Lonely Wanderers and the Tales That Almost Were - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
The story-teller can make allusions to tales the audience already knows, but the story-teller may also be setting up the audience's anticipation for the next story. Tolkien loved to do this. He kept promising his readers more and more, and in doing so he created that illusion of depth which would ultimately defeat his efforts to produce a true Silmarillion. Always compelled to reveal more and more about Middle-earth by his earlier revelations, Tolkien wandered down tangential track after tangential track.
In the letter for Waldman, Tolkien fell into the same trap (or laid it, yet falling into it just the same). In passing he mentions
There are other stories almost equally full in treatment, and equally independent and yet linked to the general history. There is the Children of Hurin, the tragic tale of Turin Turambar and his sister Niniel -- of which Turin is the hero: a figure that might be said (by people who like that sort of thing, though it is not very useful) to be derived from elements in Sigurd the Volsung, Oedipus, and the Finnish Kullervo. There is the Fall of Gondolin: the chief Elvish stronghold. And the tale, or tales, of Earendil the Wanderer. He is important as the person who brings the Silmarillion to its end, and as providing in his offspring the main links to and persons in the tales of later Ages. His function, as a representative of both Kindreds, Elves and Men, is to find a sea-passage back to the Land of the Gods, and as ambassador persuade them to take thought again for the Exiles, to pity them, and to rescue them from the Enemy. His wife Elwing descends from Luthien and still possesses the Silmaril. But the curse still works, and Earendil's home is destroyed by the sons of Feanor. But this provides the solution: Elwing casting herself into the Sea to save the Jewel comes to Earendil, and with the power of the great Gem they pass at least to Valinor, and accomplish their errand -- at the cost of never being allowed to return or dwell again with Elves or Men. The gods then move again, and great power comes out of the West, amd the stronghold of the Enemy is destroyed....Tolkien never wrote a long version of the story of Earendil. He does appear at the end of "Quenta Silmarillion" as promised, but the story is only a brief narrative. We don't have a "Voyages of Earendil" to refer to or even long for. Such a text was probably never contemplated by Tolkien, except in the briefest way. There are the notes for an early Earendil epic which have been published in The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. Christopher Tolkien showed us that his father once intended to create an Odyssey for Earendil which would have rivalled Homer's work, but the voyages and wanderings were never fully realized. And Tolkien never returned to them, after he abandoned the Lost Tales. But the history of Earendil diverged significantly from the early glimpses, and his story was diminished.
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