Christopher Tolkien
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2020 7:45 am
Having by coincidence just two days ago completed reading The Silmarillion it is with no small sadness that I learn of the death of it's editor and effective creator, son of the more famous JRR, Christopher Tolkien. Passing away in his beloved homeland of France last week at the venerable age of 95, Christopher Tolkien will always alas remain under the shadow of his genius father (something he would no doubt have had to come to terms with himself), but this should in no way detract from our appreciation of the hugely valuable contribution he himself made to the legend that is now simply remembered under the collective name of The Lord of the Rings.
As artist of the maps in the books that anyone who like myself took so much pleasure in following Frodo and his companions travels through Middle-Earth on, his contribution is unarguable and unique of its own right, but pales into insignificance when set against the huge task of curating and editing his father's huge and disordered collection of notes and material, from which the whole Tolkien Universe was born. It is upon this foundation of his son's work that the true genius of the father rests; without his tireless efforts to colate, order and publish the material TLOTR would remain a simple, if magnificent, stand-alone story. That it was a mere offshoot of a much, much more encompassing idea, a mythopoeic creation with languages and races, with history and Creation myth of it's own, was entirely due to the work of Christopher Tolkien and thus it may be rightfully said that he played St Paul to his father's Christ, the spotlight being on the latter but the footwork that brings us to where we are today resting entirely with the former.
In addition, the non-Middle-Earth contribution of Tolkien the academic should not be forgotten either. As with his father before him, Christopher Tolkien was a gifted academic with a huge bibliography of valuable and erudite work to his name - contribution that will quietly but significantly live on alongside that of his work in respect of his father's estate.
God Speed Christopher Tolkien. You will not soon be forgotten.
As artist of the maps in the books that anyone who like myself took so much pleasure in following Frodo and his companions travels through Middle-Earth on, his contribution is unarguable and unique of its own right, but pales into insignificance when set against the huge task of curating and editing his father's huge and disordered collection of notes and material, from which the whole Tolkien Universe was born. It is upon this foundation of his son's work that the true genius of the father rests; without his tireless efforts to colate, order and publish the material TLOTR would remain a simple, if magnificent, stand-alone story. That it was a mere offshoot of a much, much more encompassing idea, a mythopoeic creation with languages and races, with history and Creation myth of it's own, was entirely due to the work of Christopher Tolkien and thus it may be rightfully said that he played St Paul to his father's Christ, the spotlight being on the latter but the footwork that brings us to where we are today resting entirely with the former.
In addition, the non-Middle-Earth contribution of Tolkien the academic should not be forgotten either. As with his father before him, Christopher Tolkien was a gifted academic with a huge bibliography of valuable and erudite work to his name - contribution that will quietly but significantly live on alongside that of his work in respect of his father's estate.
God Speed Christopher Tolkien. You will not soon be forgotten.
