Silmarillion re-read, link to part 1 and letter to Milton Waldman

White ships from Valinor, Ted Nasmith.

I’m currently re-reading The Silmarillion and you can now find the full post of part 1 of my 2010 “Blogging the Silmarillion” series originally published on The Cimmerian, here.

A few additional thoughts and comments on this most recent go-round.

I don’t know why I previously failed to mention Tolkien’s 1951 letter to Milton Waldman that leads off the volume. It’s like reading the cheat code for Tolkien’s greater legendarium. Interestingly this letter does not appear in the 1977 Houghton Mifflin first edition hardcover, but does appear in the gorgeous, Ted Nasmith illustrated 2004 second edition that I also own. Get this latter edition if you don’t already have it, there are nearly 50 illustrations and many appear in this volume for the first time.

Waldman was Tolkien’s friend and an editor at the publishing house of Collins, and the letter is more or less a lengthy summation of Tolkien’s argument that The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings should have been published together, or at least in conjunction, “as one long Saga of the jewels and the rings.” Of course that did not occur as The Silmarillion was published posthumously in 1977.

The letter contains a wonderful summation of what lies at the heart of the legendarium, “Fall, Mortality, and the Machine.” I am perhaps slightly more forgiving than others of Tolkien adaptations, even though I’d be content if we got no more, but I do believe that any faithful Tolkien adaptation must contain these elements. A Fall from God, the creator, Iluvatar; the problem of Mortality (and the problem of the pursuit of deathlessness); and the Machine, or the desire to dominate or coerce other wills and raze and bulldoze the natural world. Either implicit or explicit.