Why should I not delight to live In these fair lands where Aestas has long residence Working her artistry day after day? It is not to the artist’s blame that The audience shrivels and withers before the intensity of her performance Snails or slugs bestrewn with salt cast from where she prompts sweat
Though descended from hardy men I am not a hardy man Have not the stamina that I once did And even that was not so much But that fault is mine if fault it is And problem mine if it is no fault Though I confess to seeking faults and wallowing in them
Even so feeble and fast-falling as I am I take some small joy in seeing the dance she does Dwelling here so long as she does Kindly and in force here as in few other places Even if it is not for me that she will dance Or not only for me And others gyrate more fully and freely than I have ever done At her mere approach and in her long duration Taking their time as she with them until she Satisfied that she has done enough Moves on Only to come back again As those who sit before this stage of hers Bound by brush among gnarling woods upthrusting Know will happen And mostly when– Though she visits at odd times between
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Oh, I am not immune to that demand
That Stupid God has called across the land,
From stony shore to balmy beach of sand,
From water’s side to high and snow-clad peak!
I often find myself compelled to seek
Some idle pastime through which that god wreaks
The ruin of the mind. I make me numb,
An infantile sucking on the thumb
Or sitting thereupon to depths self-plumb.
Yet while too many find their joy in such,
I linger in that hateful fear: too much
Of any joy will blunt the future touch
Of better happiness that can be found–
At least as much of it as is around.
Good job, yeah! Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
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Read the previous entry in the series here. Read the next entry in the series here.
Following an extended message between bird-keepers treating concerns of information security, the first chapter of the novel, “The Duke and the Captive,” begins with a messenger reporting to the Duke of Chalced in fear or reprisal for the ill news he carries. The messenger is escorted away, and the ducal palace is described in some detail as the Duke is tended and receives a fuller report on actions in the Rain Wilds. His own situation is described in some detail, both his failing health and dearth of legal heirs, and his anxiousness to consume dragon-blood and -flesh to assuage both. The Duke lashes out, feebly but pointedly, at those around him.
Something of an antecedent? Image from Google Maps, used for commentary
Selden Vestrit, captive, ruminates on his situation as Chalcedeans view him, an oddity among a collection of oddities. The onlookers discuss selling him, ignoring his pleas. As they leave, Selden is wracked by coughing, his situation worsening as he longs for Tintaglia and freedom both.
The question occurs to me again as I reread the present chapter: To what, if anything, is Chalced an analogy? As I’ve remarked, there are analogues for other nation-states in the Realm of the Elderlings series. Bingtown and the Rain Wilds echo the United States, making Jamaillia something like Hanoverian England. The Six Duchies and the Out Islands are not unlike the indigenous American peoples, if with other influences visible and at play, so that “parallel” would be too strong a term. It is the case that the Duchies and Bingtown are or have been in position to ally against Chalced, being both vexed thereby; the analogue of Chalced would therefore be some state vexatious to multiple populations, heavily autocratic, and with a (relatively) poor human rights record.
I admit to getting somewhat outside my remaining areas of expertise, here, but colonial Spain somehow comes to mind. I am not a Hispanist; I did grow up in an area marked by Spanish colonialism, and there is something of that in even popular and public-school accounts of the local and regional histories, but I am far from a specialist in such things. I do, however, think there might be something to investigate in that line for an intrepid student who is more attuned to such concerns than I can be. (Please be sure to cite me if your papers take you in such a direction; I shall thank you.)
Similarly outside my expertise but similarly suggestive is the parallel of the names. Chalced seems to work from Chalcedon, an ancient town of Classical Asia Minor now part of the Istanbul district in Turkey. Site of some important early Christian councils and the namesake of chalcedony, it exerts some historical and religious influence…but, again, my noting that there is some interest to follow does not mean I am equipped to follow that interest in what has to be a short(ish) blog post such as this one. Again, a student of more related concerns looking at this might well have more to say. (Again, too, kindly throw me a citation if you investigate that way; I shall still thank you.)
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Why is this the thing that shocks you so
The one at which you mean to draw a line
And sever yourself from the greater godly body
In which you were raised
To which you pledged yourself
And not the lie that you enact by
Pushing yourself away from it
And it from you?
Is it not a sin to lie?
Yet you expect to be forgiven
And to remain among the body of the elect
While working so very, very hard
To keep others out of it
I think it’s pretty. Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com
Why is this the thing that shocks you so
The forbidden deed among forbidden deeds
The unpardonable event that must be set aside
Or must be set aside.
Because it is commanded that it not be done
And that those who do it find opprobrium
And not the marks made in flesh and marring of it
And not keeping the gleanings of the harvest
Or the fruits from the edges of the fields
And not the mistreatment of strangers in the land
And not adultery
Which is one of the larger among
Thou shalt not
Set in stone on courthouse steps as a movie’s marketing maneuver
A politician’s campaign ploy?
Are they less forbidden?
Yet they who do them
Again and again
And gladly
Those get welcomed in and celebrated
While others would be left to languish
Why is this the thing that shocks you so
The one you claim cannot be forgiven
That merits castigation, condemnation
And not the killing of another person
Something many claim that they would do again
Given similar circumstances
And not when someone else is creeping into their home at night
Which might well be excused
But in the homes of others
Unwelcome on their lands
And for no real purpose save to be there?
Is it not a sin to kill?
And yet many do more than fail to repent
Who are kept among the congregation gladly
Why is this the thing that shocks you so
Demands of you that you rise up in anger
Giving voice to hatred
Giving hands to violence all too often
You who claim to hold as your lord and teacher
One who often abjured violence
Who said who lives by the sword will die by it
Who said who calls another a fool is in danger of damnation
Who said not to resist evil
Who said to turn the other cheek
Who said to give more to those who ask of you than they ask
Who said to take the beam from your own eye before worrying what is in another’s
Who said to cut yourself down to keep yourself from sinning rather than to cut another down
When you will welcome back among you
Even praise
Who flout the two true commandments
Proudly
Who offer up not even a mumbled apology
Let alone burnt gifts of atonement
Or efforts to make real change in themselves
And whose actions bespeak praise for Mammon?
It doesn’t seem right, does it?
It shouldn’t
But you still do it
Over and over and over again
Unrepentantly
And demanding to have a house that is not yours
Be as you would have it
Shutting out those who have too often been in the cold
Who harming none have suffered harm
Why is
This
The thing that shocks you so?
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Elliott RWI 