The Story of Kullervo
The Story of Kullervo is the title of J.R.R. Tolkien's reworking of one of the Kalevala stories.
In a 1914 letter to Edith Bratt, Tolkien mentions that he is "trying to turn one of the stories [from the Kalevala] — which is really a very great story and most tragic – into a short story".[1] Humphrey Carpenter notes that "'The Story of Kullervo', was never finished, but proved to be the germ of the story of Túrin Turambar in The Silmarillion".[2]
The manuscript remained unpublished for many years, but was published in 2010 in Tolkien Studies: Volume 7, edited and with a commentary by Verlyn Flieger.
Quotes
"The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala. It remains a major matter in the legends of the First Age (which I hope to publish as The Silmarillion)"― J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 257
See also
References
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 1, (dated October 1914)
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Note 6 to Letter 1, (dated October 1914)