Notes from The Silmarillion
When I read The Lord of the Rings, I was endlessly intrigued by the references Tolkien made to the ancient history of Middle-Earth. What had really happened there? Why was it called Middle-Earth? How did the events of LOTR fit in with the rest of its history?
So it was with great anticipation that I picked up The Silmarillion ([Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Silmarillion-J-R-R-Tolkien/dp/0618126988/ref=ed_oe_p)), in which Tolkien chronicles the full history of the LOTR world.
In its scope and length it reminded me of [Anathem](http://ryskamp.org/brain/books/notes-from-anathem), where a single 900-page book felt like several different, but related, stories. In The Silmarillion, this is made explicit by separating the book into four separate sections. Each section uses a different level of perspective and detail, from high-level creation and deities down to personal interactions. This gives the book immense scope and the ability to give a full history of the world. It also uses the same trick as Anathem with its setting, in a world that is “not Earth”, but clearly “similar to Earth in many ways.” (Technically, Tolkien last described it as Earth “[at a different stage of imagination](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth)”)
As a literary work, however, it’s almost the opposite of LOTR and Anathem. While those books start small, with interpersonal issues in a small community, The Slimarillion starts very big, with the creation of the world and its deities. It sets up an interesting overall flow, as the focus shifts from large scale to very small and back again in LOTR.
Tolkein gives a good description of this himself in the letter to his publisher included in the front (of my version, at least), which was at least as interesting as the rest of the book in telling how he created these works. He describes his goal as follows:
> To make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story — the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendor from the vast backcloths. – Forward, xi-xii
The lyrical, poetic writing style is tough to read but is appropriate for the telling of ancient stories. The Silmarillion is set as a work of mythology for the world it describes, not for we as outsiders. As such, it tells the stories to people who are already familiar with the names and places. Fortunately, Tolkien includes a thorough index and glossary at the end of the book for those of us born outside Middle-Earth.
For those simply wishing to understand the history of the LOTR world, the [Middle-Earth Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth) is probably the best resource. But if that isn’t enough, and you want to hear the stories yourself, The Silmarillion is the place to find them.
### Notes
Just a few notes cribbed here; as with Anathem, the focus is on the reading of the story itself.
Tolkien didn’t write everything with the final grand scheme in mind; rather, it emerged from the writing:
> The mere stories were the thing. They arose in my mind as ‘given’ things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew…always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’. – Forward, xii
> The Hobbit…was quite independently conceived: I did not know as I began it that it belonged. But it proved to be the discovery of the completion of the whole. – Forward, xii
An interesting perspective on the Dwarves, which were created outside of Eru’s (God’s) grand vision by an angelic Valar and didn’t have the same respect for the earth that the Elves did. Sadly, this seems also to be our perspective in this world…
> Because thou hiddest this thought from me until its achievement, thy children will have little love for the things of my love. They will love first the things made by their own hands, as doth their father. They will delve in the earth, and the things that grow and live upon the earth they will not heed. Many a tree shall feel the bit of their iron without pity. – 39
And while many of the stories immediately recall similar religious stories, Tolkien says this was not his goal:
> I dislike Allegory–the conscious and intentional allegory–yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth of fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more life a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) – Forward, xii-xiii