THE SILMARILLION
Among the tales of sorrow and ruin that come down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures.—J.R.R. Tolkien
Late last night we finished The Silmarillion, Marcus keeping my throat sustained with iced orange juice. The last sentence came hoarsely but triumphantly: ‘and at long last an end had come to the Eldar, of story and of song.’ I closed the book and we hugged each other in our excitement. Then we were sad; we had been reading this book together ‘forever’!
Reading The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien is something I myself would never have decided to do—reading it aloud, with all those ‘eye-splitting’ Elvish names, certainly not! I was satisfied with The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
But Marcus loves background information, and had already devoured the appendices of the Lord of the Rings, the extensive special features of Peter Jackson’s movies, and the many books about said movies. An entire Middle-Earth history book was apparently fascinating.
He borrowed several editions from the library and somehow cajoled me into reading one aloud to him. Many evenings I would read—of the Valar, of the Eldar, of Morgoth, of Beren and Luthien—while he did dishes or organized the garage or prepped a floor for tiling.
A number of books are published together as The Silmarillion, and it was laughingly depressing to be always turning the page to ‘Chapter One.’ I tried to sound like I knew how to pronounce Thuringwethil, Ingwion and Celembrimbor. {I also pretended to remember who they were.} But I did come to savor the heraldic language and archaic sentence structure reminiscent of northern sagas.
‘In the beginning was the word,’ and Tolkien’s Middle-Earth came into being by language. The passionate philologist created a new language, Elfin or Quenya; a people were needed to speak it; and these people needed a history. The Silmarillion is an account of the creation of Arda {Earth} and the origin of its peoples, a collection of Elvish legends, and a history of the first three ages.
At its best, The Silmarillion is sublime in conception and language. The Creation account is movingly beautiful {‘the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void’}. At other points it devolves into lists of people and places we couldn’t keep straight—a reminder that The Silmarillion was a posthumous publication of an author’s extensive but incomplete notes.
Some readers are annoyed by the lack of much dialogue or characterization, but we read it like an ancient history book and were happy.
It took us the better part of the year to read The Silmarillion, culminating in a December rush to make room for the Iliad next year. Hector, we’re coming!
• cover illustration by Ted Nasmith for The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien •
December 24, 2013