When I tried once to explain briefly to a friend what it was all about, I found that with the exercise of severe economy I took 41 pages and 10,000 words. (J.R.R. Tolkien) #relatabel #justlikeme #frfr

I think most people haven't browsed the History of Middle-Earth and thus don't know how much Tolkien struggled with executive dysfunction and how much of his work is unfinished. HoME is 12 volumes of unfinished, unedited, often contradictory material; it's not a “history of Middle-Earth” as in, a narrative of events in the realms of Arda, it's a “history of Middle-Earth” as in, I, Christopher Tolkien, will show the boxes and boxes of Middle-Earth manuscripts that my father started and never completed; it's a history of the work we call Middle-Earth, a history of revisions. And that's still not all of it! Most of the stuff that interests me was to be slowly published even later, in the periodicals Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon, and occasionally in books like The Nature of Middle-Earth (2021). It's still not all published, by the way. Christopher and the Tolkien Estate editors involved with this describe it more to the note of “scratched the surface” or “tip of the iceberg”. Yes, this is the most famous name in fantasy and most of his material remains unpublished.

That's in part because most of the material is not fiction stories per se, there's no unpublished novels or missing adventures of Sam Gamgee, it rather has to do with his life work: the languages and their legendarium, of which the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was something of a diversion, an offshoot pressured by editors after the success of The Hobbit—and the bitter initial rejections of the Silmarillion. Most of Tolkien fandom is primarily interested in the LotR story, which to his credit he did write to the end, quite neatly (the sequel was abortive and there's many unfinished prequels and side stories, but there is a big main story that he, unquestionably, shipped). Therefore Tolkien doesn't come across at first sight as particularly having trouble in getting things done. Yet we don't have even a basic Quenya grammar. He couldn't even settle definitively on basic details of morphology.

And this is not a small detail that's missing; it's his entire goal. He did his best to explain as explicitly as he could that the story exists to flesh out the languages and not the other way around:

If I might elucidate what H. Breit has left of my letter: the remark about 'philology' was intended to allude to what is I think a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. [emphasis his] The authorities of the university might well consider it an aberration of an elderly professor of philology to write and publish fairy stories and romances, and call it a 'hobby', pardonable because it has been (surprisingly to me as much as to anyone) successful. But it is not a 'hobby', in the sense of something quite different from one's work, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stones' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. I should have preferred to write in 'Elvish'.* But, of course, such a work as The Lord of the Rings has been edited and only as much 'language' has been left in as I thought would be stomached by readers. (I now find that many would have liked more.) But there is a great deal of linguistic matter (other than actually 'elvish' names and words) included or mythologically expressed in the book. It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in 'linguistic aesthetic', as I sometimes say to people who ask me 'what is it all about?' [emphasis mine]

*(Oh for an LotR entirely in Quenya! Look at what they took from us ;–; )

…But most people just aren't interested in conlangs, or philology or phonetics or grammar or anything of the sort, which is like, perfectly ok, I'm also not interested in car motors or materials engineering or a ton of other things; it's just that this attitude obscures from view the thing that Tolkien put the most work about, as if I read a novel written by a mechanic who dedicated literal decades to producing plausible fictional vehicles and I just gloss over all the “car parts”; only it goes a good deal deeper because language is the material from which stories are made of, so it's more like a musician who designs his own scales and tunings and custom instruments at great pains, only for most of the audience to focus entirely on his love lyrics. Even now, for example, I'm looking at a summary table of the 12 HoME volumes on Wikipedia, and the current revision unexplainably omits the Etymologies and List of Names that take up most of vol. 5 and all the linguistic material on vol. 11, both of which remain the largest published non-journal source of Tolkien's original goal. (For more on Tolkien's attitude to conlanging and his theories about sound and meaning in artlangs and natlangs alike, see A Secret Vice , 1931, published 2016.)

Tolkien's narration is intended primarily as an experiment in his phonaesthetic theory, but the way this operates on most of his readers remains purely subconscious. Middle-Earth feels strangely palpable, like you could just peek around the book page and see some more of it, in a way that most of its imitators failed to reproduce; because without considering the languages you can't explain why it has that effect; and few people ever set out to experience the artistry of Quenya morphology. (For more on this topic see The Road to Middle-Earth, 1982).

Meanwhile the Silmarillion, a book so central the Life Work, was something that he struggled with his entire life and could never finish, precisely because he cared about it much more than about the LotR story:

My chief joy comes from learning that the Silmarillion is not rejected with scorn. …But I shall certainly now hope one day to be able, or to be able to afford, to publish the Silmarillion! a sequel or successor to The Hobbit is called for. I promise to give this thought and attention. But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils are in my heart… (1937)

As for larger work. Of course, my only real desire is to publish ‘The Silmarillion’: which your reader, you may possibly remember, allowed to have a certain beauty, but of a ‘Celtic’ kind irritating to Anglo-Saxons. Still there is the great ‘Hobbit’ sequel – I use ‘great’, I fear, only in quantitative sense. It is much too ‘great’ for the present situation, in that sense. But it cannot be docked or abbreviated. I cannot do better than I have done in this, unless (as is possible enough) I am no judge. But it is not finished. I made an effort last year to finish it and failed. Three weeks with nothing else to do – and a little rest and sleep first – would probably be sufficient. But I don’t see any hope of getting them; and it simply is not the kind of stuff for odd moments. (1945)

My work has escaped from my control, and I have produced a monster: an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and very terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion. My estimate is that it contains, even without certain necessary adjuncts, about 600,000 words. One typist put it higher. I can see only too clearly how impracticable this is. But I am tired. It is off my chest, and I do not feel that I can do anything more about it, beyond a little revision of inaccuracies. Worse still: I feel that it is tied to the Silmarillion.… (1950)

As for The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, they are where they were. The one finished (and the end revised), and the other still unfinished (or unrevised), and both gathering dust. I have been both off and on too unwell, and too burdened to do much about them, and too downhearted. Watching paper-shortages and costs mounting against me. But I have rather modified my views. Better something than nothing! Although to me all are one, and the 'L of the Rings' would be better far (and eased) as part of the whole, I would gladly consider the publication of any pan of this stuff. Years are becoming precious. (1952)

The surprising welcome given to The Lord of the Rings will probably make this procedure unnecessary; and has justified the publishers’ firm resolve to issue the present work first; though I wanted to present the matter in ‘chronological order’. For one thing, it would have lightened and quickened the narrative of the Third Age! […] Since the publishers are now pressing for the Silmarillion &c. (which was long ago turned down), I do intend as soon as I can find time to try to set the material in order for publication. Though I am rather tired, and no longer young enough to pillage the night to make up for the deficit of hours in the day… (1955)

I am not writing the Silmarillion, which was long ago written; but trying to find a way and order in which to make the legends and annals publishable. And I have a dreadful lot of other work to do as well. (1956)

Yes — the Silmarillion is growing in the mind (I do not mean getting larger, but coming back to leaf & I hope flower) again. But I am still not through with Gawain etc. A troublous year, of endless distraction and much weariness, ending with the blow of C.S.L.'s death. (1963)

I regret very much to hear that you have contracted to write a book about me. It does meet with my strong disapproval […] I wish at any rate that any book could wait until I produce the Silmarillion. I am constantly interrupted in this […] (1966)

I wish I had time to produce an elementary (both languages are, of course, extremely difficult) grammar and vocabulary of 'elven': sc. Quenya and Sindarin. I am having to do some work on them, in the process of adjusting 'the Silmarillion and all that' to The L.R. Which I am labouring at, under endless difficulties: not least the natural sloth of 77+. (1969)

Thank you for your most kind letter and for your general interest in my work. I am however now an old man struggling to finish some of his work. Every extra task however small diminishes my chance of ever publishing The Silmarillion. So I hope you will understand why I feel it impossible to spend time making any comments on myself or my works. (1972)

His last letter to Lord Halsbury is particularly poignant to me:

When you retire I shall certainly beg your help. Without it, I begin to feel that I shall never produce any pan of The Silmarillion. When you were here on July 26, I became again vividly aware of your invigorating effect on me: like a warm fire brought into an old man's room, where he sits cold and unable to muster courage to go out on a journey that his heart desires to make. For over and above all the afflictions and obstacles I have endured since The Lord of the Rings came out, I have lost confidence. May I hope that perhaps, even amid your own trials and the heavy work which must precede your retirement, you could come again before so very long and warm me up again ? I particularly desire to hear you read verse again, and especially your own: which you make come alive for me… (1973)

He died later that year, without, of course, ever finishing the Silmarillion. The version heroically put together by Christopher, the 12 volumes of HoME, the periodicals, the Nature, all of it, are attempts to make sense of the mountains of manuscripts and notes and lexica and grammars and minutely crossed-over-and-recrossed miscellanea produced over those decades, the details of the language changing every time he touched them:

Nobody believes me when I say that my long book [Lord of the Rings] is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the [LotR] was all about, and whether it was an ‘allegory’. And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn’ omentielmo, and that the phase long antedated the book. I never heard any more.

(=“A star shines on the hour of our meeting.”) But even in this paradigmatic example, he later changed it to ~ omentielvo, because he added exclusive vs. inclusive distinction in the first person plural, as in Tupi, and omentielmo is the exclusive 1p.poss, wholly inadequate for the greeting. Or that's how a nonbeliever would put it, but as someone touched by the star-light I feel icky writing the previous sentence, as if committing a sin. Tolkien would say rather that he found out that Quenya had an inclusive/exclusive 1p. distinction, and therefore there was a mistake in the Red Book which he translated to English (=LotR), probably because Frodo's commandment of Quenya was shaky, but this was glossed over so latter versions took the liberty of fixing the hobbit's grammar. This process of discovery, of “revelation” rather than “invention”, is one of the factors behind the incredible depth of the legendarium and the source of much of my favourite work from it (like the Shibboleth of Fëanor, an entire side story of bitter political drama that came about when Tokien set to find out why Galadriel used the incongruously innovative form súrinen rather than þúrinen when she sings Namarië.) Alas, the same process of revelation also results in a labyrinth of revisions and amendments and contradictions that became humanly impossible to round up in a single lifetime.

That's what studying Tolkien languages is like; one might naïvely look for the “final” or “definitive” version of the grammars, the vocabulary, the corpora, but there's no such things; Tolkien who self-defined so strongly as a philologist produced, ironically and entirely by accident, an entire philological area of his own, devoted to digging up manuscripts and comparing and classifying them and documenting their differences in minuscule detail etc., much like we do with philological manuscripts in our world, except in this case they're all from a single pair of hands (allegedly). Authors who produce “Elvish grammars” or “Quenya courses” that try to fit it all into a single, self-consistent system and gloss over this richness of variation do a disservice to the Tolkienian heritage, and necessarily have to deviate from the author and shape the languages to their own vision; to beat up and prune and shape philology until it becomes no more than linguistics.

And that, this entire text so far, is my way of prefacing the point that GRRM and Tolkien aren't so different actually. I don't bury the lede, I compost it. You'll understand why it's so easy for me to sympathise with these particular old men, in contrast to how I usually feel about straight male writers. (I'm still short of 41 pages in this particular exercise of severe economy, I hope.)

This is why when I watch George R.R. Martin say last month, for the tenth time or so, that he will stop with all his side projects and distractions and focus on finishing the Life Work, after having produced half a series of novellas and one volume of a history book by accident, the entire ordeal reads very familiar to me; the way that he words it, his self-loathing, his repeatedly shattered optimism, the pain of ageing etc. The main differences are on matters of primary focus: for Tolkien it was the languages and the legends, it was his belief that languages literally shape the legends written in them, so it felt impossible for him to reach a “good enough” consonance between grammar and myth, sound and meaning. For GRRM the main interest is ethics and politics, and the Life Work is to present many different points of view at the same time, all of which are flawed but also humanised, all of which making both good and bad points, and then wrap it all together into a single picture of humanitarian ethics; he has quipped often about Tolkien never explaining what was Good King Aragorn's tax policy, but it's been 30 years and we still know nothing of Good Queen Alysanne's tax policies either, turns out consistency in political history is as hard to portray as consistency in phono-semantics. I imagine if GRRM wrote on paper and preserved his output we would have endless boxes of manuscripts to thrawl through in posterity, just like Tolkien. Instead of philological journals and etymologies, maybe they'd be published as case studies in political theses; a sort of baroque multiverse of alternate timelines and different takes on the characters, each growing into archetypes. But that probably will never come to pass, because another difference between the two authors is that GRRM edits destructively in his MS-DOS computer, and he does not want manuscripts to be investigated posthumously. He's not a philologist.

As for me, when I watch these suffering old men struggling so much to deliver works that, yes, I dearly wished I could read, even now, right now—I just want to tell them that maybe it's ok to not do things. It's ok to not finish things. You have already done a lot and enriched the lives of people like me. I don't want to have even the most wondrous works of human creation if that comes at the cost of human happiness, of entire decades of anxiety and misery. It's fine to go out walk in the sunlight, have some tea. Do nothing, and do nothing guilty-free for once. There are more books to read, more languages to learn, more politics to discuss than we could fit into a million human lifetimes. I will yearn for these unfinished works like one yearns for the Lonely Isle, for some distant, remote shore; and I'll cherish the sweet pain of the yearn, a pain that like rain after the drought brings about fanfics, and close-reading theory podcasts, and philology journals, and the inspiration to create our own, entirely original works.

It is thus that life goes on—imperfect, incomplete, tumbling, reproducing, continuing; life is movement, it is messy chaotic growth, not the static and dead perfection of geometrical monuments; life is the untamed growth that escapes all systems, it's a profusion; this is true both of the life of flesh, and of the life of spirit. Tolkien has once remarked that Esperanto and the other auxlangs of his time are “deader than dead”, because their grammars were created without an accompanying mythology, without a culture and a history; I agree entirely; but Quenya and Sindarin and even brief sketches like Adûnaic and the Black Speech are alive, they left behind the magnetically charged tracks that only living things leave; not just because Tolkien provided them so richly with poetry and myth, but because they were allowed to grow so profusely as to remain unfinished, to keep changing until they were cut short too suddenly by death, like all of us.