REVIEW: Arda Reconstructed by Douglas Charles Kane
A review of Arda Reconstructed by Douglas Charles Kane. I did this a few years ago, only just thought to put it up here. Apparently some of Kane's criticisms of Christopher Tolkien caused a stir, which I can see -- although not wrong per se, they're more than a little unfair. Ultimately, my main criticism will be Kane's reflexive acceptance of the integrity of authorial "intention." Otherwise, though, I thought this a quite useful book. I've consulted it upon a number of occasions.
Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the
Published "Silmarillion"(review)
One of
the more perplexing questions about J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumously published The
Silmarillion concerns how, and to what extent, Christopher Tolkien changed
or advanced the work of his father during the editing process. Typically, there
are two main camps of thought: either Christopher merely assembled Tolkien’s
relatively finished notes into a publishable form or he wrote the bulk
of material himself from what notes from his father existed. Thanks to the
publication of Douglas Charles Kane’s Arda Reconstructed, Tolkien
scholars and fans alike now have a basis for deciding the issue. Kane’s basic
methodology is simple – he compares the text of The Silmarillion with
the source material now available in the multi-volume The History of
Middle-Earth (also edited by Christopher Tolkien). Kane argues that,
while most sentences and ideas come from somewhere within Tolkien’s notes,
Christopher exercised a heavy editorial hand that changed the organization,
style, and sometimes even meaning of Tolkien’s mythology. A picture emerges of
an editorial process both remarkably faithful and lamentably divergent from
Tolkien’s authorial intent.
Many previous works have traced the development and
themes of Tolkien’s vast mythology. Most of the best insights come from
Christopher via his comments in the works he has edited. Otherwise, the most
exhaustive account of the development of the mythology comes from the essay by
Charles Noad in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on the “The History of
Middle-Earth” edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl Hostetter. Also, The
Silmarillion: Thirty Years On, edited by Allan Turner, considers the key
question on whether the original The
Silmarillion has been superseded in
the Tolkien canon by the publication of The History of Middle-Earth. Yet
neither work manages to comment much on the actual textual choices made by Christopher during his editing process. This is precisely what
Kane seeks to catalogue. To that end, every chapter and paragraph in the
published 1977 text is cross-listed with its source material. All major changes
are noted. Kane uses his prose to explain the tables and to amplify the
significance of the changes he notes.
The introduction of Arda Reconstructed is where
Kane outlines the design and methodology of his book. Three large sections
analyzing the textual changes in The Silmarillion comprise the rest of
the book. The first section handles the major editorial changes in the Ainulindale
and the Valaquenta. Tolkien continually vacillated on whether his
mythology should exist in a flat or a round world – a flat world tended to
strengthen the power of Tolkien’s imagery, but he also felt that his mythology ought
to be compatible with a scientific understanding. Christopher (rightly,
according to Kane) chooses to make the text conform to a flat world, although
this did entail excising many lines from the original sources inconsistent with
a flat world.
The
second section of Kane’s work, however, on the Quenta Silmarillion, demonstrates
most clearly Christopher’s editorial tendencies. Here, wide-scale editorial
changes push “the limits of editorial intervention.”[1] Material
originally from one chapter is freely juxtaposed with material from another. Occasionally,
Christopher inserts text from different stories entirely, or removes text to
place in another story. At certain points, Kane claims that Christopher’s
changes run counter to what Kane deems to be Tolkien’s original authorial
intent. One such change occurs in the third chapter of the Quenta
Silmarillion. When the Valar summoned the elves to Valinor, Christopher
removes an explicit statement from a later reworking of the original
manuscript, to the effect that the elves’ summons is a profound error, albeit
one of good intent. This sense remains in the published text – except Kane
cites a piece of scholarship, unknown to Christopher in 1977, suggesting that
Tolkien had decided the summons derived more from anxiety and fear than
“good intent.” Without establishing the validity of the new scholarship – a
difference exists, for example, between the last change in an
uncompleted sequence and a final change – Kane rather confusingly
suggests that such evidence “provide[s] a cautionary example of the limitations
of comparing the published text with the texts printed” in The History of
Middle-Earth.[2] Such
a claim undermines Kane’s criticism that “Christopher’s edits appear to
seriously change his father’s intentions,”[3]
especially if the basis for that claim is scholarship of which Christopher
could not have been aware.
The
third section, dealing with the Akallabeth, Of the Rings of Power and the
Third Age, as well as the Appendices, is by far the shortest section of the
three. These stories, according to Kane, contained the fewest changes. A short
conclusions rounds the section off; here Kane outlines five major tendencies of
Christopher’s editing. First, the editing process removed too much of Tolkien’s
original philosophical speculation. Second, many sections were condensed or
eliminated entirely, and this particularly harms the story of the fall of
Gondolin. Third, Christopher had “virtually re-created” the story of the ruin
of Doriath. Fourth, aiming at absolute consistency within the published text,
Christopher had chosen to remove all references to the oral and/or written
means of transmission of the many stories in the final published work.[4] Tolkien
himself was by no means clear in his own mind about how he wanted such
information conveyed, if at all; nonetheless, many of The Silmarillion’s stories
appear as if ex nihilo.
On Kane’s view, however, the fifth and most egregious
editorial intervention is the systematic reduction of the role of female
characters – a reduction which makes the published The Silmarillion “a
lesser work.”[5]
Kane lists many examples, of which one will suffice. In the fifth chapter of
the Quenta Silmarillion, Kane notes that the published text calls
Galadriel “beautiful,” whereas the original source text – later published in Morgoth’s
Ring and The War of the Jewels – call her beautiful and valiant.[6] Such a
change cannot be explained through space restrictions. It seems minor and unnecessary.
It is especially concerning to Kane because one of the more frequent complaints
against Tolkien was that he ignored women in his writings, and the edits of Christopher
Tolkien “unfortunately only serve to exacerbate those complaints.”[7] Yet
Christopher had a clear opportunity to lay them partially to rest. What are the
reasons for such an action? Careful as Kane is to frame his criticisms in the
most diplomatic manner possible, he never raises the question. Some benign
hypotheses might have served a good purpose, however.
Kane is
also generally content to leave out theoretical questions, even those vital to
his argument. For example, all five of his main criticisms center on the
concept of authorial intention. What does authorial intention mean,
however, in an unfinished work? However much we might pore over the mythology
and believe we see the workings of Tolkien’s mind through the years, the fact remains
that there cannot be any intention without finality, and Tolkien was
infamous for never achieving finality, as least in his mythology, as his late (attempted)
incorporation of a round world demonstrates. For my own part, it seems more
reasonable to see The Silmarillion as a collaboration between Christopher and his father, rather than a
misguided deviation from an original, authoritative, and non-existent text. In
this way, we might avoid the even trickier question of the extent to which
authorial intention – even when determinable – constitutes a methodologically
sound guideline in a text so thoroughly accepted in the Tolkien canon. We might
also note that Kane’s criticisms are permanently flawed in that he had no
access to Tolkien’s actual notes. These will remain in Christopher’s
possession until such time (if any) they are given to some official collection.
Until that moment, we cannot with certainty know what unpublished notes or
knowledge Christopher may be working with, even as careful as he is to make his
editorial decisions transparent.
Nonetheless, the carefully constructed tables
cross-listing the text of the published The Silmarillion with its published source texts
will be Kane’s outstanding contribution to the study of Tolkien’s mythology. Arda Reconstructed will be an excellent reference
text for scholars and Tolkien devotees alike, just as Kane has claimed. Moreover,
while Kane’s specific criticisms of Christopher’s editing cannot be wholly
satisfactory, the documentation of the systematic reduction in the role of
female characters in the texts might prove a valuable insight for extending
Tolkien studies along feminist lines.
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