Two thoughts, the first kinda trivial: what if the High God's god was the one who actually killed the Father of Horses, and the Ranyhyn just mistakenly thought its spawn was said killer? I feel like the way the water in the mountain attacked was more like "teeth" or "fangs" than the way the lurker attacks.
The second thought is an explanation for where SRD, directly or indirectly, got his Covenant-and-the-Despiser-as-one plot from. First, consider this: not only is evil in Covenant represented as an individual person, but this person is a fallen god.
In his Answer to Job, Carl Jung depicts the Christian God as an "antinomy," a paradox balanced on top of itself--a being at once absolutely good and, as the sovereign of all possible worlds, absolutely evil as well. And to reconcile Himself to Himself, He Incarnates in sinful humanity (or, more precisely, redeemed sinful humanity)--He does so to make up for the sin He inflicted on us in ancient days. This deliverance is partly mediated by the assumption into heaven of a woman representative of love and wisdom--Mary. (Jung conjectured that Catholic society had developed to the point where Catholic archetypes were proceeding according to the Gnostic prophetic myth of Sophia's freedom, and that this procession inspired the pope of the time to dogmatically assume Mary's assumption.)
The Last Dark, then, is in a way the outcome of the fantasy genre. For Jung, via Tolkien, can be seen as having helped paved the way for this genre's literary ascension upon the Earth. That is, Jung, inasmuch as he believed in the dark God and sought His purification, assisted in giving humanity a "weapon" to fight the dark God's darkness with: the light of the imagination. (A light of meaning in the darkness of mere being, to quote Jung through Watchmen.) Now that we have this story that perhaps best of all yet written expresses the truth of divine evil, now that we can confront this truth more easily, we can better confront the Despiser within not only ourselves as individuals, but in its radically evil sociocultural/political form.
The dark God
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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lurch
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Along the comparable line of thought..howabout..the very way we " think" as a Dark God. ? Our habit of being logical puts humans in a perpetual polarized existence of True False, Yes No, Left Right, Black White, Right Wrong etc etc. Binary existence is great for building a robot but humans are so much much more than a yes no polarized existence. Our humanity is not in binary code. And because of that, We, humans, become conflicted and divided by the very system of thinking and perceiving we are taught to use. Using Logic makes us predictable. Once a person is predictable,,the person is easily Manipulated...manipulated to...go to war..or..whatever cause or purpose that benefits The Manipulators. Dark God indeed; our habitual way of thinking is our own worst enemy.
No,,before any one puts words in my mouth and misconstrues the message..I'm saying if you want to build a skyscraper or bridge, use logic. If you want to go to Mars, use logic..If you want to build a robot, use logic. But if you want to build a Human Being, logic will be of poor service. We are much more than a True False truth table.
So yes,,any Creative work is a weapon against The Dark God. Its not just Fantasy writing. Any unique creative work is...therapy against the divisive manipulations of our " learned" habitual way to survive living in society.The Surrealists believed that every individual had a Talent,,that was for the individual to discover and exercise via the Imagination; Jung's inner light as a weapon all of us are armed with.
As a Divine Evil...well in the sense of...how can you get to grey, without black and white?...How can you rise above the Mundane,,if there is no Mundane? or as Donaldson puts it...its a matter of using our weaknesses to make us stronger. ..Our " Dark God" as a spring board to the enlightened heights..Our logic and reason not as our humanity,,,but only as a " tool" to get us to our Humanity....
No,,before any one puts words in my mouth and misconstrues the message..I'm saying if you want to build a skyscraper or bridge, use logic. If you want to go to Mars, use logic..If you want to build a robot, use logic. But if you want to build a Human Being, logic will be of poor service. We are much more than a True False truth table.
So yes,,any Creative work is a weapon against The Dark God. Its not just Fantasy writing. Any unique creative work is...therapy against the divisive manipulations of our " learned" habitual way to survive living in society.The Surrealists believed that every individual had a Talent,,that was for the individual to discover and exercise via the Imagination; Jung's inner light as a weapon all of us are armed with.
As a Divine Evil...well in the sense of...how can you get to grey, without black and white?...How can you rise above the Mundane,,if there is no Mundane? or as Donaldson puts it...its a matter of using our weaknesses to make us stronger. ..Our " Dark God" as a spring board to the enlightened heights..Our logic and reason not as our humanity,,,but only as a " tool" to get us to our Humanity....
If she withdrew from exaltation, she would be forced to think- And every thought led to fear and contradictions; to dilemmas for which she was unprepared.
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Hashi Lebwohl
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We may either agree with this assessment or we may disagree with it; those are our only two options.lurch wrote:Along the comparable line of thought..howabout..the very way we " think" as a Dark God. ? Our habit of being logical puts humans in a perpetual polarized existence of True False, Yes No, Left Right, Black White, Right Wrong etc etc. Binary existence is great for building a robot but humans are so much much more than a yes no polarized existence. Our humanity is not in binary code. And because of that, We, humans, become conflicted and divided by the very system of thinking and perceiving we are taught to use. Using Logic makes us predictable. Once a person is predictable,,the person is easily Manipulated...manipulated to...go to war..or..whatever cause or purpose that benefits The Manipulators. Dark God indeed; our habitual way of thinking is our own worst enemy.
No,,before any one puts words in my mouth and misconstrues the message..I'm saying if you want to build a skyscraper or bridge, use logic. If you want to go to Mars, use logic..If you want to build a robot, use logic. But if you want to build a Human Being, logic will be of poor service. We are much more than a True False truth table.
Yes, I am being bad this morning.
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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Now the thing is, lurch, you are very right in a sense, and I will explain how so, while defending what might strike you as a limited point of view on the question of logic's constitutional role in our authentic human nature.
Logic, if we think only in general of how to infer conclusions from premises in a precise fashion, is mostly what you say it is, lurch, since it proceeds (though some disagree, with plausible justice) from a principle of non-contradiction. Two propositions, assertions, assertoric functions, whatever, cannot be true or a matter of fact if they conflict on a sentential level. "X is y," and, "X is not y," cannot be the truth in the same context. It is fairly clear that judgments based on such a simple process must, if our exclusive intellectual devoir, render us the simpletons you might be tempted to call us, we who worship logic. (I will confess that I do.)
Yet there is more to this--the great Mystery, you'd probably call it, only also clear to us, and this is the stranger thing. It is not that the great abyss, which seems as if it should be unknowable by us, is as such unknown. It is rather that, despite this incredible discursive and intuitive gulf between ourselves and the heart of reality, we somehow can know it.
That's one way to look at your Mystery. To put it another way, perhaps with the same underlying meaning, is to note what I said about looking at logic as just assertoric inference. But there's more to it. You are not liable to be aware of this, but there is, as it goes, something known as erotetic logic, the study of the logical relations between questions and answers (logical, that is, at the sentential level again, in the sentential sense).
Now it is axiomatic that the structure of the concept of a question implies the structure of the concept of an answer. Erotetic functions imply, conceptually, assertoric ones. But whence this implication? For it is not that, when we ask a question, all we do is switch out the "?" at the end with a "." and we know what we sought to know for the sake of our inquiry. No, it doesn't work quite like that whatsoever. Rather, to end my little essay, the purest abstract relation between questions and answers, between the Mystery and the Truth, resembles the notion of creation ex nihilo--if it is not the essence of the act of genesis itself.
Logic, if we think only in general of how to infer conclusions from premises in a precise fashion, is mostly what you say it is, lurch, since it proceeds (though some disagree, with plausible justice) from a principle of non-contradiction. Two propositions, assertions, assertoric functions, whatever, cannot be true or a matter of fact if they conflict on a sentential level. "X is y," and, "X is not y," cannot be the truth in the same context. It is fairly clear that judgments based on such a simple process must, if our exclusive intellectual devoir, render us the simpletons you might be tempted to call us, we who worship logic. (I will confess that I do.)
Yet there is more to this--the great Mystery, you'd probably call it, only also clear to us, and this is the stranger thing. It is not that the great abyss, which seems as if it should be unknowable by us, is as such unknown. It is rather that, despite this incredible discursive and intuitive gulf between ourselves and the heart of reality, we somehow can know it.
That's one way to look at your Mystery. To put it another way, perhaps with the same underlying meaning, is to note what I said about looking at logic as just assertoric inference. But there's more to it. You are not liable to be aware of this, but there is, as it goes, something known as erotetic logic, the study of the logical relations between questions and answers (logical, that is, at the sentential level again, in the sentential sense).
Now it is axiomatic that the structure of the concept of a question implies the structure of the concept of an answer. Erotetic functions imply, conceptually, assertoric ones. But whence this implication? For it is not that, when we ask a question, all we do is switch out the "?" at the end with a "." and we know what we sought to know for the sake of our inquiry. No, it doesn't work quite like that whatsoever. Rather, to end my little essay, the purest abstract relation between questions and answers, between the Mystery and the Truth, resembles the notion of creation ex nihilo--if it is not the essence of the act of genesis itself.
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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I also would like to add that I feel there is something distinctive about fantasy literature that ought to serve a widespread role in our struggle (literal or metaphorical) with the evil God. For it is precisely in this genre alone that such a struggle is ever literally represented. And I know that reading about Covenant and Co. walking for leagues through rain upon rain inspired me more than perhaps any other reading to put up with walking in the rain patiently. (That's a small example of the self-discipline I expect from myself and have as such expected since I first read the Covenant series.)
It's not so surprising, I think, that we have this connection not only between Tolkien and Jung but Jung and C. S. Lewis (via Tolkien). For which author's work served as the prime inspiration for both the Covenant series and LOST, dear lurch? Lewis'. So it's as if The Last Dark was mystically preordained by the Jung-Tolkien-Lewis trinity. LOST is the only work of fiction that I had a reaction to like I did when I first read Lord Foul's Bane, I think. I felt somewhere inside me the mimetic or archetypal parallels that might unite them. And then they turned out to be united...
More to the point, the most extensive efforts of imagination are required by the most advanced works of fantasy (or certain samples of science) fiction. So the most refinement of our inner mental power must come by representing to ourselves fantasy/extreme science fiction storylines in a concrete way. And so far as our inner mental power is our true "weapon" against our (inner?) dark God, well...
It's not so surprising, I think, that we have this connection not only between Tolkien and Jung but Jung and C. S. Lewis (via Tolkien). For which author's work served as the prime inspiration for both the Covenant series and LOST, dear lurch? Lewis'. So it's as if The Last Dark was mystically preordained by the Jung-Tolkien-Lewis trinity. LOST is the only work of fiction that I had a reaction to like I did when I first read Lord Foul's Bane, I think. I felt somewhere inside me the mimetic or archetypal parallels that might unite them. And then they turned out to be united...
More to the point, the most extensive efforts of imagination are required by the most advanced works of fantasy (or certain samples of science) fiction. So the most refinement of our inner mental power must come by representing to ourselves fantasy/extreme science fiction storylines in a concrete way. And so far as our inner mental power is our true "weapon" against our (inner?) dark God, well...
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lurch
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No.. I disagree, Its my opinion, the Source material, the prime inspiration for both LOST and TLD,,is clearly, Andre Breton's " Nadja",,along with other explorations of the Surreal by the author such as , Magnetic Field Lines, Humor Noir etc....Lost was all about " tactile"..feelings..The production made the viewer " feel". They opened us up , pulled out our guts , tied them in a knot and swung us over their heads to get us to feel,,and definitely " logic" took a back seat in a story about folks surviving a plane coming apart at 30k ft because of electro magnetic pulses hitting it. Yea Right.Again, TCoTC starts off with a nasty deed executed by TC, because he didn't believe what he was feeling,,didn't believe what he was feeling had any consequence...and TCoTC ends in reality that, the Feelings, are the only things that are real.
We are dealing with products for mass consumption, so seems to me things erotetic is non sequitor to the work. The author mentions quite a few other authors and their works, no doubt. But to say any one is the Prime Inspiration does a disservice to the author and his creativity and creation. Surrealism isn't a dead end.Its not a thing, a piece of work,,an answer. No, it is and must always be The Question.. Its a state of mind,,and infinite in that...out of nothing indeed.. So while being a way of seeing and mentally processing, it isn't THE way. What a Surrealist creates is that person's creation, and that creation serves as an example of the Surreal process, but never says this is the answer..hence your open ended finale to LOST and.....The Last Dark.."Who Am I", can only be answered by the individual and that person's answer, for the moment, isn't anybody else's answer.
Mystery is explorable, What we discover in that exploration may be totally inexplicable, totally unexpected and unrelated, thus logic and its obvious or not associations become non sequitor. Matter of fact applying any expectation to Mystery asserts you already have an answer in mind or possibilities lined up, so when you do that you really aren't dealing with a Mystery. Look at nuclear physics. Man explored it. Man discovered Quantum realities. Logic no longer applies. So we invent new ways to explain it. I can imagine it must of been similar times for Aristotle. Exciting, but still man made.
I do not agree one can apply the methods of Logic , ancient or modern, to ones imagination. Imagination is free of constructs and even organization. Please tell me of the Logic of a dream and especially a nightmare. What we discover in Our Imagination and create from it ,defines us as unique individuals, Who We Are.
Constitutional role..interesting...Logic was invented by man. Before the Greeks bubbled up this process of predictability the rest of the world was using variations of intuition, osmosis thru experience, "feeling" and much of that survives to today in the Middle and Far East. So,,be very careful in the assignment of Human Nature..Logic was invented by man.
And finally..are you sayin a musician, a poet, heck, even a architect can't do work in Fantasy?..Concrete way..?? you really need to read some Good Surrealism,,Recommendations have already been posted here recently.
We are dealing with products for mass consumption, so seems to me things erotetic is non sequitor to the work. The author mentions quite a few other authors and their works, no doubt. But to say any one is the Prime Inspiration does a disservice to the author and his creativity and creation. Surrealism isn't a dead end.Its not a thing, a piece of work,,an answer. No, it is and must always be The Question.. Its a state of mind,,and infinite in that...out of nothing indeed.. So while being a way of seeing and mentally processing, it isn't THE way. What a Surrealist creates is that person's creation, and that creation serves as an example of the Surreal process, but never says this is the answer..hence your open ended finale to LOST and.....The Last Dark.."Who Am I", can only be answered by the individual and that person's answer, for the moment, isn't anybody else's answer.
Mystery is explorable, What we discover in that exploration may be totally inexplicable, totally unexpected and unrelated, thus logic and its obvious or not associations become non sequitor. Matter of fact applying any expectation to Mystery asserts you already have an answer in mind or possibilities lined up, so when you do that you really aren't dealing with a Mystery. Look at nuclear physics. Man explored it. Man discovered Quantum realities. Logic no longer applies. So we invent new ways to explain it. I can imagine it must of been similar times for Aristotle. Exciting, but still man made.
I do not agree one can apply the methods of Logic , ancient or modern, to ones imagination. Imagination is free of constructs and even organization. Please tell me of the Logic of a dream and especially a nightmare. What we discover in Our Imagination and create from it ,defines us as unique individuals, Who We Are.
Constitutional role..interesting...Logic was invented by man. Before the Greeks bubbled up this process of predictability the rest of the world was using variations of intuition, osmosis thru experience, "feeling" and much of that survives to today in the Middle and Far East. So,,be very careful in the assignment of Human Nature..Logic was invented by man.
And finally..are you sayin a musician, a poet, heck, even a architect can't do work in Fantasy?..Concrete way..?? you really need to read some Good Surrealism,,Recommendations have already been posted here recently.
If she withdrew from exaltation, she would be forced to think- And every thought led to fear and contradictions; to dilemmas for which she was unprepared.
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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It is a matter of stated fact, though, that both SRD and the creators of LOST (Lindelof and Cuse if not Abrams, I think) said that the Narnia stories were their main inspirations. That's where I got the Lewis connection from.
Now as to whether logic is a human invention, once again, we must be careful when answering this question to be clear what we mean by the word "logic." If you mean that consistent inference is artificial, I would disagree. "Socrates is mortal," follows from, "Socrates is a man," and, "All men are mortal," naturally, not because we decide it does.
Also, I don't understand this question:
Now the concreteness thing is this: imagining an entire world, with its own laws of nature, religions, cultures, wars, creatures, etc., requires more processing power, if you will, than imagining daily life (however surrealistically reveried). So a surrealist epic fantasy (like the Covenant series) requires the most processing power of all, the most effort.
"Please tell me of the Logic of a dream and especially a nightmare." I could do that with respect to my own dreams and nightmares, but not necessarily anyone else's.
Now as to whether logic is a human invention, once again, we must be careful when answering this question to be clear what we mean by the word "logic." If you mean that consistent inference is artificial, I would disagree. "Socrates is mortal," follows from, "Socrates is a man," and, "All men are mortal," naturally, not because we decide it does.
Also, I don't understand this question:
I don't know what I said to imply that poets are unable to write fantasy. After all, Dante's Paradiso is one of my personal go-to examples of the pattern of inspiration that I think led to SRD's work.And finally..are you sayin a musician, a poet, heck, even a architect can't do work in Fantasy?..Concrete way..?? you really need to read some Good Surrealism,,
Now the concreteness thing is this: imagining an entire world, with its own laws of nature, religions, cultures, wars, creatures, etc., requires more processing power, if you will, than imagining daily life (however surrealistically reveried). So a surrealist epic fantasy (like the Covenant series) requires the most processing power of all, the most effort.
"Please tell me of the Logic of a dream and especially a nightmare." I could do that with respect to my own dreams and nightmares, but not necessarily anyone else's.
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Zarathustra
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This is one of the most profound things I've read on the Watch. I didn't realize there were others here who also had this realization, and recognized its importance.Mighara Sovmadhi wrote: Yet there is more to this--the great Mystery, you'd probably call it, only also clear to us, and this is the stranger thing. It is not that the great abyss, which seems as if it should be unknowable by us, is as such unknown. It is rather that, despite this incredible discursive and intuitive gulf between ourselves and the heart of reality, we somehow can know it.
The Mystery of reality is that it's not a Mystery ... even though it seems that it "should" be. The fact that we can know reality, that we can transcend our own subjectivity, that we don't just roll up into solipsistic singularity points and embrace utter nihilism/skepticism, is the greatest mystery of our existence. But it's a mystery that we create only when we take a step back from our active participation in reality, and assume a more reflective attitude toward our own always-already Being-in-the-world, and begin to analyze it thematically. Our language mistakes and our misconceptions that we create while in this reflective attitude blur the always-already fact of our knowing.
Joe Biden … putting the Dem in dementia since (at least) 2020.
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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I daresay you knew before I did, since I don't think I quite knew it until I just wrote it down in this thread. The closest I came earlier to this realization was when reflecting on how Dante, it seems to me, used the concept of ineffability as a symbol for the Incarnation, the reconciliation of the supposedly unknowable (God) with those who aren't supposed to know (humanity). For if this legendary man were both fully divine and fully human, then somehow humanity can know what is divine fully.But this is just to say, perhaps as one of your signatures indicates, that instead of using concepts of transcendence to fly away to some other world, we can use them to construct such a world within ourselves--the world of our imaginations, disciplined so as to yield an intelligible story. That is, all those who make up detailed fantasy worlds of their own express their inner human meaning in one of the best ways of all.
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lurch
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I asked,yea,me..I asked Damon and Carlton infront of perhaps a hundred or so folks,,how much of influence did Andre Breton have on their Lost.. Damon,,after getting approval from Carlton replied.." Subconsciously, 100 percent,,consciously 0 percent.." which to a Surrealist makes perfect sense. SO,,I find your Facts,,your assertions,,not of the reality that I kno...
.Your need for Concrete way ,,implies the requirement for tangible when discussing fantasy,,I just won't connect a radio speaker to a bookpage as proof of a logical requirement of the Art. Again.. I'm not saying logic doesn't exist..I'm saying its secondary , subservient, to our Humanity. The author is thematically involved with our Humanity.
SRD has also said his TCoTC was influenced by the Norse Legends..OMG, how much did Jung speculate on Norse Legends..? Point being,,its folly to narrow down to one or two " prime influences"..Imagination is inclusive not exclusive...imho...
I sense a change of the definition of Logic inorder to suit the case being applied. Moving the goal post to accommodate the kicker so to speak.Processing Power is now " Logic".. uh oh..Processing Power is usually applied to Computers..not human creativity... .Also, I'm sorry for the necessary inclusion of a God or deity in your defining of Logic.. I've found it reassuringly welcomed that " The Creator" has been made obviously absent in the Last Chrons and LOVE and Hope and Compassion have been raised to the heights replacing the Creator. The author's decision seems quite right to me.
You can twist in the wind anything said or some " everybody knows",,but is that the mystical part of your conflicted, Mystical Logic?.. Disciplined to tell an intelligent story...uh oh again..that is sooo wrong to me....There goes every new and different work of Art out the window because some one determines it isn't Intelligent,,The Enlightenment actually was the era of reaching perfection,,being the most Intelligent,,and thats been dead for two hundred years now.I mean, . who are you to say that.?. I mean.. if thats YOUR threshold..fine. What an Intelligent story is as defined by you works only for you. Please don't believe that has to be applied across society. In fact,, there is plenty of ART,, that has little or nothing to do with "Intelligence."... Folks tried to blame me for being a snob..You just proved what a intellectual snob really is. Please, the pinky up in the air bit is laffable. Quite the gimmick! Liberate your self from the Power of the Pinky!!!..Its an Illusion!..Haaaa!..
.Imagination doesn't work well when it disciplined, because it isn't even of the realm of being Disciplined.. Its a Place of Infinity not a action or a verb,,..A Free and Liberated access to the Imagination is what the creative aspire to: Unencumbered by dead weights like logic and discipline.Thats what editors try and do,,and is why writers, artists,,have such a terrible time with them..
The end of TLD has Thomas, Linden and Jeremiah meandering off to the Insequent,,NOT with all the others..unencumbered.,,a great metaphor imho.
.Your need for Concrete way ,,implies the requirement for tangible when discussing fantasy,,I just won't connect a radio speaker to a bookpage as proof of a logical requirement of the Art. Again.. I'm not saying logic doesn't exist..I'm saying its secondary , subservient, to our Humanity. The author is thematically involved with our Humanity.
SRD has also said his TCoTC was influenced by the Norse Legends..OMG, how much did Jung speculate on Norse Legends..? Point being,,its folly to narrow down to one or two " prime influences"..Imagination is inclusive not exclusive...imho...
I sense a change of the definition of Logic inorder to suit the case being applied. Moving the goal post to accommodate the kicker so to speak.Processing Power is now " Logic".. uh oh..Processing Power is usually applied to Computers..not human creativity... .Also, I'm sorry for the necessary inclusion of a God or deity in your defining of Logic.. I've found it reassuringly welcomed that " The Creator" has been made obviously absent in the Last Chrons and LOVE and Hope and Compassion have been raised to the heights replacing the Creator. The author's decision seems quite right to me.
You can twist in the wind anything said or some " everybody knows",,but is that the mystical part of your conflicted, Mystical Logic?.. Disciplined to tell an intelligent story...uh oh again..that is sooo wrong to me....There goes every new and different work of Art out the window because some one determines it isn't Intelligent,,The Enlightenment actually was the era of reaching perfection,,being the most Intelligent,,and thats been dead for two hundred years now.I mean, . who are you to say that.?. I mean.. if thats YOUR threshold..fine. What an Intelligent story is as defined by you works only for you. Please don't believe that has to be applied across society. In fact,, there is plenty of ART,, that has little or nothing to do with "Intelligence."... Folks tried to blame me for being a snob..You just proved what a intellectual snob really is. Please, the pinky up in the air bit is laffable. Quite the gimmick! Liberate your self from the Power of the Pinky!!!..Its an Illusion!..Haaaa!..
.Imagination doesn't work well when it disciplined, because it isn't even of the realm of being Disciplined.. Its a Place of Infinity not a action or a verb,,..A Free and Liberated access to the Imagination is what the creative aspire to: Unencumbered by dead weights like logic and discipline.Thats what editors try and do,,and is why writers, artists,,have such a terrible time with them..
The end of TLD has Thomas, Linden and Jeremiah meandering off to the Insequent,,NOT with all the others..unencumbered.,,a great metaphor imho.
If she withdrew from exaltation, she would be forced to think- And every thought led to fear and contradictions; to dilemmas for which she was unprepared.
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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Well...lurch wrote:I asked,yea,me..I asked Damon and Carlton infront of perhaps a hundred or so folks,,how much of influence did Andre Breton have on their Lost.. Damon,,after getting approval from Carlton replied.." Subconsciously, 100 percent,,consciously 0 percent.." which to a Surrealist makes perfect sense. SO,,I find your Facts,,your assertions,,not of the reality that I kno...
As for SRD, just read his "The Stories That Made the Difference" (I think it's called).Lost producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have often cited The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis' beloved fantasy series, as a major creative touchstone for their own fantastical epic. [www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20259645,00.html]
And okay, maybe Lewis isn't the main source for LOST, but it's one of them. In the same way that I acknowledge LOST and House of Leaves as two of the primary inspirations for my own book, yet I would also say that the Covenant story resembles mine more than mine resembles either LOST's or HOL's.
Probably it doesn't imply this. I'm just contrasting the abstract (logic) with the concrete (our worldly lives)..Your need for Concrete way ,,implies the requirement for tangible when discussing fantasy,,
I never said that logic was processing power. I was referring to the human brain's capacities of representation. Don't you think it takes more brain power to visualize an entire continent like Middle-Earth, with thousands and thousands of years of history, than it takes to represent my home town?I sense a change of the definition of Logic inorder to suit the case being applied. Moving the goal post to accommodate the kicker so to speak.Processing Power is now " Logic"..
Now as for whether my use of the word "logic" is unfair, well, it's not. It's the standard one for people who really enjoy studying the subject. Which means it's not the layman's use.
I didn't define logic as God, or God as logical. In fact, I think God, as the Father, is evil, which means anti-reason (not merely lacking in reason but actively trying to subvert and destroy the thing). Or why else did He make sure most people believe in Him because they read a book where they are taught to have blind faith in Paul's nonsensical theory of the Atonement?Also, I'm sorry for the necessary inclusion of a God or deity in your defining of Logic..
We don't have to defer to other people's determination of whether our writing is intelligible. (Note, again, I said "intelligible," not "intelligent." There's a difference.) I just meant that it's better, when making up a fantasy world, to fit the pieces of that world together in a meaningful way. If we try to tell two opposite messages with one story, we defeat the purpose of our story. And if the world that metaphorically represents this purpose is self-defeatingly obtuse, so also is our story foolish.Disciplined to tell an intelligent story...uh oh again..that is sooo wrong to me....There goes every new and different work of Art out the window because some one determines it isn't Intelligent,,
Dante's poetry is an excellent example of a writer contriving an amazing fantasy world, with amazing mysterious word usages (the "Papa Aleppe"(sp.?) enigma, for instance), while employing the utmost intellectual rigor. And so is my own writing..Imagination doesn't work well when it disciplined, because it isn't even of the realm of being Disciplined.. Its a Place of Infinity not a action or a verb,,..A Free and Liberated access to the Imagination is what the creative aspire to: Unencumbered by dead weights like logic and discipline.Thats what editors try and do,,and is why writers, artists,,have such a terrible time with them..
These are samples of my book (more can be found at https://www.facebook.com/DareToTakeTheTest). Point is, the whole work is riddled with riddles like these. It's exceedingly creative, yet I would never likely say that I wrote it without substantially exercising my rationality to do so.
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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Also, I'm not exactly asserting that epic-fantasy literature is absolutely superior to all other works of fiction, only that it is better suited to inspiring us to fight the archetype of the dark God in us. Other kinds of writing might be better for other reasons, other purposes. In fact, The Name of the Rose is "merely" historical fiction, and Douglas Hofstadter's GEB is not really fiction at all, yet both are as good in their own way, I'd say, as the Covenant series. And I could cite more examples than these to defend my respect for all the reading I've ever done.
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TheFallen
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Mighara... you're on a roll, my good man. I'm the most churlish cynic on God's green earth - and yet I'd have worn out the "Good Post" button by now (if such a thing still existed - dammit guys, where's it gone?) on a fair few of your recent posts - and especially those in this particular thread.
Honestly, it's so damn refreshing to see someone posting both insightfully and thoughtfully, laying out his opinion clearly and expounding it cogently with erudition and evidence, as compared to the usual rote unsupported pap that's more usually to be found. That's genuine scholarship and intellectual rigour, so absolutely - credit where credit's due. Hats off to you.
As per your posted picture poetry above (says he with clumsy alliteration), I wonder if you are au fait with the works of Guillaume Apollinaire, and specifically his poetry collection Calligrammes, poèmes de la paix et de la guerre, published posthumously in 1918. As a poet, Apollinaire bridged the gap between the Symbolists of the late C19th and the Modernists of the early C20th. His attempt to add extra layers of meaning and evocation to his poetry by means of a synaesthesia that included the purely visual art of typography is something that I think you'll find interesting, to say the least.
Here's his most famous poem from that collection, called Il pleut, plus quite a reasonable translation, in case French is not one of your strongpoints.
Il pleut des voix de femmes comme si ells étaient mortes même dans le souvenir
c'est vous aussi qu'il pleut merveilleuses rencontres de ma vie ô gouttelettes
et ces nuages cabrés se prennent à hennir tout un univers de villes auriculaires
écoute s'il pleut tandis que le regret et le dédain pleurent une ancienne musique
écoute tomber les liens qui te retiennent en haut et en bas
It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in memory
And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my life O little drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and below
Honestly, it's so damn refreshing to see someone posting both insightfully and thoughtfully, laying out his opinion clearly and expounding it cogently with erudition and evidence, as compared to the usual rote unsupported pap that's more usually to be found. That's genuine scholarship and intellectual rigour, so absolutely - credit where credit's due. Hats off to you.
As per your posted picture poetry above (says he with clumsy alliteration), I wonder if you are au fait with the works of Guillaume Apollinaire, and specifically his poetry collection Calligrammes, poèmes de la paix et de la guerre, published posthumously in 1918. As a poet, Apollinaire bridged the gap between the Symbolists of the late C19th and the Modernists of the early C20th. His attempt to add extra layers of meaning and evocation to his poetry by means of a synaesthesia that included the purely visual art of typography is something that I think you'll find interesting, to say the least.
Here's his most famous poem from that collection, called Il pleut, plus quite a reasonable translation, in case French is not one of your strongpoints.
Il pleut des voix de femmes comme si ells étaient mortes même dans le souvenir
c'est vous aussi qu'il pleut merveilleuses rencontres de ma vie ô gouttelettes
et ces nuages cabrés se prennent à hennir tout un univers de villes auriculaires
écoute s'il pleut tandis que le regret et le dédain pleurent une ancienne musique
écoute tomber les liens qui te retiennent en haut et en bas
It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in memory
And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my life O little drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and below
Newsflash: the word "irony" doesn't mean "a bit like iron" 
Shockingly, some people have claimed that I'm egocentric... but hey, enough about them
"If you strike me down, I shall become far stronger than you can possibly imagine."
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I occasionally post things here because I am invariably correct on all matters, a thing which is educational for others less fortunate.
Shockingly, some people have claimed that I'm egocentric... but hey, enough about them
"If you strike me down, I shall become far stronger than you can possibly imagine."
_______________________________________________
I occasionally post things here because I am invariably correct on all matters, a thing which is educational for others less fortunate.
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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Thank you for the appreciation of my arguments or images or whatever. I think you who watch the Watch (forgive that joke) have made it possible for people to express themselves well here. The only other forum I go to nowadays is christianforums.com (lol, yeah?) where I'm always playing the heretic game with the mainstream orthodox there, defending the most bizarre but plausible interpretations of their scripture I can come up with sometimes. What's worse, arguably, is that I believe (only half-metaphorically, I'll just confess) in the theology I present... But you can imagine that not only there but many other places have I (and I imagine many others here also) experienced unprovoked hostility, and aside from some mark-missing run into and committed in the politics and/or history subforum, I don't recall anything in the way of such... IDK... ideology? Anger? Whatever it is, I usually don't see it here.I honestly don't remember where I first saw calligrams, but I know I might've seen some of the ones you refer to when I've done image searches on Google. I've also seen Arabic ones, and let me tell you, inasmuch as the three or four or so most widespread religions all defer to the quality of their scriptures to try to support their assertions to unique and overwhelming revelation, Islam does have something weird and interesting going for it. But that's another story for another time, as Michael Ende says in The Neverending Story.
And I can understand the power of the poem that looks like rain. It's interesting that the goal or premise or something is artificial synaesthesia (yes?), since one of the two first concrete ideas I had for my book was to have pages where all the words were arranged like smiley faces--this since I'd just House of Leaves and was overwhelmed with a sort of revelation of my own, an idea about how to tell a story (if not then what story to tell). And the symbolism was to be that the character in that scene would be on a certain drug, and the effect of trying to read the sentences that were often chopped up by the edges or the interstices of the images and, despite plain paragraph-like flow, intangibly divided into discrete paragraphs: this effect was to emulate what it's like to try to read when you're on that drug (as I'd myself taken it several times before and tried to do just that).
And like an Andelainian breeze, I jest to say that the story I ended up with is like a radical reimagining of the Covenant story in the "Choose Your Own Adventure" format. Because the protagonist has an exotic disease (though not with directly antisocial consequences) and goes on adventures in his or her dreams (you can read it, technically, as either sex, since the only names your character is directly identified with ever are nicknames of indeterminate origin)...
Another story for another time, that is. That totally should sound like Yoda saying something.
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Mighara Sovmadhi
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CORRECTION: I have stated that Tolkien and Jung had some kind of intellectual partnership, or were otherwise directly co-inspired or some such thing. I based this statement on memory, but upon second glance I have found a much more tenuous connection between the two. That is, they are mentioned in tandem at gnosis.org in various video lectures, but having not watched these yet, all they seem to indicate to me is that Tolkien's theory of storytelling is similar to Jung's dream/archetype concepts.