Читать книгу The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien - Christopher Tolkien - Страница 44

[Tolkien had still not delivered the foreword to the Clark Hall Beowulf translation by 27 March, when Allen & Unwin wrote a desperate letter asking what had happened to it, and telling him that ‘a word or two’ would be enough. The text sent by Tolkien with the following letter was, despite its length, used in full when the book was published.]

30 March 1940

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Unwin,

Apologies would be vain in the face of my vexatious and uncivil behaviour. So I felt long ago – that the only possible reply to your repeated enquiry of March 5 was copy. I have got into worse trouble than I need – in spite of the many disasters that have befallen me^fn5 – since I have foolishly wasted much labour and time under a misapprehension, which a more careful consideration of the pagination of the page-proofs might have dispelled.

I knew that a ‘word or two’ would suffice (though I could not feel that any words under my name would have any particular value unless they said something worth saying – which takes space). But I believed that more was hoped for. I cannot lay my hand on the relative letter, and in any case I now realise that an earlier stage, before page-proof, was envisaged. I can only regret that I did not get something done at an earlier stage. For a fairly considerable ‘preface’ is really required. The so-called ‘Introduction’ does not exist, being merely an argument:² there is no reference whatever to either a translator’s or a critic’s problems. I advised originally against any attempt to bring the apparatus of the old book up to date – it can be got by students elsewhere. But I did not expect a reduction to 10 lines, while the ‘argument’ (the least useful part) was re-written at length.

That being so I laboured long and hard to compress (and yet enliven) such remarks on translation as might both be useful to students and of interest to those using the book without reference to the original text. But the result ran to 17 of my MSS. pages (of some 300 words each) – not counting the metrical appendix,³ the most original part, which is as long again!

I was in this stage early in March, and trying to make up my mind what to jettison, when your letter of March 27th reached me (yesterday). All very foolish. For the pagination indicates clearly my share as a very small one.

All I can do now is to send in what I have done. You might care to consider it (submitting it to Wrenn) for inclusion later, e.g. if a further edition is required. (Retouched it might make a suitable booklet for students. The metrical account, being on a novel plan, and considering the relations of style and metre, might be attractive, as students are usually rather at sea on this subject.)

To meet the immediate emergency – I suggest (with grief, reluctance, and penitence) that the passages marked in red (? 1400 words), or those in blue (750–800?) might serve. If not too long.

Yours sincerely

J. R. R. Tolkien.