The heart

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« on: April 19, 2013, 02:45:22 pm »
Quote from: Fëanor
What do you think about the trick of the heart? When Kellhus, almost dying, is cut free from the circumfix and reaches to his heart and shows it to the multitude, with haloed hands... (that too, what with those haloes?)

I didn´t find any answer in the subsequent books. Any of you know something, from another source maybe?

Conjectures, Nerdanels?

To me it would be very disappointing if they turn out to be "miracles". No miracles allowed in SF or fantasy (in good fantasy, I mean). I believe that Kellhus is indeed manipulating people with that idea, of being some God amongst men (or THE God), and that's the point of these tricks, plainfully... but we know better.

Do we?

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« Reply #1 on: April 19, 2013, 02:45:30 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
I think the favored theory is that Kellhus reached into his chest, but his hand/arm went into the outside rather than into his chest, it then came back inward inside of Serwe's chest and grabbed her heart, then he withdrew his hand through the hole, looking all the world like he'd just pulled out his own heart.  He was able to do this through some outside soul shenanigans that I don't metaphysically much understand and it was enabled by Serwe's sacrifice/attachment/-soul-close-to-his-outside or some such. 

or it was just sleight of hand and he already had her heart secreted on his person and he just pulled off an illusion.

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« Reply #2 on: April 19, 2013, 02:45:37 pm »
Quote from: Madness
I think it's interesting that you suggest miracles "aren't allowed" in SFF, Feanor.

I remember Bakker wrote on Three-Seas once that there was a scene cut between Cnaiur and Kellhus - he felt the ambiguity we wrestle with concerning Kellhus' Circumfixion and Serwa's Heart reflected the lack of this other scene.

But bar sleight of hand, I think lockesnow has the current consensus down, something I've only gotten on board with in the past two years. It's really only since WLW that I ever really considered the agency, effects, and metaphysics of the Outside in the Second Apocalypse.

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« Reply #3 on: April 19, 2013, 02:45:45 pm »
Quote from: Fëanor
Hm, yeah, the Outside again. TAE comes heavy with that. I say I am 50/50 with each one (that, and the quick hand, haha).

The haloes? Baskerville trick?

About the "not allowed"... its a way of saying that Fantasy and SF are miracles themselves... so why curling the curl? If the autor subcreates a world/universe in which rules are different, nature is different, even Gods (I prefer books with no God intervention, though some deitys may be "allowed"... not Homer like (acting, fighting in the battlefield and conspiring with this or that party) but Tolkien (watching... and eventually breaking half the world)) anyway, I was saying, if they have this miraculous stage... they don't need miracles within. Forgive my english again, it's difficult to talk these stuff and make it understandable.

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« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2013, 02:45:56 pm »
Quote from: Madness
You're doing fine, Feanor, don't worry about it. The beauty of communication... hell, I'd love to see any of us English speakers try this in Spanish ;).

I get the distinctions and, honestly, I feel like Bakker will author Gods & Miracles somewhere between Homer and Tolkien - he has said both are heavy precursors.

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« Reply #5 on: April 19, 2013, 02:46:08 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Gah, there was this bit - not sure where I read it, where Scott actually said he had a fair bit more for that passage, but it got cut. I wish I could find it for you...

Perhaps along with the halo's (that Serwe see's first), the heart is like that. It's possibly the very moment he goes mad (and we cease getting any POV writing from him).

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« Reply #6 on: April 19, 2013, 02:46:13 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
Is there such thing as a madman when everyone is insane? The sane become mad, and the mad sane. Perspective.

Anyway, I'd say Callan, that there is a possibility there, except that not everyone would have seen the heart if it was an 'illusion' similar to the halos that eventually everyone comes to see. At least not at this point when so many still didnt believe.

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« Reply #7 on: April 19, 2013, 02:46:20 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
The heart is a moment that is more than a bit like Leto II taking on the sandworm symbiosis, isn't it?

regarding miracles.  Bakker is playing with that expectation Feanor.  Fantasy is inherently a secondary world where the old understandings or laws-of-the-world (pre-science) hold sway.  We should see more miracles in fantasy worlds.  However it's an interesting paradox and contradiction that despite having an inherently magical world, these worlds tend to be portrayed with a realist/scientific bent that often disproves (to the non-diagetic reader) miracles.  Bakker is turning this comfortable genre convention on its head.  The convention where the reader is comforted by having a meaningful world (rather than the modern disenchanted/explained world science gives us) and is comforted because the world is explained and presumed to operate on the same principles that the reader's modern world operates on; if the world were full of meaningful miracles, gods, saints, demons and other supernatural agencies and events the reader would be constantly challenged by the unreality and would not be comfortable--indeed, there are many fans of this series who were FURIOUS when the implicit was made explicit in the Judging Eye: that the world was not backgrounded by the comfortable, known world of Earth they had assumed, rather the world was Other, and was the logical continuation of the fantasy Earwa backgrounded by the magical, supernatural and the unknown.

It's very unsettling and VERY purposeful.  Oh howl they did howl.

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« Reply #8 on: April 19, 2013, 02:46:28 pm »
Quote from: Madness
I'm still howling ;).

Interesting thought that, lockesnow. If Wilshire's finally done Heretics, perhaps, its time for us to congregate in his PON vs. Dune thread.

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« Reply #9 on: April 19, 2013, 02:46:46 pm »
Quote from: Fëanor
Yeah, lockesnow that's the point. One thing is what we call miracles from this world and its rules and science. Fantasy transcend those rules, so it's "miraculous", ok; but gives us some amount of explanations (not everything, mistery must be dosed), and it's not merely about being comfortable; it's a game in which the author can do almost everything, but deus ex machina or plainly unexplicable things tend to let us down, because it's like foul play. So, the miracles I don't want to see in this books are not the ones I mentioned (those in relation to our world, science), but those like when "something is this way" with no possible explanation, and I don't need that explanation right now... It's enough if we can conjecture different possibilities, but not "just because". Magic, for example. If Kellhus did magic and pulled his heart out... that's curling the curl, because we already are in a wolrd in which magic exists with certain rules (anagogic, pushke, daimotic, gnostic, inchoroi and quya stuff). The theory Madness produced about his hand entering the outside and reaching Serwë's heart for any reason, it's ok to me. Supervelocity hand, too. But I'm not ok if it's like "just because". I'm struggling with the language and don't seem to succeed...
EDIT: I don´t mean Madness's hand, but Kellhus's.

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« Reply #10 on: April 19, 2013, 02:46:50 pm »
Quote from: Fëanor
Quote from: lockesnow
there are many fans of this series who were FURIOUS when the implicit was made explicit in the Judging Eye: that the world was not backgrounded by the comfortable, known world of Earth they had assumed, rather the world was Other, and was the logical continuation of the fantasy Earwa backgrounded by the magical, supernatural and the unknown.
This doesn't apply to me, I'm fine whit Earwa (or he world in which Earwa, Eanna and who knows what exists), and I'm ok with some deitys milling around in this subcreated world. But still would bother me a miracle "out of that universe", something anomalous that happens "just because". Like Tom Bombadil, haha.

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« Reply #11 on: April 19, 2013, 02:46:58 pm »
Quote from: Madness
Credit to that one can't go to me, Feanor. Someone in the ethereal One-Thread Famine times at Westeros came up with that bit. I just have a memory for fiction ;).

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« Reply #12 on: April 19, 2013, 02:47:10 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote
If Kellhus did magic and pulled his heart out... that's curling the curl, because we already are in a wolrd in which magic exists with certain rules (anagogic, pushke, daimotic, gnostic, inchoroi and quya stuff).

That reminds me of the bit where Cnaiur fights Kellhus on the steep and to Kellhus it seems as if Cnaiur hand passes through Kellhus's sword arm.

That's what pushke is - utter passion. Blind rage! Except the pushke is teachable - so even though it falls off the damnation radar for being passion based, it's still closer to it's intellectual brethren than a raw outburst of it is (if you'll take the Cnaiur example of being some kinda magic outburst).

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« Reply #13 on: April 19, 2013, 02:47:17 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Fëanor
Quote from: lockesnow
there are many fans of this series who were FURIOUS when the implicit was made explicit in the Judging Eye: that the world was not backgrounded by the comfortable, known world of Earth they had assumed, rather the world was Other, and was the logical continuation of the fantasy Earwa backgrounded by the magical, supernatural and the unknown.
This doesn't apply to me, I'm fine whit Earwa (or he world in which Earwa, Eanna and who knows what exists), and I'm ok with some deitys milling around in this subcreated world. But still would bother me a miracle "out of that universe", something anomalous that happens "just because". Like Tom Bombadil, haha.

There's a couple problems with your position:

One: Earwa is explicitly an enchanted world, we live in an explicitly disenchanted world, you seem to want a disenchanted experience within an enchanted world, something the author has repeatedly said he is deliberately avoiding. 

Two: A 'just because' anomalous miracle is impossible in an enchanted world.  The very conception of "just because" is completely rooted in a modernist disenchanted perspective, if you regard anything miraculous in-world as happening 'just because' your disenchanted Earth perspective is blinding you to the fact that in-world there is always an explanation that the miraculous has motive and the miraculous is not a mis-interpreted coincidence.

To make this a bit clearer:  In our past the world was perceived to be inherently enchanted, before science disenchanted the world, in a culture like ancient Greece, if someone was struck by lightning it was because Zeus was angry with them and they probably deserved it; in our disenchanted world if someone was struck by lightning it was just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time it has nothing to do with the victims misdeeds or lack of good deeds it has nothing to do with dieties, it's just because of a scientific fact of how lightning happens, there's no motive behind the lightning.

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« Reply #14 on: April 19, 2013, 02:47:26 pm »
Quote from: Fëanor
Argh, I know the translation is killing me! Is the third time I try to explain mi position and I read you and I agree but I cannot make myself clear.

Your "One": I don't want a disenchanted expirience within an enchanted world! I just want this enchanted world to be consistent itself, in a way of saying -I'm not "scientificist" (there is such a word in spanish; can't find it in english, though; it's not "scientist", it's "someone who thinks scientific methods must extend to all realms of intellectual and moral life, without exception")-; I'm just talking about that "intellectual challenge" Bakker talks about regarding fantasy readers; IOW, I want all wonder imaginable, yes (prefer not deitys, but can be), but don't want the author introducing anomalys "just because", which leads to...

"Two": So we all agree, no "just because" events in enchanted world. That's what I am talking about. That's why I asked about conjectures to explain the heart trick. And now I notice that there was no need to specify (EDIT, "express", not "specify") my fear, 'cause you agree (your "Two" says exactly what I think).

I mean... obviously I understand all that stuff with the lighting and the greeks trying to find out meaning... Sorry if make you explain that.

EDIT AGAIN: And so my mistake was calling those anomalys "miracles". Maybe that is so because, to me, the word "miracle" inevitably evoke discussions with religious people who pray and actually expect miracles to happen (in our very world, yes). Sorry.