Legendarium...

Tolkien often referred to his Middle-earth stuff as the ''legendarium.'' I wrote about the significance of this umbrella term in a post a while back. I was thinking, though, that whereas before I lamented the fact that Tolkien died before completing his great work, I now perceive that this adds somewhat to the reality of it all - all mythology is incomplete. Legendarium once meant the lives of the Saints, afterall.

I wrote before that this ''reality'' found expression in the most unlikely character of Bilbo Baggins, busy gathering from divers sources the legends that were to comprise the Red Book of Westmarch. I like to think of this book as an illuminated manuscript, like one of the old, beautiful Books of Hours of the High Middle Ages. Even more selfish, perhaps, I sometimes wish that Tolkien's work was never published, but that his wife Edith had gathered all the fair copies that she made, compiled this wonderful illuminated manuscript, and tucked it away in the Bodleian Library, ready for someone like me to come across decades, perhaps even centuries, later. I'd give anything to have that first impression of Tolkien's work again - familiarity can become stale afterall...