Could Covenant have dreamt of the Land other times than...
Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 2:50 pm
... written, or by him remembered you might say? Imagine his ten years of nearly absolute isolation even after he overcame the Illearth Stone. Do you think he tried to imagine himself into the Land a lot to compensate for the deficiency of the "real" world? We know he writes a strange book about guilt and power, and is befriended, in truth, by a doctor, and then Linden Avery (who ends up more than a doctor). But we're talking ten years leading up to a sudden self-sacrificing immersion in Joan's bloodletting.
We could, for instance, acknowledge memory dreams about time in the Land, but however vivid this might seem, with the exception of Andelain (it could be said), these dreams are never as gracious as the true dream of the Land Covenant had. This is pretty conjectural, however.
More promising, I think, is the Platonic description of the Land's metaphysics the author has offered (don't have the citation at hand, so I guess if you don't find it, I'm wrong, or maybe I'll find it later). Maybe there is a Form of a Story out there, and the Land is that place. All the plot twists go according to the Chronicles' peculiar logic. So maybe that's when Covenant recognizes that that's logically how the Story would go, and imagines it that Way (if you know what I mean). Perhaps somehow, his role as the Timewarden involved consciously perceiving what he subconsciously dreamt about the past, if not also the present or future, of the Land's Earth.
We could, for instance, acknowledge memory dreams about time in the Land, but however vivid this might seem, with the exception of Andelain (it could be said), these dreams are never as gracious as the true dream of the Land Covenant had. This is pretty conjectural, however.
More promising, I think, is the Platonic description of the Land's metaphysics the author has offered (don't have the citation at hand, so I guess if you don't find it, I'm wrong, or maybe I'll find it later). Maybe there is a Form of a Story out there, and the Land is that place. All the plot twists go according to the Chronicles' peculiar logic. So maybe that's when Covenant recognizes that that's logically how the Story would go, and imagines it that Way (if you know what I mean). Perhaps somehow, his role as the Timewarden involved consciously perceiving what he subconsciously dreamt about the past, if not also the present or future, of the Land's Earth.