Waiting on Wednesday (11)

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. So here's a thing I'm looking forward to: The Fall of Arthur, by J.R.R. Tolkien (author) and Christopher Tolkien (editor), from HarperCollins, May 23, 2013.

The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain, may well be regarded as his finest and most skillful achievement in the use of the Old English alliterative metre, in which he brought to his transforming perceptions of the old narratives a pervasive sense of the grave and fateful nature of all that is told: of Arthur’s expedition overseas into distant heathen lands, of Guinevere’s flight from Camelot, of the great sea-battle on Arthur’s return to Britain, in the portrait of the traitor Mordred, in the tormented doubts of Lancelot in his French castle.

Unhappily, The Fall of Arthur was one of several long narrative poems that he abandoned in that period. Associated with the text of the poem, however, are many manuscript pages: a great quantity of drafting and experimentation in verse, in which the strange evolution of the poem’s structure is revealed, together with narrative synopses and very significant if tantalising notes. In these latter can be discerned clear if mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with The Silmarillion, and the bitter ending of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, which was never written.

*****

Tolkien was actually a pretty decent poet, and I enjoyed another of his forays into alliterative verse: The Lays of Beleriand presents his treatment in that format of one of his own Great Tales, the Song of the Children of Hurin. I'm also a fan of most things Arthurian, and the closer they stick to early stories the better I generally like it. On the other hand, I bounced off The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, so I'm not positive I'll love this one! But I'll definitely give it a shot. 

The Children of Hurin

I've been reading the new book by J.R.R. Tolkien, who has been dead for 34 years.  It's a story I'm familiar with from its iterations in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Lays of Beleriand: Húrin, the lord of the (human) House of Hador in the First Age of Middle-Earth, is an ally of the Noldor Elves in their interminable war against Morgoth, the force of evil, until he is captured in battle.  When he still refuses to knuckle under, Morgoth curses him and his whole family, and Húrin's son Túrin and daughter Niënor grow up under the curse unbeknownst to them.  The book is mostly about Túrin and how everything he ever does turns out badly for him and those who love him...and, really, for everyone around him whether they love him or not.

It's a story that must have been close to Tolkien's heart, seeing as how he spent pretty much his whole adult life writing and rewriting it in prose and in intricate alliterative verse.  It's also bloody depressing, without a paragraph or even a line of redemption for anybody in it.  The emphasis on man's inability to escape his fate is very strong.

But I think it works better as a standalone tale between its own covers than it does as a chapter in a longer book.  The illustrations by Alan Lee are great as well.  Far be it from me to argue with Christopher Tolkien, who has been editing his father's papers almost as long as I've been alive, but I disagree with his decision to end the tale rather abruptly after the death of Túrin, then append an awkward epilogue about the parents; either leave them out entirely, or give them their own chapter! But I'd love to see the other two of Tolkien's three "Great Tales" given the same treatment, though I don't know if that's possible given the extant variations.

Originally posted at MySpace 4/27/07