The Meaning of Fatal Revenant

[Nerdanel]

I like titles with multiple meanings (as counted by word-meaning combinations) that fit the book. My previous biggest multiple meaning has been three for "The Dark Eidolon" by Clark Ashton Smith (can you figure them out?), but I have the feeling that "Fatal Revenant" is going to blow that out of the water. Let's see...

Alternate titles to illustrate the different potential aspects of Fatal Revenant:

Murderous Undead
Fateful Undead
Murderer Returns
Fateful Return
History Repeats Itself/Law of Karma
Unnaturally Reanimated History

Covenant, Jeremiah, Roger, the Demondim, Kastenessen... We'll have no shortage of opportunities to fulfill those titles.

[Zarathustra]

I'm not sure about 'eidolon,' but I know that "eidos" was used by Husserl to refer to eidetic structures of consciousness. They are similar to Plato's Forms, except that they don't have objective, external reality. I'm not a language expert, but '-lon' rememinds me of an ending you'd apply to a word to signify a being or person. So maybe this is a dark being of consciousness? A dark figment of one's thoughts or dreams? A demon?

Of course, I guess I could just Google the term, but that seems like cheating.

[Nerdanel]

I originally had to check out "eidolon" myself too. I rechecked it just now from my Webster and learned it had a third meaning in addition to the two I already knew, having checked them probably from dictionary.com originally. ...Which means that "The Dark Eidolon" now has FIVE meanings that I know of, and they all make sense in the context of the story. (I have heard Clark Ashton Smith used to read a dictionary for fun.)

Eidolon:
- shadowy apparition
- idol
- purpose

All except the purpose can be dark in a physical or metaphorical way, which makes five combinations in total. Awesome! (Yes, I'm weird.)

[Zarathustra]

Okay, I cheated. Apparently, it's been too many years since I read Husserl, so my memory of "eidos" wasn't exactly right. It's more like the pure essense or meaning of a thing. Still, it's similar to Plato's Forms without the transcendental modality of existing.

. . .in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl who used it to
mean the subject of the set of predicates which could not be removed
from a thing after having submitted it to a process of imaginative vari-
ation in short, the essence of a thing. In this connection one finds in
his philosophy the use of the adjective “eidetic” to designate the pro-
cess mentioned as well as to qualify formal and material divisions of
philosophical investigation into essences.

Derivative of the term is the expression “eidolon” which in the
Homeric period would be a phantom or an unreal image; it would also apply to the shades of the dead who were only images or copies of their living selves. It could also apply to votive images of the dead. In the Atomist tradition in Greece, the “eidola” (plural of “eidolon”) would be the images that would come off objects and affect the perceiver;
hence, it has the sense of a copy. Generally it can be used for the
representations of men and gods. One also finds the term in Biblical
Greek in a more pejorative sense to denote an idol, an understandable
enough mutation of meaning, given the previous sense of copy.

So, a dark phantom, image, copy, or idol. Hmm.

[dlbpharmd]

This seems like a good spot to post this Q&A:

Anonymous: I don't think this would be a spoiler, but is it safe to say that the "Revenant" in "Fatal Revenant" is Thomas Covenant? I am assuming that "revenant" in this case is defined as someone who is brought back to life to fullfill a special goal.

That would definitely be a spoiler for someone who hasn't read "The Runes of the Earth." But it seems to me that you're making a very reasonable assumption.

(04/19/2006)

[wayfriend]

Except all SRD is saying is, there are some grounds for assuming that Revenant = Covenant. And SRD has admitted that he misleads us without outright lying in the GI.

So, to me, this is a total non-clue. In fact, I am now more likely to believe that Covenant is not the Fatal Revenant. Because, from that position, I can see him writing this answer. If Covenant was the Fatal Revenant, I can't see SRD writing this answer. Unless he's trying to fool me by seemingly trying to fool me ... gah!

I think the thing riding up to Revelstone is the Fatal Revenant. But it ain't TC.

[Nerdanel]

SRD has earlier said that there will be multiple fatal revenants in different parts of the book. Covenant might well be one of them. I'm thinking that we can already guess at the fatal revenants with some certainty; for example, the Demondim are extremely likely to fall in the fatal revenant box, and nothing can stop that besides them not being in the book or them getting a personality transplant - not too likely.

[wayfriend]

SRD has earlier said that there will be multiple fatal revenants in different parts of the book.

In the GI? Can't find it...

[Nerdanel]

Yes, it was in the GI. I think it was a few months ago, probably. The GI is getting really unwieldy to sort through, for sure...