeth on Nov 24 2014, 6:50am)


squire
Half-elven


Nov 24 2014, 7:01am

Post #24 of 29 (1160 views)
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Why not? [In reply to] Can't Post

If we think of translation and adaptation as two forms of the same discipline - making as faithful a copy as possible, whether between two languages or two narrative media - then a work that sacrifices accuracy in favor of an easier reception of the derivative version might well simply advertise that it is "drawn from" or, as is more common today, "based on", the original work.



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Elthir
Grey Havens

Nov 24 2014, 2:38pm

Post #25 of 29 (1142 views)
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drawn from [In reply to] Can't Post


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Drawn from, as in based on or written up from. Nothing here about a translation, folks.



Can it not also mean 'taken from a larger corpus'? As a few sentences later The Hobbit is referred to as a 'selection' from the Red Book. Again, I've no doubt that the modern book is due to Tolkien as the latest author, not just translation but adding his own touches as a story-teller...

... but I'm still not wholly convinced we are not dealing with a 'tale' here, or something close to it; something put in story form by Bilbo and Frodo. In H&S's look at 'chapter 80' (being unfinished) they too note the abandoned epilogue that Sam (concerning his questions and answers) '... does not know how to write them as part of the story.'

And why should Bilbo have trouble finishing his book? The Prologue notes that the Red Book was in origin Bilbo's diary, but I take that to mean (or possibly to mean) that it began as his original notes made along the way, or soon after returning. But to keep a diary, it seems to me, takes no great skill, at least when we are talking about the 'least' you can do with respect to producing something that can be called a diary -- that is, you record what happened and when.

To craft a diary into a 'book' that others might be interested to read seems much more difficult, as now it's a work of art in my opinion, like writing poetry, which Bilbo also loved to do. I got the impression (perhaps wrongly) that Bilbo was not finishing his diary at Rivendell, but his book based on it: the events turned into a tale.

Writing stories wasn't Tolkien's normal vocation and he took a long time to write his book too, but to me it's because it takes an 'Elvish craft' to do it well -- including the act of translation: to strike the balance between the meaning of the original and its artistic presentation.

I'm still not wholly convinced myself that the original 'selections' were already in something we could easily characterize as 'in story form' (by the time Sam reads parts of them to his children), but I do get the impression, at least, from reading the Epilogue that this is so, including the part where Elanor seems to compare Sam's actual seeing of things (he himself is 'in' the story) versus a story.

Of course we could have something of a 'diary' that approaches the art of story-telling... so, erm...

... I dunno Smile


(This post was edited by Elthir on Nov 24 2014, 2:41pm)

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