Earwa > The Almanac: PON Edition
TDTCB, Ch. 13
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Madness ---Yeah, had to do it. Some grist nuggets, for sure ;). His italics.
(click to show/hide)
--- Quote from: Cu'jara Cinmoi (Pierce Inverarity) ---I can go on and on about my reasons for choosing the female types I did. So for instance, I wanted to exploit the ironic parallels between 'Men' and their dastardly 'antithesis,' the Sranc. I wanted to explore the nihilistic implications that underwrite social functionalist accounts of our present day gender egalitarianism - the suggestion that the now-sacred values so many have espoused here are actually secondary, ways to rationalize the more efficient utilization of labour given our new technologies of production and reproduction (something which is part and parcel of the way I use Kellhus as a contradictory figure of modernity). What does justice mean when it comes about for all the wrong reasons? I can go on and on, about the ways in which I parallel Serwe and Earwa, and so on.
--- End quote ---
(click to show/hide)
--- Quote from: Cu'jara Cinmoi (Pierce Inverarity) ---Regarding (2), I'm saying that, although Three Seas society is thoroughly patriarchal, it is the story that largely determines the relative paucity of female characters. Just because you don't see many powerful female characters, doesn't mean they aren't there. The assumption frankly perplexes me. My general dislike of quota characterization, or the fact that the world was originally born in the mind of a naive 17 year old, may have led me to go overboard, but I'm not really convinced this is the case. Otherwise I think my choices are pretty much as thematically justified as they could be.
The reason my female characters are defined by male desire is simply because critiquing male desire is one of my primary thematic axes - building up, in the case of Esmenet, to Kellhus's use of contemporary egalitarian rationales to 'liberate' her into his unique brand of slavery, and in the case of Serwe (whose naivete and compliance to desire was meant to parallel that of fantasy worlds in general), her death in the course of Kellhus's Circumfixion, which is to say, his rise to absolute power in the Holy War. This was one of the things I buried because it struck me as too allegorical, too obvious and one to one: the figure of the scriptural world (where reality is abject before desire), bound as a corpse to the figure of modernity (where desire is held abject before reality - and so goes instrumental).
(But of course, Serwe comes back...)
Another backfire, I suppose. But still, pretty interesting I think, the suggestion that the reader actually has Serwe's corpse in their hands because they have Kellhus in their heads!
Otherwise (and you're getting me to do something I despise doing, which is giving spoilers) the idea was to have female characters rise to power in believeable ways - this is what I meant when I said I wanted to tell a rags-to-riches story with Esmenet.
As for the 'numbing' repetition of harlot, womanish, and so on, I meant this as a blur on the numbing repetition of 'bitch,' 'pussy,' and so on in contemporary Anglo culture. Even after all this time, men continue to define themselves and their virtues against women - to the point where the greatest male sin - homosexuality - seems to come down to playing woman to another man. This is where the themes surrounding Cnaiur directly link up with those underwriting Esmenet. Sadly, this is another instance where I thought I was being too overtly feminist (really!) and actually ended up provoking the opposite response in probably too many readers.
--- End quote ---
--- End quote ---
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: lockesnow ---
--- Quote from: Church ---
--- Quote ---Serwe feels/hears the thought of ancient souls in the trees, Kellhus twice dismisses trees as noise when he hears them, irrelevant in his pursuit of pure signal.
Yet it is a tree that hypnotizes and paralyzes him for a day, it is a tree that triggers the crucial decision that a dead world and a live world are not equal... and more--think of all the trees at the climax of the next novel.
--- End quote ---
Nice link - so Serwe is his link to the non-rational side of the world? Or to a different kind of rationality which is just as open to manipulation?
--- End quote ---
Cnaiur describes them; he defines her as rushing water to his inert rocks/empty riverbed.
Which should bring you right back to the prologue and the stream...
--- End quote ---
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Church ---
--- Quote ---Cnaiur describes them; he defines her as rushing water to his inert rocks/empty riverbed.
--- End quote ---
Where is this quote? Had a look but couldn't find it.
--- End quote ---
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: lockesnow ---sorry I should have mentioned, it's in chapter 19, not 13. I just finished the reread of TDTCB last night.
--- End quote ---
sologdin:
the crossing of the mountains.
--- Quote ---The Hethantas massed above them. They negotiated steep granite slopes, picked their way through narrow ravines, beneath cliffs of sedentary rock pocked with strange fossils. For the most part, the trail followed a thin river hedged by spruce and stunted screw pine.
--- End quote ---
(I.13 at 389). We are no longer on the trackless steppe, even though CuS has been inscribed by tracklessness:
--- Quote ---As always, Cnaiur found the change of terrain unsettling, as though the years had tattooed linear hoizons and vast bowl skies onto his heart.
--- End quote ---
(I.13 at 376.) tracklessness therefore inscribes its own trackiness. part of the trackiness of the steppe is that the mountains mark out the limit of religious ritual:
--- Quote ---Cnaiur could feel the Empire on the far side, a labyrinth of luxuriant gardens, sprawling fields, and ancient, hoary cities. In the past, the Nansurium had been the destination f his tribe's seasonal pilgrimages, a place of shouting men, burning villas, and shrieking women. A place of retribution and worship.
--- End quote ---
(I.13 at 373).
a significant scene, then, the crossing of the mountain is historiczed at livy XXI, regarding hannibal in the alps. but it is more importantly mythologized in numerous places: tolkien numerous times, RSB numerous times--but most significantly in deuteronomy:
--- Quote ---32:48 And the LORD spake unto Moses that selfsame day, saying,
32:49 Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession:
32:50 And die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people:
32:51 Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of MeribahKadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel.
32:52 Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.
--- End quote ---
moses can't cross the mountains, but only may be permitted to see; only joshua may cross and complete the holy war. moses must die on the mountain.
cnaiur and kellhus are both hannibal, but hannibal as he should have been. the question remains: who is moses, who joshua in the hethantas? we know that kellhus is permitted a mosaic glimpse of the promised land:
--- Quote ---Kellhus paused at the promontory's lip and looked over jumbled ravines and ancient forests. Kuniuri had looked much the same from the roof of the Demua, he supposed, but while Kumiuri was dead, this land was alive. The Three Seas. The last great civilization of Men.
--- End quote ---
(I.13 at 395). there is the gaze, but is there death? the contention must be that there is death on the mountain, for CuS:
--- Quote ---Heaving him up, Kellhus thrust the barbarian out over the precipice and, with one arm, held him dangling over the distant Empire. The wind swept his jet hair across the abyss.
"Do it!" Cnaiur gasped through snot and spittle. His feet swayed over nothingness.
So much hatred.
"But I spoke true, Cnaiur. I do need you.
The Scylvendi's eyes rounded in horror. Let go, his expression said. For that way lies peace.
--- End quote ---
(I.13 at 399).
all involved knew that this scene aforesaid was imminent:
--- Quote ---Cnaiur shrugged, knowing this was not the case. Though places on the Steppe could be discarded, things could not be--not by the People, at least. Everything was needed.
Then, with unaccountable certainty, he realized that Kellhus would kill him.
--- End quote ---
(I.13 at 374).
the need is war (I.13 at 397), and "the chances of finding another with as much experience and insight as Cnaiur ur Skiotha were negligible. They call him the most violent of all men" (I.13 at 401).
CuS is reduced on the mountain. it is not literal death, of course, but an equivalent reification as instrumentality. it is an extension of the process famously described by mr. marx:
--- Quote ---There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
--- End quote ---
(Capital I.1.iv).
instead of commodities masking relations between persons as mere relations between things, AK has transformed his relation with CuS from a relation with a person into a relation with a thing. cnaiur has a use value, of course, that exceeds any exchange value--this is made very explicit from AK's perspective, whereas CuS believes that his exchange value has exceeded his use value. the latter point makes him moses.
the natural sequellae of this point: what law, then, has he handed down?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version