to me, Tolkien's books, if you look at every single one seperately and forget
they were all written by one man, are like pieces of one big myth that was
written down by different people, as were the myths of our world. if you
compare the style of the Sil to that of LotR, you see a big difference. they
need not necessarily have been written by one man. then you have the unfinished
tales and all the other books that tell different parts of the story in a
slightly different way, sometimes vastly different. and then there's LotR, a
somehow independent tale, but still on the background of the older
mythology...
imagine that half or more than half of the books would be lost, that some only
existed in fragments or didn't exist anymore but known to have existed once --
then, if i was a historian, it would feel very much like a genuine myth.
(consider also the many books that were written with Tolkien's mythology as
background
!)
--- --- ---It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision.
H.P.Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
