On Túrin Turambar and His Forthcoming Publication

J.R.R. Tolkien worked on the story of Túrin Turambar for most of his life; started in 1918, it was one of the great labors of his mythology. It is also one of the most solidly depressing, unhappy tales I have ever had the pleasure to read.

Merrystar hates it. She endured all of the prose and verse versions that appeared throughout the History Of Middle-Earth and found none with redeeming value. I don’t hate it quite as passionately, but (oh, the truth is hard) I haven’t read all of them. I slogged through the Unfinished Tales version instead, which was as ‘final’ a version as we could come to expect.

Until now, of course. Christopher Tolkien, he who has shouldered so many of his father’s burdens, completed the Narn i Chîn Húrin. It will be released soon as The Children of Húrin.

I always considered it a small tragedy that Tolkien spent so much time polishing this story while leaving The Fall of Gondolin essentially untouched. The promise seen in Of Tuor and His Coming To Gondolin will never been realized like that of Of Túrin Turambar; the story would have to be spun from whole cloth, something that Christopher has (wisely?) chosen not to do.

(Among the other Tolkienean tragedies I mourn:

• the third (and last) version of Galadriel’s journey to Middle-Earth and subsequent ban never making it into the rewritten mythology,
• the dearth of narrative near the end of the Silmarillion (especially about Dior and Elwing’s brothers),
• the omission of the events of Fëanor’s Shibboleth,
• Glorfindel’s return from the Halls of Mandos.

I leave Celeborn’s parentage as an unsatisfying mystery, but hardly a tragedy.)

I will, of course, purchase this book in numerous editions and read it as soon as it comes out. It’s been 11 years since Christopher Tolkien published the last book of the History of Middle Earth, and you better believe I’m ready for more.

But I reserve the right to be depressed after reading it.