Earwa > The Almanac: PON Edition
TDTCB, Ch. 9
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: lockesnow ---I posted part of this first in the misc forum of the why esmi thread, but it’s all thoughts I was working on for this chapter.
--- Quote ---But the mystery of this one woman, this Sumni harlot, stirred fear rather than disdain within him. Fear and longing. But why? After Inrau's death, distraction was what he had needed most of all, and she had stubbornly refused to be that distraction. Quite the opposite. She pried him for the nuances of his day, debating--more with herself than with him--the meanings of each meaningless thing he learned. Her conspiracies were as impertinent as they were absurd.
--- End quote ---
From the beginning, DA's perceptions of Esmenet foreshadow her outsized importance, here we see it emphasized how he fears her and wants her and that when he thinks about fearing and wanting her the author chooses to emphasize her nihlistic tendencies, how she searches for meaning in a meaningless world--kind of like the traditional modernist protagonist. It's interesting that Kellhus will be seeking the opposite of this, seeking to find meaninglessness in a meaningful world. It's also interesting there's this binary of meaning and meaningless regarding Esmenet so soon after the definition of the No-God was provided, "emptiness, absolute and terrible," Esme is only a few paragraphs after this definition, and we should definitely make a connection here, I think.
Bakker continues,
--- Quote ---One night he told her as much, hoping only to silence her for a short time. She had paused, but when she spoke, it was with a weariness that far surpassed his own, the tone of one injured to honesty by the pettiness of another. "This is only a game I play, Achamian... There is is truth inside a game." He'd lain in the darkness, consumed by inner turmoil, feeling that if he could unravel his hurts the way she could, he would crumble, collapse into dust. This isn't a game. Inrau is dead. Dead!
--- End quote ---
italics in the original, emphasis mine. Amazing that Esmenet here could have weariness that surpasses that of the Mandate! The Mandate. And note how her ability to self-analyze is considered so extensive, I think we're getting some foreshadowing as to why she will work with Kellhus, Achamian is so scared of her abilities that he thinks he would crumble into dust (biblical, eh?) if he did the same--and then look how FAST Achamian runs away from this conclusion, he distracts himself from the powerful conclusions he is approaching by retreating into the safe recriminations regarding Inrau's death. Rather than following Esmenet's path to insights--a path very similar to the path Kellhus follows for insight--DA is scared and runs away, he rejects the 'game' and focuses on his hurt feelings. "Inrau is dead. Dead!"
--- Quote ---Achamian had lain with many whores in many cities through the years, so why was Esmenet so different? he'd first come to her because of her beautiful boyish thighs and seal-smooth skin. He'd returned because she was so good, because she joked and lusted the way she had with Callustras--whoever he was. But at some point, he'd come to know the woman apart from her spread legs. What was it he'd learned? With whom had he fallen in love?
Esmenet, The Whore of Sumna
Often, in his soul's eye, she was inexplicably thin and wild, buffeted by rain and winds, obscured by the swaying of forest branches. This woman, who had once lifted her hand to the sun, holding it so that for him its light lay cupped in her palm, and telling him that truth was air, was sky, and could only be claimed, never touched by the limbs and fingers of a man. He couldn't tell her how profoundly her musings affected him, that they thrashed like living things in the wells of his soul and gathered stones about them.
--- End quote ---
Good god, look at that last paragraph, look at the foreshadowing there. Esmenet is already like a god when see through the gaze of his soul's eye, this passage is screaming and describing her specialness. Her appearance, her teachings they all overwhelm DA throughout this chapter and the series and this is long before she meets Kellhus, the world has marked Esmenet, for certain.
Who else could match Kellhus than someone such as this?
After all this ruminating on Esmenet, DA is shaking and wonders, “What’s happened to me?” DA, being DA, comes up with an excuse, “he had been overwhelmed by circumstances,” and yet has he really? Or could he be shaking because the dream was so bad (we see this in other post-intense dreams) and Seswatha is trying to signal him towards the significance of Esmenet that she is now a player on the world stage, she is now a kahiht (world-soul), and shockingly DA responds to these signals by making a map of world stage and it’s players. And note that the biggest mistake he will make is that he leaves Esmenet off this map, she’s integral to the events that unfold and the interactions that drive them, she’s as much a player as any of the others that DA will list—and he doesn’t know this yet. But it was a lengthy rumination on Esmenet that led DA to make a map of players—his subconscious is prodding him, hammering him to notice her, and he doesn’t.
--- Quote ---He was missing something, he realized. Forgetting…
--- End quote ---
But although DA doesn’t include an ‘unimportant’ player like Esmenet, he does attribute significance to Inrau, even though Inrau isn’t an active player; ahh, DA, you sexist bastard. ;) He magnifies a mystery he cares about and overlooks a much more important mystery, he overlooks the rumination that started this all which was, “But the mystery of this one woman, this Sumni harlot, stirred fear rather than disdain within him. Fear and longing. But why? ”
This whole thought digression begins with DA reflecting on the mystery of Esmenet and her importance and he does not even see it. He does not even see it when it is right in front of him.
But really, pay close attention to Bakker pointing out from DA’s perspective those keywords, missing and forgetting, because after DA misses and forgets Inrau, two paragraphs later we have:
--- Quote ---Achamian often made such maps—not because he worried he might forget something, but because he worried he might overlook something.
--- End quote ---
How much more obvious can Bakker make it, DA tells himself he does not do the thing he has just himself done! Oh so fallible, so very fallible. And cleverly, Bakker hides this failing where readers of genre are most likely to miss it—he hides the failing in the middle of DA congratulating himself on his intelligence while he does something clever. A reader is complicit, and if DA is congratulating himself on his intelligence the reader is even less likely to notice the failings of the narrator, because the reader is busy congratulating themselves for their own intelligence as well. This builds on the pattern established with DA in Chapter One, where Bakker hides DA’s failings and shitty judgments of character by having DA insult jocks and popular kids, he is saying something clever and agreeable to the genre audience so Bakker gets away with some pretty egregious narrator character failings.
It’s very literary. ;)
--- Quote ---A prelude to the Second Apocalypse? Could it Be?
--- End quote ---
If it is so it fits with the dream and, note the timing, Esmenet has just become kahiht. Note the structure, the chapter begins and ends with her, and details her transformation as she leaves Sumna, We cut away and the cutaway is 60% a rumination on the mysteries of her, that rumination leads to analysis of the world-stage; from a re-read perspective Esmenet should obviously be on this stage and her absence is conspicuous, in a sense she is a big part of that map as well, this chapter is all hers, as she thinks earlier, as a lead in to DA’s ruminations, “I survived, Akka. And I did not survive.” I suppose you could say she is something… more. What are the Dunyain but Whores of the Logos?
--- Quote ---Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner?
--- End quote ---
Just to remind you again, Bakker is making it obvious about DA here, he doesn’t make the map to remember things, because a man such he NEVER forgets something important, and while making it he realizes he’s forgotten two important things, but he NEVER forgets things, remember that. And he definitely has man-tinted blinders on.
--- Quote ---For an absurd moment, she found herself fearing for her fear. If escaping Sumna meant nothing, did that mean the whole world was a prison?
--- End quote ---
Annnnnnd the confirmation bias I’ve got going on with this post is starting to go haywire, because I’m seeing confirmation that Esmenet is kahiht now literally everywhere in this chapter. Wheee! I'll leave it to Sologdin to discuss the Foucault implications of this last quoted passage I've noted.
--- End quote ---
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Church ---I like your thinking lockesnow. The first time I read this I saw Esmemet's storyline as basically all being about Achamian - she's the one who will give him the missing piece of the jigsaw, and then him being a sorcercer (and a man) will go off, kill the bad guys, and it'll all be sorted. Re-reading, it becomes clear that it's all a lot more complicated than that and her story is her own.
--- End quote ---
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Wilshire ---What exactly is a kahiht, or rather a World-Soul?
--- End quote ---
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Madness ---Kahiht quotations:
(click to show/hide)"She watched wide-eyed, a sense of awe squeezing the breath from her lungs. She stood, she realized, at the very heart of the Holy War, fiery with passion, promise, and sacred purpose. These men were more than human, they were Kahiht, World Souls, locked in the great wheel of great events" (TDTCB, p596).
Great lines :) - Esmenet finding Proyas' fire, finally, among those camped around Momemn's walls.
"Kahiht - The name given to so-called World-Souls in the Inrithi tradition. Since the God manifests himself in the movement of historical events in Inrithism, to be Kahiht, or a world historical individual, is considered sacred" (TTT Glossary, p575).
"No. I tell you this because I truly know very little. The Judging Eye is a folk legend, like the Kahiht or the White-Luck Warrior, notions that have been traded across too many generations to possess any clear meaning ..." (WLW, p89)
--- End quote ---
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: lockesnow ---And my confirmation bias is going bonkers again from the first quote Madness gave, from later in the book, Esmenet is the one who provides us with the definition of a kahiht, and Esmenet has many ruminations about feeling that she has become more, particularly in the chapters belonging to her section, "The Harlot."
This is a re-read, and we control the flow of time in the secondary world, we can read something that comes after and apply those revelations to what came before it, we can take new data and apply it to our understanding of initial understandings and yield a new synthesis.
Bias Bias everywhere. So much fun.
--- End quote ---
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