Ursula Le Guin

[luka]

I was lucky enough to be in The Pink Temple with the Instructors recently and it became clear how The Wizard of Earthsea is a story of how we learn to operate within that psychic space, that larger psychedelic world, what the parameters are there and what drives us to transgress them and the consequences of those transgressions. How we learn to feel our own power and try to master it and how others help us. How much restraint and caution is appropriate. To what extent strength and energy should be given its head etc etc

 

[Woebot]

she did a translation of the tao te ching

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lao-Tzu-Tao-Te-Ching/dp/1570623953

 

[Corpsey]

Colin Burrow · It’s not Jung’s, it’s mine: Language-Magic · LRB 21 January 2021

Ursula Le Guin was able to direct a whole array of ‘what if?’ questions against the conventions of children’s...

www.lrb.co.uk

 

[Benny Bunter]

5 chapters in to the first Earthsea book, @Corpsey has just read them all so I thought I'd bump (but no spoilers please) This is definitely living up to the hype so far, as good as left hand of darkness.

What I love about it so far is all the stuff about the power of naming - there are no gods in it, but language itself is the world and the source of power and creativity. Language is magic and vice versa. I don't suppose it's an original idea but it's so beautifully illustrated and imagined here and makes me think about JH Prynne's investigations into etymology, the roots of words and therefore life that I've been reading over the last year in his poetry and essays - take knowledge/back to the springs etc... @luka might know what I'm on about cos we've sort of touched on it before

 

[Benny Bunter]

The idea of naming as the foundation of ancient knowledge made accessible to kids and adult thickos like me in a cool story about wizards and witches, none of that heavy religious stuff, I love it!

 

[luka]

i like how pride in his own strength leads to a terrible psychic wound. trip advice. @Corpsey

 

[Benny Bunter]

Ah yeah one of your poems was inspired by Earthsea/the aftermath of a bad trip wasn't it? I'll have to give it another read soon

 

[Benny Bunter]

i like how pride in his own strength leads to a terrible psychic wound. trip advice. @Corpsey

That's the bit I've just read, where he shows off to Jasper and let's the Shadow into the world. If he'd died in the act maybe the shadow would have gone back through the rift that was opened up but he lived and has to face up to what he's done

 

[luka]

Ah yeah one of your poems was inspired by Earthsea/the aftermath of a bad trip wasn't it? I'll have to give it another read soon

some people say its even better than earthsea

The Pink Temple

The book of what cannot be spoken. Compromised geometry. Struggled to justify. Curved stone. Signalled our intent wanted to be perfect...

deepmeditationtherapy.blogspot.com

 

[Benny Bunter]

The unutterable nauseous with guilt

 

[Benny Bunter]

Corpsey will run away from this now I've mentioned it but he really should read your stuff.

 

[luka]

hes probably not clever and sensitive enough to understand it. its just for the elite really. not for everyone.

 

[IdleRich]

What I love about it so far is all the stuff about the power of naming - there are no gods in it, but language itself is the world and the source of power and creativity. Language is magic and vice versa. I don't suppose it's an original idea but it's so beautifully illustrated and imagined here

I'm not even sure which I read first but when I was a kid I read The Wizard of Earthsea etc and also The Dark is Rising trilogy (or however many there were) by Susan Cooper and they both referred to this concept of knowing the true name of something giving you power over it, so I think that I quite unconsciously formed this idea that it was a common idea, an idea that existed in the world and which could be borrowed by anyone wanting to use it to fold into their own mythos... I suppose like elves or the Necronomicon (which some people thought was a genuine legend of anonymous origin rather than created by Lovecraft) as discussed in other threads.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Yeah, and also the idea that the further you go back into the 'old language' tracing etymological roots, the closer you get to the true essence of things.

 

[IdleRich]

And is my real name that one my parents gave me or something more that even I have to discover? If the former it's a bit lame really isn't it?

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

I was lucky enough to be in The Pink Temple with the Instructors recently

Christmas party was it?

There's an interesting ecology of magic that's missing from most fantasy books. Rain here means drought there, and in the later books, magic is dying in the world. It's not solely about true names (which is an idea from the old testament), and there are gods, or at least embodied ancient evils.

 

[Benny Bunter]

She said in an interview somewhere she probably got the idea of the true names thing from the golden bough that she read as a young girl

 

[Corpsey]

I was reading Tehanu last night (I can see why some people don't like it, but I do, other than some frankly weird changes in tone from time to time) and becoming increasingly convinced that Le Guin must have been a fan of Yeats. Perhaps they just shared common interests (mythology, eastern philosophy, magic and the occult, etc.) but I think there are even phrases that seem distinctly Yeatsian. An example which will seem and perhaps is ridiculous is Ogion telling Tenar "All changed!" — which immediately makes me think of "All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born."

Anyway, this doesn't necessarily add much to the experience of reading the books, it just struck me. I read some Yeats as a result, and had forgotten how great he is.

 

[subvert47]

I was reading Tehanu last night (I can see why some people don't like it, but I do

I've probably said this already... Tehanu is better at second reading, because it takes time to appreciate what Le Guin is doing. In the first three, Ged is the hero, the mage. In the fourth he's just some guy who herds goats. And the things you thought were important before, no longer are.

The Other Wind takes that even further.

 

[Corpsey]

Also that so far at least not much has happened. The first and third books are these massive world sweeping adventures (esp. the first) and so far this has all been in one place. I'm loving it though.