07-04-2006, 18:43
Ce que dit Vincent est évident !
D'ailleurs Christopher Tolkien parle dans HOME de la création littéraire, de la méthode de travail de son père et de la nature des textes :
[citation]On the other hand, the linguistic histories were nonetheless 'images', invented by an inventor, who was free to change those histories as he was free to change the story of the world in which they took place; and he did so abundantly. The difficulties inherent in the study of the history of any language or group of languages are here therefore compounded: for this history is not a datum of historical fact to be uncovered, but an unstable, shifting view of what the history was. Moreover, the alterations in the history were not confined to features of 'interior' linguistic development: the 'exterior' conception of the languages and their relations underwent change, even profound change; and it is not to be thought that the representation of the languages in letters, in tengwar, should be exempt. It must be added that my father's characteristic method of work - elaborate beginnings collapsing into scrawls; manuscripts overlaid with layer upon layer of emendation - here find their most extreme expression; and also that the philological papers were left in the greatest disorder. Without external dating, the only way to determine sequence (apart from the very general and uncertain guide of changing hand- writing) is in the internal evidence of the changing philology itself; and that, of its nature, does not offer the sort of clues that lead through the maze of the literary texts. The clues it does offer are very much more elusive. It is also unfortunately true that hasty handwriting and ill- formed letters are here far more destructive; and a great deal of my father's late philological writing is, I think, strictly unusable. It will be seen then that the philological component in the evolution of Middle-earth can scarcely be analysed, and most certainly cannot be presented, as can the literary texts. In any case, my father was perhaps more interested in the processes of change than he was in displaying the structure and use of the languages at any given time - though this is no doubt due to some extent to his so often starting again at the beginning with the primordial sounds of the Quendian languages, embarking on a grand design that could not be sustained (it seems indeed that the very attempt to write a definitive account produced immediate dissatisfaction and the desire for new constructions: so the most beautiful manuscripts were soon treated with disdain).[/citation]
Cordialement.
Alain.
D'ailleurs Christopher Tolkien parle dans HOME de la création littéraire, de la méthode de travail de son père et de la nature des textes :
[citation]On the other hand, the linguistic histories were nonetheless 'images', invented by an inventor, who was free to change those histories as he was free to change the story of the world in which they took place; and he did so abundantly. The difficulties inherent in the study of the history of any language or group of languages are here therefore compounded: for this history is not a datum of historical fact to be uncovered, but an unstable, shifting view of what the history was. Moreover, the alterations in the history were not confined to features of 'interior' linguistic development: the 'exterior' conception of the languages and their relations underwent change, even profound change; and it is not to be thought that the representation of the languages in letters, in tengwar, should be exempt. It must be added that my father's characteristic method of work - elaborate beginnings collapsing into scrawls; manuscripts overlaid with layer upon layer of emendation - here find their most extreme expression; and also that the philological papers were left in the greatest disorder. Without external dating, the only way to determine sequence (apart from the very general and uncertain guide of changing hand- writing) is in the internal evidence of the changing philology itself; and that, of its nature, does not offer the sort of clues that lead through the maze of the literary texts. The clues it does offer are very much more elusive. It is also unfortunately true that hasty handwriting and ill- formed letters are here far more destructive; and a great deal of my father's late philological writing is, I think, strictly unusable. It will be seen then that the philological component in the evolution of Middle-earth can scarcely be analysed, and most certainly cannot be presented, as can the literary texts. In any case, my father was perhaps more interested in the processes of change than he was in displaying the structure and use of the languages at any given time - though this is no doubt due to some extent to his so often starting again at the beginning with the primordial sounds of the Quendian languages, embarking on a grand design that could not be sustained (it seems indeed that the very attempt to write a definitive account produced immediate dissatisfaction and the desire for new constructions: so the most beautiful manuscripts were soon treated with disdain).[/citation]
Cordialement.
Alain.