Moderators: Orlion, kevinswatch
OK, here's a telepathic call to all Haruchai on the Watch, including any "incogniti" with not-obviously-ethnic character names.Well then, thank you Fist, as well! See what you've started! **rushes off to Dissecting to reread The Search**(wishes Bannor, Brinn and all Watchers who deeply ID with the Haruchai would read these same posts)
So do I.-Halt them! Korik shouted. I will have no more Kevins. The mission must not fail.
Korik is so set in his purpose, so straight foward--and I love Gilden-Fire
He could not forget any detail of the last night he had spent with his wife, whose bones were already ancient in the frozen fastness of her grave.
Ah yes, danlo. Excellent choice!-Halt them! Korik shouted. I will have no more Kevins. The mission must not fail.
Yeah, I guess it's ok. Whatever...Durris wrote:So do I.Danlo wrote:I love Gilden-Fire
And let's finish this one!He could not forget any detail of the last night he had spent with his wife, whose bones were already ancient in the frozen fastness of her grave.
*bows head and closes eyes*The Vow sustained him, but it was not warm.
"Ah, Bannor," he sighed. "Are you so ashamed of what you were?"
Bannor cocked a white eyebrow at the question, as if it came close to the truth. "I am not shamed," he said distinctly. "But I am saddened that so many centuries were required to teach us the limits of our worth. We went too far, in pride and folly. Mortal men should not give up wives and sleep and death for any service - lest the face of failure become too abhorrent to be endured."
Brinn and Ceer appeared amid the slashing moil, followed by Hergrom. With hands and feet, they chopped and kicked, crushing rats faster than Linden's eyes could follow.
With signs and gestures, Seadreamer made Honninscrave understand what he wanted to know; and the Master asked Brinn how the Haruchai had withstood Kasreyn's geas. Brinn discounted that power in a flat tone. "He spoke to me with his gaze. I heard, but did not choose to listen."
On either side, Brinn and Cail seemed to blur as they fought. Whirling and striking in all directions, they dealt out blows and swift death.
I'll just highlight this one:But the Guard lay on the floor, coughing up the last of its life. Over the husta stood Hergrom. He was poised to spring. Flatly, he said, "Kemper, if you have harmed him you will answer for it with blood."
"It is said that upon the edge of the Earth at the end of time stands a lone man who holds the meaning of the Haruchai - a man whom we name ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. It is said that he has mastered all skill and prowess that we desire all restraint and calm, and has become perfection - passion and mastery like unto the poised grandeur of mountains. And it is said, should ever one of the Haruchai seek out ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol and contest with him, we will learn the measure of our worth, in defeat or triumph."
...
His voice dropped as if in no other way could he contain the strength of his yearning. "Ur-Lord." Clenched as if it were squeezing blood out of itself, his fist rose like an appeal. "Do not prevent me from the meaning of our lives."
...
Cross-legged on the shelf sat an ancient man in a tattered colorless robe.
His head was half bowed in an attitude of meditation. But his eyes were open. The milky hue or cataracts or blindness filled his orbs. Faint wisps of hair marked the top of his head; a gray stubble emphasized the hollowness of his cheeks. His skin was seamed with age, and his limbs had been starved to the point of emaciation. Yet he radiated an eerie and unfathomable strength.
Brinn or Cail might have looked like that if the intensity of their lives had permitted them to reach extreme old age.
...
"And if you fail?" Covenant lashed the word at Brinn's dispassion. "You already believe you're unworthy. How much more do you think you can stand?"
Brinn's visage remained inflexible. "I will know the truth. Any being who cannot bear the truth is indeed unworthy."
Sorry, I don't have time to type out the battle with Nom right now."Thomas Covenant, bethink you." Obliquely, Linden wondered why it was Durris who spoke and not Cail. "The Haruchai are known to you. The tale of the Bloodguard is known to you. You have witnessed that proud, deathless Vow - and you have beheld its ending. Do not believe that we forget. In all the ages of that service, it was the grief of the Bloodguard that they gave no direct battle to Corruption. And yet when the chance came to Bannor - when he stood at your side upon Landsdrop with Saltheart Foamfollower and knew your purpose - he turned aside from it. You had need of him, and he turned aside.
"We do not judge him. The Vow was broken. But I say to you that we have tasted failure, and it is not to our liking. We must restore our faith. We will not turn aside again."
And because Bannor is a damned good person! He resists blaming others:Cail wrote:Bannor in TPTP has every reason to despise TC, yet he doesn't because of his former Vow, and because of the hope that TC can redeem the Land.
He's even given up revenge against Foul!"I am a Haruchai. We also are not immune. Corruption wears many faces. Blame is a more enticing face than others, but it is none the less a mask for the Despiser."
I guess we shouldn't be surprised that he was able to forgive Covenant for his role in the Corruption of the Vow."The deepest wish of the Bloodguard was to fight the Despiser in his home, pure service against Corruption. This desire misled. I have put aside such things.”
As SRD has him say it,This may be why I identify with Cail so much. He failed and was judged unworthy by his kinsmen, yet he continued on with the duty he was charged.
Ah, the mixture of disqualification and stubborn devotion in that statement."It is agreed that such unworth as mine has its uses."
And I'll be more than happy to go into the Westron Mountains and invite anybody who has anything bad to say about Cail outside for a little chat!! <img src=kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/album_see.php?id=128>Durris wrote:And the unworth was in no eyes but his own and his compatriots'. Ask Covenant, or Linden, or Sunder, or Hollian, or the Giants, and you'd hear a different verdict altogether.
Though the merewives were a near occasion of "failure" at the time Cail encountered them (I use quotation marks because the failure is specific to Haruchai morality and doesn't exist in any other worldview), I've never parsed his return to them as a confrontation with a past failure. In the forehall of Revelstone, he could have used the penitential, judgmental language that would imply that, but spoke of them another way entirely. As is culturally typical, he leaves unspoken as much as he says, but Linden sees it all anyway.At the time of his release from duty, he went head on to meet with one of his failures....or was it? Was he just seeking a passion as strong as his?
[Holy bleep, can SRD write! Brinn's speech is one of his other two or three most splendid paragraphs, purely as prose. Not to mention that I can actually hear Brinn's accent in my mind's ear when I read it.][Cail is speaking] "It was given to me that when the word of Bannor was fulfilled I would be permitted to follow my heart."..."I will return to the merewives."...Surprise and apprehension seemed to tighten Linden's percipience to a higher pitch, a keener penetration; and she saw Cail with sudden acuity, felt parts of him which had been hidden until now. She knew with the instantaneous certainty ofvision that he did not intend to throw his life away, did not want death from the Dancers of the Sea: he wanted a different kind of life. A resolution for the inextricable desire and bereavement of his extreme nature.
She cut Covenant off, stopped the First. They glared at her; but she ignored her vehemence. They did not understand. Brinn had said, The limbs of our women are brown from sun and birth. But there is also a whiteness as acute as the ice which bleeds from the rock of mountains, and it burns as the purest snow burns in the most high tor, the most wind-flogged col. And from it grew a yearning which Cail could no longer bear to deny. Panting with the force of her wish to support him, give him something in return for his faithfulness, she rushed to utter the first words that came to her.
"Brinn gave his permission. Don't you see that? He knew what he was saying--he knew what Cail would want to do. He heard the same song himself. Cail isn't going to die."...
[Cail is speaking again] "The song of the merewives has been named delusion. But is not all life a manner of dreaming? Have you not said that the Land itself is a dream? Dream or delusion, the music I have heard has altered me. But I have not learned the meaning of this change. Ur-Lord, I wish to prove what I have dreamed to its heart. Permit me."
Well, I shouldn't have neglected to say "imho"--I didn't intend disputing your perspective so much as complementing it.Very, very well put Durris. Such are the pratfalls of attempting to keep up with this discussion when I haven't read the whole series in about 14 years (I'm devouring them every waking moment that I can now). I'm roughly 100 pages from the end of WGW, and I haven't hit the passage you quoted yet, so I'm relying on somewhat foggy memory, not to mention the impressions of my much younger and less mature mind.
It takes a Haruchai to know another one, perhaps. My experience of that capacity for judgment is strangely patchworked: when I see someone else (real or imaginary) judging themselves, as SRD put it, "by standards no mortal could meet", I can see through it. When I'm doing it myself (whether the judgment is directed at myself or at someone else) I don't see the unreasonableness.'Course, it also may be my Haruchai-like mentality that judges Cail's "failure" so harshly.
*blink*The passage quoted makes me wish to have been there...to see the fire in Cail's eyes. This would appear to be a HUGE part of the redemption of the Haruchai that Bannor spoke of.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO yes!!!!!!!!! Phenomenal stuff!! I should have included that passage when I tried to say what the difference is between the Haruchai and the Vulcans. A Vulcan would NEVER say such a thing!Durris wrote:[Holy bleep, can SRD write! Brinn's speech is one of his other two or three most splendid paragraphs, purely as prose. Not to mention that I can actually hear Brinn's accent in my mind's ear when I read it.]
I can't wait to see the progeny of this union!!Durris wrote:Cail isn't going to the scene of a failure to prove or exonerate, or punish, himself. He's a mortal bridegroom in procession to a cosmic wedding.
I'm gonna leave this one alone. But just this once!!Durris wrote:*Durris heads for a cold shower*
Indeed!!!Cail wrote:Very, very well put Durris.
I've been astonished time and again by the interpretations people have presented here that I never thought of.Cail wrote:This has actually been rather interesting (and I may start a new thread about it), but I'm getting so much more from the books now than I did when I last read them. It also helps to have the outstanding analysis from other fans here that see something different than my rather narrow perspective.
IMO, kevinswatch is the reason the internet was invented!Welcome to the human race.Durris wrote:It takes a Haruchai to know another one, perhaps. My experience of that capacity for judgment is strangely patchworked: when I see someone else (real or imaginary) judging themselves, as SRD put it, "by standards no mortal could meet", I can see through it. When I'm doing it myself (whether the judgment is directed at myself or at someone else) I don't see the unreasonableness.
Yeah, right! Words fail you about as often as they fail me!!Durris wrote:*blink*
Words fail me. Again.
