Gil-galad was an Elven-king... - Page 2
© Michael Martinez
In a further explanation of how "The Ruin of Doriath" was written later in the book, Christopher says:
This story was not lightly or easily conceived, but was the outcome of long experimentation among alternative conceptions. In this work Guy Kay took a major part, and the chapter that I finally wrote owes much to my discussions with him. It is, and was, obvious that a step was being taken of a different order from any other 'manipulation' of my father's own writing in the course of the book: even in the case of the story of the Fall of Gondolin, to which my father had never returned, something could be contrived without introducing radical changes in the narrative. It seemed at that time that there were elements in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with 'The Silmarillion' as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon that conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function.This repudiation of his most significant contribution to The Silmarillion shows that Christopher Tolkien does not present it as a canonical work. That is, he never intended the published Silmarillion to represent his father's vision. He was cautionary in the foreword to the Silmarillion itself, noting that
...to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book, the diversity of the materials -- to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century -- would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative....A complete consistency...is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost....We therefore have solid reason, provided by Christopher Tolkien himself, to question the validity of any statement in The Silmarillion. But that is not to say that everything in the book should be thrown out as non-canonical. Rather, since we now have the source materials available for our own study, we can determine (especially with the aid of Christopher's explicit commentary) where the original stories were altered or not used, and why.
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