Language: English (Old English, and Quenya)
The 5th book in History of Middle-Earth','The Lost Road'' continues stories we learnt about in book 4, The Shaping of... which was the 1930 Silmarillion.
The stories presented here have been composed around 1937, just before, and then, during the composition of The Lord of the Rings.
Christopher Tolkien (= C.T) also corrects oversights and editorial errors he made in other books in History of Middle-earth - but also in the Unfinished Tales and the published Silmarillion. Because of these, the reader is forced to reach for these and compare, and thus, making the process a tad more tedious - hence the not so-perfect score of 9/10.
Below is a full review, get a cuppa, it's 2,513 words long!
Before I start, I must point to a small ISBN issue pertaining "The Lost Road" :
I physically hold the one shown in this review, ie with the cover seen it (illustration of The Heaven of Moriondë, by Roger Garland), published 21, September 1989, by Unwin (paperbacks), totalizing (VI-) 455 pages.
The same ISBN can be found on a mass market, 30 Septmeber, 2006 edition, published by Del Rey, with 512 pages and the following cover
As I cannot find any table of content to compare these two editions, I now turn to the one I hold:
Preface (1)
Part one : the fall of Númenor and the lost road
I. The early history of the legend (7)
II. The fall of Númenor
the original outline (11)
the first version (13) (commentary 18)
the second version (23) (commentary 29)
III. The lost road
the opening chapter (36)
the Númenórean chapters (57)
the unwritten chapters (77)
Part two: Valinor and Middle-Earth before The Lord Of The Rings
I. The texts and their relations (107)
II. The later annals of Valinor (109)
III. The later annals of Beleriand (124)
IV. Ainulindalë (155)
V. The Lhammas (167)
VI. Quenta Silmarillion (199)
Part three
The etymologies (341)
Appendix :
I. The Genealogies (403)
II. The list of names (404)
III. The second 'Silmarllion' map (404)
Index (415-455)
This volume continues the History of Middle-Earth, with 2 new stories that were planned to be interwoven : The Fall of Númenor- an Atlantis-type story of a drowned continent, and the Lost Road, in which the heroes dream of their ancestors, or time travel into their own preincarnated selves, back to the events of said drowning... The link was never written, but intended.
The rest of this volume is comprised of newer materials of the Silmarillion, between its previous version from 1930, seen in volume IV, but not as full as the final, 1977 one.
Linguistic histories of the peoples, etyomogies of words, genologies, a list of names, a newer map and an index complete this present volume.
Detailed Review on Part one:
Christopher Tolkien's preface and the first chapter (the early history of the legend) explains the agreement his father and CS Lewis had had about writing stories, the latter doing a space-travel and JRR was to write a time-travel story. This would become The Lost Road (the story which gives its title to this present book) and was to be tied to The Fall of Númenor, a tale about the drowning of an ancient continent, Númenór, just like Atlantis, preserving the name into its composition elements.
The cause, however, is different : after the Great Battle between Elves and Mortal Men against Morgoth, the Elves were recalled to dwell in Valinor, and the Men were given a new land by the Valar. Due to its proximity to Valinor, these Men were afforded a long lifespan. Despite this gift, they wished to prolong their lives and angered the Gods. Sûr/ Thû/Gorthû/Sauron comes disguised as a Great Bird and with lies, further poisons these Men, causing them to set sail to the West - to to the Lands of the Gods.
Thus, the first part of this book explores this new story, told in two main versions. Christopher divided the first version into 14 paragraphs, which serve to compare with the second version, where differences occur mostly in paragraphs 1 to 5, and then 14.
He does include the minor emendations for the other paragraphs (6 to 13) before placing 14 into its proper section - and it's easy to see it due to the different font size.
In this tale, we notice the first mention of Mordor, The Black Land ; and also that Sauron, first seen in notes in the previous book (The Shaping of Middle-Earth) becoming more present for the previous names Thû (or Gorthû).
JRR Tolkien hadn't yet given Elrond his brother Elros, so narration includes Elrond, and others mentioned elsewhere, as part of this ever growing body of myths - growing in parallel from older tales (History of, books 1-3, then 4, the 1930 Silmarillion) and which would become later the ensemble Lord of The Rings +(1977) Silmarillion - without reaching, as of yet, the full beauty in narration, but already showing some of its complex elements.
The story of the Lost Road itself is comprised of only 4 finished chapters :
1. A step forward, young Alboin & 2. Alboin and Audoin :
In these first chapters, we meet young Alboin, a somewhat biographical character, analogous to, yet different than JRR Tolkien : Alboin often dreams and in inspired with sudden flashes about names of characters, places, and languages. He is close to his father, Oswin Errol, and they frequently talk about Alboin's day and night dreams and inspirations -all the whilst, the father wishes his son to pursue his studies and to find a balance between imagination and the useful, tangible studies he's supposed to concentrate upon.
After Oswin's death and Alboin is a father himself, to Audoin, their roles repeat the same patterns in a beautiful juxtaposition of dialogues, situations and reflections.
One night, Alboin dreams a message from Elendil, who lived in Númenór, but with his own father's voice, Oswin's, reminding him of his wish to go back in time, inviting Alboin and asking him to extend the invitation his son Audoin, to share in the peril if they so wish... And so they do, in unnamed chapters 3 and 4, becoming themselves Elendin and Amandil (Herendil), facing their own danger of disagreement between father and son, on "political" grounds of either allegiance and faithfulness to the Valar, or siding with Sauron's message. Thus, the story is both a time-travel, with no machinery nor an extension of magic, but simply as a "Preincarnation", through characters sharing names with identical, or similar enough, meanings - told over and over through dialogues between each pair of father/son, and the choices they had in naming their respective sons- among other situations.
I found this story to be really well written and saddened that it wasn't finished. Some of the inspirational sources were dubious, as they were myths themselves, turned either from other myths, or from real history, as understood at the time of composition... Indeed, some elements of The Lost Road are inspired by the Lombards - a germanic people from the 6th to 8th centuries - as well as Norse myths (but as told by Sturluson), and also a book from 1906, The literature of the Celts, by Magnus Mclean, where it is explained that 40 days before the flood, a niece or granddaughter of Noah, with 50 girls and 3 men, came to Ireland... I had to roll my eyes at that one quite fast upon reading!
Thus, the stories The Lost Road, and The fall of Númenór, are beautiful stories, retaining full disconnect from known history and well written. As for the sources of inspiration, somewhat or a lot doubtful, depending on which. It is sad that the JRR had abandoned composition, and hadn't fully tied them into one narrative.
Christopher Tolkien also presents poems, composed in the mid-1920's- and which re related to these tales.
Of note, Oswin Errol may be the same character as Ælfine Eriol from the Lost Tales.
Detailed review of part two :
Christophe starts with (I) the text and their relations, discussing various texts and versions of the stories, between the ones presented here, composed roughly between 1937 and 1945, during that of The Lord of The Rings, and their counterparts in volumes III (Lay of Leithian), IV (Shaping of Middle-Earth), with its 1930 Silmarillion - when composition was abandonned despite progression, in 1931- as well as with the versions in Unfinished Tales. He gives each an abbreviation for faster reference during analysis.
The Later annals of Valinor (in II) and of Beleriand (in III) extend or reduce elements from the annals of the same names in Vol IV (Shaping of), changing also names, relations and embedding most features which had been emendations, straight into their 'final' form of 1937 in this current volume. The biggest changes occur for the Second Age, told n the Later Annals of Beleriand, extended from 250 Sun years seen in Vol IV, to 597 in the second version - prolonging the Seige of Angband, but not reaching the full length of the final version given for this age as of yet (3,441 years!!).
This section was somewhat faster to read as I had read their previous version not so long ago ; I did notice several differences, and despite many improvements to both, JRR Tolkien had missed a few elements which would contradict themselves between Annals, and Tales, showing that the various stages of composition were concomitant and that in his ever-growing expansions and precision, some material would be forgotten or missed.
The Ainulindalë, creation myth in its next version then appears, though not too different either from the previous (seen in VOL. IV) nor from the finished 1977, Silmarillion, tells of Illuvatar, the All-Father, creating the Ainur, the Holly ones, the powers ; the music they played, the discord that ensuded with Melko's portions, and the subsequent creation of the World and the new races on Middle-Earth. I say not too different, and yet there are enough changes from the previous, to be retained into the last version, that this current one is notable both in its eloquent, fluid narrative style and the features of the stories.
Then comes historical accounts of the various languages, in two main versions in the Lhammas - though only the second text is proposed in full, with its emendations, and the differences between it and the first text are in Christopher's commentaries.
A final, shorter account for the account of Elvish tongues alone is proposed in the Lammesethen, as conceptions of Elvish races, and their languages, further evolved. The main difference here further distances the origins of Quenya, thus preserving the Tongue of the Gods to be more fuflly separate, and in both versions (Lhammas +Lammesethen), remain unknown to Men.
These linguistic histories are accompanied by sketches JRR had about relationships between the languages, as well as Christopher's tables which serve to summarize and see more clearly - as the sketches aren't easy to read due to their font.
His notes and comments further inform us of later changes in conceptions, that would lead, eventually, to those of the final names for Elvish races, and their respective languages, which hadn't been fully formed in this period (1937+).
I noted that neighter of these linguistic histories were emended to the longer version of the Later Annals presented above, thus in the texts, numbers and dates given correspond to 200 years earlier than their emended versions (and far from the final versions), showing that JRR was composing them in parallel, emending dates in the Annals before integrating them into the Lhammas, and a very interesting conception of influence between general characteristics of peoples and their histories and events, upon their languages.
This second part ends with a newer version of the Quenta Silmarillion, with composition stages from around November 1937 onward.
As the Ainulindalë, the Music of the Ainur, was at this point made into a separate piece, the chapter introducing the Valar/Ainur have been shortened, and some of the attributes of these Powers are now either more detailed, repeated, or slightly modified.
Although some wordings between this and subsequent chapters are different to the 1930 Silmarillion as seen in Vol IV, as well as the final 1977 version, and/or those of the various Tales and Lays, the content isn't wholly different in itself - only details and conceptions of myths, names, geographies and meanings, are ever changing. Christopher does a great job at explaing each of these elements in his commentaries, chapter after chapter comprised in this new Quenta.
However, he gives only excerts concenring the tales of Beren and Lúthien from the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion's manuscripts (as commentary on chapters 12-15), refering back to the 1977 published version in the Silmarillion (where these stories become chapter 19). This forces the reader to go compare, with a mixed effect : we cannot read the fuller early 1937 versions and their 1951 emendations, which would later become the 1977 fullest and yet altered chapters - as Christopher points out to certain ommissions he regrets having occured in the 'final version'. Luckily, he corrected it for the stand-alone book for these beautiful tales!
He also mentions other errors he commited, for example omitting the c in Narn I Chîn Húrin (= The Lay of the Children of Húrin), shown in the Unfinished Tales as Narn I Hîn Húrin, because he didn't wish readers to mis-pronounce as English Chin.
Lastly, after chapters 17 and 18 (of this 1937 Quenta), Christopher comments and presents the ending portion, which at the time was missing several pages ; thus, shortly after Túrin goes into his self-imosed outlawery life in the woods, the story takes up again somewhere in the middle of Eärandel's tale and concludes this Quenta, beautifully, eloquently, and yet, before the connection between chapters was made. These tales become, in the published 1977 version as chapters 19 to 24 in its own Quenta, extending and further modifying names and sometimes a few relations or presence of specific chatracters in specific events, whereas some of these appear as contradictory in this current, 1937 version - and despite the few emendations in 1951.
Detailed review of Part Three :
The etymologies presented by C.T offer the various prefixes his father had devised in word and name constructions in his Elvish various languages in the same period as the other stories in this book, circa November 1937-February 1938 - before the advent of Sindarin, and yet showing its very sources. The prefixes are roots comprised of 2-6 letters, which have a meaning and used in creating words and names - with given examples in the list.
Sometimes, as C.T explains, it was even harder to track down, read and dechyper all the various remnants and layers of emendations, as his father left very confusing, disorganized and overlayed papers, with almost nothing clearly and easily readable.
The Appendix offers (1) Genealogies, followed by (2) a list of names - or rather, 2 small lists of names and dates not seen elsewhere ; the names listed in this (2) had been started by JRR in the 1930, with a role to index all the names he was using, but this work was left unfinished.
In (3) The second 'Silmarllion' map, C.T attempt sto redo the original map as drawn, before all the layers had been included in book IV (Shaping of M.E.) He presents 4 different panels and comments.
lastly , the Index (a whooping 40 page slong!) was designed to help in finding, as much as possible, references in the book - at least from the stories. Thus, not all those who appear in the etypologies and appendix will be present, unless also mentioned in the stories, or show particular interest.
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