Interview with Christopher Tolkien

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Scholar of Gondor
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Here's a link to a Harper Collins page which features an interview with Christopher, from 2009.

https://www.tolkien.co.uk/interview-chr ... r-tolkien/
It's all in the books.

Herald of Imladris
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Thanks, geordie!
I am no longer young even in the reckoning of Men of the Ancient Houses

Istari Steward
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Wow, thank you for the link, I had not seen this before. The whole interview is fascinating, but particularly this:

"In his later writing mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations: from which arose incompatibilities of tone."

I wish he had given an example or elaborated at all, I am intensely curious how this was reflected in the Silmarillion's drafts.

Chieftain of The Mark
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A great read, thanks @geordie . I'm very partial to The Children of Hùrin, and very pleased that Christopher presented it as a separate book
- he hath not forgotten Image the face of his fathers -

Guardian of the Golden Wood
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KingODuckingham wrote: Tue May 26, 2020 6:36 pm Wow, thank you for the link, I had not seen this before. The whole interview is fascinating, but particularly this:

"In his later writing mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations: from which arose incompatibilities of tone."

I wish he had given an example or elaborated at all, I am intensely curious how this was reflected in the Silmarillion's drafts.
I think you can get an impression of what he means simply by comparing the earlier HOME volumes with the last three volumes. The shift is apparent in the appearance of grand discourses like that between Finrod and Andreth (Morgoth's Ring, Part IV) and also in the reworking of details such as the making of the Silmarils, where the Silmarils are now - and only now - likened to an incarnate soul in a body. This latter gives a clue, I think, what was going on: in composing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien was compelled to work out the relationships between a mortal, an elf, and a Ringwraith, with the latter a mortal who escaped the doom of his kind by becoming a sort of counterfeit elf - undead rather than undying, and this then impacted upon his thinking about the whole, as in he now attempted to think through the 'metaphysical' (or theological) side of his sub-creation.

I've never systematically compared the earlier and later 'Silmarillion' writings so the above is impressionistic rather than firm conclusion. But I have a sense that people do not sufficiently recognize how 'The Lord of the Rings' was (or became) a part of those stories. That is to say, rather than a postscript added at the end the imagination of the story of the end of the Third Age was part and parcel of the imagination of the whole, and working out the what, when, and how of the Rings of Power had repercussions for the whole.
Eat earth. Dig deep. Drink water.

Storyteller
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I enjoyed all that, but particularly Christopher's answer to the question of what his father would have thought of his popularity:

"I think (if one extends the question to include more than simply his enormous popularity) that he might have been in turns delighted, charmed, amused, puzzled, disquieted, baffled, indignant, but, finally, comprehensively astounded."

:smiley24:

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