The Lays of Beleriand (The History of Middle-Earth, Vol. 3) (edició 1994)

One of these days . . . I really want to read this full tale of Luthien and Beren.

The lays are… lays! They’re written as long poems. For some reason, I was not expecting that. I also wasn't expecting it to be so pleasant to read; I usually hate poetry. It reminds me of a fanfic drabble: every word chosen carefully, lots of rich details but nothing extraneous. Maybe when I have the house to myself I will read them aloud. (I did, and it was amazing.)

"The Lay of Leithian" is the familiar story of Beren and Lúthien. The rhyming couplets are perfect for this story; I prefer it over all the other prose versions. It also has a lot more detail. "The Lay of the Children of Húrin" is in alliterative verse, and I enjoyed it, although maybe not as much. I don’t know a lot about poetry, but alliterative verse was a much better choice than rhyming couplets, since it’s a much darker story.

Favorites: Lúthien faces down Morgoth. She is brilliant as always, but it’s the characterization of Morgoth himself that gets to me: you can feel his hatred of the Valar, how convincing he can be, and how twisted his view of the world.

Least favorites: None of it is finished! Luckily we know how the stories end, but I would love to read them all the way through in verse. ( )

I wonder whether Tolkien would have published materials dealing with the First Age in his lifetime, if he hadn't tried to write epics on the period? Still, they're not half bad epics, and C.S. Lewis' fictional German professors commenting on /The Lay of Leithien/ are not to be missed.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1693204.html

This is the third volume of the History of Middle Earth; it contains two unfinished poems tackling the two key narratives of the Silmarillion. The first, a version of the tale of Turin told in alliterative blank verse, did not really appeal to me, and while I can see why Tolkien, with his background, wanted to give it a try, it's not very surprising that the effort did not come off. The Lay of Leithian, however, is a different matter - telling the story of Beren and Luthien in rhyming couplets of iambic tetrameter, it has a tremendous energy that Tolkien never quite managed in the prose versions of the story, despite its strong personal significance for him. Also I had forgotten, or had never realised, just how kickass a heroine Luthien actually is. The couplets are occasionally a little unpolished, but Christopher Tolkien reproduces a mock source-critical analysis by none other than C.S. Lewis suggesting that the least good bits are obvious interpolations by later scribes. J.R.R. Tolkien then revised the poem in line with Lewis' suggestions, but typically started expanding it from the middle again and never got around to finishing it.

Years later, it was part of the disorganised bundle of papers submitted to Unwin as material for a potential sequel to The Hobbit. Unwin's reader, who clearly had not been given much background, found the poem indigestible and urged instead an expansion of the prose summary of the rest of The Silmarillion. Tolkien wasn't up for this at that point, and wrote The Lord of the Rings instead. And thus was history made. ( )

edited by Christopher Tolkien