notes editorial changes he made in the text published in Unfinished Tales, as well as authorial emendations.
Tolkien also wrote two versions of an introductory note to the Narn, probably c. 1958, which explains its origins within the context of the *‘Silmarillion’ mythology. A brief summary appeared in Unfinished Tales (p. 146); both texts, under the title Ælfwine and Dírhaval, were published with commentary and notes in The War of the Jewels, pp. 311–15. The Narn began as a lay in an Elvish mode of verse written in Sindarin (*Languages, Invented) by Dírhaval, a Man who lived at the Havens towards the end of the First Age and gathered all the information he could about the House of Hador. According to the first version, Ælfwine (see *Eriol and Ælfwine) translated the lay into the English of his time as a prose narrative, from which the Modern English version is said to have been made. The second version is purported to be written by Ælfwine himself, explaining that he did not feel able to translate the work into verse.
The first version is a manuscript with the title Túrin Turumarth; the second is an untitled, much shorter typescript which Tolkien attached to the twelve-page typescript he had made of the opening of the Narn.
See also *‘The “Túrin Wrapper”’.
CRITICISM
In his review of Unfinished Tales (‘Dug Out of the Dust of Middle-earth’, Maclean’s, 26 January 1981) Guy Gavriel Kay wrote that
Túrin Turambar is Tolkien’s most tragic character – perhaps his only tragic figure. His story is told in The Silmarillion: victim of the curse of a fallen god, condemned to bring evil on those who aid him, tangled in a web that leads to a bitter ending of unwitting incest with a long-lost sister and ultimate suicide. Here the same tale is retold, at three times the length and in detail that would have overwhelmed the spare narrative style and the overriding shape of The Silmarillion. The story was inspired by a part of the Finnish myth-cycle, *The Kalevala, but in the fated inevitability of its conclusion, Túrin’s saga moves and feels like something out of Greek tragedy. The reader’s affinity for the longer or the shorter version will depend on whether he prefers his tragedy austere or baroque. [p. 46]
Thomas M. Egan in his review ‘Fragments of a World: Tolkien’s Road to Middle-earth’, Terrier 48, no. 2 (Fall 1983), wrote:
Adventure tales like ‘Narn I Hîn Húrin’ … grip us with the moral drama of Good and Evil involved. The language … is almost always quasi-Biblical, elegant in tone and forcing us to slow down in our reading habits. It is the context the author uses to explore a human soul, when it ultimately finds despair and loss, rather than the optimistic triumph of the Ring heroes [in *The Lord of the Rings] …. The mood is sometimes bitter but never cynical. Incest, rape, murder are all here as Tolkien explores his version of the modern anti-hero. Túrin Turambar seems cursed by fate …. But Tolkien adds the depths of his convictions to the tale. The respect for the power of human free will, that which links the soul to God (Eru) Himself … appears here as always operating. Even when it is denied or misused, the author always puts in the concrete details of other characters or situations to remind us that things could have gone so differently – if the dominating figure was willing to curb his pride, chastise his lust for revenge (even when severely provoked) and especially, learn the elusive art of possessions (rather than letting things control the individual). [p. 10]
Narqelion. Poem in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), a lament to autumn, with passing references to Eldamar and the Gnomes (a kindred of the Elves) from the *‘Silmarillion’ mythology, inspired by the poem Kortirion among the Trees (*The Trees of Kortirion). (Compare Quenya Narquelië ‘sun-fading’, the name of the tenth month given in The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D.) A single text survives, apparently begun in November 1915 and completed in March 1916. Four lines were published in Biography (1977). The complete poem was first published, with a commentary, in ‘Narqelion: A Single, Falling Leaf at Sun-fading’ by Paul Nolan Hyde, Mythlore 15, no. 2, whole no. 56 (Winter 1988), pp. 47–52. The poem, with extracts from Hyde’s article, was also printed in Vinyar Tengwar 6 (July 1989), pp. 12–13.
A fuller linguistic analysis of the poem, ‘Bird and Leaf: Image and Structure in Narqelion’ by Patrick Wynne and Christopher Gilson, was published in Parma Eldalamberon 3, no. 1, whole no. 9 (1990); it includes an English translation from Qenya. A facsimile of the manuscript of Narqelion was published (p. 5) in Vinyar Tengwar 40 (April 1999), which number also includes ‘Narqelion and the Early Lexicons: Some Notes on the First Elvish Poem’ by Christopher Gilson, a new linguistic analysis made in light of Elvish lexicons published in 1995 and 1998 (see *Gnomish Lexicon and *Qenyaqetsa). Gilson provides both a literal translation of the poem into English prose and a fresh translation in verse.
Natura Apis see Songs for the Philologists
Nature. Tolkien’s love of and delight in all aspects of the natural world – plants, trees, birds, weather, sky, the changing seasons – as they appear in a rural or even a town landscape, is made abundantly clear in his correspondence. To quote only a few examples from letters to his son *Christopher: ‘A lovely morning dawned …. A mist like early Sept[ember] with a pearl-button sun … that soon changed into serene blue, with the silver light of spring on flower and leaf. Leaves are out: the white-grey of the quince, the grey-green of the young apple, the full green of hawthorn, the tassels of flower even on the sluggard poplars. The narcissuses are a marvellous show …’ (18 April 1944, Letters, p. 73); ‘The most marvellous sunset I have seen for years: a remote pale green-blue sea just above the horizon, and above it a towering shore of bank upon bank of flaming cherubim of gold and fire, crossed here and there by misty blurs like purple rain’ (22 August 1944, Letters, p. 92);
It froze hard with a heavy fog, and so we have had displays of Hoarfrost such as I only remember once in *Oxford before … and only twice before in my life. One of the most lovely events of Northern Nature. We woke … to find all our windows opaque, painted over with frost-patterns, and outside a dim silent misty world, all white, but with a light jewelry of rime; every cobweb a little lace net, even the old fowls’ tent a diamond-patterned pavilion …. The rime was yesterday even thicker and more fantastic. When a gleam of sun … got through it was breathtakingly beautiful: trees like motionless fountains of white branching spray against a golden light and, high overhead, a pale translucent blue. It did not melt. About 11 p.m. the fog cleared and a high round moon lit the whole scene with a deadly white light: a vision of some other world or time. [28 December 1944, Letters, p. 107]
Towards the end of his life, in a letter to *Rayner Unwin, Tolkien described a more formal display in the Fellows’ Garden at Merton College: ‘The great bank … looks like the foreground of a pre-Raphaelite picture: blazing green starred like the Milky Way with blue anemones, purple/white/yellow crocuses, and final surprise, clouded-yellow, peacock, and tortoiseshell butterflies flitting about’ (16 March 1972, Letters, p. 417). And his delight in watching birds is shown in another letter to Christopher:
There is a family of bullfinches, which must have nested in or near our garden, and they are very tame, and have been giving us entertainment lately by their antics feeding their young, often just outside the dining-room window. Insects on the trees and sowthistle seeds seem their chief delight. I had no idea they behaved so much like goldfinches. Old fat father, pink waistcoat and all, hangs absolutely upside down on a thistle-spray, tinking all the while. [7 July 1944, Letters, p. 87]
In turn Tolkien applied his keen interest in the world around him, observed in minute detail and vividly described, to the invented landscapes of his fiction, giving them the substance of reality. *The Lord of the Rings is particularly rich in this regard, from Goldberry’s gown ‘green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew’ and her
