The Fall of Arthur
di J.R.R.
Tolkien
a cura di Christopher Tolkien
HarperCollins, Londra, 2013, pp. 240
Illustrazioni di Bill Sanderson
Rilegato con sovraccoperta
Indice
Foreword
Notes on the
Text of The Fall of Arthur
The Poem in
Arthurian Tradition
The Unwritten
Poem and its Relation to The Silmarillion
The Evolution
of the Poem
Appendix
Old English Verse
Note di copertina
The world
first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells
the extraordinary story of the final days of England’s legendary hero, King
Arthur. "The Fall of Arthur", the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into
the legends of Arthur King of Britain, may well be regarded as his finest and
most skilful achievement in the use of the Old English alliterative metre, in
which he brought to his transforming perceptions of the old narratives a
pervasive sense of the grave and fateful nature of all that is told: of
Arthur’s expedition overseas into distant heathen lands, of Guinevere’s flight
from Camelot, of the great sea-battle on Arthur’s return to Britain, in the
portrait of the traitor Mordred, in the tormented doubts of Lancelot in his French
castle.
Unhappily,
"The Fall of Arthur" was one of several long narrative poems that he
abandoned in that period. In this case he evidently began it in the earlier
nineteen-thirties, and it was sufficiently advanced for him to send it to a
very perceptive friend who read it with great enthusiasm at the end of 1934 and
urgently pressed him ‘You simply must finish it!’ But in vain: he abandoned it,
at some date unknown, though there is some evidence that it may have been in
1937, the year of the publication of "The Hobbit" and the first
stirrings of "The Lord of the Rings". Years later, in a letter of
1955, he said that ‘he hoped to finish a long poem on "The Fall of
Arthur"’; but that day never came.
Associated
with the text of the poem, however, are many manuscript pages: a great quantity
of drafting and experimentation in verse, in which the strange evolution of the
poem’s structure is revealed, together with narrative synopses and very
significant if tantalising notes. In these latter can be discerned clear if
mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with "The
Silmarillion", and the bitter ending of the love of Lancelot and
Guinevere, which was never written.
