Re: Questions regarding some of the Zothique stories.
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 7 February, 2024 06:08PM
Hello and greetings!
The first thing in general to consider is that much of CAS' style, his actual use of words, is informed by poetry--he's taking a very flexible approach, and is sometimes coining new usages, if not words.
Specific comments below.
sheepwarrior Wrote:
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> Hi, long time listener, first time caller.
>
> I would love to get your opinions or answers to
> some questions/observations I have…
>
>
> The Voyage on King Euvoran
>
> When the Vagabond Necromancer brings the
> Gazolba-Bird Crown to life.
>
> ”Then, with metallic whirring, its white tail
> deployed like the beams of a flying sun, it flew
> swiftly through the open portals, and passed
> seaward from Aramoam into the morning light.”
>
> Q: It seems to suggest that the bird is somehow
> mechanical?
Yeah, it does.
I'm guessing that because it was a part of the crown for ages, it's stuffed, and should it come to life (this is fantasy, right?) it will not behave like a living bird. So he has it behave like one that is artificial in some sense, and he does this by *suggesting* that the sound of its movement is mechanical.
> Were wire frames used in in the process of
> taxidermy?
I wouldn't know, nor would I be too literal when reading poetic fantasy.
>
>
> The Dead Will Cuckold You
>
> When Natanasna is talking to Kalguth in the
> necropolis of Faraad.
>
> ”As I prevised, the king took advantage
> Of my commanded presence in his halls,
> And sent his hounds to sniff for you. He’ll not
> Venture to harry me, who have climbed too high
> In magedom’s hierarchy, but would fang
> His baffled spleen on one not fully armed
> And bucklered with arts magical.”
>
> Q: What is your understanding of the line ”fang
> his baffled spleen”?
> Using various online dictionaries I came up with
> ”fling his frustrated spite” or ”direct his
> cheated wrath” maybe?
Again poetic suggestion.
The reader will know how a fang penetrates. In this passage he is figurative penetrating his "spleen", and in this he uses spleen in the sense of "venting one's spleen", venting anger.
[url=https://grammarist.com/idiom/vent-ones-spleen/#:~:text=To%20vent%20one's%20spleen%20means,the%20repositories%20of%20different%20emotions.]
So far as to why the king's anger is "baffled", perhaps the story context lets us know.
>
>
> The Empire of the Necromancers
>
> When Illeiro is first mentioned at the beginning
> of Chapter 2.
>
> ”Youngest and last of the Nimboth emperors was
> Illeiro, who had died in the first month of the
> plague, and had lain in his high-built mausoleum
> for two hundred years before the coming of the
> necromancers.
> Raised up with his people and his fathers to
> attend the tyrants, Illeiro had resumed the
> emptiness of existence without question and had
> felt no surprise. He had accepted his own
> resurrection and that of his ancestors as one
> accepts the indignities and marvels of a dream. He
> knew that he had come back to a faded sun, to a
> hollow and spectral world, to an order of things
> in which his place was merely that of an obedient
> shadow. But at first he was troubled only, like
> the others, by a dim weariness and a pale hunger
> for the lost oblivion.”
>
> Q: Based on this description the sun dimmed in the
> space of two hundred years.
It might mean that, but it also might mean also a) when combined with "hollow and spectral world" we can see that *nothing* is as it was when he was alive; or b) he is simply returning to the same sun that he had known when living--a faded sun.
> Surely that would
> suggest something unnatural.
That would not be out of place in a story about two guys who resurrect an entire dead kingdom and forcing reanimated corpses to do their bidding.
> I can't imagine
> Illeiro being able to see an appreciable
> difference in the brightness of the sun in just
> two centuries?
> Or am I just overthinking it lol
Yes. Over-thinking it.
>
>
> Necromancy in Naat
>
> Several lines from the story...
>
> ”On a clear blue summer day it departed from
> Oroth with all auguries for a safe and tranquil
> voyage.”
>
> ”The skies cleared, leaving a bright azure vault
> from horizon to horizon.”
>
> ”he remarked a singular darkening of its waters,
> which assumed from moment to moment a hue as of
> old blood commingled with more and more of
> blackness: though above it the sun shone
> untarnished.”
>
> Q: Am I right in thinking that Necromancy in Naat
> is actually set BEFORE the sun starts to dim on
> Zothique?!?!
In my readings of Zothique I don't think you should be too literal about the sun. It's a sort of visual device to show that everything is winding down--the world is just plain worn out, it's really hard to even envision some of the action of some of the stories. E.g.,in that story of the two brothers who hear a story about an ancient king/sorcerer and his stellar monster familiar and how they were buried together beneath the throne room, everything about the story is bright and desert-like. It's hard to imaging how the subhumans pursue them into a dim desert ruin. So basically, when "seeing" the narrative, I see it as normally lit.
Most of the visuals become unimaginable if you dim the sun. E.g., The Isle of the Torturers, what with all the sailing, works best visually in light as we know it.
So CAS making the dimmed sun allusion may have actually shot himself in the foot, in my opinion, because his stories are extremely visual.
But these are just my own opinions, nothing more.
>
> Thank you in advance for any help you can offer,
> cheers.
--Sawfish
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