Kevin's Watch

What was the significance of the Marrowmeld sculpture looking like Bannor and like TC?

Didn't that end up inspiring Mhoram to realize that the Oath of Peace wasn't working for them? Been a few years since I read that, but I think it's discussed in TPTP.

It has to do with the finality of both Covenant or the Bloodguard.

To Covenant; at that time, it was either that the Land is real or it isn't.
Nothing in between

Same as the Bloodguard. It was either flawless service, or no service.
Nothing In between.

Mhoram realized, that the New Lords, were doing the in between...they were trying to learn Kevin's lore, but keeping the Oath of Peace at the same time.

Yes, the Oath of Peace did neither apply to TC nor the Bloodguard. Mhoram discovered that the Oath was keeping the Lords from understanding Kevin's Lore and this knowledge also made him discover the secret of the Ritual of Desecration - similar to Trell who also sort of douted his Oath and subsequently was able to perform the ritual ona smaller scale.

Like Akasri, it's a long time since I read these stories - but I like the question because I remember at the time being a little puzzled by this very point. In respect of the Oathof Peace am I right in thinking that even though they discovered that it was the Oath that was hindering thier advancement in the understanding of Kevin's Lore that the Lords held to the Oath and abandoned the Lore, rather than the other way around?

One of the best answers to be found in the GI.

In the Gradual Interview, Stephen R Donaldson wrote:I can't actually tell you how Mhoram's imagination/insight works: hell, I don't know how *mine* works. But I think I do know *what* he saw: the empowering paradox of passion and discipline.

That's cryptic, I know. There's no good way to explain the potential hidden within paradoxes. But look at it this way. The Oath of Peace is, in effect, "modeled" on the Bloodguard. (I mean thematically, not literally.) The Bloodguard are all about emotional control: so is the Oath of Peace. Witness Atiaran's appeal to Triock when he wants to kill Covenant--and her own subsequent attitudes. Covenant, on the other hand, is all about passion (in this context, "passion" means "intense emotion"). Witness his rape of Lena, and the way he wears his emotions on his sleeve.

Elena's marrowmeld sculpture put forward the notion that the control of the Bloodguard and the passion of Covenant are two faces of the same dilemma (the need of passion to be controlled, the need of control to be enlivened by passion); and that those two faces can be combined into one.

From this, Mhoram extracted the understanding that the Oath of Peace has been, well, misapplied. It is literally a prescription for behavior; but it has been taken as a proscription against passion. Yet passion is power, as Covenant so often demonstrates. (And power is dangerous: therefore the Bloodguard knowingly, and the people of the Land unwittingly, have suppressed their access to it.) Mhoram learned to find his own version of "the eye of the paradox": the point where both passion and control can be affirmed.

Mhoram's great insight most definitely does *not* involve "a willingness to harm, hate, or do violence." Rather it involves a willingness or ability to make choices which are not ruled or controlled by passion (e.g. hate, anger, despair, or fear), and then to act on those choices with absolute passion.

Blake wrote, "Reason is the circumference of energy." Gichin Funakoshi wrote, "If your hand goes forth, withhold your anger. If your anger goes forth, withhold your hand." Someone (I've forgotten who) wrote, "Beauty is controlled passion." Mhoram learned to understand this. The fatal flaw of the Haruchai (and of Atiaran, and of Trell, and of Troy, and of the Unhomed, and of Kevin--and of Covenant early on) is that they did not.

(11/24/2004)