I recently finished reading a fantasy novel: Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson. I'm still deciding whether I liked the novel and whether I'll read the other two books of the trilogy, or the rest of the books in the universe, but there were some themes and passages that struck me. One is the following. The main character, a leper magically transported to another world, is commenting on the Land, as the other world is called. This world is in touch with and in love with nature, and everyone has a deep connection with it: some can even propel boats without oars and heal shattered pots with song. One major theme of the work is the slow desecration of the Land: it begins healthy and vibrant, and it in time becomes grim and violated. All of this is easy to see, though: as Thomas Covenant, the protagonist, describes it, you can see health in the Land. The following passage contrasts the vision of the Land and its health and the vision of our world, including the ways each set of inhabitants sees the world. I think it is a poignant observation on modern man's view of beauty and how his view should be corrected.
"You probably see it better than I do—but even I can tell that this is beautiful. It's alive—it's alive the way it should be alive. This kind of grass is yellow and stiff and thin—but I can see that it's healthy. It belongs here, in this kind of soil. By hell! I can even see what time of year this is by looking at the dirt. I can see spring.
"Where I come from we don't see— If you don't know the annual cycles of the plants, you can't tell the difference between spring and summer. If you don't have a—have a standard of comparison, you can't recognize— But the world is beautiful—what's left of it, what we haven't damaged." Images of Haven Farm sprang irrefusably across his mind. He could not restrain the mordancy of his tone as he concluded, "We have beauty too. We call it 'scenery.'"
"'Scenery,'" Mhoram echoed. "The word is strange to me—but I do not like the sound."
Covenant felt oddly shaken, as if he had just looked over his shoulder and found himself standing too close to a precipice. "It means that beauty if something extra," he rasped. "It's nice, but we can live without it."
"Without?" Mhoram's gaze glittered dangerously.
And behind him Foamfollower breathed in astonishment, "Live without beauty? Ah, my friend! How do you resist despair?"
"I don't think we do," Covenant muttered. "Some of us are just stubborn." Then he fell silent.
"You probably see it better than I do—but even I can tell that this is beautiful. It's alive—it's alive the way it should be alive. This kind of grass is yellow and stiff and thin—but I can see that it's healthy. It belongs here, in this kind of soil. By hell! I can even see what time of year this is by looking at the dirt. I can see spring.
"Where I come from we don't see— If you don't know the annual cycles of the plants, you can't tell the difference between spring and summer. If you don't have a—have a standard of comparison, you can't recognize— But the world is beautiful—what's left of it, what we haven't damaged." Images of Haven Farm sprang irrefusably across his mind. He could not restrain the mordancy of his tone as he concluded, "We have beauty too. We call it 'scenery.'"
"'Scenery,'" Mhoram echoed. "The word is strange to me—but I do not like the sound."
Covenant felt oddly shaken, as if he had just looked over his shoulder and found himself standing too close to a precipice. "It means that beauty if something extra," he rasped. "It's nice, but we can live without it."
"Without?" Mhoram's gaze glittered dangerously.
And behind him Foamfollower breathed in astonishment, "Live without beauty? Ah, my friend! How do you resist despair?"
"I don't think we do," Covenant muttered. "Some of us are just stubborn." Then he fell silent.
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