Suvo zlato <3

Konacno sam se upustio u uvanturu citanja "Istorije Srednje Zemlje", 12 knjiga na Engleskom jeziku koje na skoro 6000 strana dopunjuju, objasnjavaju, predstavljaju genezu i na svaki drugi moguci nacin nam prblizavaju svet Srednje Zemlje i Valinora.

Bitno je znati:

Content

"This...discussion is an attempt to explain my primary motives for offering The Book of Lost Tales for publication. It is the first step in presenting the 'longitudinal' view of Middle-earth and Valinor: when the huge geographical expansion, swelling out from the centre and (as it were) thrusting Beleriand into the west, was far off in the future; when there were no 'Elder Days' ending in the drowning of Beleriand, for there were as yet no other Ages of the World; when the Elves were still 'faeries', and even Rúmil the learned Noldo was far removed from the magisterial 'loremasters' of my father's later years."

—Christopher Tolkien, towards the end of the Foreword to the book

It's great wen you can read the first and fresh versions of what will once become the world of Middle-earth and how story was changed and how it will be if it was not. And of course all followed by Christoper's comments. Thank you for sharing, Christopher and thank you for being such a beautiful weird human being with a wonderful brain, Mr. Tolkien.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1581275.html

The Book of Lost Tales was published in 1983, interpreted from a series of longhand notebooks started by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1917, as later interpreted by his son Christopher. Tolkien's series of linked short stories were written in his spare time from his academic career and family obligations; once he decided to abandon the Lost Tales and start over, he probably did not expect that they would ever see the light of day - this is essentially a private set of thoughts whose author did not deem them ready for publication.

The book offers insights into the process of writing, crafting and drafting, trying to get it right, over the decades which led to Tolkien's great works. Occasionally one can trace particular elements to the outside world: Tolkien's town of Kortirion is very explicitly modelled on Warwick. But more often the writers are drawing on their own emotional resources and imagination, trying as it were to find the story that is trying to get out - the Tolkien drafts show constant refining to get a better result.

The Book of Lost Tales is of interest more because of what it eventually led to, and also to an extent because of what fed into it, than because of the content. Of course Tolkien drew on the ancient literature with which he was very familiar in crafting his own work; but the style seemed to me to have strong links with Lord Dunsany and with the earlier and less weird Lovecraft. Dunsany's The Gods of Pegāna had of course been published in 1905, but I see that Lovecraft only started publishing horror in 1919, so I guess it is a case of two contemporaries drawing from a common well.

I couldn't really recommend The Book of Lost Tales to anyone but a Tolkien enthusiast (and I have been one for most of my life, but have only now got around to reading it 27 years after it was published).

This is the first of a 12-book series written by JRR Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien. After his father died, his son collected and studied both his father's published and unpublished works, and decided to organize them into a readable collection, complete with explanations and footnotes. For anyone who loved the Lord of the Rings and hungers for more; also for anyone who is curious about how Tolkien developed his imagined world in the first place.

If you wanted to know how things came about in Middle Earth and the Undying Lands, this is a wonderful book to have for informational reference. From tales about the chaining of Melko ('Melko' was the original name, but it seems few people know that - perhaps they didn't read the book ;) ), to the coming of the Eldar, and the awakening of Men, the stories in this book are essential to fully understand the beginnings of Tolkien's world.

Non per tutti, direi. La nuova edizione, che dà il via all'ambizioso (e troppo rimandato) progetto di traduzione della Storia della Terra di Mezzo, è molto bella e curata. Rimane un testo di analisi filologica, non certo un libretto estivo di racconti. Magnifico vedere come evolve l'intero pantheon di divinità ed elfi conosciuti nel Silmarillion, ma decisamente più un testo di studio per suuuuuuper appassionati.

Oh Tolkien! This book was about the beginning of Middle Earth (even though it is not called that yet) all these stories Tolkien wrote when he was young...all these poems I had never read before. There were times I would just stop and re-read something because it was so beautiful. The first story was my favorite, "The Cottage of Lost Play." It was beautiful!
The description of the tree Laurelin in "The Coming of the Valor,"..."Behold from that place that had been watered from Kulullin rose a slender shoot, and from its bark pale gold effulgence poured; yet did that plant grow apace so that in seven hours there was tree of mighty stature, and all the Valar and their folk might sit beneath its branches. Of great shapeliness and goodly growth was that stick, and nought was there to break its smooth rind, which glowed faintly with a yellow light, for a vast height above the earth. Then did fair boughs thrust overhead in all directions, and golden buds swelled form all the twigs and lesser branches, and from these burst leaves of a rich green whose edges shone. Already was the light that that tree gave wide and fair, but as the Valar gazed it put forth blossom in exceeding great profusion, so that all its boughs were hidden by long swaying clusters of gold flowers like a myriad hanging lamps of flame, and light spilled form the tops of these and splashed upon the ground with a sweet noise."
And of the other tree Silpion, "...the other waxed now to a stature even as lofty as Laurin, and its stock was yet more shapely and more slender, and its rind like silk, but its boughs above were thicker and more tangled and its twigs denser, and they put forth masses of bluish green leaves like spearheads...and its blossoms did not hang in clusters but were like separate flowers growing on fine stems that swung together, and were as silver and pearls and glittering stars and brunt with a white light, and it seemed as if the tree's heart throbbed, and its radiance wavered thereto waxing and waning. Light like liquid silver distilled from its bole and dripped to the earth, and it shed a very great illumination about the plain, yet it was that not as wide as the light of the tree of gold..."
I love his descriptions of light being liquid.
There were several poems of his I had never read before that I LOVED...one of them being "Kortirion Among the Trees,."

O fading town upon a little hill,
Old memory is waning in thine ancient gates,
The robe gone grey, thine old heart almost still;
The castle only, frowning, ever waits,
And ponders how among the towering elms
The Gliding Water leaves these inland realms,
And slips between long meadows to the western sea -
Still bearing downward over numerous falls,
One year and then another to the sea,
And slowly thither have a many gone,
Since first the fairies built Kortirion.

So so so so so pretty! It has sparked inspiration to write poetry again...I just love reading it. I love the sound of the rhymes... I love his poetry so very much! It creates such beautiful, amazing imagery. There were several in this book and I hope there are more in the next ones because I absolutely love reading them.

I'll be honest and say that there were times when I spaced out because there were so many words and characters. There were slow parts, he never did finish these stories so his son edited them. But there were also beautiful moments and I loved it.

This is a good book for any Tolkien lovers out there. Some might find it hard to get through..but it is truly amazing. I love his descriptions and his creation of his own myth with his own gods and goddesses and creation of Middle Earth. Also interesting are the commentaries by Christopher...he explains a lot about Tolkien's ideas and how they changed and the names and everything. Makes me realize how much time he put into his writing...all those names and meanings and languages....its amazing.
Wonderful book.

Tolkien was a soldier and Oxford student in his early 20s when he embarked on the project at which he would spend his whole life laboring. At the time, it was an incredibly strange and eccentric project: the invention of an entire mythological cycle with its own mythic cosmos, along with densely intricate languages, cultures, and a history recounted in the form of an epic cycle of stories. Of course, he spawned the genre of modern fantasy in doing so, but in many ways Tolkien was not a fantasy writer. His work belongs to a genre all its own: myth, but in a uniquely modern sense.

This is the first volume constituting Tolkien's first version of the story cycle he would spend the rest of his life revising and expanding: the history of his imaginary world Arda from its creation onwards. The language of The Book of Lost Tales is more archaic and stylized than that of either The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, and it reflects his original ambition: to create a mythological origin story for his homeland of England. (Contrary to a lot of popular discourse about Tolkien, he abandoned this conception of what he was up to relatively early on.)

For readers of The Silmarillion, one of the things that's interesting here is that while The Book of Lost Tales predates his invention of the Second and Third Ages of the Sun, many of the stories that eventually made their way into The Silmarillion are not just here, but also presented in much greater detail than in their later forms. As his son Christopher puts it in his editorial commentary, The Silmarillion's writing style is much more 'epitomizing' than that of The Book of Lost Tales. For example, "The Tale of the Sun and the Moon" in The Book of Lost Tales is much longer, with richly beautiful descriptions of the world's fantastical geography and composition.

Further, many of the details of the stories here are quite different. For example, Fëanor is here, as are his masterworks the Silmarils, but their theft by Melkor (here, Melko) takes place after Fëanor and his people resolve to depart Valinor and exact vengeance. Most importantly of all, the whole story cycle is framed by a Decameron- or Canterbury Tales-like conceit, in which a seafarer named Eriol accidentally washes up on the shore of the island of Tol Eressëa, and is told these tales in a mysterious place known as the Cottage of Lost Play, by Elves as well as by children who have 'taken the dream road' there and can't make their way back.

In some ways, Tolkien's mass popularity has worked against him. On the one hand, it's led to a great many people snobbishly dismissing his work as trashy pop escapism. On the other hand, people who are passionate aficionados of the fantasy genre Tolkien helped to found are likely to find the bulk of his writings too difficult, too boring because it isn't plot- or action-driven, and/or too archaic in its mode of presentation to be worth the bother. I know it sounds crazy to say about the author of some of the biggest bestsellers of the modern era, but Tolkien was a true literary eccentric, a true outsider, most of whose work sadly seems destined to be under-appreciated.

I had thought that this book was a bunch of stories in the Tolkien mythology that had never been published. It was only after picking this book up at the library that I discovered what it actually is. After his father died, Christopher Tolkien first compiled, edited, and published The Silmarillion and then later made this twelve volume (yes, twelve!) set of what is essentially all of his father's unpublished and generally unfinished writings.

This first book is what eventually was rewritten as The Silmarillion, but how Tolkien had first envisioned the telling of the story, as a man named Eriol who stumbles upon an elfin island and bids everyone he meets to tell him their history of the world.

I've read the Silmarillion a couple of times, so I'm generally pretty familiar with the story. This is like reading Tolkien's first draft of The Silmarillion, which is a little bit weird. After each chapter, Christopher Tolkien describes how each story evolved into the final story in The Silmarillion. Ultimately, I think it's a better idea to read the author's final work rather than early drafts, but it's a little bit interesting to see how Tolkien changed various stories over time.

Really, this is only a book for people who are very well acquainted with the story of Middle Earth and want more insight into Tolkien's literary practice. I would even say that it doesn't make much sense to read this unless you've read The Silmarillion more than once.

An invaluable look into the early shape of Tolkien's legendarium, the stories (and the framing device) that existed long before "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Christopher Tolkien is a great editor, although his use of endnotes rather than footnotes is a choice of endless consternation for someone who owns all 12 volumes of the History of Middle-earth.

In many ways the stories in this volume look very different from those in the published Silmarillion, but they are nevertheless fundamentally part of the same work. They are much more exhaustive in the way of explanatory myth than the leaner Silmarillion, the gods are more flawed, and the world is more raw. This collection of stories is not only valuable for the insight into how Middle-earth was shaped, but for its own distinctive flavor.

more commentary than stories

It's really impossible to rate this book. If you are a hardcore Tolkien fan, I think you'll love it. If you thought The Silmarillion was a difficult read, you'll probably want to skip this one.

Basically, this book is a printing of Tolkein's early drafts of tales that eventually came to comprise the Silmarillion, along with his son Christopher's commentary. Much of this material was ultimately rejected in the final versions, and there were some major changes to much of the material.

So, if you are interested in seeing Tolkien's thought process in creating and developing Middle Earth, and are willing to put in the effort required to keep up with all the changes, this book is for you. If you are looking for a fantasy story in which you can lose yourself in the prose, you might want to give this one a miss.