JRR Tolkien - The History of Middle Earth Series vol03 GL3APP
APPENDIX.
C. S. Lewis's Commentary on the Lay of Leithian
I give here the greater part of this commentary, for which see pp. 150-1.*
Lewis's line-references are of course changed throughout to those in this
book. The letters H, J, K, L, P, R refer to the imaginary manuscripts of
the ancient poem.
For the text criticised in the first entry of the commentary see
pp. 157-8, i.e. text B(1).
Meats were sweet. This is the reading of PRK. Let
any one believe if he can that our author gave such a
cacophany. J His drink was sweet his dishes dear.
L His drink was sweet his dish was dear. (Many
scholars have rejected lines x - 8 altogether as un-
worthy of the poet. 'They were added by a later hand
to supply a gap in the archtype,' says Peabody; and
adds 'The more melodious movement and surer nar-
rative stride of the passage beginning with line g [But
fairer than are born to Men] should convince the
dullest that here, and here only, the authentic work of
the poet begins.' I am not convinced that H, which
had better be quoted in full, does not give the true
opening of the Geste.
That was long since in ages old
When first the stars in heaven rolled,
There dwelt beyond Broseliand,
While loneliness yet held the land,
A great king comely under crown,
The gold was woven in his gown,
The gold was clasped about his feet,
The gold about his waist did meet.
And in his many-pillared house
Many a gold bee and ivory mouse
And amber chessmen on their field
Of copper, many a drinking horn
Dear purchased from shy unicorn
Lay piled, with gold in gleaming grot.
All these he had etc.)
(* An account of it, with some citation, has been given by Humphrey Carpenter in The
Inklings, pp. 29-31, where the view expressed in his Biography, p. 145, that 'Tolkien did
not accept any of Lewis's suggestions', is corrected.)
[It seems virtually certain that it was Lewis's criticism that led my father
to rewrite the opening (the B (2) text, p. 154). If the amber chessmen and
ivory mice found no place in the new version, it is notable that in Lewis's
lines occur the words 'And in his many-pillared house'. These are not
derived from the B (1) text which Lewis read, but in B (2) appears the line
(14) in many-pillared halls of stone. It seems then that Durin's
many-pillared halls in Gimli's song in Moria were originally so called by
C. S. Lewis, thinking of the halls of Thingol in Doriath.]
40. The description of Luthien has been too often and too
justly praised to encourage the mere commentator in
intruding.
68. tall. Thus PRKJH. L east. Schick's complimentary
title of 'internal rime' for these cacophanies does not
much mend matters. 'The poet of the Geste knew
nothing of internal rime, and its appearance (so called)
is an infallible mark of corruption' (Pumpernickel).
But cf. 209, 413.
71-2. The reader who wishes to acquire a touchstone for the
true style of the Geste had better learn by heart this
faultless and characteristic distych.
77. HL Of mortal men at feast has heard
[The line in B(1) was of mortal feaster ever heard. With hath for has
Lewis's line was adopted.]
99 - 150. This is considered by all critics one of the noblest
passages in the Geste.
112. Notice the double sense of within (macrocosmic and
microcosmic). That the original poet may have been
unconscious of this need not detract from our plea-
sure.
[Lewis was clearly right to suspect that the original poet had no such
double sense in mind.]
117. H The legions of his marching hate
[Lewis was criticising the original line in B his evil legions' marshalled
hate. With retention of marshalled for marching Lewis's line was
adopted.]
[In the following comment the reading criticised was:
swift ruin red of fire and sword
leapt forth on all denied his word,
and all the lands beyond the hills 125
were filled arith sorrow and with ills.]
124. The relative understood. I suspect both the construc-
tion and the word denied, neither of which has the
true ring. H reads:
And ruin of red fire and sword
To all that would not hail him lord
Came fast, and far beyond the hills
Spread Northern wail and iron ills.
And therefore in wet woods and cold etc.
130. 'A weak line' (Peabody) .
[The original reading in B which Lewis criticised was who had this king
once held in scorn, changed to who once a prince of Men was born]
137. Some emend. The rhythm, however, is good, and
probably would occur more often if the syllabic
prudery of scribes had not elsewhere 'emended' it.
172. LH When I lost all
[No alteration made to the text.]
173-4. L Thus, out of met night while he gazed,
he thought, with heavy heart amazed
[No alteration made to the text.]
[In the following comment the reading criticised was:
But ere he dared to call her name
or ask how she escaping came]
175-6. she escaping. A Latinised phrase, at once betraying
very late corruption. The ugly assonace ere... dared
confirms my suspicion of the distych. No satisfactory
emendation has been proposed.
[she escaping came was changed to she escaped and came]
196. H Whining, his spirit ached for ease. Peabody
observes of the whole passage: 'The combination
of extreme simplicity, with convincing truth of
psychology, and the pathos which, without com-
ment, makes us aware that Gorlim is at once
pardonable and unpardonable, render this part
of the story extremely affecting.'
[No alteration made to line 196]
208. haply. LH chance.
[No alteration made to the text.]
209 - 10. One of the few passages in which Schick's theory of
deliberate internal rime finds some support.
[See the comment on line 68.]
2I5. that. H the.
[No alteration made to the text.]
[The lines 313 - 16 referred to in the following comment had been
bracketed for exclusion, and that at 3 I 7 changed to Then, before the text
went to Lewis.]
313. H reads Thus Morgoth loved that his own foe
Should in his service deal the blow.
Then Beren...
'Our scribe is right in his erasure of the second distych,
but wrong in his erasure of the first' (Peabody). The
first erased couplet certainly deserves to remain in the
text; indeed its loss seriously impairs the reality of
Morgoth. I should print as in H, enclosing Thus...
blow in brackets or dashes.
[My father ticked the first two lines (313-14), which may show that he
accepted this suggestion. I have let all four stand in the text.]
400. Of Canto z as a whole Peabody writes: 'If this is not
good romantic narrative, I confess myself ignorant of
the meaning of the words.'
401. et seq. A more philosophical account of the period is
given in the so called Poema Historiale, probably
contemporary with the earliest MSS of the Geste.
The relevant passage runs as follows:
There was a time before the ancient sun
And swinging wheels of heaven had learned
to run
More certainly than dreams; for dreams
themselves
Had bodies then and filled the world with elves.
The starveling lusts whose walk is now
confined
To darkness and the cellarage of the mind,
And shudderings and despairs and shapes of sin
Then walked at large, and were not cooped
within.
Thought cast a shadow: brutes could speak:
and men
Get children on a star. For spirit then
Kneaded a fluid world and dreamed it new
Each moment. Nothing yet was false or true.
[Humphrey Carpenter, who cites these verses in The Inklings, says
(p. 30): Sometimes Lewis actually suggested entirely new passages to
replace lines he thought poor, and here too he ascribed his own versions
to supposedly historical sources. For example, he suggested that the lines
about the "elder days" [401 ff.] could be replaced by the following stanza
of his own, which he described as "the so called Poema Historiale
[&c.]".' But he cannot have intended these lines, which not only, as
Humphrey Carpenter says, show 'how greatly Lewis's poetic imagi-
nation differed from Tolkien's', but are in a different metre, as a
replacement; see Lewis's comment on lines 438 - 42.]
413. Another instance where the 'internal rime' theory is
justified.
438-42. Almost certainly spurious. This abstract philosophi-
cal statement - which would not surprise us in the
scholastic verse of the period, such as the Poema
Historiale - is quite foreign to the manner of the Geste.
L reads:
...singing in the wood
And long he stood and long he stood
Till, many a day, with hound and hail
His people seek him ere they sail,
Then, finding not, take ship with tears.
But after a long tale of years
(Though but an hour to him it seemed)
He found her where she lay and dreamed.
[My father marked lines 438 ff. in the typescript, but made no change to
the text.]
516. Flowering candles. The reader should notice how the
normally plain style of the Geste has yet the power of
rising into such expressions as this without losing its
unity.
[In the following comment the reading criticised was:
the silent elms stood dark and tall,
and mund their boles did shadows fall 518
where glimmered faint...]
518. did PRK, let JL. Though neither is good, PRK seems
the better reading. Its slight clumsiness may be
passed over by a reader intent on the story: the 'neat'
evasion let, with its purely formal attribution of an
active role to the trees, is much worse, as cheap
scenery is worse than a plain backcloth. H reads:
The silent elms stood tall and grey
And at the roots long shadows lay
519-42. 'This passage', Peabody observes, 'amply atones for
the poet's lapse (dormitat Homerus) in 518. Ipsa
mollities.'
[I do not understand why Lewis picked particularly on did at line 518: the
use of did as a metrical aid was very common in the B-text as Lewis saw it
- it occurred twice, for instance, in the passage here praised: did flutter
523, did waver 533, both subsequently changed.]
555 - 6. 'O si sic omnia! Does not our poet show glimpses of
the true empyrean of poesy, however, in his work-
manlike humility, he has chosen more often to
inhabit the milder and aerial (not aetherial) middle
heaven?' (Pumpernickel). Some have seen in the
conception of death-into-life a late accretion. But cf.
the very early lyric preserved in the MS N3057, now
in the public library at Narrowthrode (the ancient
Nargothrond), which is probably as early as the Geste,
though like all the scholastic verse it strikes a more
modern note:
Because of endless pride
Reborn with endless error,
Each hour I look aside
Upon my secret mirror,
And practice postures there
To make my image fair.
You give me grapes, and I,
Though staring, turn to see
How dark the cool globes lie
In the white hand of me,
And stand, yet gazing thither,
Till the live clusters wither.
So should I quickly die
Narcissus-like for want,
Save that betimes my eye
Sees there such shapes as haunt
Beyond nightmare and make
Pride humble for pride's sake.
Then, and then only, turning
The stiff neck mund, I grow
A molten man all burning
And look behind, and know
Who made the flaw, what light makes dark,
what fair
Makes foul my shadowy form reflected there,
That self-love, big with love, dying, its child
may bear.
[It is a matter for speculation, what the author of Nargothrond thought
of the public library at Narrowthrode. - This poem, with some alter-
ations, was included in The Pilgrim's Regress (1933).]
563-92. Sic in all MSS. The passage is, of course, genuine,
and truly worthy of the Geste. But surely it must
originally have stood at 391 Of 393? The artificial
insertion of Beren's journey in its present place -
where it appears as retrospect not as direct narrative,
though defensible, belongs to a kind of art more
sophisticated than that of the Geste: it is just such a
transposition as a late Broseliandic literary redactor
would make under the influence of the classical epic.
[A quarter of a century later, or more, my father rewrote this part of the
poem; and he took Lewis's advice. See p. 352.]
[The original reading of B criticised in the next comment (lines 629 ff.)
was:
Then stared he wild in dumbness bound
at silent trees, deserted ground;
the dizzy moon was twisted grey
in tears, for she had fled away.)
629 - 30 Thus in PRKJ. The Latinised adverbial use of the
adjective in mild and the omitted articles in the next
line are suspicious.
L But wildly Beren gazed around
On silent trees (and)* empty ground.
The dizzy moon etc.
(* Peabody supplies and. But the monosyllabic foot is
quite possible. Cf. 687.)
H But wildly Beren gazed around.
Emptied the tall trees stood. The ground
Lay empty. A lonely moon looked grey
Upon the untrodden forest may.
I prefer H because it gets rid of the conceit (it is little
more) about the moon. (This sort of half-hearted
personification is, of course, to be distinguished from
genuine mythology.)
[Against this my father scribbled on Lewis's text: 'Not so!! The moon
' was dizzy and twisted because of the tears in his eyes.' Nonetheless he
struck the two lines out heavily in the typescript, and I have excluded
them from the text.]
635-6. An excellent simile.
641. Peabody, though a great friend to metrical resol-
utions in general, finds this particular resolution
(Bewildered enchanted) 'singularly harsh'. Per-
haps the original text read wildered.
: [The reading in B was bewildered, enchanted and forlorn. My father
then changed bewildered to wildered and placed it after enchanted.]
651-2. JHL transpose.
[This was done. Cf. lines 1222 - 3, where these lines are repeated but left
in the original sequence.]
[After line 652 B had:
Thus thought his heart. No words would come
from his fast lips, for smitten dumb
a spell lay on him, as a dream
in longing chained beside the stream.
After seeing Lewis's comment my father marked this passage 'revise',
and also with a deletion mark, on which basis I have excluded the four
lines from the text.]
Only in PR. Almost undoubtedly spurious. 'The latest redac-
tors', says Pumpernickel, 'were always needlessly amplifying,
as if the imagination of their readers could do nothing for itself,
and thus blunting the true force and energy of the Geste....'
Read:
A heartache and a loneliness
- Enchanted waters pitiless.'
A summer maned etc.
[heartache was the original reading of B at 651 x, changed later to
hunger, but retained at 1223.]
653-72. Of this admirable passage Peabody remarks: 'It is as if
the wood itself were speaking.'
677-9. LH From dim cave the damp moon eyed
White mists that float from earth to hide
The sluggard morrow's sun and drip
[No alteration made to the text.]
683. Beat, which is utterly inappropriate to the sound
described, must be a corruption. No plausible
emendation has been suggested.
[My father scribbled in a hesitant substitute for beat and a different
form for line 684 (of his own feet on leafy....) but I cannot read the
rhyming words.)
685-708. In praise of this passage I need not add to the in-
numerable eulogies of my predecessors.
710. Bentley read sam far off, to avoid the ugliness that
always results from w-final followed by an initial
vowel in the next word.
[The reading criticised was saw afar, and the line was changed as
suggested.)
715. Stole he PRK. He stole JHL. PRK looks like the
metrical 'improvement' of a scribe: dearly bought by
a meaningless inversion.
[The reading criticised was Then stole he nigh, changed to Then nigh
he stole.)
727 - 45 This passage, as it stands, is seriously corrupt, though
the beauty of the original can still be discerned.
[See the following notes.]
[The original reading of B in lines 729 - 30 was:
the hillock green he leapt upon -
the elfin loveliness was gone;]
729. Intolerable bathos and prose in a passage of such
tension.
[The original reading of B in line 739 was:
its echoes wove a halting spell:]
739. Why halting? 'Let the amanuensis take back his
rubbish' (Bentley) .
[Against this my father wrote 'A spell to halt anyone', but in the margin
of B he wrote staying/binding, and I have adopted binding in the
text.]
[The original reading of B in lines 741 - 5 was:
His voice such love and longing fill 741
one moment stood she, touched and still;
one moment only, but he came
and all his heart was burned with flame. 744]
741-2. The historic present is always to be suspected. The
second verse is hopelessly corrupt. Touched in this
sense is impossible in the language of the Geste: and
if the word were possible, the conception is fitter for a
nineteenth century drawing-room in Narrowthrode
than for the loves of heroes. HL read:
And clear his voice came as a bell
Whose echoes move a wavering spell
Tinuviel. Tinuviel.
Such love and longing filled his voice
That, one moment, without choice,
One moment without fear or shame,
Tinuviel stood; and like a flame
He leapt towards her as she stayed
And caught and kissed that elfin maid.
[My father marked the passage 'revise', and very roughly corrected it
(adopting the concluding verses of Lewis's version) to the form which I
have given in the text, despite the defective couplet.]
[The original reading of B was:
aswoon in mingled grief and bliss,
enchantment of an elvish kiss.)
760-1. L Aswoon with grief, aswoon arith bliss,
Enchanted of an elvish kiss.
[enchanted for enchantment was adopted.)
[The original reading - the text B(1) seen by Lewis, see p. 194- of lines
762 - 73 was:
and saw within his blinded eyes
a light that danced like silver flies
a starlit face of tenderness
crowned by the stars of Elfinesse.
A mist a:as in his face like hair, 5
and laughing whispers moved the air -
'O! dance with me now, Beren. Dance! '-
a silver laugh, a mocking glance:
'Come dance the wild and headlong maze
those dance, we're told, beyond the ways 10
who dwell that lead to lands of Men!
Come teach the feet of Luthien! '
The shadows wrapped her. Like a stone
the daylight found him cold and lone.
On line 8 of this passage Lewis commented:]
L a silver laughter, an arch glance
'Whether mocking or arch is the more intolerably
miss-ish I care not to decide' (Peabody).
[The line was abandoned in the B(2) version. On lines 9 - 12 Lewis
commented:]
JHL omit. Is not the whole passage [from the begin-
ning of the Canto to the end of the passage from B(1)
given above] unworthy of the poet?
[It is clear that this severe criticism led to the rewriting of the opening of
the Canto.]
775. The chiasmus 'is suspiciously classical. H gives Dark
is the sun, cold is the air.
[Against this my father scribbled: But classics did not invent chiasmus!
- it is perfectly natural.' (Chiasmus: a grammatical figure by which the
order of words is one of two parallel clauses is inverted in the other.)]
[The passage criticised by Lewis in the following comment was:
Hateful art thou, 0 Land of Trees!
My flute shall finger no more seize;
may music perish etc.]
849. Clearly corrupt. HJL Oh hateful land of trees be
mute! My fingers, now forget the flute!
[Against this my father wrote: 'Frightful 18th century!!!' But he re-
ordered the second line to: my fingers the flute shall no more seize,
and subsequently rewrote the passage to the form given in the text, lines
849-52.]
849-83. 'These lines are very noble' (Pumpernickel).
909. cometh. HJL comes. HJL is certainly the more
emphatic rhythm.
[No alteration made to the text.]
[The original reading of B at line 911 was:
...those shores,
those white rocks where the last tide mars]
911. 'Where eight dull words oft creep in one low line.'
Lines of monosyllables are often to be found in the
Geste, but rarely so clustered with consonants as
this. No satisfactory emendation has been suggested.
I suspect this is a garbled version of 1142 - 3:
our scribes do not always accept or understand epic
repetition.
[The emendation made to B and given in the text is derived from lines
1142 - 3 as Lewis suggested. His reference is to Pope, An Essay on
Criticism, line 347: And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.]
978-9. In Gestestudien Vol. XIII pp. 9 - 930 the reader will
find a summary of the critical war that has raged
round the possibility of the assonance (or rime) of
within-dim. Perhaps a great deal of ink would have
been saved if the scholars of the last century had been
familiar with the L reading Where out of yawning
arches came A white light like unmoving flame.
'My own conclusion is that if the assonance in the
textus receptus is correct, the same phenomenon
must originally have occurred often, and have been
suppressed elsewhere by the scribes. Editorial effort
might profitably be devoted to restoring it' (Schuffer).
But cf. 1140-1.
[The original reading of B in lines 980 - x was:
With gentle hand there she him led
down corridors etc.]
980. J Downward with gentle hand she him led,
which explains the corruption. The verse origin-
ally ran Downward with gentle hand she led.
The scribe of J, wrongly believing an object to be
needed, inserted him. Vulg. then 'emends' the
metre by dropping Downward and inserting
there: thus giving a clumsy line.
[In this note Vulg. = Vulgate, the common or usual form of a literary
work. My father wrote in Lewis's line on the B-text with his initials, and
made the consequent change of down to through in line 981.]
[The original reading of B was: as into arched halls was led]
991. HJL she led
996. L in old stone carven stood
[No alteration made to the text.]
[The original reading in B was: while waters endless dripped and
ran]
1007. H While water forever dript and ran
[The original reading in B was: in lightless labyrinths endlessly]
1075. Labyrinths. HJL Labyrinth.
[Lewis corrected his spelling to Laborynth(s), against which my father
queried: 'Why this spelling?']
980-1131. The whole of this passage has always been deservedly
regarded as one of the gems of the Geste.
1132-61. I suspect that this passage has been greatly expanded
by the late redactors who found their audience some-
times very ignorant of the myths. It is, as it stands, far
from satisfactory. On the one hand it is too long an
interruption of the action: on the other it is too
succinct for a reader who knows nothing of the myth-
ology. It is also obscure: thus in 1145 few readers can
grasp that their means 'the Silmarils'. The shorter
version of H and L, though not good, may in some
respects be nearer the original:
Then Thingol's warriors loud and long
Laughed: for wide renown in song
Had Feanor's gems o'er land and sea,
The Silmarils, the shiners three,
Three only, and in every one
The light that was before the sun
And moon, shone yet. But now no more
Those leavings of the lights of yore
Were seen on earth's back: in the drear
Abysm of Morgoth blazing clear
His iron crown they must adorn
And glitter on orcs and slaves forlorn etc.
[My father put an exclamation mark against the shiners three; and he
wrote an X against lines 1144 - 5 (see note to these lines).]
*
Here C. S. Lewis's commentary on The Gest of Beren and Luithien
ends, and no more is recorded of the opinions of Peabody, Pumpernickel,
Schuffer and Schick in the volumes of Gestestudien - nor indeed, on
this subject, of those of their generous-minded inventor.