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Tolkien writes
Sep. 18th, 2006 10:48 amThis press release comes, not from the official sites where I still haven't seen anything, but from a reliable source via e-mail: a new Tolkien story, for adults, designed for reading and not for scholarly collating of multiple versions:
( The Children of Húrin )
The Children of Húrin, Silmarillion fans will recall, were the tragically doomed Túrin Turambar and his equally unfortunate sister Nienor Níniel. A summary version of the story appears in chapter 21 of The Silmarillion. There are at least, oh, eight or nine separate versions or partial versions of the story elsewhere in the posthumous books, notably a long but very incomplete prose version in Unfinished Tales and an even more incomplete poetic version in The Lays of Beleriand - a truly rare attempt at writing Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse in modern English. Exactly what texts, previously published or unpublished, the new book will be based on is unknown to me; nor is what persuaded Christopher Tolkien to create a reconstructed text, a format he tried in his first few editions and then firmly moved away from.
I thought people should know about this. Where I hang out, this is a big deal; and with luck, it will prove more readable for the casual dilettante than have previously-published posthumous Tolkien books. The story is one of those big, grand, malevolently foredoomed, ruthlessly inevitable tragedies of the kind old Will S. used to specialize in. We'll see how this book deals with it.
( The Children of Húrin )
The Children of Húrin, Silmarillion fans will recall, were the tragically doomed Túrin Turambar and his equally unfortunate sister Nienor Níniel. A summary version of the story appears in chapter 21 of The Silmarillion. There are at least, oh, eight or nine separate versions or partial versions of the story elsewhere in the posthumous books, notably a long but very incomplete prose version in Unfinished Tales and an even more incomplete poetic version in The Lays of Beleriand - a truly rare attempt at writing Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse in modern English. Exactly what texts, previously published or unpublished, the new book will be based on is unknown to me; nor is what persuaded Christopher Tolkien to create a reconstructed text, a format he tried in his first few editions and then firmly moved away from.
I thought people should know about this. Where I hang out, this is a big deal; and with luck, it will prove more readable for the casual dilettante than have previously-published posthumous Tolkien books. The story is one of those big, grand, malevolently foredoomed, ruthlessly inevitable tragedies of the kind old Will S. used to specialize in. We'll see how this book deals with it.
