{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2670", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2670, "subject": "Pullman, to Adam", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-05-27T15:12:18+00:00", "last": "2001-05-28T15:20:01+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "pei047 at attglobal.net" }, "date": "2001-05-27T15:12:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Pullman, to Adam", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Adam:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "At 18:51 2001-05-24, alga wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "\"An Almost Christian Fantasy,\" the review by Daniel Maloney in the\nCatholic journal First Things of Pullman's His Dark Materials\ntrilogy\nis\nup. Intelligent analysis, I think, not just religious but\nliterary.\nhttp://print.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0105/reviews/moloney.html" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Thanks for pointing this out. I agree it's a very perceptive review." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "think Moloney has put his finger on the basic flaws of the ending,\nthough\nhe's wrong to state as a definite fact that Will and Lyra do no more\nthan\nkiss. (I'd also dispute his claim that atheists can't write fantasy,\nbut\nthat's another issue.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think he's probably right about the kiss. Her daemon, after all, has\nnot yet settled. And if they did have sex, in her role as Eve she would\nhave to get pregnant, which is a bit much for a 13-year-old. Unless\nwe're doing inner-city realism, which we emphatically aren't. (Agree\nabout the atheists, see below.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Interesting that such a sympathetic review appears in First Things,\nwhich I\nthink of (possibly mistakenly) as quite conservative, both\ntheologically and\nsocially. Moloney does say that if Pullman's anti-Christian\npropaganda had\nbeen presented more effectively, then he would have advised parents to\nkeep\ntheir children away from the books." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, isn't that interesting! I do know what he means, though." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dust doesn't seem to hard to explain, at least in broad outline; in\nfact,\nPullman pretty much lays it out in HDM, especially TAS. Dust is\nmatter that\nhas begun to become conscious of itself (TAS, 31), matter and spirit\nbeing\none in Pullman's metaphysics (TSK, pb, 249) Dust is both produced by\nconscious beings (TAS, 491) and sustains consciousness in these beings\n(don't have a specific page reference at the moment, but I clearly\nrecall it\nbeing stated that if the Dust goes out of the universe so will\nconsciousness). I'm not so clear about the Specters; in particular,\ntheir\nbeing created whenever the Knife is used seems contrived by Pullman to\nkeep\nWill and Lyra apart. (And why, after presenting his Church as evil\nfor\nsuppressing scientific investigation, does he throw in this\nman-was-not-meant-to-tamper-with-the-unknown stuff?)\n\n(On the subject of Dust, I think it was a mistake of Pullman's to\nidentify\nDust with dark matter. It seems that a lot of fantasy writers whose\nstories\nare set in, or cross over with, our world give in to the temptation\nto\nidentify their MacGuffin with whatever unexplained scientific\nphenomenon is\ncurrently au courant. Not only does this mix genres, it will date\ntheir\nbooks horribly when the phenomenon is discovered either to have a\nperfectly\nmundane explanation, or worse yet, not to exist after all.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "in terms of\nManichaean Light and Dark and a logical world-view (pretty damned\nhard\nto do when there are infinite worlds)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm not sure what you're referring to when you talk of Manichaeanism.\nThere's no evil Supreme Being in Pullman's books, any more than there\nis a\ngood Supreme Being. The Authority is evil, but only in the sense that\nHitler was evil, not in the sense of an evil Principle. And Pullman's\ncharacterization certainly isn't Manichaean, as you're undoubtedly\naware;\nviz. the harpies, who have been evil and serving the Authority for\nthousands\nof years, but are converted to good (a darn sight too quickly, if you\nask\nme).\n\nAnd Mani also posited a radical dualism between matter and spirit,\nsomething\nPullman rejects." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think he borrowed the Dark/Light thing from Mani and is playing around\nwith it--it gets out of his control, though it starts really well, first\nwith the epigraph and then with Asriel's photgraphs. In the Brit\neditions, apparently there are epigraphs (or maybe it's margin notes) to\neach chapter in the first two books, and he own drawings in the third.\nWhat a shame the US editions left these out; they might be quite\nenlightening." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Incidentally, for those interested in Gnosticism, I discovered a\nwebsite on\nGnosticism called the Gnosis archive. It includes translations of the\nNag\nHammadi writings and some of the Corpus Hermeticum, as well as a links\npage,\nand is maintained by believing Gnostics. It's at\nwww.webcom.com/~gnosis/welcome.html" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually there are nearly 100 Gnostic sites, some (most) of them pretty\nridiculous. Look under Yahoo: Religion." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Do your moral and religious objections refer to Will and Lyra's\nseparation,\nor to the whole idea of Lyra being the new Eve, whose love for Will\nsaves\nthe universe? If the latter, I agree that \"the Eve thing\" is very\nweak as a\nresolution to the plot (Pullman does provide a sort of explanation,\nthough a\nweak one, on TAS p. 478), but it fits with the theme of innocence vs.\nexperience, a major theme of the book (though my sense is that it's\nnot\ndeveloped as effectively as it could have been). The Church,\nidentifying\nexperience with original sin, wants to keep everybody innocent. The\nDust is\nattracted to experience, since the experienced--adults--are more\nconscious\nthan the innocent--children. This is why the Church thinks Dust is\nconnected to original sin, iirc. Pullman is in favor of experience,\nbecause\nit increases consciousness--an interesting reversal on the usual\nattitude in\nchildren's and young adult books that childhood = goodness and\nadulthood =\ncorruption (even if Pullman doesn't carry it through consistently:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "despite" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "the bad children in Cittagazze, most of the children in HDM are good\nand\nmost of the adults are either corrupted or at least morally ambiguous,\nthough there are some exceptions). So in choosing experience over\ninnocence\n(without consciously realizing she is doing so), Lyra is coming down\non the\nright side of the book's major dualism." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmm. This paragraph illustrates how tangled things get. But let me\nremind you that Lee Scoresby, Will's father and the gyptians are neither\ncorrupted or morally ambiguous (well, Will father is a bit strange). Nor\nare the Cittagaza adults on horseback who guard the children. The\nwitches are a special case, like the angels, being simply beyond\nmorality. They are certainly not corrupted, even (in the case of the\nangels) in serving Asriel or even in killing Will's father. But this is,\nonce again, a place that Pullman's logic is fuzzy.\n\nI would not object to the Lyra/Eve thing if Pullman had just shut up\nabout it and let us form out own conclusions. But to actually insist on\nthe connection and then emphatically to seperate her from Adam as though\nTHAT would simply brush Original Sin aside seems specious to me. There's\nalso the role of Eve as Mother of Us All, and it makes me squirm to put\na 13-year-old in that position--see above. There's also, as I have said\nbefore, all the howdyado about her having to make this Great Choice that\nwill save the world (or not) all unknowingly and by herself but, when\npush comes to shove, she is both pushed and shoved." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No. \"Balthamos said quietly, '...He was never the creator. He was an\nangel\nlike ourselves--the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was\nformed\nof Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when\nmatter\nbegins to understand itself....He told those who came after him that\nhe had\ncreated them, but it was a lie.'\" (TAS, 31-32) So the Authority is\nnot the\nDemiurge, because matter pre-existed him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, I remembered this after I sent the Demiurge message. But for the\nsake of argument, the original Gnostic Demiurge is also mistaken in the\nbelief that he was the creator. He too was messing around with what was\nalready there in the pleroma. He too lied. He was less of a creator than\nSophia, who created *him* and who also put the divine pneuma in mankind\nso that they are greater, i.e. closer to the divine, than spirits or\nangels--Pullman follows this division, and so does Crowley. I think you\nhave to admit the analogy--Pullman is not just inventing all his (dark)\nmaterials." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Actually, the Authority is \"lower\" even than that. Dust is not the\nfirst\nconscious matter, as I mistakenly stated in my earlier post; it is\nbrought\ninto existence by conscious living beings. (TAS, 451; this is the\npassage I\ncouldn't locate in my previous post about how the vanishing of Dust\nwould be\nthe end of consciousness.) So the angels, including the Authority,\nare\ndependent for their existence upon fleshly consciousness already\nexisting.\nAngels are lower, not higher, than humans in Pullman's cosmology,\nreflecting\nhis high valuation of matter (see TAS, 375; also a passage I can't\nfind at\nthe moment, where somebody talks about how much the angels wish they\nhad\nbodies)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right, see above." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As far as I can tell, there is no God in Pullman's world. The\nAuthority\ndies on pp. 410-11, and yes, it's a very good thing (even for the\nAuthority). And the absence of God also seems to be portrayed as a\ngood\nthing." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think this may be true, both parts of it. If cornered, Pullman might\nrefer to the Alien God, though I suspect he may personally be an\natheist, as is Crowley. You absolutely don't need to be religious to use\nthese wonderful (dark!) materials--I just wish his logic were\nconsistent. In a Gnostic universe, however, the Alien God would\ndefinitely not be a plot factor! The best you could hope for would be\nSophia." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Okay, now I see what you meant by saying you objected to the Eve thing\non\nmoral and religious grounds. But I think you have hold of the wrong\nend of\nthe stick. The cosmic choice, the choice it is Lyra's destiny to make\nand\nmust make freely, is not the choice to give up Will. It is her choice\nto\nlove Will and show her love. The Church's values are the opposite of\nPullman's, but the Church can read the alethiometer; and according to\nthe\nChurch, it is Lyra's giving into \"temptation,\" not her rejection of\ntemptation, which will lead to the triumph of \"Dust and sin.\" (TAS,\n68) And\nsince Dust is good, and the Church is bad, Lyra's \"temptation\" is\ngood.\nRecall also that the Dust, speaking through Mary's computer, tells\nMary she\nmust \"play the serpent,\" which she does by telling Lyra of her love\naffair\nand awakening Lyra's sexuality. Original Sin is not \"averted\": in\nPullman's\nmetaphysics, it doesn't exist. The \"Fall\" is good, since it leads to\ngreater consciousness: recall the mulefa's story of the serpent." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I just can't buy that either. A young teen falling in love is not making\na choice, she is giving in to little dancing hormones. She can make a\nchoice about \"going all the way\" or not but there is nothing to indicate\nthat these two very young kids do that--it's ambiguous, and my\ninclination is to think they don't, but it's not from choice: it's that\nthey are really too young for sex; they are in a sort of bliss. The kids\non the fan fiction site think it's the most romantic thing in the world.\nMrs. Coulter, who serves the Church, seems to have been, and remains,\nrather a lively sort in that department. I'd forgotten about that\nMary/serpent thing, but that seems entirely too muddled to me as well." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Granted, Pullman muddies the waters by requiring Lyra and Will to make\nanother decision later, in which they do have to resist \"temptation\";" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "but," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "as I discuss below, if they make the wrong decision at that point, it\nwill\nnot destroy the world. And reading the end of Chapter Thirty-Five, in\nwhich\nLyra and Will express their love (TAS 470), it's clear that _this_ is\nwhen\nthe world is saved." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'll read that again.\n\nFrom Eli:\n\nIf it had occurred to Will and Lyra" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "that\nthe obstacles were not absolute, they could have gone on to ask\nmore\ninteresting questions: what if everybody did it? are we special,\nto\njustify it? And the question Pullman didn't dare to ask them: even\nif\nwe can, should we?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "In a way, he did quite right. I don't know that they would have\nanswered the way he wanted. The honest story, I want to call it\nthough\nI really shouldn't, might be a tragedy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But the decision that Lyra and Will have to make at the end is not to\nclose\nup all the windows: the angels tell them to do this. The decision\nthey have\nto make is to resist the temptations, first for one of them to go to\nthe\nothers' world and have ten years of happiness and then death; and then\nto\nuse the extra Dust they will create to keep a window open for\nthemselves\ninstead of keeping their promise to the dead. These decisions they do\nmake\nwithout being coerced by threats of cosmic disaster.\n\n(I'm not saying I find this part of the book well worked out. Your\nobjections are valid. Also, it makes little sense for Xaphania to\nfirst\ntell Will that there is a way he can learn to travel to other worlds,\nwhich\nwill take him a lifetime to learn; and then say that they can't leave\nany\nnatural windows open because if they did, Will would spend a lifetime\nsearching for it (TAS, 494-495). And come to think of it, couldn't\nXaphania\nleave one natural window open, and then tell Will where it is? I'll\nhave to\ngo back and look at the readerview discussion, because the more I\nthink\nabout it, the stranger Pullman's insistence on their separation\nseems.)\nIt's exactly like \"The Cold Equations\": the author stacks the deck to\nforce\na \"tragic\" choice upon his characters, which when examined more\nclosely is\nnot really forced at all. There has to be a name for this type of\nscene,\nwhere the characters frantically come up with ways to escape the\nchoice the\nauthor wants to force upon them, and an all-knowing authority figure\ncomes\nup with ad hoc reasons why they won't work." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Absolutely agree--and remember that Will's father preceded him. Pullman\nis going to have to address some of this in his Dust book, I would\nthink.\n\n-alga" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2001-05-28T15:20:01+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Pullman, to Adam", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 5/27/01 2:12 PM, Alice Turner at pei047 at attglobal.net wrote:\n\nI think he borrowed the Dark/Light thing from Mani and is playing around\nwith it--it gets out of his control, though it starts really well, first\nwith the epigraph and then with Asriel's photgraphs." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, the use of Dark/Light imagery doesn't necessarily indicate influence\nfrom Manichaeanism--it's common enough. In fact, I don't recall noticing\nany influence of Manichaeanism in particular, though there is Gnostic\ninfluence." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In the Brit\neditions, apparently there are epigraphs (or maybe it's margin notes) to\neach chapter in the first two books, and he own drawings in the third.\nWhat a shame the US editions left these out; they might be quite\nenlightening." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Other way around; the drawings were in the first two books, and the\nepigraphs in the third. There is a website,\nwww.geocities.com/the_golden_compass/index.html\nwhich has the epigraphs. It also has the covers to the UK editions of NL\nand SK, both the juvenile and adult editions (I quite like the adult\ncovers), but none of Pullman's drawings yet. From my cursory scan of the\nepigraphs, I'd say they're interesting but don't settle anything (a number\nof them are drawn from the Blake poem at the start of TAS), but a closer\nanalysis might reach a different conclusion.\n\nIncidentally, Random House didn't use his drawings because they thought it\nmade the book look like a children's book; and they didn't use his epigraphs\nbecause they hadn't used his drawings, and they wanted to get the book out\nin a hurry. (The readerville discussion, message #91). Nice to know they\nhave so much respect for the integrity of the books they publish." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "(even if Pullman doesn't carry it through consistently:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "despite\nthe bad children in Cittagazze, most of the children in HDM are good\nand\nmost of the adults are either corrupted or at least morally ambiguous,\nthough there are some exceptions).\n\nHmm. This paragraph illustrates how tangled things get. But let me\nremind you that Lee Scoresby, Will's father and the gyptians are neither\ncorrupted or morally ambiguous (well, Will father is a bit strange). Nor\nare the Cittagaza adults on horseback who guard the children. The\nwitches are a special case, like the angels, being simply beyond\nmorality. They are certainly not corrupted, even (in the case of the\nangels) in serving Asriel or even in killing Will's father. But this is,\nonce again, a place that Pullman's logic is fuzzy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, these are the exceptions I was thinking of. But while these are all (I\nthink) socially marginal figures. The adult world portrayed by Pullman is,\nas a whole, thoroughly corrupt." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would not object to the Lyra/Eve thing if Pullman had just shut up\nabout it and let us form out own conclusions. But to actually insist on\nthe connection and then emphatically to seperate her from Adam as though\nTHAT would simply brush Original Sin aside seems specious to me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The separation between Lyra and Will has nothing to do with Original Sin,\nsince the books reject the idea of Original Sin, as I've argued before.\n(Nor did the Gnostics believe in Original Sin as a yielding to temptation;\nI'm surprised that you read the books as Gnostic books and still read the\nending as you do.) And whether or not Lyra and Will have sex, they\ndefinitely \"fall\"; Lyra's bringing the fruit to Will's mouth, and his\naccepting it, make this clear." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There's\nalso the role of Eve as Mother of Us All, and it makes me squirm to put\na 13-year-old in that position--see above." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Obviously Lyra can't literally be the Mother of Us All, whether or not she\nhas sex (and I also dislike the idea of her being pregnant). If she and\nWill are Parents to humanity, it is in a metaphorical sense: they are \"the\ntrue image of what human beings always could be, once they had come into\ntheir inheritance.\" (TAS, 470)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But for the\nsake of argument, the original Gnostic Demiurge is also mistaken in the\nbelief that he was the creator. He too was messing around with what was\nalready there in the pleroma." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As far as I can tell, though, the Authority doesn't even shape the material\nuniverse out of pre-existing, as the Demiurge did. Our universe came into\nexistence by itself; the Authority just moved in and took over." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "He too lied. He was less of a creator than\nSophia, who created *him* and who also put the divine pneuma in mankind\nso that they are greater, i.e. closer to the divine, than spirits or\nangels--Pullman follows this division, and so does Crowley. I think you\nhave to admit the analogy--Pullman is not just inventing all his (dark)\nmaterials." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I wasn't aware of that fact about Gnosticism, and it is an interesting\ncommonality. But for Pullman, humans are above angels not because they\ncontain the divine pneuma, but because they are flesh. I would argue that\nHDM is not Gnostic, although it's influenced by Gnosticism (of course, the\nwaters are muddied by the fact that \"Gnosticism\" was not a term any of the\npeople we think of as Gnostics ever used; it was applied by later\nhistorians.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think this may be true, both parts of it. If cornered, Pullman might\nrefer to the Alien God, though I suspect he may personally be an\natheist, as is Crowley." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In the readerville discussion, Pullman says he personally doesn't believe in\nGod (message #65). And I, myself, don't recall any evidence of the Alien\nGod in the books." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The cosmic choice, the choice it is Lyra's destiny to make\nand\nmust make freely, is not the choice to give up Will. It is her choice\nto\nlove Will and show her love." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I just can't buy that either. A young teen falling in love is not making\na choice, she is giving in to little dancing hormones." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Agreed that Lyra is not making a conscious choice between innocence and\nexperience, as it seems to me that Pullman's theme really requires. But she\ndoes make a sort of choice, in showing her love to Will by giving him the\nfruit. And for the reasons I've given before, it is this choice which is\nthe cosmic choice she is destined to make.\n\nI think the internal evidence is clear, but I have external evidence as\nwell. In the readerville discussion I referred to earlier, Pullman says:\n\"Temptation: I've been asked this question a lot, or a variation of it. The\nevent is signalled as clearly as i could without making it ridiculously\novert. Mary in her marzipan story is giving them the information they need\nto progress to the next stage of their development. It isn't represented as\ntransgressive because in the mulefa world growing up was never seen as a\nloss, but a gain: their story of the snake and the wheel shows that. Mary is\ntold to play the serpent, and in that world, that means bring wisdom. And\nnext day she actually gives them some fruit, and it's fruit that Lyra lifts\nto Will's mouth, knowing exactly what it will mean. The signals are all\nthere.\" (message #31)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'd forgotten about that\nMary/serpent thing, but that seems entirely too muddled to me as well." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This seems pretty straightforward to me, once you recognize that here\nPullman is using a Gnostic version of the myth, in which the serpent is the\ngood guy because he encourages Adam and Eve to gain the knowledge the\nDemiurge hid from them." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I'll have to\ngo back and look at the readerview discussion, because the more I\nthink\nabout it, the stranger Pullman's insistence on their separation\nseems.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rereading the readerville discussion, it seems to me that Pullman wanted to\nhave his lovers tragically sundered, but didn't succeed in creating a\nsituation where this would follow naturally, so resorted to the dice-loading\nwe see.\n\n--Adam" } ] } ] }