Tolkien estimated five thousand pages to do the Sil the way he wanted it.
Five thousand pages of fantastic heroes and glorious cities going down in
futile defeat. All the good stuff would be there, but geez, who'd have
the endurance to hang on to the end of it?
Have you read, say, 'Hurin in Brethil', where the great
hero, bitter from his long and terrible bondage, self-righteously spends fifty
or sixty pages ruining what's left of the lives of the poor people of
Haleth? It's a wonderful illustration of how the deceits of Morgoth work,
but could you stand a couple thousand pages of such stuff? The Elves who
lived through these things mostly ended up so sad that they had to sail away to
find healing. We humans don't have that option and shouldn't want such
detailed insight into their
grief.
