The Second Apocalypse

Earwa => The Prince of Nothing => The Almanac: PON Edition => Topic started by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:11:47 am

Title: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:11:47 am
Quote from: Madness
Some thoughts post-writing. I definitely see the point of lockesnow's suggestion that we break things down in simple sentences to have a sequential way to refer to the sectionals in each chapter, though I haven't done so here. This is the point of immersing ourselves and trying individual ways to do these write ups. Even though I started late, I do think that for the Prologue posting and discussion we limit ourselves to the 19th, Ch. 1 can begin on August 20th. Rather than post specifically first like this, I will probably just make a new topic on the first day of each reading "week."

Here goes. I invite everyone to join at their leisure. Let's consider this a soft start - I have relatively few expectations as I like to approach the evolution of these communications as organically as possible. I advocate adopting our own styles of posting and see what emerges. I do ask that references to anything past the thread title be spoiler tagged. Anyone is welcome, of course, to join in at any time during our experience of this epic. For the moment, we'll consider this the active thread until end of day August 19th - I'm working from EST, I believe the forum is GMT. Then onto TDTCB, Ch. 1 August 20th to the 24th.

I am reading from the small black TDTCB and my page numbers will reflect that.

Cheers everyone. Strength on the journey... Journey well.

The Wastes of Kûniüri

2147 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Mountains of Demua

If it is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything.

- AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN

The prologue begins with a short tale of Anasurimbor Ganrelka II's household. The citadel of Ishual is described as the secret refuge of the Kuniuric High Kings and having fled the Apocalypse, plague finds Ganrelka within its walls.

In the end only Ganrelka's bastard son and the Bardic Priest survive the disease. The Priest catches the bastard and molests him in some fashion, muttering "there are no crimes when no one is left alive" (p3).

Following the winter snows, a group of refugees finds Ishual. They scale the walls and in finding the bastard, one asks, "with a voice neither tender or harsh ... 'We are Dunyain, child. What reason could you have to fear us?'" (p3) to which the boy responds "'so long as men live, there are crimes!' ... 'No, child ... only so long as men are deceived'" (p4).

This passage also mentions that these Dunyain have "repudiated" (p4) the Gods. "Here awareness most holy could be tended. In Ishual, they had found shelter against the end of the world ... And the world forgot them for to thousand years" (p4).

A few interesting notes.

Firstly, this passage very much seems to focus on the introduction of the Dunyain. It also seems to suggest that they are a threat - "one cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten" (p1) resonates with the last sentence of the passage, quoted above.

Secondly, Ishual is apparently a secret of the Kuniuric High Kings yet these Dunyain are the only refugees of the Apocalypse who stumble upon the citadel.

Lastly, Apocalyptic Dunyain have voices "neither tender nor harsh" (p3) and yet "the man's eyes filled with wonder" (p4).

This is a history of a great and tragic holy war, of the mighty factions that sought to possess and pervert it, and of a son searching for his father. And as with all histories, it is we, the survivors, who will write its conclusion.

- DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

Late Autumn, 4109 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Mountains of Demua

The second set of passages in the Prologue begins almost two thousand years later with a set of recurring dreams, which are viewed by the dreamers as desecration. Someone demands that their son be sent to them, to the holy city of Shimeh.

The son in question is Anasurimbor Kellhus, seemingly descended from Ganrelka's bastard of the year 2147. Our first encounter with Kellhus is as he looks back upon the Elder Dunyain, decending into the Labyrinth called the Thousand Thousand Halls of “unlit depths” (p5).

According to the text, it is Kellhus’ father, whom Kellhus seems to think travelled as he himself now travels, who has sent the Elder Dunyain, the “dreamers” (p5), the dreams that desecrate. In Kellhus’ perspective the Dunyain return to the Thousand Thousand Halls in order to die, to limit the connection Kellhus’ father has with their fastness.

“What comes before determines what comes after” (p6). This is described as being paramount to the Dunyain who seek “to know what would come after … the hallowed communion of intellect and circumstance – the gift of the Logos” (p7).

Kellhus wanders even as he begins to lose all semblance of self as he travels horizon to horizon. Nature inhabits and possesses him. I find it interesting that, as this seems to be Kellhus first journey into the world from Ishual’s walls, Bakker seems to evoke a sense of Tabula Rasa - the idea of the mind as a blank slate at birth, that experience then writes itself upon.

Kellhus eventually finds ruins and seeing his reflection – probably the first time ever – and some animals he makes his first distinction: “I am not one more animal … I am a man. I stand apart from these things” (p10).

Finally, he is too weak to travel and walks “until he could no longer … The way is too narrow, Father. Shimeh is too far” (p10).

He is found buried in the snows by a trapper named Leweth. Since Kellhus is our introductory perspective to Bakker’s story, we are as captive to Kellhus’ interpretations as Kellhus is to Leweth’s perspective.

We also learn that Leweth is little more than a child to Kellhus, in that Kellhus can read some measure of Leweth’s thoughts and emotions through the man’s face.

Leweth is an alcoholic and Kellhus, in needing more than “drink-exaggerated passions” (p13) to study, pours the casks of whiskey into the forest.

Bakker takes a passage it seems to showcase Kellhus’ power over Leweth, his ability to manipulate the man as his mission requires. More importantly, it also serves to suggest Kellhus’ father’s requisite import: “Thirty years, Father. What power you must wield over men such as this” (p16).

“Why, the ancient Dunyain had asked, confine the passions to words when they spoke first in expression? A legion of faces lived within him, and he could slip through them with the same ease with which he crafted his words. At the heart of his jubilant smile, his compassionate laugh, flexed the cold of scrutiny” (p16).

Throughout much of Kellhus and Leweth’s interaction at the cabin, Kellhus’ perspective refers to much of Leweth’s description of the world as myth and superstition. We’re told of the No-God and his Consult, the Gods, Sorcery, and the Apocalypse, much of which Kellhus dismisses outright until finding the Kuniuric Stele of Celmomas II – in a language almost identical to his own.

Eventually, Leweth and Kellhus are forced to leave Leweth’s cabin and his dogs to creatures called Sranc, whose tracks Kellhus finds returning from the Stele. Having not seen them in-text, for us and “for Kellhus the threat existed only in the fear manifested by the trapper” (p23).

They are tracked through the forests by a number of these creatures until they can run no longer. We are granted a perspective from Leweth, who watches while Kellhus manages the impressive feat of killing some of the Sranc pursuing them. Finally, when Leweth tells Kellhus they can shelter in some Nonmen Ruins west of them, Kellhus drops Leweth in the snow and leaves him for the Sranc.

This I believe is the first mention of creatures called Nonmen (p26).

Finally, in sheltering in the ruins and fighting the remaining Sranc beneath an immense dead oak, Kellhus encounters one of these Nonmen, who owned and commanded the Sranc chasing Leweth and Kellhus.

The Nonman tells us that one of the Sranc was his “elju … our ‘book,’ you would say in your tongue” (p30). He seems very concerned with memory and remembering. He corroborates for Kellhus and the reader some ideas concerning the No-God and the Apocalypse.

However,  in this final passage the existence of sorcery seems most important. After Kellhus defeats the Nonman in traditional combat, the Nonman simply blows Kellhus away with an example of what Kellhus deems to be sorcery, before Kellhus flees.  “Sorcery? Is this among the lessons I’m to learn, Father? (p33)

Cheers.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:12:25 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Fabulous summary Madness, I especially loved your insight regarding the way the §P.1 contains bookends with the first and last sentances.  Great catch.  I also think this primed me to see some other associations from one sentence to the next that I might have otherwised overlooked in my close reading.  I'll get to more of the chapter tomorrow, I'm particularly enticed by the water water everywhere imagery that dominates Kellhus' journey prior to encountering the ruins.

***

Prince of Nothing Re-Read

Prologue
I sort of feel that this first section is more of a preface than a prologue; partly because this is the only chapter of any of the books that has chapter header aphorisms in the middle of the chapter.  So I think of §P.1 as sort of the preface and when the next two aphorisms come up and the timeline jumps forward 1970ish years, that’s sort of the start to the prologue.  This will be long; much longer than I’ll probably ever go into again for any chapter.  That is because I’ve reread this chapter more times than anything else in the series—and I tend to think that this may be the piece of writing that Bakker re-wrote more than anything else in the series, I think he does remarkable things with the text throughout these sections.

I never quite know what to make of this Ajencis quote—I think it is the single most important aphorism in the entire series—and I always seem to come up with a different way to interpret.  In terms of what this accomplishes on a first read, it sets up the reader to realize that souls are at stake in this universe, I sometimes feel like souls are rarely referenced in fantasy; this use of souls right at the very beginning--with a new definition of what a soul means in this mileau--is really unique.

§P.1 The first thing I noted was the second paragraph.  I wonder if Bakker had read Orson Scott Card’s ‘How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy’, because this paragraph is a textbook example of how Card describes a Speculative world should be introduced to the reader.  It really is impressively masterful, reminiscent of the master herself, Octavia Butler (Card references her opening to Wild Seed in his text). 
Quote
The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse.  But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts.  No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates.  Ishuäl was the secret refuge of the Kûniüric High Kings, and no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret.
What is so impressive about this paragraph? The first sentence entices you by telling you something major happened, but it’s teasing, a tactic to keep you reading to find out how a great castle was overthrown—already the second sentence and the book is exciting right?  And before we even get to the end of the second sentence of the book, suddenly the stakes are raised.  “The Apocalypse.” It sends shivers down your back.  Not only is there an epic war going on, but the very term invokes all sorts of biblical and science fiction imagery, it’s not just a war we’re thrown into the middle of, the use of the term Apocalypse implies it is a war for the very survival of the human race.  An end of the world.  This is going to be epic. 

Next we find out who (presumably) the opponent is, inhuman Sranc, and they can scale walls.  It conjures similarities to the word "Orc" and that is what the word immediately conjures for me, the image of Peter Jackson’s portrayal of Orcs.  These Sranc are clearly the enemy.  But wait, Dragons.  Even better.  This really is big.  Dragons and Sranc against the humans, magnificent.  Furnace-hearted, that’s got a nice, poetic ring to it, odd, almost, old-fashioned, it makes me thing of older epics like the Aeneid where elaborate metaphors described the inhuman enemies of man.

(spoilers for the series)
(click to show/hide)
Anyway, back to the second paragraph, Kuniuric High Kings, excellent, I’m immediately reminded of various fantasy High Kings, almost always the good guys, so that’s who I’m rooting for, and they're give the title of 'king' so they’re probably human.  Ah, and it matches the prologue title, Wastes of Kuniuri; so the Kuniuric High Kings rule the Kingdom of Kuniuri and they’re being attacked by inhuman legions.  But wait,  The “No-God,” aha, this must be the Big-Bad, the leader of the Sranc and Dragons.  The Sauron who has brought the Apocalypse and whom the humans are warring against.

The point of this lengthy breakdown is to really highlight just how efficient this opening paragraph is at conveying really essential information, in broad strokes Bakker lays out some of the key terms of what is ultimately the conflict for all three series, The Apocalypse, mankind versus the hordes of the No-God.  It’s a really impressive and compact form of writing that does the heavy lifting of providing a bunch of background information while also enticing the reader to continue onward without overwhelming the reader.   A paragraph like this creates a partnership with the reader because the reader isn't aware of doing any work, but neither does it feel chintzy, everything is smooth sailing from the beginning, other than the foreign fantasy names (and for a genre reader, foreign fantasy names can be comforting in their own right). It’s an incredibly enticing piece of writing and fully within the classic forms of how this genre handles introducing an entirely alien mileau.

Next paragraph, note that the sentries are not watching, their ‘thoughts are stricken,’ so they don’t see… something.

Then the plague strikes, suspiciously it takes out the King first. And his entourage sees “wolves” eyes in the light of his bier.  There is some interesting wolf imagery later that this will connect to.

In the next paragraph, Bakker reiterates the sentries are not watching, ‘they saw little,’ so once again, Bakker emphasize that they don’t see… something. 

Also in this paragraph is a beautiful phrase “bloodline to its thinnest tincture.”  But this phrase is also the first glimpse we get of the rather loaded spiritual world that Bakker has establish for us.  Because thinnest tincture refers to the blood of Ganrelka’s concubine and the concubine’s daughter; from the very beginning Bakker is telling us that in this world, women’s blood is not equal to men’s blood.  Also, we should start to get really suspicious here.  The sentries are not seeing something and simultaneously the royalty of the household are mysteriously dying, as though they were targeted first because they are most important.

And the next paragraph we get a catalog of the gruesome deaths that await the elite of the household, All the descriptions are incredibly enticing, for a reread, these names should leap with significance, but I remember zeroing on the ‘sorcerous texts’ part of this paragraph my first time through.  Note that the text does not say that Ganrelka’s uncle suicided, only that he was found hanging from a rope.  And all the elite crème de la crème knights of the household were found dead in their beds.   Note also that the text explicitly avoids saying that this paragraph’s victims died of the plague—the reader just assumes that because we’ve been primed by the earlier paragraph, which suggested it hit the entire household (but household is paired with bloodline so…), but only the first three were explicitly claimed to be victims of the plague. 

Conveniently, only a boy—now the heir, although apparently the plague didn’t target him, despite being part of the bloodline (unless he’s not of Anasurimbor blood…), and a bard survive. 

Is the Bard behind it all?  Perhaps, the text is vague on this point.  Note the transition from “when no one is left alive.” To “But the boy lived.”  Coupled with the ending of this paragraph, “Was it murder when no one was left alive?” Interesting how the boy takes on the exact same rationalization in committing his crime that the bard used in committing his crime.  In a single paragraph Bakker has the victim become the perp and shows how radically changed a person can be, while also tweaking his readers, who will probably justify the boys actions because culture demands that such justifications be used.  These two paragraphs are a really stunning piece of writing, and in a small form—and completely under-the-table, manage to convey one of Bakker’s favorite themes.  Ever are men deceived (which may help explain what the Dunyain is about to tell the boy, the dunyain says, only so long as men are deceived, and the boy realizes that he justified crimes for the same reason the Bard did, that the justification both of them used is unacceptable, and only so long as they are deceiving themselves will they be unable to overcome their circumstances in which they both committed and justified crimes to themselves). 

The boy survives an entire winter on his own, and there are indeed wolves in the woods. And in the next chapter he will describe the Dunyain first as a ‘wolf people’ (this would be the payoff I mentioned earlier to the notations of wolves.’

The Dunyain scale the walls.  What else scales the walls in this chapter?  Sranc.  That’s a deliberate comparison, same words, we don’t yet know that these wolf people are not Sranc—they are a threat.  And in case you didn’t catch the point of comparing them to how Sranc have been described, here’s another hint that is more obvious, “Like the Bardic Priest,” again, this imagry is of threat and danger, predation and so on.  Very interesting. 

The boy seems to pass the test of the Dunyain, and understand his own self-deception, and the Dunyain celebrate… but are they celebrating Ishual, or celebrating the inclusion of the boy in their ranks—the text seems to celebrate the boy, not the place, “The stranger brought him to the others, and together they celebrated their strange fortune.”   But note how the Dunyain deceive themselves,  They repudiate gods but elevate ‘awareness’ to a godlike status, “awareness most holy.”  From the very beginning are we seeing that the cause of the Dunyain is a vain one?  I’m not sure.

I remember well how the second to last paragraph of this section shocked me on the first reread.  They chiseled away the runes and sorcery, they burnt the books of magic, they discarded all that supernatural about them.  I was not ready for that sort of repudiation, it’s very different from anything else I can think of in fantasy.

And I have to say that Madness really hit a major homerun noting the beautiful literary way that Bakker bookends §P.1 with “One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten,” and “And the world forgot them for two thousand years.” And to emphasize this point for the reader, Bakker follows this up with a quote that tells us that “Man Forgets”
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:12:51 am
Quote from: Triskele
One thing that I've always wondered about is exactly who and what the Dunyain were before fleeing the Apocalypse and finding sanctuary in Ishual.

It seems like we know that they had already formed The Project, but they'd not been able to put it into practice in anything like the way they would come to now that they'd taken root in Ishual. 

I am not sure if we'll ever get any more information on this at all, or if we'll get some huge reveal about how some other historic character planted the Dunyain seed somehow. 

I could see it going either way, but I kind of suspect we won't get anything more.

ETA:  Are we supposed to keep this thread spoiler free, or can we assume that everyone reading this has made it through WLW by now?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:13:22 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Triskele
ETA:  Are we supposed to keep this thread spoiler free, or can we assume that everyone reading this has made it through WLW by now?
The God has decreed that only virgins may tread these hallowed grounds, their innocence blesses us all; the guilty and the damned profane this place with the spoiling stench of their rot as they revel in the mud and madness of their inner delusions.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:13:43 am
Quote from: Madness
Yeah, I'd ask that if you must post spoilerific thoughts here, use tags. We can't just assume that everyone who comes to Second Apocalypse has read through all the books thus far - I specifically remember multiple people commenting on TPB over the past two years that they wouldn't return because Bakker or others had simply posted things that pertained to TAE without consideration of newcomers.

I realize that many of us have survived the years since Three Seas fell in the Westeros One-Thread Famines and it was acceptable to post immediately and thoughtlessly. If these threads inspire you with thoughts pertaining to ongoing speculation there are plenty of threads that exist or don't yet exist in TUC, WLW, and Misc. Chatter subforums.

Or you can do what lockesnow did above.

Unless, of course, the ten of us actively posting on Second Apocalypse are set to pay Bakker's mortgage to keep him writing full-time.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:14:08 am
Quote from: Twooars
Quote from: lockesnow
The boy seems to pass the test of the Dunyain, and understand his own self-deception, and the Dunyain celebrate… but are they celebrating Ishual, or celebrating the inclusion of the boy in their ranks—the text seems to celebrate the boy, not the place, “The stranger brought him to the others, and together they celebrated their strange fortune.”   But note how the Dunyain deceive themselves,  They repudiate gods but elevate ‘awareness’ to a godlike status, “awareness most holy.”  From the very beginning are we seeing that the cause of the Dunyain is a vain one?  I’m not sure.

I remember well how the second to last paragraph of this section shocked me on the first reread.  They chiseled away the runes and sorcery, they burnt the books of magic, they discarded all that supernatural about them.  I was not ready for that sort of repudiation, it’s very different from anything else I can think of in fantasy.

Well spotted and I agree, it is /very/ strange for a sect so interested in knowledge to eliminate all references to sorcery. very uncharacterisitc and I hope there will be some explanation about this in future books.

And yeah, awesome way to introduce a new world with almost no infodumping at all.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:14:47 am
Quote from: Madness
I could see them removing sorcery because they thought it made men of the world fat and lazy? Obviously, throughout the prologue, we see in Kellhus that they managed some kind of martial prowess over two thousand years of training and breeding.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:15:17 am
Quote from: sologdin
good contributions above as to the content.  as i can’t improve upon them, i offer merely some commentary as to form, though marxism may argue also that form is its own peculiar type of content.

RSB's prologue opens with an epigraph, drawn from the in-setting tome of ajencis, The Third Analytic of Men:

Quote
If it is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing.  Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything.

(I.pro (2003) at 1). 

the prologue continues to narrate “the end of the world” (I.pro at 4), several thousand years prior to the main action that the novel itself purports to describe, as well as to the action of the second part of the prologue.   in skipping ahead two thousand years, the prologue introduces a primary character for the main action of the novel.  this character’s quest, commencing in the second part of the prologue, is itself prefaced by the actors of the first part of the prologue, about whom the text intones “the world forgot them for two thousand years” (I.pro at 4).

the first part of the prologue begins post-epigraph with a gnomic

Quote
One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.

(I.pro at 1). 

what is to be done with these formal minutiae?

we might begin with some standard definitions, and thereby find the standard reading of prologue, about which harmon & holman's handbook to literature opines:

Quote
An introduction most frequently associated with drama and especially common in England in the plays of the Restoration and the eighteenth century.  In the plays of ancient Greece a speaker announced, before the beginning of the play proper [emphasis added], such salient facts as the audience should know to understand the play itself [emphasis added].

the pertinent principle that is encoded by prologue is therefore that it occurs before the beginning, and is exterior to the play itself, which might only be understood through comprehension of the salient facts.

regarding preface, a related concept (as we shall see further, below), in harmon & holman:

Quote
A statement at the beginning of a book or article--and separate from it [emphasis added]--which states the purpose of the work, makes necessary acknowledgements, and, in general, informs the reader of such facts as the author thinks pertinent.

this, then, gives us to understand that the preface is separate from the text itself, and should deploy the purpose, the necessary acknowledgements, the author’s statement of the pertinent.

to round it out, harmon & holman note that the epigraph in literature is:

Quote
a quotation on the title page of a book, or a motto heading a section of a work.

more to the point, the current wikipedia entry for epigraph holds:

Quote
In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface [emphasis added], as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional context.

the epigraph is itself a preface.  we have, then, a prologue with a epigraphic preface, at the very least.  but, as the prologue is bifurcated, with parts separated by much time and space in-setting, it is fair to state that the first part of the prologue prefaces the second part, just as the epigraph prefaces the entirety of the prologue--and, just as the prologue, separate from the play itself, prefaces the novel proper.

taking these definitions and rationales into account, RSB’s prologue amounts to three separate prefacing maneuvers:

1 ) the epigraph;
2 ) the first part “at the end of the world”; and
3 ) the entirety of the prologue itself.

the first preface works as a moment of willful blindness of inventing an axiom (“the soul precedes everything”) in order to cure the purported cognitive defect of coming to understanding only after the fact, which means “we understand nothing.”  the precession of the soul is supplied as a remedy. 

something therefore precedes everything, all signification--here, the “soul”--which presumably must also precede the epigraph of ajencis, which, as stated, itself precedes the first part of the prologue, which precedes the second part of the prologue, which precedes the novel itself.

we are accordingly presented with a precession of prefacing that terminates only by virtue of a rhetorical trick of begging the question of the existence of a “soul.”  the precession of prefaces must be amended, then, to:

0 ) the “soul“;
1 ) the epigraph;
2 ) the first part; and
3 ) the entirety of the prologue.

the weirdness that remains is that the prologue as a whole is “separate from” the “the play itself”--simultaneously parcel to and distinguished from the novel that follows. 

regarding prefaces, mr. derrida notes, in the ironic no-preface to dissemination, that

Quote
Prefaces, along with forwards, introductions, preludes, preliminaries, preambles, prologues [emphasis added], and prolegomena, have always been written, it seems, in view of their own self-effacement.  Upon reaching the end of the pre- (which presents and precedes [emhasis added], or rather forestalls, the presentative production, and, in order to put before the reader's eyes what is not yet visible, is obliged to speak, predict, and predicate), the route which has been covered must cancel itself out.  But this subtraction leaves a mark of erasure, a remainder which is added to the subsequent text and which cannot be completely summed up within it.  Such an operation thus appears contradictory, and the same is true of the interest one takes in it.


(dissemination (1981) at 9). 

taken this way, however, RSB’s layered prologue manifests expressly its own self-effacement:  the doctrine of the “soul” self-cancels to the extent it is tautological fiat by definition and responsive to a non-problem; the epigraph self-cancels insofar as it proposes a cryptic problem and then supplies an answer, curing its enthymemic dilemma; the first part of the prologue self-cancels as it raises its own forgetting, and self-cancels the forgetting ab initio when it suggests that the forgotten will return to besiege those who are unable to raise walls against it; and the prologue itself as a whole self-cancels when it deploys a “route” for the primary character that

(click to show/hide)

the prologue puts “before the reader’s eyes what is not yet visible,” what can be understood only after, the bizarre and incomprehensible setting details that are fundamental to certain strands of post-tolkienian secondary creation.  we might reduce the prologue, to preface, to soul, to precession itself, consistent with the oft-stated determinist principle that “what comes before determines what comes after” (I.pro at 6).  despite the layers of erasure, the cancelling is never complete and must remain incomplete--both because the determinist principle continues in “the play itself,” “separate from“ the prologue, and because the principle of precession exemplified in the layers of the prologue itself embodies the determinist principle. 

the precession of the “soul” is not incidental, but is at root of the primary character’s prior training in the semiotics of face, which allows him to read the “fine musculature of [redshirt's] face,” allowing the reader to see that “whatever moved [redshirt’s] soul moved his expression as well,” granting, through mere reading, an “ability to anticipate [redshirt’s] thoughts, to re-enact the movements of [redshirt’s] soul” (I.pro at 11).

there is therefore no direct access to the “soul,” but only indirectly through the protocols of reading, which, though in general sufficiently problematized when it comes to the discipline of linguistics, is presented here as initially unproblematic with respect to the semiotics of face.  it should be problematic, however, and, if it ultimately is not, then the unproblematic semiotics of face would be the single most fantastic item in a setting filled with fantasy content. 

the face is nevertheless a language, and in the prologue is structured like writing; the preceding soul that is being understood through the face is something of the mysterious signified, the trace of which is marked out and subject to erasure by the signifier of the writing/face.  it is, as in linguistics, an exercise in unsuccessful searching for the origin, the arche, which might only been revealed in its traces, its telling absences, rather than any true manifestation or presence.

i have not addressed the salient facts, the necessary acknowledgements, the pertinent items that prefaces and prologues are supposed to disclose; perhaps those can best be pulled out when we actually get to the play itself, which is separate from the prologue.  only by knowing what comes before the play itself might we understand the play itself, and if we only understand what comes before the play itself after reading the play itself, then we understand nothing.

in this last connection, derrida's preface literally begins with its mind-numbing conclusion:

Quote
This (therefore) will not have been a book.

(dissemination at 3).  as RSB’s prologue begins simultaneously at “the end of the world” as well as at the origin, the “soul,” the absence that stands postulated as the beginning of a chain of causal precession, it might similarly be said to stand for the proposition All good things must come to a beginning.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:15:37 am
Quote from: Madness
Thanks for coming, sologdin. Very interesting perspective. It will take me some time to digest.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:15:59 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: sologdin

we are accordingly presented with a precession of prefacing that terminates only by virtue of a rhetorical trick of begging the question of the existence of a “soul.”  the precession of prefaces must be amended, then, to:

0 ) the “soul“;
1 ) the epigraph;
2 ) the first part; and
3 ) the entirety of the prologue.

the weirdness that remains is that the prologue as a whole is “separate from” the “the play itself”--simultaneously parcel to and distinguished from the novel that follows. 
Everything in your post was amazing, but I kept thinking you were going to include the Nietzsche quote that precedes all of this.  How does that work in, particularly as Nietzsche is presumably non-diagetic?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:17:04 am
Quote from: sologdin
good point.  didn't even think of that, but it should be included, because i think that the prologue, as i have read it, must move between diegetic and non-diegetic references.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:17:22 am
Quote from: Ajokli
Quote from: Madness
I could see them removing sorcery because they thought it made men of the world fat and lazy? Obviously, throughout the prologue, we see in Kellhus that they managed some kind of martial prowess over two thousand years of training and breeding.

Like the Bene Gesserit with the Jihad.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:17:40 am
Quote from: Tony P
Managed to keep up with the project, though I'm not nearly as well versed in the metaphysical aspects as you guys. Still, some things stood out.

An interesting point about sorcery:

Quote
And there were sorcerers whose assertions were decrees, whose words dictated rather than described how the world had to be. (p. 19, black paperback)

To be on the safe side, I'm going to put the next bit in spoilertags.

(click to show/hide)


there is also, perhaps, a reference to the White Luck Warrior in the very same paragraph:

(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:18:07 am
Quote from: Oreb
Quote from: lockesnow
§P.1 The first thing I noted was the second paragraph.  I wonder if Bakker had read Orson Scott Card’s ‘How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy’, because this paragraph is a textbook example of how Card describes a Speculative world should be introduced to the reader.  It really is impressively masterful, reminiscent of the master herself, Octavia Butler (Card references her opening to Wild Seed in his text). 
Quote
The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse.  But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts.

That's very strange, because that's not quite how it reads in my copy (the UK paperback edition). These are the first two sentences of the second paragraph in my copy:

Quote
The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But no army, human or inhuman, had scaled its ramparts.

Sranc, as you can see, are not mentioned.

What's the reason for this discrepancy?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:18:23 am
Quote from: Imparrhas
Prologue I
This is the only pov we have of the time before the Three Seas ascendancy that's not a vision or dream. We don't see anything of the old religion beyond the Bardic Priest. The Dunyain that speaks to the prince is more human than the Dunyain seen after 2000 years of breeding and training. The last High King is described as an Emperor of nothing, leaving behind a dynasty of nothing through his bastard son.

Prologue II
The two examples given to show the predictability in Ishual are a leaf moving across a path and what others will say. The first is purely material, the second involves the soul of another. Both can be grasped by the Logos.

pg 14. How did Leweth avenge himself?

pg 28. Kellhus's sword is described as seizing space like the brances of a tree. This same description was used for the trees that had Kellhus mesmerized earlier.
(click to show/hide)
.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:18:37 am
Quote from: Twooars
Quote from: Oreb
Quote from: lockesnow
Sranc, as you can see, are not mentioned.

What's the reason for this discrepancy?

You are right. There is no mention of Sranc in that sentence in my Kindle version too. The first mention of Sranc, however, is on the same page, about the wind moaning like Sranc horns.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:19:00 am
Quote from: Imparrhas
About the Dunyain removing sorcery from Ishual: I think this is, thematically, related to their principle of before and after. They want a mechanistic universe which they hope one day a soul can fully grasp. If there is an Outside, a place affected by and affecting this supposedly natural universe, their whole reason for being is gone so they try to forcibly disenchant Ishual. Of course when Kellhus leaves their retreat later he still faces sorcery. They can approximate the universe they want in their little corner of the world but it doesn't change how it really is. EADunyainD.
(click to show/hide)

Within in the setting it doesn't make a lot of sense though. Why would they consider sorcery as anything but another part of the world? We have people who can work miracles by pushing buttons and we don't call that supernatural.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:19:17 am
Quote from: generic
Quote from: Imparrhas
About the Dunyain removing sorcery from Ishual: I think this is, thematically, related to their principle of before and after. They want a mechanistic universe which they hope one day a soul can fully grasp. If there is an Outside, a place affected by and affecting this supposedly natural universe, their whole reason for being is gone so they try to forcibly disenchant Ishual.

There is something very strange going on with the Dunyain. On the one hand they're perspective seems almost modern. Causalty is the basis of their world view and they scoff at the superstitious believes of the world born. On the other hand they renounce history, burn the books, hide in the remotest part of the world and strive to preserve their ignorance even if it means mass suicide. One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten. Yet they try to raise walls by forgetting.

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole Dunyain breeding program turned out to be self destructive. And thinking back to the "wolf people" possibly a trap.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:19:36 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Oreb
Quote from: lockesnow
§P.1 The first thing I noted was the second paragraph.  I wonder if Bakker had read Orson Scott Card’s ‘How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy’, because this paragraph is a textbook example of how Card describes a Speculative world should be introduced to the reader.  It really is impressively masterful, reminiscent of the master herself, Octavia Butler (Card references her opening to Wild Seed in his text). 
Quote
The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse.  But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts.

That's very strange, because that's not quite how it reads in my copy (the UK paperback edition). These are the first two sentences of the second paragraph in my copy:

Quote
The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But no army, human or inhuman, had scaled its ramparts.

Sranc, as you can see, are not mentioned.

What's the reason for this discrepancy?
Maybe an UK editor decided it was too many made up words in the second paragraph?

My copy is a first edition Overlook HC, American.  perhaps we should ask RSB about that, maybe it's an authorial change? I think it's a mistake to change it, as the paragraph is more enticing with the descriptor, "inhuman Sranc," although I can imagine that the rationalization is that the paragraph is also less genre-intimidating to a virgin reader without that phrase.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:19:54 am
Quote from: sologdin
nice, a bona fide problem for textual criticism/editorial theory.  which variant is to be authoritative?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:21:06 am
Quote from: lockesnow
I once wrote a lengthy essay in college about comparing and contrasting the use of "o" versus the use of "ou" in the American and British versions of the Harry Potter volumes, respectively, and what this problem revealed about the psyche and nature of the author, but it didn't go over well.  Clearly the lack of 'u' is packed with significance just waiting to be 'discovered' by an intrepid undergrad.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:21:25 am
Quote from: Callan S.
Possibly the runes were removed, because that would be evidence enough for latter generations to figure out the damnation mechanic.

And it was determined they must not be potentially swayed from their mission
(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:21:41 am
Quote from: lockesnow
the runes were removed but they kept writing, since Kellhus can read the stele.  you'd think writing with all its implications of sign and signifier and how it intersects meaning would be a variable the dunyain would eliminate.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:22:12 am
Quote from: generic
Quote from: Callan S.

Maybe spoiler the last bit? Though I disagree. Dunyain control everything they come into contact with and lock out everything they can't control. Self-preservation doesn't seem to enter into it. Exhibit one: Masssuicide of the elder monks.
Maybe they judged that sorcery would make it impossible to limit exposure to the world not under their control?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:22:26 am
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote
Self-preservation doesn't seem to enter into it. Exhibit one: Masssuicide of the elder monks.
It's not self preservation I'm refering to - it's preserving the mission. Mission is everything to a Dunyain.
Quote
Maybe they judged that sorcery would make it impossible to limit exposure to the world not under their control?
Contaminating the experiment/the control. Yeah, that's even more likely. Though it says something in their prediction of how dedicated latter generations of Dunyain would be to the missions exact specifications.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:22:45 am
Quote from: sologdin
mr. lockesnow has raised a salient objection to my prior reading.  i therefore respectfully submit this amending & supplemental addendum to post # 8, which is incorporated herein by reference as though pled hereunder in extenso.

i’d previously conjectured that RSB’s prologue presents a precession of prefacing:

0 - the “soul”
1 - the [chapter] epigraph
2 - the first part
3 - the entirety of the prologue.

this summation is manifestly erroneous, as it has omitted several moving parts.

not counting the publisher preliminaries (frontispieces, proper title page, copyright page, dedication, acknowledgements), the first item of "the work of art” as opposed to “the commercial product,” if those items can be meaningfully distinguished, is the nietzsche epigraph:

Quote
I shall never tire of underlining [emphasis added] a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit--namely, that a thought comes when “it” wants, not when “I” want…

we are presented with a schism of desire:  the will of one’s thoughts is distinct from the will of one’s mind.  the thought arises of a volition separate and apart from the thinker of the thought.  nietzsche here personifies thought, which is normal for him:

Quote
What is truth? A moving army of metaphors, metonymies and anthropomorphisms, in short a summa of human relationships that are being poetically and rhetorically sublimated, transposed, and beautified until, after long and repeated use, a people considers them as solid, canonical, and unavoidable. Truths are illusions whose illusionary nature has been forgotten, metaphors that have been used up and have lost their imprint and that now operate as mere metal, no longer as coins.

(“on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense” (1873)).  at the very least, it indicates that thought itself (the “soul" in-setting) is itself prefaced by something further preceding it.  that this “concise little fact” is something subject to underlining places us plainly within the domain of writing, with the writing itself preceding the underlining of it--though, we observe with some humor, that this nietzsche epigraph self-cancels: the "concise little fact" is not in fact underscored.  it forgets its own premise even as it presents the object of the premise.

the table of contents intervenes, designating what comes after, in summary form, listing out apparent geographies.  we then enter the prologue itself.  the first part is prefaced, as before, with the ajencis gnomic.  the second part is doubly epigraphed, first by a nursery rhyme that lays out a taxonomy (which we note as an incidental that may become active later), a taxonomy that invokes “forget“ as well as “regret” (I.pro at 4), the latter another incidental merely noted for now.  the second epigraph for the second part is much more pregnant immediately:

Quote
This is a history of a great and tragic holy war, of the mighty factions that sought to possess and pervert it, and of a son searching for his father.  And as with all histories, it is we, the survivors, who will write its conclusion

(I.pro at 4).  the author of the second epigraph to the second part is mr. drusus achamian (hereinafter “DA”), in what appears to be the opening line--the prefacing remark--to his corollary Compendium of the First Holy War, a title indicating that the holy war is merely the first, or preface, to some later belligerence.  it also indicates that RSB’s writing is preceded by a more primary work--the novel that follows is to be a secondary work, a synthesis of DA’s firsthand account, presumably with other source materials--which means that the novel must of necessity disagree with the firsthand account in some particulars, either through overt contradiction or covert curing of omissions.

the revised precession of prefacing must therefore be:

-4   the will of thoughts in reality, as per nietzsche
-3   the “soul” in reality, thinking real thoughts
-2.5   the “concise little fact”
-2   nietzsche’s underling of a “concise little fact”
-1   the cartographic summation
-0.5   the will of thoughts in-setting, as per nietzsche
 0    the “soul” in-setting, thinking thoughts in-setting
 1    the ajencis epigraph
 1.1   the first part of the prologue
 2   the taxonomic nursery rhyme
 2.1   the preface to the compendium
 2.2   the second part of the prologue
 3    the prologue in its entirety

in looking at the precession of prefacing, this analysis turns away momentarily from the text itself to extrinsic genre history.

the relevant tolkien passage (and i defy anyone to suggest that tolkien does not substantially, as opposed merely to chronologically, precede RSB)--

Quote
Of the long years of peace that followed after the coming of Denethor there is a tale.  In those days, it is said, Daeron the Minstrel, chief lore master of the kingdom of Thingol, devised his Runes; and the Naugrim that came to Thingol learned them, and were well-pleased with the device, esteeming Daeron’s skill higher than did the Sindar, his own people.  By the Naugrim the Cirth were taken east over the mountains and passed into the knowledge of many peoples; but they were little used by the Sindar for the keeping of records, until the days of the War, and much that was held in memory perished in the ruins of Doriath.  But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while they still endure for the eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.

(silmarillion (1977) at 94-95).  tolkien conjoins very explicitly in his mythology the production of writing and the failure of memory--forgetting what has preceded the War.

we also see a different reaction to memory in moorcock, whose elric is in general at war against memory, as i  have noted elsewhere, and here rehearse briefly:

elric volume I--
Quote
One numinous object, the Mirror of Memory, "contains many memories, some of which have been imprisoned for thousands of years" (85), and is used as a weapon by the antagonist. When that mirror is later broken and the stolen memories are released, they "warred for a place in Elric's skull" (129) and compelled others to rip out their own eyes and bash their own brains out (130). Memory is definitely a Bad Thing in this setting--apparently the burden of past crimes is too great, and maybe that's the reason that, while Elric's "knowledge of the world beyond the shores of Melnibone is profound" (5), it is also drawn from books, and therefore reviled. During the underworld scenes (which are reminiscent of Leguin's underworld scenes in Earthsea), we meet also Elric's sidekick, an archer-priest, genuinely cool, "the inheritor of all [his sect's] knowledge," who refused it and went to exile (141). Another character in the underworld is a guy "Who Knew All" and who is tasked to forget everything before he is liberated from the underworld (151).

elric volume II--
Quote
Carries with it the same retreat from memory that the first volume forefronts. Elric generally fails to recall certain items (23), and, after the first episode is completed, he "could not clear his head entirely of the impression left by that dream" (63), "recalling little of his voyage on the Dark ship," as "in later years he would recall most of these experiences as dreams" (76).

He adopts the cause of a damsel in distress in part two, seemingly because the antagonist promises her that "in time, you will remember" (98)--so it makes perfect sense that Elric takes up for her against memory. When that antagonist is destroyed, the antagonist welcomes it, for though he had "escaped my doom for many years, I could not escape the knowledge of my crime" (105). Elric fears that "my peace will more resemble" the antagonist's (107), an escape from knowledge of crime into death.

The promise of part two is made manifest by part three, which features, essentially, a mission to end the suffering of the Wandering Jew, who carries "the frightful knowledge" of the arche (119). Elric specifically fears that the legends of the arche are true (123), admits that "in danger you find forgetfulness" (122), decries "the agony of knowledge" (126). The point of the "quest" is to erase the known.

the other four principle elric volumes are not so unambiguous, but the thematic is present throughout to the extent that elric seeks to forget.  memory itself is what besieges him, rather than what has been forgotten.  tolkien is also different than RSB, wherein memory is the necessary preface to the building of walls, apparently against the inhabitants of ishual, who have been forgotten.  in tolkien, they did remember, without writing, and did build walls--and it worked out in a very bad way nonetheless.  we are presented, then, with an original conception in genre--though we might make sense of the equivalence of memory and writing that shows up in tolkien by reference again to RSB’s favorite, mr. derrida.

i here again draw deeply from dissemination, particularly the famous essay on mr. plato’s pharmacy:

Quote
Writing comes from afar, it is external or alien: to the living, which is the right-here of the inside, to logos as the zoon it claims to assist or relieve.  The imprints (tupoi of writing do not inscribe themselves this time, as they do in the hypothesis of [Plato’s] Thaetetus, in the wax of the soul in intaglio, thus corresponding to the spontaneous, autochthonous motions of psychic life.  Knowing that he can always leave his thoughts outside or check them with an external agency, with the physical, spatial, superficial marks that one lays flat on a tablet, he who has the tekhne of writing at his disposal will come to rely on it.  He will know that he himself can leave without the tupoi’s going away, that he can forget all about them without their leaving his service.  They will represent him even if he forgets them; they will transmit his word even if he is not there to animate them.

(dissemination at 104).  the tekhne of writing is debilitating even as it allows an external archive of the mind, existing even when forgotten--the writing is RSB’s wall against the forgotten, even though walls may not be built against the forgotten.

Quote
It is this life of the memory that the pharmakon of writing would come to hypnotize: fascinating it, taking it out of itself by putting it to sleep in a monument.  Confident of the permanence and independence of its tupoi, memory will fall asleep, will not keep itself up, will no longer keep to keeping itself alert, present, as close as possible  to the truth of what is.  Letting itself get stoned (medusee) by its own signs, its own guardians, by the types committed to the keeping and surveillance of knowledge, it will sink down into lethe overcome by non-knowledge and forgetfulness.  Memory and truth cannot be separated.  The movement of aletheia is a deployment of mneme through and through.  A deployment of living memory, of memory as psychic life in its self-presentation to itself.  The powers of lethe simultaneously increase the domains of death, of nontruth, of nonknowledge.  This is why writing, at least insofar as it sows “forgetfulness in the soul,” turns us toward the inanimate and toward nonknowledge.   But it cannot be said that its essence simply and presently confounds it with death or nontruth.  For writing has no essence or value of its own, whether positive of negative.  It plays within the simulacrum.  It is in its type the mime of memory, of knowledge, of truth, &c.  That is why men of writing appear before the eye of God not as wise men but in truth as fake or self-proclaimed wise men.

(dissemination at 105).  we note certain passages of mr. derrida only incidentally, perhaps reserving comment for later in the reread project.

Quote
For it is above all against sophistic that this diatribe against writing is directed: it can be inscribed within the interminable trial instituted by Plato, under the name of philosophy, against the sophists.  The man who relies on writing, who brags about the knowledge and powers it assures him, this simulator unmasked by Thamus has all the features of a sophist: “the imitator of him who knows.”  He whom we would call the graphocrat […] boasts about knowing and doing all.  And mainly […] about having a better understanding than anyone else of mnemonics and mnemotechnics.

(dissemination at 106).  memory and memory-tekhne:  memory structured like a writing.

Quote
The sophist thus sells the signs and insignia of science: not memory itself ([i[mneme[/i]), only monuments (hypomnemata), inventories, archives, citations, copies, accounts, tales, lists, notes, duplicates, chronicles, genealogies, references.  Not memory but memorials.

(dissemination at 107).  does this include a compendium? a cartographic summation?  a preface?

Quote
In truth the sophist only pretends to know everything; his “polymathy” is never anything but pretense.  Insofar as writing lends a hand to hypomnesia and not to live memory, it, too, is foreign to true science, to anamnesia in its properly psychic motion, to truth in the process of (its) presentation, to dialectics.  Writing can only mime them.  (It could be shown, but we will spare ourselves the development here, that the problematic that today, in this very spot, links writing with the (putting in) question of truth--and of thought, without remaining at that, the conceptual monuments, the vestiges of the battlefield, the signposts marking out the battle lines between sophistic and philosophy.

(id.) 

Quote
Contrary to what we have indicated earlier, there are also good reasons for thinking that the diatribe against writing is not aimed first and foremost at the sophists.  On the contrary: sometimes it seems to proceed from them.  Isn’t the stricture that one should exercise one’s memory rather than entrust traces to an outside agency the imperious and classical recommendation of the sophists?

(dissemination at 108).

Quote
Thus, in both cases, on both sides, writing is considered suspicious and the alert exercise of memory prescribed.  What Plato is attacking in sophistic, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing.

(id.)

Quote
The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument; truth as distinct from its sign, being as distinct from types.  The “outside” does not begin at the point where what we now call the psychic and the physical meet, but at the point where the mneme, instead of being present to itself in its life as a movement of truth, is supplanted by the archive, evicted by a sign of re-memoration or of com-memoration.  The space of writing, space as writing, is opened up in the violent movement of this surrogation, in the difference between mneme and hypomnesis.  The outside is already within the work of memory.  The evil slips in within the relation of memory to itself, in the general organization of mnesic activity.  Memory is finite by nature.  Plato recognizes this in attributing life to it.  As in the case of all living organisms, he assigns it, as we have seen, certain limits.  A limitless memory would in any event be not memory but infinite self-presence.  Memory always therefore already needs signs in order to recall the non-present, with which it is necessarily in relation.  The movement of dialectics bears witness to this.  Memory is thus contaminated  by its first substitute: hypomnesis.  But what Plato dreams of is a memory with no sign.  That is, with no supplement.  A mneme with no hypomnesis, no pharmakon.  And this at the very moment and for the very reason that he calls dream the confusion between the hypothetical and the ahypothetical in the realm of mathematical intelligibility.

(dissemination at 108-09). memory is finite by definition, including within its ambit the necessity of forgetting, implying that the mind is always at least partially self-absent, relying on supplements such as a compendium, a cartographic summation, and so on.

that the new inhabitants of ishual at the close of the first part deface sorcerous runes and burn sorcerous books, in the service of tending “awareness most holy,” despite having repudiated the gods, “against the end of the world” (I.pro at 4) indicates either a general iconoclasm or a specific arcanoclasm, condition precedent to being forgotten by the “the world.”   

the second part’s first epigraph instructs that nonmen forget--we are therefore immediately in dialogue with the first part of the prologue:  nonmen specifically forget, whereas the first part indicates that the world forgot.  that men regret appears to rule out forgetting, however:  regret by definition is rooted in memory.  it is the key emotion in the elric stories. 

in coming to the second epigraph of the second part, we note that the preface to the compendium intones that the survivors write the conclusion.  is this the preface to a conclusion?  it is not obvious.  But:  we know that kellhus (hereinafter “AK”) is a survivor:

Quote
There they would die, as had been decided.  All those his father had polluted.  I’m alone.  My mission is all that remains.

(I.pro at 5).  it should be noted, that in meeting a nonman, AK is promised, contrary to the second epigraph:

Quote
RUN, ANASURIMBOR!” it boomed.  “I WILL REMEMBER!”

(I.pro at 30).  we are given a rule, and the first example of an item coming within the rule produces a contradiction.  there are several possibilities:  the second epigraph is wrong; the nonman is wrong; the prologue is wrong. 

the nonman attempts to explain: 

Quote
”As the ages waxed, some of us needed more than your childish squabbles to remember.  Some of us needed a more exquisite brutality than any of your feuds could render.  The great curse of our kind--do you know it?  Of course you know it!  What slave fails to exult in his master’s degradation, hmm?”  […] “But I make excuses like a Man.  Loss is written into the very earth.  We are only its most dramatic reminder.”

(I.pro at 28).  what is forgotten is itself written, and what is written is a wall against what is forgotten.  the failure of memory of the nonman is itself a spur to memory otherwise.  we are very far away from both elric and tolkien at this point.


none of this is pulled together.  perhaps it can be pulled together as the reread project proceeds.  but what we know is this: the point of the preface is to self-cancel, to be forgotten.  we as readers might not raise walls, except through writing, against what has been forgotten.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:23:12 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: sologdin
(I.pro at 28).  what is forgotten is itself written, and what is written is a wall against what is forgotten.  the failure of memory of the nonman is itself a spur to memory otherwise.  we are very far away from both elric and tolkien at this point.


none of this is pulled together.  perhaps it can be pulled together as the reread project proceeds.  but what we know is this: the point of the preface is to self-cancel, to be forgotten.  we as readers might not raise walls, except through writing, against what has been forgotten.
An excellent revision and expansion.

Note also how the author encourages the readerly propensity to forget the prologue.  After introducing a nominal hero, AK, he then moves to a different ...tagonist, DA--who was, in fact introduced before AK by being privileged by the third epigraph of the prologue.  This sets up an interesting binary and tension between these two characters many hundreds of pages before their paths ever cross.  But I am distracted, the point I intend to make is that the novel is structured very oddly--a structure that is not continued in any of the four sequel novels.  That structure has the author abandoning his nominal hero after introduction for over half the book (AK is abandoned at 31, and is recovered in chapter 12 at 337, in a book 577 in length).  AK is taken off stage, and the intention as you suggest, perhaps, is that the prologue is meant to self-cancel, the reader is meant to forget--the author is assisting the reader, deliberately in forgetting.   

The author lays the exposition on thick, not in interleaving chapters, as is the common tactic for such complex stories spanning a continent and multitudinous character & viewpoints, but in distinct 'parts' (as the Table of Contents indicates).  These parts could interleave relatively easily, and if this were done, AK might only be off stage for a hundred pages, a not uncommon span with stories of this type.  if this were done, we might have a chapter order of: Prologue, 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 12, 7, 4, 13, 8, 9, 14, 10, 15, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, Appendices.  And this is only one ordinal possibility, the key 12th chapter could certainly come before 3 or even two, it could easily be the third or fourth chapter, had the author wanted to take an order like: 5, 6, 12, 1 etc.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:23:31 am
Quote from: Happy Ent
1. Bakker’s opinion on the Sranc threat in the North has changed since the prologue. Clearly, given the situation described in later books, it seems very difficult for a yearly caravan from Sakarpus to Athritau to make the trip through the Istyüli plains. Or for a trapper to survive many years alone. Also, Sakarpus has moved a fair deal to the West.

2. I repeat my claim (made many times before) that Kellhus goes bonkers and would not be able to retrace his steps from Leweth’s home to Ishüal because his Dunyain conditioning is broken for many, many days. Of course, given the final scene in WLW, this does not seem to be true. I wonder if Moënghus had the same feelings of awe and beauty that Kellhus feels when he sees the first grand vistas of the Demua mountains. Did Moe just stay Dunyain all the way and is Kellhus indeed speshul?

3. Kellhus almost dies and is found due to sheer luck. I call that divine intervention, of course. (A similar situation appears later with Cnaiür.)

4. The whole info-dump (where the reader is introduced to the setting by proxy, by having Leweth tell a blank-slate Kellhus) is well enough thought out, but I can remember that I was extremely confused. It’s simply too much, while simultaneously attempting too many other things. (Characterisation.)

5. There’s a strange section where the POV is confused. It starts “Leweth could only stare at him.” It seems like a Leweth-POV, but the he refers to Kellhus as “monk”. This is strange. Then “Leweth cried, perhaps out of anguish, perhaps hoping to draw them away,” — that’s a strange way to write from Leweth’s POV. Next section is clearly Leweth, and he says “monk” again. We know Kellhus is a monk. But Leweth?

6. The encounter with the Nonman, who we know is  Cet’ingira (Mekertrig) thanks to a  Bakker interview, is delicious. Again, this can only happen through some kind of extreme “correspondence of cause” or divine intervention: an Anasurimbor meeting the Consult boss. Mekki hits Kellhus with a Nonman version of the Odanai Concussion Cant that we see Akka use many books later to good effect.

Another small inconsistency is that Kellhus doesn’t immediately recognise Mekki as inhuman because of his voice. In later books, everybody can hear that Nonmen sound strange (though they speak human languages well enough).

7. Lots of good tree imagery in the prologue. From the twigs in Kellhus’s shoe to the great tree behind the screaming Cet’Ingira at the end.

8. Cet’Ingira uses a Sranc for his elju (his book). Clearly, the mechanics of Nonman memory loss and how they cope with it are already completely fleshed out.

9. Cet: “The Anasûrimbor pities me! And so he should… Ka’cûnoroi souk ki’elju, souk hus’jihla”. We’ve tried to translate this before, let’s have another go.

Cûnoroi is Nonman for Nonman and elju means book. So,

“A Nonman without his book is without his soul.”  “When the Nonmen lose their books, they lose their selves.” Something like that?

Or just “All Nonmen need books, all men must die.” Or “All books must die. But first we read.”

Or “Ever are Nonmen deceived.”
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:23:45 am
Quote from: Happy Ent
10. Cet’Ingira claims to have ridden against the No-God.

I don’t think that is correct. (Not that I think he mis-remembers. I just think that Bakker has changed his mind about the chronology since then.) What he should say is that he has ridden for and against the Inchoroi. As far as I understand, the No-God is invented only after Cet (with the help of Shaeönanra) has reopened the Ark. (Actually, I think I should spell that with a diaeresis on this forum.)

… has reöpened the Ark, freeing the brothers Au— and forming the Consult. Since that time, Cet has been firmly on the side of the Inchoroi, witnessing both the birth and defeat of the No-God as a ranking member of the Consult.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:24:08 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote
1. Bakker’s opinion on the Sranc threat in the North has changed since the prologue. Clearly, given the situation described in later books, it seems very difficult for a yearly caravan from Sakarpus to Athritau to make the trip through the Istyüli plains. Or for a trapper to survive many years alone. Also, Sakarpus has moved a fair deal to the West.

5. There’s a strange section where the POV is confused. It starts “Leweth could only stare at him.” It seems like a Leweth-POV, but the he refers to Kellhus as “monk”. This is strange. Then “Leweth cried, perhaps out of anguish, perhaps hoping to draw them away,” — that’s a strange way to write from Leweth’s POV. Next section is clearly Leweth, and he says “monk” again. We know Kellhus is a monk. But Leweth?

agreed on the movement of Sakarpus, but remember that Moenghus was found with a herd of Sranc, that Moenghus was ejected after tracking and destroying the Sranc that found Ishual, that from this, we can presume that after Moenghus was exiled (or left and everyone assumed or was told he was exiled), Moe rejoined the Sranc and had little trouble traveling with them, that his journey to the Utemot was probably nothing like Kellhus'.   For some reason, even we forum-readers want to believe that Moenghus would condition the entire three seas, yet leave the path to the three seas unconditioned (when it was his mistakes on the path to the three seas that have limited his ability to make an impact)--if anything, from Moenghus' perspective, conditioning the path from Ishual to the Three Seas will be one of the most important parts of entire plan to bring Kellhus into the world.  If he left the path to the three seas unconditioned, the probability would be extremely high that Kellhus' Dunyain training would cause him to make the same 'shortest path' mistakes and miscalculations that Moenghus had made.  He needed to ensure Kellhus didn't take the shortest path.

The possibility is staring us in the face that the ground from Atraithau to Ishual was conditioned by Moenghus.  We know he had contact with the Sranc, from this we can deduce it was possible he would be able to divert Sranc away from Kellhus' path.  the most dangerous part of Kellhus' journey is traveling alone through the wilderness, and he should ideally arrive as a blank slate to the world of men, otherwise he may travel a path that Moenghus traveled because his perceptions of the world were stained by first encounters with Sranc.  So who should Kellhus first encounter?  A man, not a woman, he should encounter someone who is alone, he should encounter someone who has some experience of the world, not just your everyday peasant farmer who has an extremely limited conception.  A hermit (perhaps monk?) trapper is ideal because a trapper has trading connections and is naturally isolated as well as savvy.  We must consider the possibility that Leweth is more than he seems and that rather than the beneficence that Leweth as an authorial tool who helpfully gives Kellhus (and the reader) a rather accurate education and assessment of human society in the three seas that Leweth can also be a Moenghus tool, shaped to achieve the same ends.  The trippiness you noted in Leweth's perspective is something I also noted, and was something I was going to get into when I get to my close reading of Leweth. 

I think I've mentioned in chapter one that Bakker is manipulating and utilizing reader biases from the very first thought Akka has (the thought Akka has is about how superior educated fat smart people are to fit, arrogant, athletic jocks, and how such jocks are naturally the inferiors of smart people), and the perceptions that Kellhus (and the reader) have of Leweth also play into these biases, Bakker can make his readers overlook Leweth by simply positioning him in an uneducated category and not giving us insight into a counter-perspective, its an authorial way of having it both ways, imo.

Regarding Mek,
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Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:26:19 am
Quote from: Wilshire
White-Luck Warrior Spoilers
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Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:26:38 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Wilshire
White-Luck Warrior Spoilers
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Well I think of Sranc as a keystone predator, like Wolves.  The chances of someone traveling alone walking the primative Sierra Mountains from Yosemite to Malibu without running into Wolves or Bears (or the dense populations of indiginous peoples populating these lands) is infinitesimal.  Their population may not be extremely dense, but predators hunt.  Sranc hunt, and Sranc particularly hunt humans--get insanely excited at the prospect of humans to hunt, and so all it would take is a single Sranc being near enough to Kellhus' path to pick up his scent/trail to cause a frenzy in that pack.  That Kellhus traveled through the territory of many Sranc packs (traveling such a distance will take you through multiple territories of various predators) without encountering any Sranc bespeaks a conditioning of the way (there's a Dune phrase for this, curse my weak human memory--Shortening of the Way, haha!).

WLW spoilers:
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Also, you refer to the North as wasted, yet that does not match Kellhus' description.  Kellhus travels through an undeveloped wilderness rich in game and untapped forest resources and encounters two ruins, it's not a wasteland like the Plains of Mengedda.  There is no reason for Sranc to avoid it, and ample reason for them to be in the area (aforementioned resources).
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:26:53 am
Quote from: Happy Ent
To reiterate, I’m more concerned about the claim that there is a yearly caravan travelling from the Three Seas (or even just Sakarpus) to Atrithau, which makes it through often enough. That’s simply no compatible with what we see in later books.

That caravan would be full of holes after a few days of travelling.

(Kellhus travelling through the Demua mountains without meeting Sranc I have no problems with. He’s not a caravan.)
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:27:12 am
Quote from: sologdin
maybe it's a flying invisible caravan?  betcha didn't think of that, smartypants.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:27:29 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Leweth's explanation of a caravan are perhaps a convenient way for AK to believe that this is how Leweth knows what he knows.  Most people in isolated, rural places have little and less knowledge of the outside world, Leweth seems shockingly well versed, look at some of the phrasing that AK picks up from him, pretty much all of it accurate.

Also note how AK tells Leweth things throughout their discussion and Leweth neither confirms nor denies things.

But.

AK sees confirmation and denials in Leweth.   How do we know that AK isn't just seeing what he wanted to see? ;)  AK's powers would be at his weakest here because his sample size of world born men is  one--in other words, this is the easiest place a trained person could deceive him.

Also, not the similarity to

TTT spoilers
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Imagine you're a monk in mountainous northern Urals in AD 300, you travel south towards a primitive forerunner settlement that will become St Petersberg and there, some distance before you reach the city you run into a hermit trapper suspiciously living by himself in extremely dangerous terrain.  This trapper gives you a detailed accounting of the current social, political and religious situation of the far-away Aegean Sea area to which you plan to travel.   He says he learned about it because of caravans.

suspicious?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:27:51 am
Quote from: sologdin
sounds plausible. who among us, after all, denies the following report of herodotus?

Quote
The Issedonians are said to have the following customs. When a man's father dies, all the near relatives bring sheep to the house; which are sacrificed, and their flesh cut in pieces, while at the same time the dead body undergoes the like treatment. The two sorts of flesh are afterwards mixed together, and the whole is served up at a banquet. The head of the dead man is treated differently: it is stripped bare, cleansed, and set in gold. It then becomes an ornament on which they pride themselves, and is brought out year by year at the great festival which sons keep in honour of their fathers' death, just as the Greeks keep their Genesia. In other respects the Issedonians are reputed to be observers of justice: and it is to be remarked that their women have equal authority with the men. Thus our knowledge extends as far as this nation.

The regions beyond are known only from the accounts of the Issedonians, by whom the stories are told of the one-eyed race of men and the gold-guarding griffins. These stories are received by the Scythians from the Issedonians, and by them passed on to us Greeks: whence it arises that we give the one-eyed race the Scythian name of Arimaspi, "arima" being the Scythic word for "one," and "spu" for "the eye."

so say we all!
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:28:06 am
Quote from: Wilshire
By wasted I meant there isn't much human activity. Sure there are plenty of places to hide and eat grubs and such. Game is irreverent as they only eat men and grubs, ruins are mostly irrelevant unless they are a topos, and like I said the ground around  Atrithau is bizarre and we do not know how far this area's unique property of magic canceling goes. So why would large amounts of sranc congregate north of  Atrithau? I still would think that most of them would be near and between the two north most cities and the Utemont. (sorry for my miserable spelling).

Also who cares if Kell runs into a a few sranc? He obviously killed what looked like at least a few clans before he is found. Kell is a prodigy even among the dunyain (bakker interview), so Moe would obviously not be worried about him finding a few sranc stragglers.

Also isn't the area mostly dense forest? I know the sranc love to munch on men, but it would take some time for the scent of a human to reach through the forest to whatever straggler clan or two of sranc were around.

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Moe did not need to hyper condition his path until, at the earliest, Leweth.

Low human population would mean any large population of sranc would have moved on long ago.
The remaining sranc would be no match for Kell.
Atrithau's caravans suggest that the population of sranc is low.
The Utemot being able to live so near your sranc infestation suggest that there are not that many.
Evidence from later books on sranc population is largely irrelivent because that story wasnt very near where Kell is.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:28:19 am
Quote from: Callan S.
I'm not digging on Leweth being a result of Moe. I think Moe's plan just failed - his son goes a bit mad and curls up under a tree and...the world conspires. IT is not done with these machinations. Leweth is the world conspiring. Along with the twig.

Off that topic, only really noticed now the reference to Ganrelka being an emporer of nothing!
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:28:56 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Moe wasted every effort for fifteenyears to create a holy war from nothing if he was just going to let kellhus make his own way.  If moe conditoned a dozens of kingdoms and factions into a complex 1000 variable alliances to allow a war to fester why leave the path unconditioned, particularlyif the only way he can achieve his outcome is through the correctly timed arrival of his sons.  Its all for naught, one does not condition so much to leave the crucial element unmolested. 

Perhaps it is that the idea of an unmolested and autonomous kellhus makes the reader all full of happy thoughts and good feelings of internal rightness and certainty?

Why is doubt the enemy here?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:29:09 am
Quote from: The Sharmat
I see no way Moe COULD have conditioned the ground in that way while keeping up his role as Mallahet.

The Dunyain don't act with certainty. They take the shortest path. The path most probable to give them the outcome they desire. That doesn't mean that it's actually LIKELY. Simply the most likely of all possible paths. Besides...Moe made the trip. He at least knows it's possible.

The books do a very good job of instilling the reader with the notion that the Dunyain are invincible and infallible. But as we see throughout, this is not the case.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:32:12 am
Quote from: Wilshire
I agree with Sharmat here. The most likely path may still be tiny, considering how many paths there where. If Moe could do it, Kell should easily be able to. Maybe it was, say, 30% success to get form Ishual to Leweth, but 1% chance of success with the holy war to the [place where the probability trance fails]. So he could use up huge resources, time, and effort to help out the 30% or the 1%. If he could only choose one, he would allow his prodigal son to complete a journey that he himself already did, and focus his efforts on the most likely to fail scenarios.
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I guess what it comes down too is how much do we not know about Moe. If you're like some and you think that Moe is the most powerful force in the Earwa universe, then sure, he conditioned and plotted each and every step Kell took to Shimeh until it has an almost imperceptible failure chance. If you believe Moe was a pitiless slob who didnt know how to condition his way out of a paper bag, then Kell was free to do whatever and just saw what he thought was conditioned ground.

If, however, you believe somewhere in between these two radicals, then it still seems most likely that he would have the least control of the unpopulated wilderness that was geographically the farthest distance away from him considering his varied limitations, sorcererous, physical, and otherwise. He would  leave his son alone for the easy parts and help as best he could through the more difficult parts.

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Though I guess it is possible that the most difficult part of his Journey was surviving to Atrithau, but then why he probably wouldnt spend 20 years installing whats-his-name to help him out with the whole holy war bit? Also possible he had plenty of time to do both, so again, its just based on how much faith you put into Moe, and how much you feel the text has lied.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:32:26 am
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: lockesnow
Moe wasted every effort for fifteenyears to create a holy war from nothing if he was just going to let kellhus make his own way.  If moe conditoned a dozens of kingdoms and factions into a complex 1000 variable alliances to allow a war to fester why leave the path unconditioned, particularlyif the only way he can achieve his outcome is through the correctly timed arrival of his sons.  Its all for naught, one does not condition so much to leave the crucial element unmolested. 

Perhaps it is that the idea of an unmolested and autonomous kellhus makes the reader all full of happy thoughts and good feelings of internal rightness and certainty?
Perhaps it is that the idea of an unmolested and autonomous Moenghus makes the reader all full of happy thoughts and good feelings of internal rightness and certainty?

Why is doubt the enemy here?

The idea: Moenghus's plan failed right at the starting post, with it's implicit arrogance that his son would psychologically cover the same ground he did, in the same way. And then something else picked it up...
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:32:39 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Wilshire
I guess what it comes down too is how much do we not know about Moe. If you're like some and you think that Moe is the most powerful force in the Earwa universe, then sure, he conditioned and plotted each and every step Kell took to Shimeh until it has an almost imperceptible failure chance. If you believe Moe was a pitiless slob who didnt know how to condition his way out of a paper bag, then Kell was free to do whatever and just saw what he thought was conditioned ground.

If, however, you believe somewhere in between these two radicals, then it still seems most likely that he would have the least control of the unpopulated wilderness that was geographically the farthest distance away from him considering his varied limitations, sorcererous, physical, and otherwise. He would  leave his son alone for the easy parts and help as best he could through the more difficult parts.

Though I guess it is possible that the most difficult part of his Journey was surviving to Atrithau, but then why he probably wouldnt spend 20 years installing whats-his-name to help him out with the whole holy war bit? Also possible he had plenty of time to do both, so again, its just based on how much faith you put into Moe, and how much you feel the text has lied.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:32:55 am
Quote from: Wilshire
I just cant see where, from the text, you could extrapolate your conclusions from. Moe talks to sranc and makes friends with their leaders, then hypnotizes/persuades them to let a fellow go through their lands several years later? When would this opportunity have afforded itself? A starving wolf that was hunting say a deer, wouldnt simply let it into its pack if said deer gave it an alternative meal, perhaps offering up a bunny rabbit. It would just eat both, or eat the bunny and kill the deer for later.

At what point would he have had the time to slink around in sranc infested lands, unseen and unheard, to study the sranc long enough to discern their language and their social patterns? It took kell a few days to learn Leweth's language (which he was presumably told to teach kell, so he was purposely being helpful), and that was in a cozy room with a nice fire and plenty of meditation time. How much longer would it take to learn a vastly more alien language while at the same time being hunted by the very thing he was studying? Presuming, of course, that once he understood them, that he had the proper physical structure in his vocal cords to utter their "language". Unless he just taught them sign-language.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:33:11 am
Quote from: The Sharmat
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Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:33:24 am
Quote from: Madness
I'm not sure what I think of the spoiler liberties taken in this thread. I'll leave it up to the consensus of the group, whether or not the extent of these discussion most pertinent to discussing the Prlg itself.

Also, I encourage any first-time readers of PON who at any point may be following these threads to voice their opinions concerning the nature of spoilers and its affect on their experiences here.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:33:37 am
Quote from: The Sharmat
I'd assumed since this was a group re-read that spoilers were kosher. If not, then I apologize and will edit my comments.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:34:04 am
Quote from: Madness
Those of us who'd discussed a bit back and forth concerning spoilers, reached somewhat of a consensus - motivated mainly by myself - that we'd spoiler things relating to theories past the Thread Heading Ch, in this case Prologue. For instance, all this discussion about

(click to show/hide)

probably could have been in its own thread elsewhere.

Again, I believe that there is a lot ambiguity to TSA and that new readers sometimes would like clarification. So far, most, but not all by a long shot, of the members of this forum have been longtime readers and posters. However, some are completely new to the forums and the series and there hasn't been a lot of respect for this notion in any of the other subforums, which house the majority of the speculation on these forums.

I'm hoping this can be a place that new readers can come and sort confusion out for themselves without spoilers, rather than perhaps just abandoning the series.

Perhaps, its a lofty goal, though I felt we'd been doing decently, excepting the majority of the aforementioned discussion in this thread.

As I said, I leave it to those participating to conduct themselves as they will and a consensus will emerge from our communications. You have to remember, besides just enjoying the brilliant speculation by you intelligent peoples here, much of my motivation is to make Bakker money, to keep him writing, and cultivating a welcoming community, with a rising membership, is of first and foremost importance towards this goal.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:34:20 am
Quote from: Wilshire
Well as discussed before, and as you stated even, nothing was every really conceded. Madness mostly decided how it should be. This is not a problem, and I started out with a similar opinion. However, in general it has become, imo, silly to have whole posts in spoil tags. Also consider that the discussion is here, not on another bored, and people are generally lazy. Sure a whole topic could have been started and more people may have been involved, but the effort, however minimal, was enough to deter this.

Unfortunately, of the 110ish members registered to the site, the top 10 all have about 100 posts, top 20 goes down to about 20 posts, and after that there is almost no iteration. The opinions of the top 5-10 people who post most are severely disproportionately weighed, as no one else speaks up.

At this point I honestly dont care either way, spoilers or no, tags or no. I'd imagine that ,Madness, it would likely be best (at least for this portion of the site) for you to lay down a law, and enforce it. Otherwise nothing will officially every be decided and whatever is easiest will be done. It will be a pain, but if you start deleting or moving posts, people will figure it out pretty quick whats ok or not ok. Its not like you'll offend anyone, the people who post are here to stay, so a bit of irritating won't have any negative long term impact.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:34:34 am
Quote from: Wilshire
Nearly 1000 views of this topic and 48 replies. There are more than the 5 of us posting looking at these topics, I'm sure of it. Someone else has got to have something interesting to say.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:35:25 am
Quote from: sologdin
pretty sure that the view counter does not log IP address, based on a little test i just ran by reviewing the file several times in several seconds.  unless some other viewers were logging at exactly those times (given the history of forum traffic, i'm guessing it's not that busy right now), then each view is counted, no matter what the source.  the counter may therefore represent that aggregated views of the five of you who are consistently posting.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:35:40 am
Quote from: Church
i'm sure there are a fair few lurkers like me! reason for lack of posts, at least from my perspective, is that i just don't think there's that much to say about these chapters at the moment (esp the first emperor one) - they're all about setting up the story, and they do that well, but we're not really into the meat of the books yet...
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:35:52 am
Quote from: Wilshire
Quote from: sologdin
pretty sure that the view counter does not log IP address, based on a little test i just ran by reviewing the file several times in several seconds.  unless some other viewers were logging at exactly those times (given the history of forum traffic, i'm guessing it's not that busy right now), then each view is counted, no matter what the source.  the counter may therefore represent that aggregated views of the five of you who are consistently posting.

Im certain it doesn't count unique views. But consider that if there are 5 of us posting viewing multiple times, say each of us is at 100 some odd views ( a very large over estimate I would guess). That still leaves several hundred views of non participants.

Though Church, a valid point. Guess I'll wait till we go deeper before I start complaining again  :P
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:36:12 am
Quote from: koudoulis
i ll voice an opinion on spoiler policy since i cant seem to find my books and re-read ( but i still religiously* read the discussion ). I think the re-read section should not hide spoilers in any way. that makes it a hostile section to new readers but i dont think that someone who hasnt read the books should open a re-read thread. there area a lot of space in the forum for people to go and discuss spoiler -free.  however i dont feel very strong about it so its ok with me either way









*by religiously i mean i light up a cigarette before i read new posts...
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:37:21 am
Quote from: lockesnow
ah leweth

Quote
There must be some other explanation. There is no sorcery.

 “What do you know of Shimeh?” Kellhus asked. The walls shivered beneath a fierce succession of gusts, and the flame twirled with abrupt incandescence. The hanging pelts lightly rocked to and fro. Leweth looked about, his brow furrowed, as though he strained to hear someone.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 17). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Kellhus has just spent the prior paragraphs both trying to awe the reader with his awesomeness (explanation of the probability trance) and win the readers allegiance with his similarly enlightened readerly perspective of the poor dumb pre-modern folk (dismissal of sorcery et al as superstition, superstition everywhere).

And buried right after all that was this line I've bolded.  Implied in the above paragraphs is an accurate and far reaching description of the supernatural, but because Kellhus dismisses sorcery as impossible, as the noise of superstition, he misses a potential signal here--even though his subconscious is alerting him to the fact that Leweth is listening to someone, he doesn't gather that clue.  Note that Kellhus is particularly vulnerable to deception right at this exact moment because he has just exited the probability trance, and Kellhus never not ever ever DOUBTS the conclusions of the probability trance, he is always CERTAIN.  His conclusion was that there were too many variables and the truth was the only path.  And precisely moments after Kellhus experiences the thought "There is no sorcery," Leweth hears someone, and Kellhus is then given a perfectly accurate and decently complete overview of the religion of the three seas.  It's almost as though someone is watching and reading the thoughts on Kellhus' face and choosing the precise, most opportune moments to interfere directly.  When else would be the best moment to use some sorcery than seconds after Kellhus has experienced the thought that there is no sorcery?

What better way to deceive a reader and hide something in plain sight, than to do it after you have just awed and flattered the reader into agreement with the narrating perspective?

This is about like a peasant in 1400AD in the Caucausus mountains giving an accurate and decently complete overview of the state of Rome at the current moment.  It beggars belief.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:37:41 am
Quote from: Madness
Leweth does balance your assertion by suggesting the mundane know-how by way of those brave Galeoth caravans - another fanfic waiting to happen - making the Trade Route via Sakarpus to Atrithau and back. Also, from both Sorweel and Leweth, that the Three Seas are fanatic because, apparently, emissaries don't shut up about the Latter Prophet -

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But since I've enjoyed unilaterally engaging every one of these group Layers of Revelation by positing Gods... +1 ;).

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Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:37:53 am
Quote from: Wilshire
Leweth could have been a well educated individual before he headed to the mountains. There is plenty of reason for him to know all that he does, and none of them involve magic.

He is not like the peasent in the mountain. He lived in Rome his whole life, of course he knows whats going on... Simple, mundane reasoning.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:38:05 am
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Wilshire
Leweth could have been a well educated individual before he headed to the mountains. There is plenty of reason for him to know all that he does, and none of them involve magic.

He is not like the peasent in the mountain. He lived in Rome his whole life, of course he knows whats going on... Simple, mundane reasoning.
What about the possibility that Leweth is a shaman?

hermit, highly educated, had contact with mythical/semi-mythical caravans that no other person in Earwa has ever heard of, ;) lives alone at an outpost furthest from human civilization... was he driven out?  Summoned out?  Was he waiting?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: What Came Before on April 19, 2013, 02:38:28 am
Quote from: Wilshire
Quote from: lockesnow
hermit, highly educated, had contact with mythical/semi-mythical caravans that no other person in Earwa has ever heard of, ;) lives alone at an outpost furthest from human civilization... was he driven out?  Summoned out?  Was he waiting?

reminds me of a future version of a certain character living in a tower...

Spoiler due to some farfetched analogies that may give away portions of the series. Maybe.
Extreme crackpot:
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Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Wilshire on January 03, 2014, 04:07:28 am
Was reading the prologue and found this line interesting
page 17 TDTCB english small edition
"But what had come before, the Dunyain had learned, was inhuman"

minor world building spoilers maybe:
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Is he implying that the ebb and flow of all history were set in motion by brainless animals and inert rocks... How can the Dunyain complete there holy mission if they have to come before such things as this?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Aural on August 23, 2014, 11:07:55 pm
Could there be something to the fact that tears fell only from the Bard's blind eye?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Wilshire on August 25, 2014, 10:52:22 pm
He was a cishaurim!

Nah but maybe there is something there? The eyes that do no witness how the souls regret?

EDIT:
Wow. Language fail I left out several words... Corrected:
"The eyes that do not witness the world see only the soul's true form."

Meaning the Bard's weeping eye is the outward reflection of the regret/strife/pain of his soul.

Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Aural on August 26, 2014, 01:02:02 am
The eyes that do no witness how the souls regret?

I was thinking of something along those lines. Perhaps thematically it's connected to the Cishaurim's metaphysics as well.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Wilshire on August 28, 2014, 04:20:10 pm
Fixed my previous post. Now it makes sense.

Anyways, I'd be surprised if it was connected directly to the Psuke but its difficult to see where/how things connect before they are shown to us. Hopefully TUC will bring us answers, or the tools to find them.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Aural on October 20, 2014, 11:23:12 pm
While reading I made a bunch of notes and highlights on my kindle so I thought I would post some random thoughts here. However, all sober readings of the chapter have already been made so be warned that I'll restrain my self to the crackpot. Some of these thoughts--if not most--were inspired by other posters here and on Westeros.

It's not very coherent so apologies in advance.

Quote
One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.

The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts. No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates. Ishuäl was the secret refuge of the Kûniüric High Kings, and no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret.

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Quote
Ganrelka’s uncle, who’d led the heartbreaking assault on Golgotterath’s gates in the early days of the Apocalypse, hung from a rope in his chambers, slowly twisting in a draft.

Ganrelka was rescued from the Fields of Elenëot by five Knights of Trysë. We as readers know this because we were told and saw him in this prologue, but the people of Eärwa were most likely told that he died on the battlefield. What better way to smuggle him into Ishuäl unbeknownst to anyone than to declare him dead?

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Ganrelka’s uncle, who’d led the heartbreaking assault on Golgotterath’s gates in the early days of the Apocalypse, hung from a rope in his chambers, slowly twisting in a draft.

Slowly twisting in a draft. This imagery brings up the No-God but I'm not sure what to make of it.

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The old Bard continually searched for him, singing ancient songs of love and battle, but slurring the words in blasphemous ways. “Why won’t you show yourself, child?” he would cry as he reeled through the galleries. “Let me sing to you. Woo you with secret songs.”

Here we're being told that 'secret songs', or secrets, to be precise, are blasphemous?

Quote
One night the Bard caught the boy. He caressed first his cheek and then his thigh. “Forgive me,” he muttered over and over, but tears fell only from his blind eye. “There are no crimes,” he mumbled afterward, “when no one is left alive.” But the boy lived. Five nights later, he lured the Bardic Priest onto Ishuäl’s towering walls. When the man shambled by in a drunken stupor, he pushed him from the heights.

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Later the boy will repeat a paraphrasing of this view to the Dûnyain monk.

Quote
And once in a while, his eyes wide with hope and superstitious dread, he would poke the dead with his father’s sword.

I just thought that the word 'superstitious' here is a bit strange. Eärwa is an enchanted world. Most superstitions in the end turn out to be true, for instance, Kellhus learns that most of the superstitious beliefs that Leweth harboured where in fact reality.

Quote
“We are Dûnyain, child. What reason could you have to fear us?” But the boy clutched his father’s sword, crying, “So long as men live, there are crimes!” The man’s eyes filled with wonder. “No, child,” he said. “Only so long as men are deceived.”

Here the boy repeats what the the BP said and the Dunyain basically replies that no, there is another way.

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Quote
Here awareness most holy could be tended. In Ishuäl, they had found shelter against the end of the world.

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Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: MSJ on December 01, 2014, 08:18:57 pm
OK, so my thoughts on the prologue. First, something I noticed right away and has been hotly debated is Kellhus's mission. When he admits his mission to Leweth, he only says that he "searches" for his father. When he first leaves Ishual, he says to himself, "Shimeh will be my home, I will dwell in my father's house." So, I guess he never specifically states his mission, though it seems to me, he is saying he needs to find his father. Not gonna spoil anything, but later we find out there is more to his mission. So, why doesn't he contemplate this here? He seems pretty carefree and seems to be longing for his father, IMHO. Kellhus then experiences what I would call sensory overload, and gives you a glimpse into everyday life in Ishual.

Next, Kellhus is found by Leweth on the verge of death. We get to see the extraordinary capabilities of the mind of the Dunyain. He takes over Leweth, and then realizes how strong and powerful his father must be after living for twenty years with these "children".

Lastly, the confrontation with Mek. The fighting abilities of the Dunyain are put on display with the slaughter of the sranc. In retrospect, I believe this just isn't coincidence, that these two meet. Just too convenient to me. Mek knows he is a name, and when Kellhus tells him he's an Anasurimbor, Mek point to a face on his cloak of one (NC?). Here is when I think Kellhus's world is flip upside down, he learns that sorcery is real. Huh, welcome to Earwa, Kellhus!

Also, I was worried about spoilers, but this is in the re-read section, should I have to worry about any spoiler policy?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Madness on December 01, 2014, 08:33:41 pm
The request has been that you spoiler tag anything beyond the specific chapter thread content. However, you'll find in exploring that people have done that or not, as per their own discretion (and I don't think the mod team has edited anyone's post yet for that reason).
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: MSJ on December 01, 2014, 08:36:10 pm
Thanks Madness, wasn't sure. Is adding spoiler tags the same as westeros? That information might be available, haven't seen it, if so could you direct me please?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Madness on December 01, 2014, 08:39:07 pm
[ spoiler ]Spoiler text.[/ spoiler ]

Without spaces:

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Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Wilshire on December 01, 2014, 09:12:21 pm
I actually just read the prologue this past week and wondered at his statement "I will dwell in my father's house" that you pointed out.
Did he know his mission? Why does he not "think" about his mission as we would expect him to, rather than what he stated above?

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On Spoiler tagging:

You can also add

[ spoiler =spoiler title] Spoiler text. [ / spoiler]

so:
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Also, if you "quote" someone using the button, it will give you all the format that said person used in their  post. I've used this several times to copy/learn new formatting things.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: MSJ on December 01, 2014, 09:55:28 pm
Yea I was looking the whole time for his mission to be stated, even went back and read it again to make sure.
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Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Aural on February 13, 2015, 06:33:24 pm
Quote
At night he would take animal comfort in the dark and cold.

Can someone tell me what that line means? What exactly is animal comfort?
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Wilshire on February 13, 2015, 07:19:03 pm
I read that as just being comfortable sleeping outside without the trappings of modern society.
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Aural on February 13, 2015, 07:28:08 pm
Is that it? I imagined him hugging animals to himself to stay warm at night...
Title: Re: TDTCB, PRLG
Post by: Wilshire on February 14, 2015, 03:31:33 am
lmao. domesticate some wolves for blankets :P