Beren and Luthien by JRR Tolkien
Edited by Christopher Tolkien
Cover art and interior illustrations by Alan Lee
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
When I first found this book on the shelves of our local public library, I thought that it would be something similar to The Children of Hurin. That is, an expansion of the second of the three great tales of the Elder Days, the love story of Beren and Luthien, into a full-length prose narrative, more in line with a modern novel than the compressed account of the Quenta Silmarillion.
However, when I set to reading it, I discovered that this was not to be the case. Instead, I found something more on the order of a critical analysis of the development of the story from the Tale of Tinuviel in the Book of Lost Tales through to the state at which it was found at the time of the elder Tolkien's death.
I do not know why Christopher Tolkien chose to prepare this volume thusly. Perhaps it was a matter that, unlike the story of Turin and his family, the elder Tolkien had not actually set forth to write an extended prose treatment of the story of Beren and Luthien comparable to The Children of Hurin, and as a result, the son considered it presumptuous to second-guess the father's intentions and attempt a synthesis of the various earlier and more detailed versions to create an expansion of the compressed account in the Quenta Silmarillion. It is also possible that the debilities of age were becoming a factor. Christopher Tolkien would have been in his nineties when this volume was prepared, and although he was a remarkably lively and active man for his age, it's pretty clear he was slowing down in his final years. As a result, it's completely plausible that he might have found the prospect of such a project altogether too daunting, and decided to settle for a scholarly examination of the successive manuscripts.
Unfortunately, the result is a document that really doesn't add that much to the available literature on Tolkien's great story of love and sacrifice, of hope and tragedy. And that's a great shame, because the story of Beren and Luthien is in many ways the most accessible of all the stories of the First Age, Tolkien's original masterwork from which both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were side-tracks, even distractions from the long struggle to put that part of the legendarium into some form that would be sufficiently accessible to the average reader to be publishable at the time.
In fact, it would be very nice to see some serious stand-alone adaptations of the story, perhaps in film or sequential narrative art (whether Western-style graphic novels or Japanese manga). However, to do so would require the cooperation of the Tolkien estate, and there is evidence that issues with the recent cinematic adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (film rights for which were sold much earlier) have made them less accommodating in granting the necessary permissions for such a project. Similarly, it is likely that the Tolkien estate would be very hesitant to allow other hands to attempt an extended prose rendition of the story, of the sort that would compare with The Children of Hurin.
As a result, I can really recommend this volume only to completists, for the simple reason that there is very little new information, beyond some of Christopher Tolkien's interpretive notes. All the actual texts are taken directly from the various volumes of the History of Middle-Earth, and this volume primarily serves to bring them together -- yet many of them are not complete, with only the most interesting extracts, so to gain a full appreciation of the development of the texts, one must still go to the relevant volumes of the History of Middle-Earth.
Christopher Tolkien begins with a preface setting forth his purposes in creating this volume, and what he hopes to add to the published materials on his father's life-work. In doing so, he frequently quotes his earlier remarks from the History of Middle-Earth and other documents, which can give the impression of repeating himself.
The second section is the Notes on the Elder Days, in which Christopher Tolkien provides some basic explanatory material for people who have discovered this volume without having read The Silmarillion or the various volumes of the History of Middle Earth. This material covers the character of Morgoth, the original Dark Lord whom Sauron once served, as well as some basic information about Beleriand, the setting of the story, and the nature and early history of the Elves. That last section is heavily focused upon the Noldor and their rebellion after Morgoth's theft of the Silmarils, the Great Jewels that were the maguffin of the stories of the First Age, the magic items that everyone was seeking and all the grand and terrible deeds of that era were focused upon.
The bulk of the volume is of course the texts themselves and their analysis. Only the Tale of Tinuviel from The Book of Lost Tales is presented in fullness, and is introduced with a fairly lengthy discussion of certain peculiarities of this ur-text of the legendarium, particularly the various early forms of the names, but also the fact that this was first and foremost a tale told, an oral tradition that was delivered to an audience within the greater work, rather like the Decameron or the Canterbury Tales. In particular, the Tale of Tinuviel is told by Veanne, who is clearly recounting an ancient tradition of her people, a received corpus of history and legend. More than once in her telling of the tale, she notes that one or another character did great deeds that are not recounted in the story as she tells it.
There are some startling differences in the characterizations of the major figures of this version of the story, as compared to the subsequent ones. However, most of them were already noted in the expository material of The Book of Lost Tales: that Dairon was originally Tinuviel's brother, that Beren was originally an Elf of the Noldor rather than a Man (which meant that her father's opposition to Beren was an issue of the crimes of the Noldor during their departure from Valinor, rather than his being of a completely different -- and to Elven eyes, lesser -- kindred), and of course the whole story of Tevildo, Prince of Cats, and his epic battle with Huan the Hound, which is charming in the manner of a child's animal-fable, but lacks the gravitas of the later versions of that segment of the story of Beren and Luthien, in which the antagonist was the evil Maia who ultimately became Sauron..
It's also interesting to note that Veanne explicitly says that there are more stories of Beren and Luthien after their release by Mandos to live again in the land that would ultimately be named Beleriand, that they did great deeds but those belong to other tales and tonight the time of tale-telling is growing to a close. When Tolkien originally conceived of the legendarium, it was explicitly presented as excerpts of a much larger oral tradition, which would only be sampled by Eriol, who was to be both mediator and stand-in for the reader. Of course it's also useful to remember that Tolkien originally conceived the legendarium as a framework upon which other hands would build, rather than something reserved explicitly to himself. Given that he would have had a strong grounding in the Classics of Ancient Greece and Rome, and would be well aware not only of the Illiad and Odyssey of Homer, but also of the various subsequent works that expanded the story, of which most have been lost save for excerpts or even just critical references, although Virgil's Aenied is the most significant one to survive complete into the modern era, Tolkien appears to have envisioned a similar process of accretion taking place. Only later, when he came to understand how modern publishing and copyright work, did he become more guarded about the use of his works as inspiration by others.
The remainder of the analysis uses the verse Lay of Leithien as the structure around which all subsequent texts are considered. However, the poetic Lay is not quoted entire, only in extracts that Christopher Tolkien considers particularly significant. As a result, while it might serve as an introduction for a person whose only acquaintance with Middle Earth is the movies, and might inspire a person to acquire the various volumes of the History of Middle Earth in order to delve deeper into the manuscripts and their development, it really doesn't add all that much to the experience of a person who has already delved through them and was expecting something new.
There is also some material, mostly taken from the Book of Lost Tales, but also from some subsequent manuscripts, that deals with subsequent events regarding the Silmaril that Beren took from Morgoth's crown at great price. In addition, there's a short section regarding Tolkien's later attempts to rewrite the earlier parts of the Lay of Leithien, which soon petered out into occasional emendations, like so many of his ambitious projects later abandoned as something else captivated his attention.
Christopher Tolkien completes the volume with a list of names, each glossed with a brief description, and a glossary of archaic words and usages that are apt to give a modern reader difficulty.
While it has a sprinkling of interesting new material, that is by and large interpretation, sometimes in the light of documentary material that was not available to Christopher Tolkien at the time when he was compiling the early volumes of The History of Middle Earth. As a result, it will be a disappointment for many long-time fans of Middle Earth who were anticipating a full telling of this central tale of the Elder Days, as opposed to a literary analysis of its development.
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Review posted December 12, 2020
