The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => General Earwa => Topic started by: What Came Before on June 03, 2013, 01:50:46 pm
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I believe that Bakker has stated in one of his interviews that Serwe could potentially be the most important character in the entire SE series.
I was talking to a friend who just started the series and a theory popped into my head as to why, maybe, this could be. Or rather a few questions. First though, does anyone know:
1) where that idea came from, or rather the interview where Bakker said that (or something similar, I dont want to miss quote it).
2) is there somewhere on this forum that this has been discussed already?
Sorry but right now I dont have a lot of time and I want to be more certain before I write stuff down.
edit:
Interview:
But it was the innocence part, that struck me as the most significant and the most
redemptive. Without giving too much away, there is a manner in which Serwe is the most
important character in the book.
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well she's the sacrificial lamb, more to the point, she willingly gave her life, very Aslan of her.
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First apostle, though Bakker could choose to explore the Atrithi Zaudunyani.
Also, she gives her soul entirely to Kellhus, even up to death, to Zaudunyani Inrithism. I'm convinced that we don't know nearly enough about the relationship between the World and the Outside. Ascension is apparently possible, Swazond might actually trap souls a la Karsa Orlong, and belief may shape the spaces of the Gods in the Outside and certainly their requisite agency in the World.
This occluded mechanism is one of the reasons I think it is so, so important that a number of Moenghus' Sect of Cishaurim were dying for him in battle at Shimeh when he died at Sejenus' actual point of Ascension at Kyudea.
Serwe's death, her soul's fate in the Outside, might very well be the cause of Kellhus' revelations and apparent divinity.
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Ah ok is is what I was thinking, more or less. I couldn't understand why she could be such an important person, then I realized that she martyred herself. I think this might have been what actually prevented saving Kell from death at that tree. Im sure that something important came of that, and now I think its al least related to his "divinity", or rather the glowing halos and what-not.
This or it has something to do with mothing lil' Moe and what becomes of his story arc, though this wouldn't seem to make Serwe some kind of all important character regardless of what he does or happens. I think it has something major to do with Kell and his revaluations.
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In any closed world you'd read the Circumfixion as Kellhus going mad from an experience so emotional that it breaks his Conditioning. In an open world like Earwa her conviction unto death might have real metaphysical consequences.
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well she's the sacrificial lamb, more to the point, she willingly gave her life
Huh?
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well she's the sacrificial lamb, more to the point, she willingly gave her life
Huh?
Important christian connections, ala Aslan.
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I just don't remember her willingly giving her life? Frankly 'surprise' is what I remember about her in that scene?
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She was surprised but that is more or less irreverent. Her devotion is what was important, and I this that its mostly accepted that the world is "open" and this should have some metaphysical importance that we have not had fully explained yet.
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Interesting, but not from the position I imagine I'm supposed to find it interesting from.
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I imagine I was the only one who was happy to see her go.
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Certainly not the only one. She was a bimbo by all accounts, an irritating to boot.
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I also breathed a sigh of relief when Serwe bit the dust.
She filled an important role in the narrative, but her actual personality was just...airheaded and gratingly dull. Bakker could definitely have put more work into making the Serwe character more sympathetic to the reader.
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Ouch.
As TPB has had some posts on - was the character not made sympathetic to the reader, or does the reader think they sympathise more than they actually do?
Granted, we come to fantasy for the dragons and swords (to put it simplistically) to grab us. So it might lack that element - perhaps if Serwe was a dragon, for example, she'd grab more at the fantasy reader. But if even then it seems the author didn't make the character a sympathetic one, maybe that's so. Or, how do you measure whether you just don't sympathise as much as you think you do?
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I get tired of the blind fanaticism, really.
Yes, it's her character's point and I fully understand she's had an utterly abhorrent life. I CAN get behind that and sympathize, truly. But that fact is stamped out about halfway through Darkness and utterly vanishes in Warrior-Prophet under the tide of her devotion. There's just an irritation about her. Yes, she's hot; yes, she's desired by all men and a perfect tool for Kellhus; yes, she's a bit loony... but I just can't like her. There's too much 'hurr Kellhus hurr my life for you hurr' for my tastes.
Perhaps poorly articulated, but this is what leaps to the forefront of my mind.
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I get tired of the blind fanaticism, really.
Yes, it's her character's point and I fully understand she's had an utterly abhorrent life. I CAN get behind that and sympathize, truly. But that fact is stamped out about halfway through Darkness and utterly vanishes in Warrior-Prophet under the tide of her devotion. There's just an irritation about her. Yes, she's hot; yes, she's desired by all men and a perfect tool for Kellhus; yes, she's a bit loony... but I just can't like her. There's too much 'hurr Kellhus hurr my life for you hurr' for my tastes.
Perhaps poorly articulated, but this is what leaps to the forefront of my mind.
Bu..but she's hot
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:P
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Were we supposed to like her? I thought at best we were meant to pity.
I did find her interactions with Esmi interesting though. Without Kellhus' influence, Esmenet clearly would have hated her, and that shines through briefly on occasion. Just a few tantalizing hints of maybe being able to escape the Dunyain's thrall. But no. Bakker continues to tease with false hope.
This world is an outrage.
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I always flash to Aurang's speech whenever that phrase is thrown around. So awesome.
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I'm looking for the interveiw where Scott talks about Serwe as being representitive of the world and one of the most important characters in the first trilogy(?)
Can someone point me in that direction?
I have some ideas about her in light of the further layers of revelation from WLW and TJE that might be worthy of discussion.
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shit, there's tons of embedded meaning in her first chapter as a POV, the whole world shudders when she is wronged.
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I wonder if there is any significance to her being omitted from the Zaudunyani Circumfix.
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Something is really fishy about Serwe.
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Remember how she complains about being woken up by Kelhus at one point, complaining 'but the hoooorns, the horns haven't sounded!'. Then moments latter they sound.
Yes. Fishy.
She can literally see the future somehow enough that she makes a point she gets to sleep until the horns sound!
And she can fly!
Okay, no, not so much that, but...
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Edit:
Irrelevant after posts where merged
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I also suspect Serwë will become post-humously more important later on, although I have no idea how. There's probably a lot of hidden clues in her early chapters.
It's obvious why Bakker would view Serwë as "representative for the world" - she's everything Bakker has pointed out about ignorant people who are being unknowingly manipulated all the time while being convinced of their own moral rightness.
I wonder if there is any significance to her being omitted from the Zaudunyani Circumfix.
The Serwës of the world are usually overshadowed by prophets and messiahs.
But yeah, she was forgotten very fast. It's almost as if she was a shameful secret in the Aspect-Emperor's past.
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Ah...
I have this, I believe there is more in another interveiw, but...
I self consciously picked three mysogynistic types for my female characters (just as I picked fantasy cliche types for my male characters): the whore, the waif, and the harridan. Earwa is a brutally patriarchal world, much as our own was (which makes our own fascination with fantastic versions of our past that much more peculiar), and I wanted to explore the significance of those types in such a world. Serwe is obviously the waif, the frail innocent wronged by the machinations of a cruel world. As such she had to die.
But it was the innocence part, that struck me as the most significant and the most redemptive. Without giving too much away, there is a manner in which Serwe is the most important character in the book.
Now this statement about her innocence as a redemptive quality coupled with the notation of her importance...
There are several other dangling threads about redemption as an alternative to damnation and oblivion and Mimara's glimpses of the gold of redemption beneath the stain of damnation.
Serwe's recollection of 'fruitless' prayers to the ancestor scrolls, yet ultimately she is delivered to Kellhus.
She ?recognizes? Kellhus' apparently divine mission of modernization well before he begins to use this religious connotation to dominate circumstance and, of course, is the first to see his haloes. Of course, it is her innocence that causes Kellhus to use this tactic to condition her, but could not this also be 'divine' machination (as per WLW)?
Ultimately, she provides the miracle of the circumfix that allows Kellhus to ensare the holy war and convinces Kellhus that he is chosen. Remember he was bound hand and foot against her corpse and yet somehow rises up with her burning heart in his hand when they cut him down.
Perhaps it is Serwe that is the true prophet of the Thosandfold Thought (as an agency of the outside in its own right)?
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Kellhus watched while the Scylvendi took her again. With her whimpers, her suffocated cries, it seemed the ground beneath slowly spun, as though stars had stopped their cycle and the earth had begun to wheel instead. There was something . . . something here, he could sense. Something outraged. From what darkness had this come?
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 383). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
Is Serwe an axis upon which the whole world--nay, the whole universe, turns?
can the prayers of one devout, innocent, wronged woman change the course of the entire world?
Or is Kellhus sensing the entirety of the thousandfold thought transforming in this instance, as it reacts to this moment, causing everything projected up until this point to change. By taking on Serwe, Kellhus doesn't kill Cnaiur at this point and make his own, way, something he could easily do. By taking Serwe into their party, it becomes all downhill an inevitable and unavoidable path to joining and seizing the holy war. That Serwe, who causes this path to happen will also be the key to its only possible success.
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Kellhus watched while the Scylvendi took her again. With her whimpers, her suffocated cries, it seemed the ground beneath slowly spun, as though stars had stopped their cycle and the earth had begun to wheel instead. There was something . . . something here, he could sense. Something outraged. From what darkness had this come?
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 383). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
Is Serwe an axis upon which the whole world--nay, the whole universe, turns?
can the prayers of one devout, innocent, wronged woman change the course of the entire world?
Or is Kellhus sensing the entirety of the thousandfold thought transforming in this instance, as it reacts to this moment, causing everything projected up until this point to change. By taking on Serwe, Kellhus doesn't kill Cnaiur at this point and make his own, way, something he could easily do. By taking Serwe into their party, it becomes all downhill an inevitable and unavoidable path to joining and seizing the holy war. That Serwe, who causes this path to happen will also be the key to its only possible success.
This forum is ruining the series for me because I know when TUC eventually comes it will probably never match how thematically rich and nuanced this board is anticipating it to be. That's not a slam, lockesnow. I really do like your theory. There's something very powerful about the concept of an incredibly hostile universe whose fulcrum is nevertheless an innocent, tormented girl.
I'm of the opinion that Bakker is gonna totally shock all of his feminist detractors by revealing that Serwe (or maybe even Mim) is in fact The God in miniature. In a universe so dominated by the male appetite/male rationality/the male desire to control, revealing the ultimate force that set it into motion was in fact an embodiment of Love and Compassion would be really cool.
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Sorry bbaztek im gunna have to disagree with you there. Glance through a couple of Bakker's interviews, and basically lays out why them "feminist detractors" will always read the text in such a way that makes Bakker a misogynist.
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For an idle moment, her eyes followed the rafters of the immense willow they slept beneath. Limbs arched against the depths of further limbs, parted like a woman’s legs, and then parted again, winding away into great skirts of leaves that bobbed and dipped beneath the sunlit wind. She could feel the soul of the great tree, brooding, sorrowful, and infinitely wise, the rooted witness of innumerable suns.
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 405). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
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Might be that innocence has some kind of potency.
The dude that becomes WLW (in the ritual with Psatma) is young, perhaps he was chosen because of this quality?
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There are none so blind as those who have already decided what they will see. Chasing after people who have made up their minds that Bakker is a horrible misogynist and trying to convince them they're wrong would be pointless in the extreme. Anybody stupid and narrowminded enough to think that, because an author writes something set in a strongly patriarchal and misogynist world, that he must therefore approve of that sort of world, is not worth engaging with. I can only assume they think Margaret Atwood is a horrible misogynist, too, right? :roll:
Anyway, while the rest of the world seems to have forgotten Serwe, Kellhus clearly hasn't. Not only did he name one of his daughters after her (or, perhaps, 'allowed' Esme to do so), he then chose that daughter to turn witches into nuns: to take the lowest and most despised of women (even worse than whores!) and turn them into embodiments of the holy.
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Took Wilshire's advice and combined these threads. I'd hazard going back and reading the first two pages of new (old thread) additions to Curethan's thread.
Innocence, but also ignorance, seems key.
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Sorry bbaztek im gunna have to disagree with you there. Glance through a couple of Bakker's interviews, and basically lays out why them "feminist detractors" will always read the text in such a way that makes Bakker a misogynist.
I think Bakker gets a little too starry-eyed about his philosophy. I don't like it when he's too quick to pull out the cognitive bias card, because it's kind of disingenuous to anyone who has a legitimate gripe with the series. That's not to say his feminist detractors are right (if anything the series is kind of misandrist), but smugly dismissing anyone whose views don't gel with your own as "sheeple gonna see what they wanna see lol" doesn't magically exempt you from the same cognitive pitfalls that you're pointing out. When the sum of human knowledge is infinitesimal compared to what's actually out there, being so quick to point out how everything we think we know is built on sand doesn't suddenly become more interesting with repetition.
Maybe you can just chalk this up to the cognitive bias stuff never grabbing my interest as powerfully as the rest of Bakker's philosophy/concepts. It's kinda weak and the most it's ever elicited from me when he uses it in a rebuttal is a "so what?"
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"So what?" is kind of the whole point.
You think he is misogynist, he says "nah, I wrote it, I think I'd know better than you reader".
Basically saying So what?
Instead of him dropping himself into a conversation that he couldn't care less about, he points out the obvious, saying that it is a waste of time to argue the point. I'd agree with that.
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Perhaps she actually gives Kellhus his haloes*? Rather than saw them first? The origin point of them? That might even be the reason for the whole Serwe heart rip thing, as she was his boost up, but now he thinks he's beyond her?
* Serwe is master chief! Holy shit! It's metroid all over again!
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because it's kind of disingenuous to anyone who has a legitimate gripe with the series.
What's a legitimate gripe, though?
For some, what seems a legitimate gripe to them seems to be if they feel something is sexist, that's all the evidence required. As if feelings could never produce a false positive? As if if you feel outrage, then that means there definately is something to be outraged about (as if it's a known known)
At least in terms of that particular type of 'legitimate' gripe, I think the cognitive bias claims are perfectly apt.
If it's another type of 'legitimate gripe' that's different from that, what is it?
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Perhaps she actually gives Kellhus his haloes? Rather than saw them first? The origin point of them? That might even be the reason for the whole Serwe heart rip thing, as she was his boost up, but now he thinks he's beyond her?
I think she has something to do with the haloes, or him 'seeing' TTT differently, or him becoming a real prophet instead of a false one... for a time at least. Since the war I think he's fallen back into the dunyain ways, but there was a time when maybe he was truely what he said he was.
That or he is full of shit, also possible.
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Thing about the heart is that Kelhus could not have gotten it by physical means and he didnt have sorcery then.
He was beaten and bound by hand and foot upside down for what, 2 days? It would be almost impossible to tear someones heart out bare handed even if you were hale and had leverage.
Of course, Serwe had long since given him her heart, the miracle is metaphor become real...
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I'm thinking like Cnaiur manage to punch Kellhus way back on the steppe by apparently sending his hand through Kellhus' sword arm, potentially some act of passion allows Kellhus to do the heart thing.
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I remember Bakker suggesting once on Three-Seas that the ambiguity, which we all wrestle with, concerning Serwe's Heart reflects a cut scene from TWP - one where Cnaiur and Kellhus apparently have a conversation that sheds some light on exactly what happened/is going to happen at Caraskand.
He has said that he thinks the ambiguity the readers feel reflects the loss of this other scene.
Lol... Bakker Simarillian!
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My bad if this has already been mentioned, but I distinctly remember a passage in TDTCB about Serwe being unable to conceive children. Anyone have any ideas what this might signify? These books are such a smorgasbord of motifs I don't even know where to begin sometimes.
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Her Master's strangle the children of concubines. Serwe actually conceives by one of the Gaunam (sp?) men.
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The passage you may refer too is when her master or the other women say that whores only bare blue babies.
It was referring to the fact that they drowned all their whores children.
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Her Master's strangle the children of concubines. Serwe actually conceives by one of the Gaunam (sp?) men.
She conceives by several of the men. Although they killed all her kids upon birth. I remember that her Nansur owners would laugh at her whenever she was pregnant, and say "nine months left to the funeral, lol".
Lol... Bakker Simarillian!
That'd be an awesome book, if it was ever written. Bakker could write the ancient history and wars of the Nonmen, like Tolkien did with the Elves, and it'd make a really good story.
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I remember Bakker suggesting once on Three-Seas that the ambiguity, which we all wrestle with, concerning Serwe's Heart reflects a cut scene from TWP - one where Cnaiur and Kellhus apparently have a conversation that sheds some light on exactly what happened/is going to happen at Caraskand.
He has said that he thinks the ambiguity the readers feel reflects the loss of this other scene.
Lol... Bakker Simarillian!
"I am begining to think", he said, a vague violence in his eyes, "that these cut texts have wrecked abomination upon the work!"
Perhaps one day it'll be popular enough to warrant a 'let it all out' version, where this stuff STAYS THE F*** IN!!!
I'm not actually familiar with the Simarillian? I thought that was another work? I'd just like the books to contain what they were going to contain before the cut, regardless of page bloat.
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I don't know. I think the ambiguity of that scene is critical to keep the reader flip flopping over whether K is divinely inspired or demonically insane.
I hate it but I love it.
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Nitpick, Wilshire ;). Strangle, drown. Pish.
+1 Curethan.
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Maybe the innocence of a believer is more "valuable" in shaping Earwa's consensus reality? I'm not really basing this on anything, other than the hijinks that happened when Kellhus was tied to the circumfix. It seems like those souls that are saved or are the least damned hold the most sway in unconsciously affecting Earwa's consensus reality. Would explain why the inchies are so damned, since they all they do is visit horror on innocents.
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That quote about innocence and redemption.
With damnation so abundant it kinda fits that redemptive qualities would be more potent. For me anyway.
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If Mimara and Serwe, both innocent women with a long history of abuse at the hands of men, are able to somehow affect Earwa's reality at a higher level than the vast majority of people, why can't Esmi? Or for that matter, anyone innocent who has suffered greatly? What separates Serwe and Mim from the thousands of young women like them?
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why can't Esmi?
I think burning down half a city probably cut into her 'innocent victim' cred just a tad. ;)
Most 'victims' probably commit enough sins of their own to tip the scales away from any supernatural ability to benefit from God's outrage at the sins against them. The trick, perhaps, is to be a victim while remaining good yourself. A sort of inverse of "God helps those who help themselves": maybe God will only bend the World to protect those who don't take vengeance into their own hands?
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+1, Duskweaver. But I wonder at the role intention plays - for the Gods to be outraged on one's behalf... Yatwer's M.O. seems to be interceeding on behalf of those who cannot do so themselves.
Also, what does ignorance of ignorance have to do with this?
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Since Earwa is the center of objective reality, it is influenced by the desire of the God of Gods, so while Yatwer and her homies might try and interfere with its course, ultimately the capacity of reality to be influenced by sentient beings is determined by who the God of Gods feels "sympathy" for - ie the Serwes and Mims of the world.
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If Mimara and Serwe, both innocent women with a long history of abuse at the hands of men, are able to somehow affect Earwa's reality at a higher level than the vast majority of people, why can't Esmi? Or for that matter, anyone innocent who has suffered greatly? What separates Serwe and Mim from the thousands of young women like them?
But Serwe (and to a lesser extent, Mim) is not the driving force. Think of it like the WLW.
Serwe is the mechanism by which innocence annoints Kellhus as the mechanism for modernization that can allow innocence to flourish.
And to oppose the Consult, which is the incarnation of the dominance of damnation over the objective world.
Kellhus himself is the end product of the dunyain project which started in the ashes of the first apocalypse.
Serwe's role is, perhaps, to ward him against the otherwise inevitable corruption that would, for example, have claimed Moenghus.
Are the hundred gods involved?
Gods like Yatwer, who offer 'eternal' as a gift for the otherwise damned, seem unlikely to support such a movement.
Especially seeing as the are in direct opposition in the current series.
Maybe the bellicose gods, like Ajokli?
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Every moment is a Gift from Yatwer and yet above all her followers are those who suffer most, that bottom rung of society, which also constitutes its mass.
Serwe certainly seems like an easy fulcrum for such a Goddess.
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But the compensatory god's intercede for those who would otherwise be damned.
It's not about suffering, as Inrau points out to Aurang.
Serwe was innocent and therefore did not need intercesion - without reaching for Yatwer she grants no power, instead she was making space in the outside, similar to the idea of ancestors perhaps.
On that tack, can redeemed ancestors really also intervene (i.e. souls which did not need the intercession of other agencies to avoid damnation)?
Cuz in that case Kellhus has Celmomas and other Anasurimbors (and maybe generations of dunyain too) helping from the outside?
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But Serwe (and to a lesser extent, Mim) is not the driving force. Think of it like the WLW.
Serwe is the mechanism by which innocence annoints Kellhus as the mechanism for modernization that can allow innocence to flourish.
And to oppose the Consult, which is the incarnation of the dominance of damnation over the objective world.
Kellhus himself is the end product of the dunyain project which started in the ashes of the first apocalypse.
Serwe's role is, perhaps, to ward him against the otherwise inevitable corruption that would, for example, have claimed Moenghus.
If you read the circumfix scene again, it's very obvious that what triggers Kellhus' breakdown is his inability to process the fact of Serwe's death. It fills him with a profound horror that he can barely understand, let alone try to reign in with his Dunyain training. This is because the senseless murder of such an innocent soul pierces all of Kellhus' defense mechanisms and actually elicits a genuine human reaction: regret for being responsible for her death, a reluctant compassion, a burgeoning realization that perhaps he did in fact feel something tender for Serwe.
And so when the walking embodiment of the Logos is confronted with the cold-blooded murder and abuse of Innocence, it can't process it. Rationality throws in the towel, and this somehow opens the door for the No-God/God of Gods/SOMETHING to come in and muck shit up in Kellhus' head. And so we are left to wonder what it is that truly guides the events of the Bakkerverse: is it the cold, mechanical Logos, or the movements of Innocence?
edit: as for Serwe being a mechanism through which Yatwer can influence world events, I don't think such a vindictive deity would endorse Kellhus and then turn on him after accomplishing what presumably Serwe was supposed to set the groundwork for.
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Maybe the innocence of a believer is more "valuable" in shaping Earwa's consensus reality? I'm not really basing this on anything, other than the hijinks that happened when Kellhus was tied to the circumfix. It seems like those souls that are saved or are the least damned hold the most sway in unconsciously affecting Earwa's consensus reality. Would explain why the inchies are so damned, since they all they do is visit horror on innocents.
Sound plausible in how it'd cause a kind of echo chamber effect!
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edit: as for Serwe being a mechanism through which Yatwer can influence world events, I don't think such a vindictive deity would endorse Kellhus and then turn on him after accomplishing what presumably Serwe was supposed to set the groundwork for.
Maybe it's like duskweaver says - making Serwe, from her vulnerability, more god than Yatwer is?
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I'm torn between attributing the qualities of the God to serwe, or just regarding her as another one of yatwer's own. But why support a figure that your god comes to denounce?
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But Serwe (and to a lesser extent, Mim) is not the driving force. Think of it like the WLW.
Serwe is the mechanism by which innocence annoints Kellhus as the mechanism for modernization that can allow innocence to flourish.
And to oppose the Consult, which is the incarnation of the dominance of damnation over the objective world.
Kellhus himself is the end product of the dunyain project which started in the ashes of the first apocalypse.
Serwe's role is, perhaps, to ward him against the otherwise inevitable corruption that would, for example, have claimed Moenghus.
If you read the circumfix scene again, it's very obvious that what triggers Kellhus' breakdown is his inability to process the fact of Serwe's death. It fills him with a profound horror that he can barely understand, let alone try to reign in with his Dunyain training. This is because the senseless murder of such an innocent soul pierces all of Kellhus' defense mechanisms and actually elicits a genuine human reaction: regret for being responsible for her death, a reluctant compassion, a burgeoning realization that perhaps he did in fact feel something tender for Serwe.
And so when the walking embodiment of the Logos is confronted with the cold-blooded murder and abuse of Innocence, it can't process it. Rationality throws in the towel, and this somehow opens the door for the No-God/God of Gods/SOMETHING to come in and muck shit up in Kellhus' head. And so we are left to wonder what it is that truly guides the events of the Bakkerverse: is it the cold, mechanical Logos, or the movements of Innocence?
edit: as for Serwe being a mechanism through which Yatwer can influence world events, I don't think such a vindictive deity would endorse Kellhus and then turn on him after accomplishing what presumably Serwe was supposed to set the groundwork for.
Looking for stuff on Ganrelka, I ran into this thread, and this particular, extremely memorable post by Happy Ent.
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/22166-prince-of-nothing/page__st__320
What’s not to get? The God is everywhere, our souls are merely pinpricks in the fabric of reality, through which the outside shines. There are at least two monologues about this, by Kellhus or Achamian, though I cannot readily tell you where they are.
You, Relic, and I are the same. And we’re both God, or at least fragments of Him.
Place is merely a boundary imposed by reality. Once you can penetrate that boundary, you can reach through those pinpricks and manifest yourself anywhere else.
This is why Kellhus can speak, quite early, in a way that is heard inside your head, and later through other people. This is also how cants of calling work, and by extension, how Kellhus’s upgrade to the same cants makes it possible for him to translocate not only his consciousness, but his entire body. 20 years later, he can even take Esmi with him on those trips.
At the moment of Kellhus’s transformation, when he becomes the living God Made Flesh, his mastery of these concepts is complete, if only for a brief instance. He and Serwë are the same, their boundaries of flesh mean nothing to him, so there is no mystery in him reaching into “his own” chest and pullling “Serwë’s” heart out.
It’s certainly not how our reality works. But given what we know of Eärwa, it’s sounds like a pretty straightforward thing to do. (Note that Eärwan metaphysics aren’t a smörgåsbord of cool spells. Healing seems to be impossible. But ripping your wife’s heart out of your own chest? Lvl 3, at -4 against EMP, no fumbles.)
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Wow these are some wildly divergent interpretations we got here. Now that's the mark of good literature
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You, Relic, and I are the same. And we’re both God, or at least fragments of Him.
The problem with all this is that the idea of damnation is, at least on the face of it, pretty thoroughly incompatible with this sort of pantheism.
If this explicitly pantheist concept of the God of Gods is true in Earwa, then there must be something really big and important we've not yet been told/shown about damnation.
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There are ways of interpretation that encompas it.
Redemption and damnation provide forms of eternal 'life' in the outside. You get trapped and your personality defining experiences are melded with other, similar ones. But (at least, for the damned) there is no change, choice or causality, so for these 'harvested' souls there is no agency. Perhaps its different for the exalted, and Serwe and Mim may turn out to be evidence of that.
The third (and seemingly more natural) option is oblivion - which in this metaphysical model would encompass the dissolution of experiential memory and personal meaning.
Nil'Giccas describes it as 'becoming' in TJE, which could be read as pointing towards some form of rebirth or re-incarnation (i.e. the soul is washed clean and returned to the cycle).
This could even explain the Few - they might be souls that have achieved a second chance through oblivion?
Thus the outside is made of the stuff that differentiates souls, their reflections of the true world. It is God's subconsious, if you like, and for a soul to become trapped there is to become a 'memory'.
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An explanation for sorcery, I like. Not even the Nonmen have figured that one out.
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I'd hazard that the whole Nonmen becoming thing is new - likely, a defining characteristic of Erratism.
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Erratism... a new religion?
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You, Relic, and I are the same. And we’re both God, or at least fragments of Him.
The problem with all this is that the idea of damnation is, at least on the face of it, pretty thoroughly incompatible with this sort of pantheism.
If this explicitly pantheist concept of the God of Gods is true in Earwa, then there must be something really big and important we've not yet been told/shown about damnation.
Well, you can think of the Damnation machine as the superego of the God of Gods run amok. There are many references to the Hundred being the myriad aspects of the God, broken up into a thousand pieces each warring for the supremacy of their own domain. It's not all that different from how we human beings themselves are fraught with inner turmoil; base appetite vs. higher aspirations, cognitive dissonance, saying one thing and doing the opposite etc. Pretty sure some character in WLW says as much. Point is the sum of the Hundred might make up the supreme God, but as they stand, fractured into many different identities, it is a very fractious pantheon arbitrated by a Damnation machine that does more harm than good.
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Damnation is the big G slowly becoming Erratic?
All he can recall is trauma...
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...
You have to account for how much memories constitute your sense of self.
I think, regardless of my Nerdanel about the Dunyain being complicit, the Erratic is a new entity in the shell of the old Nonmen. Their new continuity is this "I" who is always becoming, who has no concrete sense of that self, except the one that is built from trauma. It's argued that trauma forms the most long-lasting, but more importantly, immediate memories. Only by this can they build a small sense of self, never complete, covered with flesh, blood, and simulacra that cast shadows of memories of who they once were.... always recovering, becoming, their former self.
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Madness, I agree--I wonder if Serwe could be at all mixed up with Yatwer. Goddess of giving and the one person who gave everything she had to Kellhus. She is innocent/ignorant--the royal road for Yatwerians!
A little part of me is hoping that Serwe is the reason for Kellhus' 'madness'. Hanging on the Circumfix, Kellhus' brain reorients to do anything, even kill the world, to get Serwe back. I would suspect that this is Moenghus' doing, that old Moe needed Kell to break down in such a way to achieve Moe's greater end. It would get interesting if Kellhus has also seen this and has prepared some awesome sweet means of subverting his dad's plan. :P
Since Earwa is all about the metaphysical, maybe Serwe's devotion to Kellhus, her conviction that lil Moenghus is Kellhus' kid, and Kellhus extra special seed does something to little Moe while he's in the womb? Little Moe ends up being the metaphysical Last Scion?
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Serwe sees the halos both on Kellhus and the skin-spy Kellhus--perhaps we can infer that the halos are created by the watcher, cast onto the watched so to speak. Kellhus convinces Serwe he is divine and her belief is so poweful it begins to change him into divinity, an ascension that is ongoing through WLW. It might be that Kellhus is angling to produce a certain kind of belief at a very high level through: if the No-God returns, everyone will know that Kellhus was telling the truth about the coming doom.
Paradoxically, failing to prevent the No-God (and maybe getting killed in the process) might raise him to godhood. Would he have a blindspot for Mog? Or would he be the one god to reveal Mog to the others. Divine Kellhus leads Yatwer, Akkeagne, and Gilgaol to save the world!
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Good ideas all. I think Kellhus might himself have realized this at some point ( his assertion that he is "more" than Dunyain ), but it was not initially his goal. Serwe sees instrumental in Kellhus' divinity, dying for the belief, and convincing the Holy War, which in turn convinced him. In Earwa, lies are truth if believed by enough people.
Not sure if anyone can ascend, but certainly Kellhus has that unique chance if it is at all possible.
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The encounter between Serwe and the Kidruhil that she stabs--it seems strange to me. US edition page 410, TDTCB. It almost seems like the soldier is seeing divinity in her before Cnaiur arrives.
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Quote the section :P
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When Kellhus first meets Serwe, the narration and pov stuff reminds me of what's going on in the Circumfix scene. TDTCB, p 383
Kellhus watched while the Scylvendi took her again. With her whimpers, her suffocated cries, it seemed the ground beneath slowly spun, as though stars had stopped their cycle and the earth had begun to wheel instead. There was something . . . something here, he could sense. Something outraged.
From what darkness had this come?
Something is happening to me, Father.
Serwe + wheeling sky + outrage + something is happening to me father = ?
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P.S. Sorry Wilshire! Finally came back to quote the passage you asked for before. In this bit a Nansur soldier is intending to rape Serwe, but he seems curious affected when he starts to undress her. TDTCB, p 410
With thoughtless economy, the older man bared hs dagger clenched her woollen shift, and slit it open from nect to belly. Avoiding her eyes, he used the point to draw aside the cloth, revealing her right breast.
"My," he said, exhaling a thick breath. He reeked of onions, rotten teeth, and bitter wine. At last he met her terrified gaze. He raised a hand to her cheek. The nail of his thumb was bruised purple.
"Leave me alone," she whispered, her voice pinched by burning eyes and trembling lips. The importent demand of a child tormented by other children.
"Shush," he said softly. He gently pressed her to her knees.
"Don't be mean to me," she murmured through tears.
"Never," he said, his voice stricken, as though with reverence.
With a creak of leather, he fell to one knee and buried his dagger in the forest floor. He was breathing heavily. "Sweet Sejenus," he hissed. He looked terrified.
She flinched from the shaking hand he slid beneath her breast. The first sobs wracked her.
That's when Cnaiur shows up
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First scene, yes it seems something odd is happening, within kellhus if nothing else.
As for the next, the only line that stands out might be "he said, his voice stricken, as though with reverence", but I dont interpret that the same way you do. Just a horny guy about to lay the hottest woman he has ever seen.
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First scene, yes it seems something odd is happening, within kellhus if nothing else.
As for the next, the only line that stands out might be "he said, his voice stricken, as though with reverence", but I dont interpret that the same way you do. Just a horny guy about to lay the hottest woman he has ever seen.
I see you fell for it, thinking what you're meant to think and not putting together the puzzle pieces as a result. His reaction makes no sense within the context of the scene, but if you presume for him that the ground wheeled as it did for kellhus then it suggests more. Akka was pretty disoriented by her fucking him as well...
Perhaps we are all fucking wrong. kellhus became divine because he became serwes consort and or protector servant. His divinity ended with her heart and he leveraged her divinity to enable that miracle.
It never had anything to do with kellhus, because it was serwe.
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Yeah sure, I'm not debating the whole Serwe-is-everything bit. I just dont see how this scene is part of it.
Soldier didnt do any swirling, and he went to a knee so he could line up their genitals (he put her on her knees already). I've never gone about raping anyone, or seen or studied it, but it seems like he's just an excited dude getting laid. This guy is a peasent, probably only ever been with old whores with few teeth and sagging... everything. A breathless, giddy, and disorienting encounter is reasonable.
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First scene, yes it seems something odd is happening, within kellhus if nothing else.
As for the next, the only line that stands out might be "he said, his voice stricken, as though with reverence", but I dont interpret that the same way you do. Just a horny guy about to lay the hottest woman he has ever seen.
I see you fell for it, thinking what you're meant to think and not putting together the puzzle pieces as a result. His reaction makes no sense within the context of the scene, but if you presume for him that the ground wheeled as it did for kellhus then it suggests more. Akka was pretty disoriented by her fucking him as well...
Perhaps we are all fucking wrong. kellhus became divine because he became serwes consort and or protector servant. His divinity ended with her heart and he leveraged her divinity to enable that miracle.
It never had anything to do with kellhus, because it was serwe.
that is awesome! it's like Serwe is the Latter Latter Prophet! perhaps the scripture of the future will only refer to Kellhus as "Serwe's Consort"
if it's true that Serwe believes so hard that it bends reality, maybe we will see her storm from the heavens to save Kellhus! maybe Kellhus uses the Daimos to open a door for her, right at the worst topoi, the thinnest boundary--Golgotterath
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I really like the idea Locke has put forth. That Serwe is a template, so to say, so we can understand why Cnaüir is so integral to Moe's scene in Kyudea. Reallly, I'm posting this so Locke will come and expand on this. Wh I doesn't love a Locke theory post?
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There is plenty around the forums about Serwe being the all-thing. I suspect we won't get much in the way of an answer until TUC or maybe TGO if we are lucky.
One can always hope locke will post again, but his attention is fleeting ;). Here's to hoping, MSJ.
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I think serwe as a template / Rosetta Stone to interpret cnaiur and moenghus relationship is probably a better explanation for bakers comments re serwe than any of my crackpots that serwe is the messiah/holy/chosen one etc. support of this is that cnaiur constantly thinks of serwe as a reflection of his younger self.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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Well, what is Serwe's "power" is as the prototypical believer. In fact, so typical that she is one of the most powerful believers ever. In Earwa, this actually translates to something of real power. The "miracle" of the Circumfix is the transference to Kellhus of her power, that is, the belief-the-can-change-the-world.
I doubt if this is a new idea though and is possibly a derail of what you guys were talking about.
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during this reread i noticed Cnaiirs fetish for Norsirai women. His most loved wife was half Norsirai and i think this comes from Moe's manipulation of Cnaiir, sexual or not cnaiir loves the pale skin and blonde hair. Kellhus must of seen this and took Serwe and gave her what cnaiir could never give her, happiness and the feeling that you are greater then you appear.
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Well, what is Serwe's "power" is as the prototypical believer. In fact, so typical that she is one of the most powerful believers ever. In Earwa, this actually translates to something of real power. The "miracle" of the Circumfix is the transference to Kellhus of her power, that is, the belief-the-can-change-the-world.
I doubt if this is a new idea though and is possibly a derail of what you guys were talking about.
This. I also think it has something to do with the analogy that one lamb is worth ten bulls (paraphrasing). Serwe believed outright that Kellhus was (first) her own personal savior from Cnaiur, then (second) everyone's savior through his manipulations, etc. So, Serwe being the seed of absolute belief in Kel's 'ascendancy', and Kel's subsequent knowing sacrifice of her through the circumfixion, raised the game. He'd sacrificed a 'lamb' to forward his goals. Do we know if anyone besides Serwe saw Kel's halos before the circumfixion? Or only after? I don't remember.
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Conphas' main general see them after Kellhus kills the 3 assassins. From the Generals POV it's says he places a haloed hand on his shoulder. He believe Kellhus is a true prophet
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Conphas' main general see them after Kellhus kills the 3 assassins. From the Generals POV it's says he places a haloed hand on his shoulder. He believe Kellhus is a true prophet
Is it described as a haloed hand, or hallowed? Functionally similar in meaning, but I remember the passage as hallowed, which implies only that he thinks it holy but not specifically that it has halos.
Could be I just improperly read/remember it that way since hallowed made more sense at the time of my reading.
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Do we know if anyone besides Serwe saw Kel's halos before the circumfixion? Or only after? I don't remember.
Esme does, that I'm sure of. And, I believe there are others also. I believe Geoffrobro is right, Martemus does see the haloes then.
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I want to say people started seeing them after he had been doing his nightly sermons.
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I think your right Wilshire. Here is the text related to Martemus at Anwurat.
The Warrior-Prophet smiled, and his eyes glittered with something fierce and unconquerable. “Conviction, General Martemus …” He gripped his shoulder with a haloed hand. “War is conviction.
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There was a passage in TTT that I thought explained a lot of what is going on with the characters in this book but especially Serwe:
One night during the infancy of the Holy War—and for reasons Cnaiür could no longer recall—the sorcerer had taken a crude parchment map of the Three Seas and pressed it flat over a copper laver filled with water. He had poked holes of varying sizes throughout the parchment, and when he held his oil lantern high to complement the firelight, little beads of water glinted across the tanned landscape. Each man, he explained, was a kind of hole in existence, a point where the Outside penetrated the world. He tapped one of the beads with his finger. It broke, staining the surrounding parchment. When the trials of the world broke men, he explained, the Outside leaked into the world.
This, he had said, was madness.
...
The bead had been broken—there could be no doubt of that. According to the sorcerer, madness all came down to the question of origins. If the divine possessed him, he would be some kind of visionary or prophet. If the demonic …
The sorcerer’s demonstration seemed indisputable. It accorded with his nagging intuitions. It explained, among other things, the strange affinities between madness and insight—why the soothsayers of one age could be the bedlamites of another. The problem, of course, was the Dûnyain.
He contradicted all of it.
So this is why Achamian is having the distorted dreams, Cnaiur is near unkillable, Saubon fought off the Coyauri single-handedly at Mengedda, and Kellhus begins hearing voices and seeing halos after the Circumfixion.
The general impression I got on the reread was that Serwe's captivity with Cnaiur was the straw that broke the camels back - the reason she could be so deluded as to think her child is Kellhus' is because she has actually gone insane.
Dread.
Tyrannizing her days. Stalking her sleep. Dread that made her thoughts skitter, flit from terror to terror, that made her bowels quail, her hands perpetually shake, her face utterly slack for fear that one crimped muscle might cause the whole to collapse.
...
None of this is happening, she thought. No one suffered like this. Not really.
She feared she might vomit for dread.
There's also a passage illustrating how all of this had built up to this collapse:
Her father, pulling her half-naked from her blankets, thrusting her into the callous arms of a stranger. “You belong to these men now, Serwë. May our Gods watch over you.”
Peristus, looking up from his scrolls, frowning with amused incredulity. “Perhaps, Serwë, you’ve forgotten what you are. Give me your hand, child.”The Gaunum idols, leering at her with faces of stone. Sneering silence.
Panteruth, wiping her spit from his face, drawing his knife. “The track you follow is narrow, bitch, and you know it not . . . I will show you.”
Cnaiür, clenching her wrists tighter than any manacles. “Mend yourself to my will, girl. Utterly. I will tolerate no remainder. I will stamp out all that does not submit.”
So it would seem Serwe's other-worldliness stems from her mental state, that the awe others felt around her is legitimate. Regarding the "origins" as Cnaiur put it, whether she was possessed by the divine or demonic, I would say divine, as she finally began to mean something as she always wished, rising to a prominent place, desired by others, and possibly helping Kellhus' shrial knights prophecy come true at Mengedda. This puts into perspective why, after Kellhus sacrifices her, he shortly thereafter has visions of the No-God, suggesting the origins of his possession are demonic.
Of course, as Cnaiur notes, Kellhus' mastery of men contradicts the possibility of free will and meaning in Earwa. Perhaps the way these individuals seem different to others is just the spark of madness in their eye or the witness' own delusion. But if there is some system of the Outside leaking in, it seems this would explain it.
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Well, I think you are on to something, in the sense that some kind of madness afflicts nearly everyone in the series.
Serwe is most certainly delusional, but intentionally so, she has essentially deluded herself, because it's what she needs, psychologically. She can't accept the abuse, the meaninglessness of what she is to Cnaiur and the senselessness of what the world has done to her, so she latches on to Kellhus as the font of meaning. New meaning, a new beginning, viramsata through and through.
Not that I don't believe that the Outside does leak in, from time to time. I think Kellhus is effected by it. I think Akka is too. Less so for Cnaiur, because his madness is different to me. More world-born, Cnaiur and Serwe's brand of "madness" is born of the world's cruelty and their attempts to overcome that with what little they have. Kellhus believes he guides, but is really guided and Akka is guided, but not to where he thinks he is.
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Well, what is Serwe's "power" is as the prototypical believer. In fact, so typical that she is one of the most powerful believers ever. In Earwa, this actually translates to something of real power. The "miracle" of the Circumfix is the transference to Kellhus of her power, that is, the belief-the-can-change-the-world.
I doubt if this is a new idea though and is possibly a derail of what you guys were talking about.
H, I want to like this idea, but I can't shake the part about her getting kilt... Her 'power' is not, um, effective in terms of gratifying her desire not to bleed all over the place, no?
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Well, what is Serwe's "power" is as the prototypical believer. In fact, so typical that she is one of the most powerful believers ever. In Earwa, this actually translates to something of real power. The "miracle" of the Circumfix is the transference to Kellhus of her power, that is, the belief-the-can-change-the-world.
I doubt if this is a new idea though and is possibly a derail of what you guys were talking about.
H, I want to like this idea, but I can't shake the part about her getting kilt... Her 'power' is not, um, effective in terms of gratifying her desire not to bleed all over the place, no?
Well, proof is in the pudding, huh? Haha, indeed, any "power" she has most certainly was not enough to save her. But that doesn't mean she doesn't posses some kind of power. For example, Kellhus has power and yet can never heal anyone. Limited power is still power though.