Tolkien, the Notion Club Papers and the Myth of Atlantis
In a long pause during the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote a story that was never meant to be published
By Sarah Zama
Image: Sentinel Bay by Sarel Theron
In the summer of 2017, I started reading all of Tolkien’s major works along with tens of other readers on the platform Litsy. When we ran our of major works, a bunch of us kept reading on, first a handful of Tolkien’s minor works and then into The History of Middle-earth.
We are still reading it, by the way. We’ve just finished volume nine of HoME, which is also the fourth and last of the History of The Lord of the Rings. It also contains The Notion Club Papers, one of the strangest things I’ve read by Tolkien.
What are the Notion Club Papers
Tolkien probably wrote The Notion Club Papers between 1945 and 1946, during a long pause in the writing of The Lord of the Rings.
The story inside the story tells us that these Papers are transcripts of the meetings of a group of Oxford scholars held during the 1980s, which were discovered in Oxford in 2012. The far future at the time when Tolkien wrote it, so maybe it isn’t all that strange that the first part of the papers concerns itself with science fiction.
In fact, Christopher Tolkien suggests that the Papers are the evolution of The Lost Road, a time-travel story that Tolkien started writing (and never finished) some ten years earlier on a dare with C.S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis did finish the story (That Hideous Strength), which is probably the reason why the Papers start with a discussion inspired by that very novel.
This group of historians and linguists probably reflects the group Tolkien actually frequented at that time. Christopher suggests that each of the characters appearing in the Papers is a doppelganger of a member of the Inklings. It’s a joke where Tolkien makes fun of his friends and of himself. For example, one of the characters (speaking in 1987) tells of how he found a very strange and forgotten book in a second-hand bookshop in Oxford. The book is entitled Quenta Eldalien, being the history of the Elves, by John Arthurson, a joke for Tolkien’s Silmarillion, which Tolkien would never see in print. John is Tolkien’s first name, and his father’s name was Arthur Tolkien. Also, one of the characters goes and speaks to one Professor Rashbold (an English translation of the German name Tolkien), who’s a very peculiar professor of linguistics at the Pembroke college.
‘The Notion Club Papers’ are the evolution of ‘The Lost Road’, a time-travel story that Tolkien started writing (and never finished) some ten years earlier on a dare with C.S. Lewis.
The Notion Club Papers are a very composite and diverse collection of writings. Part One presents the transcripts of the discussions of the club, and it’s a very complex, almost academic dissertation on the theory of speculative storytelling. Part Two opens up into a true story. One of the characters, Arry (Arundel) Lowdham, receives strange dreams of a faraway land and learns its history and language.
The languages Lowdham learns are from Númenor. So, alongside these ‘transcripts’, Tolkien went back to the legend of Númenor, which he had first envision in The Lost Road.
A discussion of the theory of fantasy writing
Part One of the Notion Club Papers is mostly discussion. There are characters in it, and each character has his own personality, but the focus is on the debate, with minimal context and plot.
At its core, the Papers are a step forward in the ideas already explored in On Fairy Stories, which Tolkien delivered at the St. Andrews University in 1939.
The discussion starts with science fiction stories and interstellar travels. Some of the characters sustain that it doesn’t matter if it is fantasy, it should still offer realistic bases to the story so that the modern reader can accept it.
It’s a very dense discussion and presented in almost academic terms. It suggests that it was intended for a public who spoke that language and was interested in this kind of subjects. Therefore a very specific audience. Most probably — I suspect — Tolkien’s circle of friends who appear as doppelgangers in the story. I don’t think that The Notion Club Papers were never meant to be published.
Even when reading a fantasy story, the reader needs to be able to take it as possible.
In search of a more acceptable form of telling stories that happened in faraway places, the group of scholars start to discuss dreams. The mind travels far away from the body in dreams. It’s an experience we all have. To some of the characters, dream-travel seems a more likely means to present a world far away in time and space. Interstellar travel may sound abstract to the reader if done scientifically or fantastical if done unrealistically. Most of the members agree that even when reading a fantasy story, the reader needs to be able to take it as possible. This can only happen when the laws at the base of the fantasy world resemble reality. They should be as good as reality. They should create, as Tolkien sustained in On Fairy Stories, a secondary reality.
Dream-travelling
As it was maybe inevitable, the discussion slowly morphs into a story. These scholars start to discuss the characteristics of dreams and the way dreams mingle with real life. Eventually one of them, Michael Ramer, tells of how he had a string of dreams, which he thinks were actually travels into a faraway world. Maybe in space, maybe in time. Maybe what he dreams of is a mythic time, because how do you tell history from myth when something happened so far away in time?
Ramer tells of his dreams and of the language he heard spoken in those dreams, and all his group of friends becomes involved in this linguistic adventure.
As Part One moves into Part Two, the storytelling quality of the Papers comes more to the front. Although the discussion remains focused on languages and the way a language is discovered and learn, we start to see a different story emerge. It’s the story of Númenor and its downfall, which comes to two different characters, Arry Lowdham and Wilfred Jeremy. In their dreams, these two men — particularly Lowdham — discover documents in an unknown language that they slowing uncover and learn as the dreams become more frequent and clear.
There are at this point two different stories unfolding. One is the story of Númenor — Tolkien’s personal interpretation of the Atlantis myth — the other, Lowdham’s story of how he discovered that myth.
The Notion Club Papers are unfinished. When Tolkien eventually went back to The Lord of the Rings, he abandoned the Papers. But Christopher suspects that eventually Lowdham would have been revealed as a descendent of the Numenoreans, who could travel back in time, to that land he didn’t even know existed, through dreams, drawn back by his blood connection and ancestry.
The Drawing of Anadûnê
The story of the Fall of Númenor and the Second Age was first drafted by Tolkien for The Lost Road. This was a time-travel story that he had started on a dare with C.S. Lewis. Unfortunately, the actual writing of that project didn’t go very far for Tolkien, but the plan that he sketched is fascinating. In essence, the idea was that individuals from this ancient Númenorean civilization could reincarnate through time. In fact, their stories emerged in different places and time through the history of humanity, manifesting in various legends, belonging to different cultures.
The way Tolkien identified many different legends, coming from different parts of the world and from different cultures, but having in common elements that might connect them to the myth of Atlantis is fascinating in itself, and I’m very sorry that he eventually abandoned that story. Though he did so because another story took hold of him: The Lord of the Rings. So I won’t complain. Still, it might as well be that, had Tolkien’s publisher not insisted on a sequel to The Hobbit, we might have that Númenor story today, instead of The Lord of the Rings.
It might as well be that, had Tolkien’s publisher not insisted on a sequel to ‘The Hobbit’, we might have that Númenor story today, instead of ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
Anyway, eventually, the arc of the story gets back to Alboin, who ‘discovers’ the ancient legend of Númenor and its connection with other times through dreams, just like Lowdham does in The Notion Club Papers.
Although the conception of the story, the characters, and the names are totally different, it can be argued that to some extent, The Notion Club Papers are indeed development of The Lost Road concept.
More importantly, Tolkien first sketched out the story of Númenor for The Lost Road, but here that story goes through great development and great evolution. These facts of the Second Age ended up being extremely relevant in The Lord of the Rings, which probably explains Tolkien’s interest in refining them at this point.
While it is perfectly recognizable as the story eventually included in The Silmarillion, The Drowning of Anadûnê presents several very apparent divergences from it. In some places, the divergences are so relevant, that it almost seems Tolkien was considering changing his entire legendarium.
Almost all names from the first draft changed, probably in concomitance with the emergence of Adunaic as the language of Númenor.
A totally different nomenclature from the one we are familiar to in The Silmarillion appears. Arbazân for Amandil (the chief of the Faithful), his son Nimruzîr for Elendil (the first of the Númenorean kings of Middle-earth), Ar-Minalêth for Armenelos (the capital of Númenor).
Many of the names that Tolkien had used that far in his Silmarillion are also changed. Amân for Manwë (chief of the Powers) and his brother Mēlekō for Melko (the Dark Lord); Eärendel one of the oldest characters in the legendarium, becomes Azrubêl and the one we know as Sauron become Zigûr.
The writing of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was causing an earthquake in the legendarium.
But more strikingly, the backgrounds of all these characters are different from the one outlined in The Silmarillion. Tolkien produces a great number of outlines and notes, with changes that appear to happen at a great speed. In one of these notes, the Valar and the Eldar disappear to become at a certain point the Avâla. This name seems to include all undying beings, and so both the Valar and the Eldar. Though subsequently abandoned, this was a change that completely revolutionized the structure of Tolkien’s legendarium to that point.
Why would Tolkien change to such a great extent the legendarium he had developed in more than twenty years?
Christopher suggests that the writing of The Lord of the Rings was causing an earthquake in the legendarium. Besides the Second Age was almost unexplored at that stage, and anything was fair game. Tolkien never feared to change things from the beginning to harmonize his world. At this point, he was creating the Second and the Third Ages basically together. It might have seemed worthwhile to try a different way.
But deeper shifts were also occurring. The Silmarillion was the history of the world from the perspective of the Elves. As Tolkien developed the Mannish civilization of Númenor in more detail, he tried to recount that tradition (which of course overlaps with that of the Elves) from the standpoint of the Men. The Elves have long lives and long memories, but Men have short lives that allow for much information to perish with them. As part of the Mannish tradition is lost, and part is deformed and changed by time, things that Elves and Men originally knew in the same way, change over time in the myths of Men.
In this way, The Drawing of Anadûnê connects with the discussion of The Notion Club Papers. It’s ultimately a study of how tradition come to exist and how the memory of people (a mortal people) is passed on to their descendants.
The Fall of Númenor
The Fall of Númenor has always been a favorite of mine inside The Silmarillion. It is a dark tale of downfall, of pride (both good and bad), of deceit, political and religious power, cowardice and courage.
In this pause of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien gave it the form that we know today, with all its visceral hate and hope, the darkness, the vengeance, the wreath of the gods.
Amazon has already announced that the first two episodes of the series inspired by Tolkien’s work will be set in Númenor — one of the scant info we have about this series.
In spite of all the reservations I may have about the series, I’ll admit that it would be exciting to see the story of Númenor come to life on the screen.
Let’s wait and hope.
Sarah Zama is a Tolkien nerd and proud of it. She read The Hobbit the first time as a teenager and was a Tolkien fan years before Peter Jackson’s trilogy ever hit the theatres. She’s always been involved with Tolkien groups, both online and in person. In 2004, she founded a Tolkien group in her city, Verona (Italy), which is still meeting and divulging the Professor’s work. In 2017, she started reading Tolkien’s work with a group of other nerdy readers, one chapter a day. They are still on the road together.