All the King's Horses and All the King's Men... - Page 5
© Michael Martinez
The essay concludes with a discussion of whether Manwe was right to restore Melkor's freedom to him. It makes the point that, had Manwe not done so, he would have become like Melkor, himself rebellious toward Iluvatar. One of the notes attached to the essay also deals with foresight. Communication by thought, the nature of good and evil, foresight -- even the notion of whether a Valar can become trapped in an assumed form (body) -- "Osanwe-kenta" wanders all over the place, leaping from idea to idea almost faster than the author can write them down.
The material from the late 1950s represents a highly productive yet unsatisfying era from Tolkien's writing career. The more he wrote about Middle-earth, the more he needed to write in order to explain what he had written. Answers begat questions, questions went unanswered, and ideas rolled from his hand like boulders crashing down the slopes of Caradhras.
It would appear, however, that everything was leading back to the mythology Tolkien had constructed for The Lord of the Rings. The portion of Appendix D from "Quendi and Eldar", which Christopher omitted from The War of the Jewels, deals primarily with Feanor's early career as an Elvish loremaster. Feanor's study of language and his political motivations are more fully elucidated in "The Shibboleth of Feanor", which Christopher published in The Peoples of Middle-earth, the twelfth and last volume in his History of Middle-earth series.
Linguists have focused upon the first part of the "Shibboleth" because it provides details concerning the development of Noldorin Quenya, whereas historians have focused on the second part of the "Shibboleth" because it provides details on the final Noldorin genealogy. "The Shibboleth of Feanor" was composed in 1968 or later, and therefore post-dates "Quendi and Eldar" by almost a decade. It would seem, therefore, that Tolkien felt unsatisfied by what he had written in "Osanwe-kenta" and decided to further expand upon Feanor's history. Christopher does conclude, at one point in The History of Middle-earth, that his father used genealogies he had written in the late 1950s while working on "The Shibboleth of Feanor". It may very well be, indeed seems most likely, that J.R.R.T. had some or all of the "Quendi and Eldar" papers available, too.
