The Silmarillion

1977 George Allen & Unwin hardback edition.
Author	J. R. R. Tolkien
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Alternate history, Fantasy
Publisher	Allen & Unwin
Publication date	1977
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	365
ISBN	0048231398
Followed by	The Hobbit

The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay,^[1] who would later become a noted fantasy fiction writer. It tells of the history of the world in which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set.

Overview

The Silmarillion comprises five parts:

1. Ainulindalë ("The Music of the Ainur"^[2]) – the creation of Eä, the world
2. Valaquenta ("Account of the Valar"<ref name="SilIndex" />) – a description of the Valar and Maiar, the supernatural powers in Eä
3. Quenta Silmarillion ("The History of the Silmarils"<ref name="SilIndex" />) – the history of the events before and during the First Age, which forms the bulk of the collection
4. Akallab̻th ("The Downfallen"<ref name="SilIndex" />) Рthe history of the Downfall of N̼menor and its people, which takes place in the Second Age
5. Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age – a brief account of the circumstances which led to and were presented in The Lord of the Rings

The five parts were initially separate works, but it was the elder Tolkien's express wish that they be published together.<ref name="Silf" /> Because J. R. R. Tolkien died before he could fully rewrite the various legends, Christopher gathered material from his father's older writings to fill out the book. In a few cases, he devised completely new material.

The Silmarillion, like Tolkien's other Middle-earth writings, was meant to have taken place at some time in Earth's past.^[3] In keeping with this idea, The Silmarillion is meant to have been translated from Bilbo's three-volume Translations from the Elvish, which he wrote while at Rivendell.^[4]

The Silmarillion, along with other collections of Tolkien's works, such as Unfinished Tales, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and The Road Goes Ever On, form a comprehensive, yet incomplete, mythopoeic narrative that describes the universe of Middle-earth within which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. The History of Middle-earth is a twelve-volume examination of the processes which led to the publication of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion through looking into J. R. R. Tolkien's initial rough drafts and thorough commentary by Christopher Tolkien.

Among the notable chapters in the book are:

• "The Music of the Ainur"
• "Of Beren and Lúthien"
• "Túrin Turambar" (closely associated with "Narn i Chîn Húrin: The Tale of the Children of Húrin" in Unfinished Tales)
• "Of Tuor and The Fall of Gondolin"
• "Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath"

Synopsis

The Silmarillion
Ainulindal
Valaquenta
Quenta Silmarillion
Akallabth
Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age

Ainulindalë and Valaquenta

Main articles: Ainulindalë and Valaquenta

The first section of The Silmarillion, called Ainulindalë, takes the form of a primary creation myth. Eru ("The One") created the Ainur before anything else, a group of eternal spirits or demiurges, called "the offspring of his thought". Eru then brought the Ainur together, and showed them a theme, from which he bade the Ainur to make a great music. Melkor—whom Eru had given the "greatest power and knowledge" of all the Ainur—broke from the harmony of the music and used his power to develop his own song. This caused discord and division as some Ainur joined him, while others stayed with the music of Eru. Eru introduced two more themes, and Melkor caused discord with both. Then the music stopped, and Eru showed them all a vision of Arda and its peoples. After a while, the vision disappeared, but Eru, seeing the desires of the Ainur, created the world.

Many of the Ainur descended, taking physical form and becoming bound to the new world. The greater Ainur became known as Valar, while the lesser Ainur were called Maiar. Manwë and the other Valar attempted to prepare the world for the coming inhabitants (Elves and Men), while Melkor, who wanted Arda for himself, repeatedly destroyed their work, until, slowly, through waves of destruction and creation, the world took shape.

Valaquenta describes each of the Valar in detail, as well as some of the Maiar. It also tells how Melkor seduced many Maiar—including Sauron and the Balrogs—into his service.

Quenta Silmarillion

Main article: Quenta Silmarillion

Quenta Silmarillion, which makes up the bulk of the book, is a series of interconnected tales set in the First Age making up the tragic saga of the three magical jewels, the Silmarils. The Valar began to fashion the world for Elves and Men, but Melkor destroyed their handiwork, after which they removed to Aman, a continent to the west of Middle-earth. When the Elves awoke, the Valar decided to fight Melkor to keep them safe. They defeated and captured Melkor, and invited the Elves to come to Aman. Many Elves journeyed to Aman, but some did not attempt the journey, and others left along the way. While there, Fëanor, a Noldorin elf, created the Silmarils, jewels which contained the light of the Two Trees of Valinor, the source of light for Aman. Melkor, having been released after seeming to repent, stole the Silmarils, killed Fëanor's father, and destroyed the Two Trees. Fëanor swore an oath of revenge, and led many of his descendants to Middle-earth, killing members of another tribe of Elves for their ships. Many other Noldor followed, so that they would not be separated from their kin. When they reached Middle-earth, the Elves undertook war against Melkor, fighting five battles against him, aided at times by Men and Dwarves. The oath of revenge that Fëanor swore caused much distrust and evil among the Elves until all of the Elvish kingdoms were destroyed. Finally, the Valar intervened, and, in the War of Wrath, completely destroyed Melkor's strongholds and expelled Melkor from Arda.

Akallabêth

Main article: Akallabêth

This short section, comprising about thirty pages, recounts the rise and fall of the island kingdom of Númenor, which the Valar granted to the three loyal houses of Men who had aided them in the final overthrow of Melkor. Their tragic fate is brought about in large measure by the actions and influence of the evil Maia Sauron (formerly the chief servant of Melkor), who had arisen during the Second Age and tried to take over Middle-earth. The Númenóreans moved against Sauron, who, seeing that he could not beat the Númenóreans with force, allowed himself to be taken prisoner to Númenor, where he quickly seduced the King, Ar-Pharazôn, led the Númenóreans into the false worship of his former master, and urged them to wage war on the Valar themselves. The Second Age ended with the destruction of the Númenóreans and their island by Eru, in punishment for their rebellion against the rightful rule of the Valar, although Sauron escaped and fled to Middle-earth.

Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age

Main article: Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age

This concluding section of the narrative, comprising about twenty pages, describes the events that take place after the fall of Melkor and the beginning of the Second Age. It tells of the emergence of the Dark Lord Sauron, the forging of the Rings of Power, and the battles between the peoples of Middle-earth and the forces of Sauron, culminating in the War of the Last Alliance, in which Elves and Men united to defeat Sauron, after which the One Ring passed to Isildur. This section also gives a brief overview of the events leading up to and taking place in The Lord of the Rings, including the waning of Gondor, the re-emergence of Sauron, the White Council, and Sauron's final destruction along with the One Ring.

Concept and creation

Development of the text

The earliest drafts of The Silmarillion stories date back to as early as 1925, when Tolkien wrote a 'Sketch of the Mythology'. However, Tolkien first began working on the stories in 1914,^[5] though a good deal was written while Tolkien, then a British officer returned from France during World War I, was laid up in a military hospital and at home with trench fever.^[6] The first story, The Fall of Gondolin, was completed in late 1916.^[7] At the time, he called his collection of nascent stories The Book of Lost Tales (which became the name for the first two volumes of The History of Middle-earth). These stories were to comprise an English mythology, intended to explain the origins of English history and culture.^[8]

In 1937, encouraged by the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien submitted an incomplete but more fully developed version of The Silmarillion to his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, but they rejected the work as being obscure and "too Celtic". The publisher instead asked Tolkien to write a sequel to The Hobbit, which became his significant novel The Lord of the Rings.^[9]

Tolkien never abandoned The Silmarillion, however.<ref name="Silf" /> In fact, he regarded it as the most important of his works,^[10] seeing in its tales the genesis of Middle-earth and later events as told in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He renewed work on The Silmarillion after completing The Lord of the Rings, and he greatly desired to publish the two works together.^[11] But when it became clear that would not be possible, Tolkien turned his full attention back to preparing The Lord of the Rings for publication.^[12]

In the late 1950s he again began work on The Silmarillion, but much of his writing from this time was more concerned with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of the work than with narratives themselves. During this time he wrote extensively on such topics as the nature of evil in Arda, the origin of Orcs, the customs of the Elves, the nature and means of Elvish rebirth, and the "flat" world and the story of the Sun and Moon. By this time, serious doubt had entered about some of the fundamental aspects of the work that went back to the earliest versions of the stories, and it seems that Tolkien felt the need to solve these problems before he could produce the "final" version of The Silmarillion. In any event, with one or two exceptions, he wrought little change to the narratives during the years of his life that remained.

Posthumous publication

For several years after his father's death, Christopher Tolkien compiled a Silmarillion narrative. Christopher's intentions seem to have been mostly to use the latest writings of his father's that he could, and to keep as much internal consistency (and consistency with The Lord of the Rings) as possible, though he admitted that a complete consistency was impossible.<ref name="Silf" /> As explained in The History of Middle-earth, Christopher drew upon numerous sources for his narrative, relying on post-Lord of the Rings works where possible, but ultimately reaching back as far as the 1917 Book of Lost Tales to fill in portions of the narrative which his father had planned to write but never addressed. In one later chapter of Quenta Silmarillion which had not been touched since the early 1930s he had to construct a narrative practically from scratch. The final result, which included genealogies, maps, an index, and the first-ever released Elvish word list, was published in 1977. Due to Christopher's extensive explanations (in The History of Middle-earth) of how he compiled the published work, much of The Silmarillion has been debated by readers. Christopher's task is generally accepted as very difficult given the state of his father's texts at the time of his death: some critical texts were no longer in the Tolkien family's possession, and Christopher's task compelled him to rush through much of the material. Christopher reveals in later volumes of The History of Middle-earth many divergent ideas which do not agree with the published version. Christopher Tolkien has suggested that, had he taken more time and had access to all the texts, he might have produced a substantially different work. But he was compelled by considerable pressure and demand from his father's readers and publishers to produce something publishable as quickly as possible. Some contend that parts of The Silmarillion are more a product of the son than of the father, and as such its place in the Middle-earth canon is hotly debated.

In October 1996, Christopher Tolkien commissioned illustrator Ted Nasmith to create full-page full-colour artwork for the first illustrated edition of The Silmarillion. It was published in 1998, and followed in 2004 by a second edition featuring corrections and additional artwork by Nasmith.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Christopher Tolkien published most of his father's Middle-earth-related writings as the 12-volume The History of Middle-earth series.

In addition to the source material and earlier drafts of several portions of The Lord of the Rings, these books greatly expand on the original material published in The Silmarillion, and in many cases diverge from it. There is much that Tolkien intended to revise but only sketched out in notes, and some new texts surfaced after the publication of The Silmarillion. These books also make it clear just how unfinished the later parts of The Silmarillion really were: some parts were never rewritten after the primitive Lost Tales.

Influences

The Silmarillion is a complex work that has been influenced by many sources. Possibly the largest influence on The Silmarillion was the Finnish epic Kalevala, especially the tale of Kullervo. Tolkien admitted that he had been "greatly affected" by Finnish mythologies,^[13] and even credited Kullervo's story with being the "germ of [his] attempt to write legends".^[14] Tolkien attempted to rework the story of Kullervo into a story of his own, and though he never finished,^[15] similarities to the story can still be seen in the tale of Túrin Turambar.^[16]

The Silmarillion has also been greatly influenced by Greek mythology. For instance, the island of Númenor is purposefully reminiscent of Atlantis.^[17] Both were great island civilisations in the West which disappeared into the sea due to a cataclysmic event. Even the names are similar: the Elvish name for Númenor is Atalantë.^[18]

Another example of the influence of Greek mythology is the Valar, who greatly resemble the Olympian gods.^[19] The Valar, like the Olympians, live in the world, but on a high mountain, separated from mortals;^[20] the Olympians live on Mount Olympus, while the Valar live on Taniquetil. The realms of the Valar also resemble those of the Olympians; Ulmo, Lord of the Waters, is similar to Poseidon, and Manwë, the Lord of the Air and King of the Valar, is similar to Zeus.<ref name="Olympian" />

The Valar also contain elements of Norse mythology. Several of the Valar have characteristics similar to the Æsir, the gods of Asgard.^[21] An example of this is Thor, one of the physically strongest of the gods, who can be seen in both Oromë, who fights the monsters of Melkor, and Tulkas, the physically strongest of the Valar.^[22] Manwё, as the head of the Valar, also contains similarities to Odin, the "Allfather".<ref name="ThorOdin" />

The division between the Calaquendi (Elves of Light) and Moriquendi (Elves of Darkness) was also influenced by Norse mythology, which has its own Light elves and Dark elves.^[23] Further, the Light elves of Norse mythology are associated with the gods, and the Calaquendi are associated with the Valar.^[24]

A traditional Catholic understanding of the Bible is yet another influence on The Silmarillion. The conflict between Melkor and Eru Ilúvatar parallels the one between Lucifer and God.^[25] Further, The Silmarillion tells of the creation and fall of the elves, similar to the way Genesis tells of the creation and fall of man, making The Silmarillion a sort of "'Bible' for the elves".^[26]

It has also been suggested that Celtic mythology influenced The Silmarillion. The exile of the Noldorin elves resembles the story of the Tuatha Dé Danann.^[27] The Tuatha Dé Danann, semi-divine beings, invaded Ireland from across the sea, burning their ships when they arrived and fighting a fierce battle with the current inhabitants. The Noldor arrived in Middle-earth from Valinor and burned their ships, then turned to fight Melkor. The Tuatha Dé Danann are also described similarly to the Noldor.<ref name="Celtic" /> This is seen by some as unlikely, though, since Tolkien wrote in a 1937 letter that he felt "a certain distaste" for Celtic legends, "largely for their fundamental unreason".^[28] However, in another letter written in 1954, Tolkien wrote that he gave Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh ... because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers".^[29]

See also

• The Children of Húrin
• Mythopoeia (genre)
• Silmaril
• The Black Book of Arda

References

External links

• A Background and History of The Silmarillion at Tolkien Online
• Chronology of The Silmarillion
• "The World of Tolkien" by John Gardner; a book review of The Silmarillion, published in The New York Times (October 23, 1977)

J. R. R. Tolkien
Bibliography
Fiction: Songs for the Philologists (1936) • The Hobbit or There and Back Again (1937) • Leaf by Niggle (1945) • The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1945) • Farmer Giles of Ham (1949) • The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (1953) • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), The Return of the King (1955) • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962) • The Road Goes Ever On (1967) • Tree and Leaf (1964) • The Tolkien Reader (1966) • Smith of Wootton Major (1967)
Posthumous publications : The Father Christmas Letters (1976) • The Silmarillion (1977) • Unfinished Tales (1980) • Bilbo's Last Song (1990) • The History of Middle-earth (12 Volumes) (1983–1996) • Roverandom (1998) • The Children of Hrin (2007) • The History of The Hobbit (2007)
Academic works : A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (trans. 1925) • Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (1925) • The Devil's Coach Horses (1925) • Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meihad (1929) • The Name 'Nodens' (1932) • Sigelwara Land parts I and II, in Medium Aevum (1932-34) • Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale (1934) • (1937) • The Reeve's Tale: version prepared for recitation at the 'summer diversions' (1939) • On Fairy-Stories (1939) • Sir Orfeo (1944) • Ofermod and Beorhtnoth's Death (1953) • Middle English "Losenger": Sketch of an etymological and semantic enquiry (1953) • Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962) • English and Welsh (1963) • Introduction to Tree and Leaf (1964) • Contributions to the Jerusalem Bible (as translator and lexicographer) (1966) • Tolkien on Tolkien (autobiographical) (1966)
Posthumous publications : Finn and Hengest (1982) • The Monsters and the Critics (1983) • Beowulf and the Critics (2002)
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