COMPASS & LOTR comparison

[davem]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Yes, and there is the quite beautiful thing about His Dark Materials - that in the end God is to be found in the very fabric of existence, not merely in the anthropomorphic figure of an aged man. This where davem's derided Republic of Heaven comes in - it is a state of existence which all share, not just those who have paid the subscription fees - and that in itself is yet another message from these stories, that God cannot simply be accessed by putting your cash onto a brass dish; the Magisterium is also a symbol of money and how it has done and very much still does corrupt churches.

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But is Dust an actual physical thing (a form of matter) or is it a metaphor for imagination/love? Can't really be both - unless Pullman is actually writing a parable & not a story at all. Pullman seems to be doing a Humpty Dumpty, & having Dust mean whatever he wants it to mean at any particular point in the story. Is this 'Divine' Dust a physical thing - in which case it can't be something as abstract & metaphysical as love or imagination, or is it simply a floating metaphor for 'nice' things - in which case how can its presence be registered on machines, or anything be done with it at all?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

But is Dust an actual physical thing (a form of matter) or is it a metaphor for imagination/love? Can't really be both - unless Pullman is actually writing a parable & not a story at all. Pullman seems to be doing a Humpty Dumpty, & having Dust mean whatever he wants it to mean at any particular point in the story. Is this 'Divine' Dust a physical thing - in which case it can't be something as abstract & metaphysical as love or imagination, or is it simply a floating metaphor for 'nice' things - in which case how can its presence be registered on machines, or anything be done with it at all?

The inspiration comes from a few things including Dark Matter, Dante and Genesis:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return

Dust is very much a real thing in Pullman's creation - it is a lot like Dark Matter in appearance and as an idea in that it's quite a mysterious substance sought after by scientists. But it's also conscious, and is attracted to conscious beings - it exists in a symbiotic relationship, needing conscious beings to survive itself, and the conscious beings needing it in order to have imagination and knowledge (i.e. consciousness!).

Dust can be a metaphor for things in our world because unless Pullman is cleverer than all the clever people in the world put together then I doubt Dust is the answer to our own existence and is just a 'thing in a book'. So of course it can be a metaphor.

[Thenamir]

Darn it, now I'm going to have to actually read HDM so I can see what you guys are talking about and write a thorough refutation.

-- Thenamir The Gadfly

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Thenamir

Darn it, now I'm going to have to actually read HDM so I can see what you guys are talking about and write a thorough refutation.

-- Thenamir The Gadfly

You might find you like it

And some more on Dust...It falls, in Lyra's world, on those who have got a fixed Daemon, as opposed to children who have shifting Daemons - so it must be linked to what the Daemon 'is'. Which cannot be firmly defined, but we can guess that the Daemon is part of the human which feels, which thinks, which learns, judging by what has happened to the nurses at Bolvangar who have undergone intercission as adults:

she would be able to stitch a wound or change a bandage, but never tell a story

Adults also make even more Dust:

by thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on

So aside from the notion that teachers must be Dust-y old things that tells us that in many ways Dust is indeed divine, is just like Tolkien's own notions of the importance of Imagination and Art. Love is also a part of what Dust is about as when children grow old enough to have a crush on someone (or something) they tend also to become adults and the Dust settles on them - so Love too is linked with Art; this has to be something Pullman gleaned from Blake.

[Thenamir]

As I noted to someone in PM, my delay in approaching HDM is not from protest of any sort (I have read and thoroughly enjoyed most of the Harry Potter books), but rather of time and the fact that I'd never heard of it until a couple of years ago. I have to admit it's not high on my to-read list even now, but if this row keeps up for much longer, I'll have to up the priority on it.

[davem]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/entert...071219?sp=true

[Lalwendë]

There's some irony for you By being so critical of the books and advising people not to read them, they're in effect doing Pullman's work for him.