Art by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion is a book that fills me with many emotions, but the only part that makes me feel anger -not tragic grief at the narrative, but real anger- is the ending where the Lord of the Rings is summarized in three paragraphs.
It makes me feel anger because it gives a comparison for just how summarized the rest of the Silmarillion is. The entire fall of the Noldor, written in a way that condenses Frodo and Sam’s whole journey to “alone with his servant he passed through peril and darkness and came at last in Sauron’s despite even to Mount Doom”.
What else did Tolkien imagine over five hundred years of history that didn’t make it into any of his notes? What did he not imagine that still must have occurred? Who are the Boromirs and the Eowyns and the Bilbos of the first age? What witch-kings did they slay and what quests did they begin? What were the riddles and the detours and the love stories?
Its all been forgotten. No one knows anymore, and it’s likely that no one ever did. Not even Professor Tolkien.
