Kevin's Watch

IIRC, the word "ur-Earth" appears in TPTP during a song celebrating the redemption of the Land. And also IIRC, it never appears again.

We also have an ur-Lord and ur-viles, and now ur-Mahrtiir.

What is ur-ish about Covenant, the black Demondim-spawn, and the new Forestal? What does it mean that the Raman is primordialized? Were the ur-viles primordializations (please forgive my repeated use of this verbalization of an adjective) of the Viles inasmuch as they fulfilled the essence of the Demondim-sires? Is that what ur-ishness is about?

Is the new Earth the ur-Earth, IOW?

"Is the new Earth the ur-Earth, IOW?"

This seems a difficult question to answer. Most of my searches for the root meaning of "ur-" keep coming up with references to drug designations.

Wiktionary states it derives from Old High German, meaning "thoroughly".

And, of course, there is High Lord Prothall's statement to Covenant in chapter 14 of Lord Foul's Bane, ""Still, the prophecies are clear about your importance. So I name you 'ur-Lord', a sharer of all the matters of the Council until you depart from us. We must trust you."

Since the new Earth was the old Earth that has now been thoroughly repaired (minus SWMNBN and perhaps the hidden banes that Fangthane had planted) to be shared by all the survivors, I suppose it COULD be the "ur-Earth". I guess it's Ur call.

When the people who made it to Ur Earth die would they be Ur Dead??

Ur...I don't doubt that they would be, which should only increase your importance over time (strength in numbers, you know).

Cord Hurn wrote:Wiktionary states it derives from Old High German, meaning "thoroughly".

Although indeed Germanic in origin, the connotations of the prefix "ur-" go far beyond "thoroughly".

"Ur-" signifies the quintessence of a thing, the ultimate, the genuine, the original pattern for something, against which anything else is a paler imitation.

Hope that helps.

The Fallen: coming from an ur-commenter such as yourself, it does indeed help! Thank you.

You're too kind, Cord Hurn.

Sadly though, I have to gracefully refuse that title. Compared to some of the crusty old relics who have been here since time immemorial, I'm a mere babe in arms.

TheFallen wrote:You're too kind, Cord Hurn.

Sadly though, I have to gracefully refuse that title. Compared to some of the crusty old relics who have been here since time immemorial, I'm a mere babe in arms.

Who are you calling old?

In the Gradual Interview, Stephen R Donaldson wrote:Considering my background, it's a bit peculiar that I have in some sense misused the "ur-". Among English majors--at least of my generation--"ur-" denotes "original," but it connotes "hypothetical." It refers to an original which we believe to exist, but which we do not possess. I twisted that quite a bit with "ur-viles" and "ur-Lord," trying to suggest an artificial and possibly corrupt relationship.

(12/14/2005)

"the ultimate, the genuine, the original pattern for something" sounds like Plato to me.

"an original which we believe to exist, but which we do not possess" sounds similar.

Both of them seem to convey the notion of a process of copying or reproducing, where the farther away from the original it gets, the less perfect it gets.

"artificial and possibly corrupt" I do not understand at all. But it still seems to be related to imperfect copies. On the other hand, Donaldson seems to use ur- on the artificial, possibly corrupt copy, not the original.

Yeah WF, it is entirely baffling.

You're right about connotations of the Platonic ideal being perceivable semantically within "ur". So, in the way he uses "ur", SRD does more than "twist that quite a bit" - he twists it a full 180 degrees. So he absolutely hasn't "in some sense misused the ur-"... he's misused it in EVERY sense. Artificiality and corruptness are quite literally the polar opposites of what is meant by an "ur-" prefix. And thus it's a whole heap more than "a bit peculiar" that SRD should use it in this antithetical way...

...unless he's always intended to prophetically indicate that, by the end of TLD, the ur-Viles are set to become the perfect culmination of all that was worthy within the Viles and that similarly, TC is set to become a similar quintessence of everything that it is to be an ideal Lord of the Land. Of course neither are originals, temporally speaking, but then again, the linearity of time no longer rigidly applies, once we get to the LCs.

Nope, that's me overthinking things and falling into an emperor's new clothes trap, I reckon. I'll bet it's purely accidental... SRD's only human, after all.

Since there was no notion of further Chronicles when ur-Lord and ur-viles was written, I think we need to reject any hypothesis involving them.

This is probably the only other clue we have.

In [i]Lord Foul's Bane[/i] was wrote:Knowledge of white gold has come down ID us through the ancient prophecies-foretellings, as Saltheart Foamfollower has observed, which say much bet clarify little-but we comprehend nothing of the wild magic. Still, the prophecies are clear about your importance. So I name you `ur-Lord,' a sharer of all the matters of the Council until you depart from us. We must trust you."

This is rather ambiguous. Originally, I had thought that an ur-lord was some sort of uber-Lord, above even the High Lord. Now I can see that it could, in the context above, just as easily mean "honorary lord". It's probably a bit of both - someone granted the title of lord because they are someone who is so important that they would cede authority to them.

An honorary lord is not a real lord. It's granted by decree rather than by attainment. Hence, it is in a sense a faux lord, an artificial lord, or at least an artificially designated lord.

No no...I can see the "artificial and corrupt."
Because they are, [the namers] quite mistaken. [if we stick with the first as the originally intended only].
I WISH SRD had been thinking along the lines/theory I proposed...but he ruined my theory, the bastard. Thinks he gets to say shit about what he meant just cuz he wrote it and shit.

But the Lords are naming him ur-Lord mostly out of ignorance [the same may be true of the ur-Viles...they really don't know fuck-all about them, know even less about Demondim, less still about Viles [other than Loric killed the bastards with a magic weapon they know nothing about].
In at least SOME ways, TC is ur-Lord-ish by the end of the first...but even then not why and how the Land-folk imagined it.

So I can see artificial/corrupt working.

Wish it was my way, though. OTOH: Since HE didn't do it, I CAN....if I ever write epic fantasy that needs an original original and an new original and a false primordial ideal leading to a true postordial perfect-pragmatic.

In the Gradual Interview, Stephen R Donaldson wrote:Considering my background, it's a bit peculiar that I have in some sense misused the "ur-". Among English majors--at least of my generation--"ur-" denotes "original," but it connotes "hypothetical." It refers to an original which we believe to exist, but which we do not possess. I twisted that quite a bit with "ur-viles" and "ur-Lord," trying to suggest an artificial and possibly corrupt relationship.

(12/14/2005)

...and to confuse things even more, let's not forget the other "ur", Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. There's nothing corrupt, nor much artificial about him. Again, entirely contradicting the G.I. response above, "ur-" here again seems to be referring to a culmination, a realising of full potential, an idealisation, if you like.

Going back to the point that Vraith and I both referred to about "ur-'s" usually coming first, temporally speaking, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir is not only a true postordial perfect-pragmatic, but also a true primordial ideal... given that he was created as such in the far distant past.

Now there's a headrush...

The poster that said the prefix "ur-" might convey the notion of 'honorary' probably fits with what I thought that it meant all those years ago when I discovered the First Chros. However, if you think about why he might be given a lord title without having earned it, more sense of the choice on the part of SRD might be had. Maybe?

When the Lords encounter TC, he bears a talisman made of a substance with which they have no familiarity. And they can't understand him beyond the fact that he comes to them 'damaged.' But they know that he is important while simultaneously not understanding him. So maybe 'ur-' implies some form of transcendence.

Oops! Somehow missed the post immediately above by TheFallen. Good post by the way.

If TC was thought to be the re-incarnation of Berek, then the idea of first sort of fits. However, 'the ideal that you do not possess' has some problems. First, Berek actually existed. Second, how is and unpredictable, untried 'champion' ideal?