#ch: lord asriel

[mamsellechosette24601]

quotes from tas about will flipping into “everything is about lyra” mode as he tries to find her that are absolutely wrecking me, in anticipation for tonight’s episodes:

ch 2: “if I’m stronger, you have to obey me. Besides, I have the knife. So I can command you: help me find Lyra. I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll find her first and then I’ll go to Lord Asriel.”

“and now I know what her world feels like, I can find it with a knife…” (just a practical comment, but when I tell you I chocked and started sobbing. Also, something something will travelling through Lyra’s world and getting the feeling of what her life was like, only she’s not there to do the showing herself, as she wanted to… something something meeting the beloved through their world in their absence… something something the way how will actually paid so much attention to what Lyra was telling him about her adventures, knowing how to deal w people and Iorek in her world)

“You’re making it harder for me to reach Lyra, not easier. She’s the most important thing [no atm, just an absolute statement! + will doesn’t know anything about the prophecy], and you’re forgetting her completely. Well, I’m not.”

ch8: “Will walked on. The toil was full and mechanical, but at least he was moving, and at least every step took him closer to Lyra.”

ch11: “And there she was, his dearest friend, asleep (…) He knelt down beside her and lifted the hair away.”

ch12: “Lyra was moving and murmuring. Will bent down and squeezed her hand”

“Lyra’s voice came urgently: ‘Will? Is that Will?’

‘Lyra!’ He said, and knelt quickly beside her (…) ‘we’re in a cave. Don’t move too fast, you’ll get dizzy. Just take it carefully. Find your strength. You’ve been asleep for days and days.’ Her eyes were still and heavy, and she was racked by deep yawns, but she was desperate to be awake, and he helped her up, putting her arm over his shoulder and taking much of her weight (…) Will breathed in the scent of Lyra’s sleepy body with a happy satisfaction: she was here, she was real.”

Like how am I supposed to survive this month

[oakleystreet]

L O R D     A S R I E L

DÆMON: Stelmaria, a snow leopard.

BOND: Whole.

HAIR: Black

EYES: (...)

AGE: Undisclosed.

BIRTH: Undisclosed.

NATIONALITY: Brytish. (English)

STATUS: Alive during LBS, NL, TSK and TAS. Dead during LO, S, TSC.

Lord Asriel was a Brytish nobleman and a notable scholar and explorer. He had, a one point, been a member of Parliament and was involved in defeating the Watercourse Bill, which would have limited the gyptians’ right of free passage through Brytain. His friendship with the gyptians was well-known, and he saved two gyptian children, Ruud and Nellie Koopman, from drowning in a flood in 1953.

He made his fortune from exploring, especially the Arctic Region, and was considered richer than a king at one point in his life. Not much of his family is known.

At some point prior to 1985, Lord Asriel met and began an affair with Marisa Coulter, who was married to Edward Coulter at the time. From this relationship, Lyra was born sometime in 1985 and because she resembled Asriel, he took the baby to one of his estates in Oxfordshire and placed her in the care of Ma Costa. Coulter, found out, however, and made an attempt on their lives, which Asriel hindered by knocking the gun from Coulter’s hand, then using it to shoot him in the head.

Asriel was tried by the High Court, and although the law protected his right to defend his property and child, it also benefitted the late Edward Coulter for defending his wife’s honor. As a result of this, Lyra was taken into government custody and Asriel was forbidden from seeing her; on top of that, he had almost his entire fortune seized, leaving him nearly penniless.

He was close to Lord Nugent, who had been in charge of finding a safe place for Lyra to stay and when she was placed at the Priory of Godstow, Asriel visited her briefly, convincing Sister Fenella to allow him to say goodbye. He left Oxford on that night, after speaking to Malcolm and borrowing his canoe; Asriel then had the canoe sent to the best boat-builder in England and asked Coram van Texel to return it to Malcolm.

In the first days of the flood, Bud Schlesinger reported he had briefly met Asriel in Chelsea the night before of his meeting, and that he was preparing to depart for the North once more.

(to be continued)

Asriel’s age is never disclosed and the hints given are somewhat contradictory. Although he is consistently addressed as “Lord,” his noble title is unknown.

Lyra mentions the Count and Countess Belacqua, but it is never clear whether they existed or not. Nothing else is known about Asriel’s family.

He was a member of Jordan College, although the text suggests he spent little time there, instead focusing on his exploring.

His wine of preference was the Hungarian wine, Tokay.

Asriel is described as a tall man, with powerful shoulders, and a fierce dark face. “His movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal (...)” (NL, chapter 1). His voice was described as deep and harsh and he was a man with a dominating posture and attitude.

DÆMON RELATIONSHIP

Slightly in disagreement, mostly quiet companionship and Stelmaria seems to exert the role of reason in their pair while Asriel acts as the impulsive, passionate, emotional part.

FAMILIAL TIES

Lyra Belacqua: daughter.

FRIENDS & ALLIES

Dr. Carne: college relation. 

Thomas Nugent: ally.

John Faa: ally.

Xaphania: ally.

King Ogunwe: ally.

Lord Roke: ally.

John Parry: ally

Thorold: ally and manservant.

ROMANTIC TIES

Marisa Coulter: lover.

Ruta Skadi: lover.

ENEMIES & RIVALS

Metatron: enemy.

Authority: enemy.

Father MacPhail: enemy.

AFFILIATIONS

Republic of Heaven: safe haven.

Jordan College: alma mater, educational.

Oakley Street: uncommitted friendship.

Magisterium: enemy.

Consistorial Court of Discipline.

Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit.

The Kingdom of Heaven: enemy, at open war.

[lordeasriel]

mary, asriel & xaphania: the triple symbolism of john milton’s satan figure

We discussed recently in the discord server about how Mary, Xaphania and Asriel are all symbols/metaphors/examples of Satan in Paradise Lost and it really has been nagging me because it’s beautiful in many ways, so I’m gonna rant about that today. I will stretch this to the limit though, be warned, plus feel free to add your thoughts to this mess (i have too much free time on weekends). Under the cut because it is long and it’s also very incoherent, might I add.

Pullman himself can’t seem to settle on who is the actual Satan figure, he goes for Asriel or Xaphania, mostly: Asriel is the metaphorical one, Xaphania is quite the literal (being the figure of the Angel who Rebelled against God, which is Lucifer). Mary isn’t that obvious, but she represents the Serpent, which in the Bible is another one of Satan’s multiple forms.

Asriel, by being the most illusive of them all, is the representation of secrecy and ultimate indignation, a man wrong by the Church. Like the Fallen Angels in the original story, his demise is cause by his Lust, for like the Angels he has watched a daughter of men (Marisa) and fell in love. He was stripped of what made him who he was (his wealth and influence, as opposed to the Angels cast out, who were stripped of their holiness and their higher rank). He fights for freedom, of course, but he is motivated, essentially, by revenge.

Mary is knowledgeable and curious; her role in the story is to play the Serpent, like with Adam and Eve. In the Bible, we are taught that Eve is tempted by the Serpent to take on the forbidden fruit: that simple gesture is both about Greed and Gluttony (or so the Bible tries to teach); however, the Serpent is not offering the fruit as a means of property or food, she offers it as an object to receive Knowledge from. And this is Mary. She is the Scientist and the figure of Experience, she values knowledge and wisdom, and she passes those on to Lyra and Will, and also the Mulefa. The Angels from the original story had a vast array of knowledge that were spread through humankind once they fell (most of their knowledge is considered demonic or evil by the original story, as if they were meant to spread bad things to humans, but you know how it is)

Xaphania is the literal figure of the Rebel Angel. Satan, before being cast out for his disobedience, was an angel and a highly regarded one. Some stories speak that Lucifer refused to acknowledge humanity as equals to angels and fought God because of it, some say that the angels that watched over humanity fell in love with human women (how very straight of them!) and were cast out because of the sin of Lust. The point is that Lucifer was loved the most by God, and was considered to be the most beautiful of the angels. One way or the other, he was cast out for defiance; Xaphania, upon discovering the truth, confronted the Authority and was exiled from the Kingdom of Heaven. She represents the ultimate figure of a warrior, depending on how you read it, she could be the sin of Wrath or Envy.

Pullman opens the first book with a passage from Paradise Lost by John Milton (a poem that essentially inspired the whole book) and something that stood out to me recently is this:

(...) Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage... (Paradise Lost, John Milton)

This is easily my favourite part of the excerpt and Pullman doesn’t use the last lines:  “for no narrow frith/ He had to cross.”, but I want to talk about it all the same because it fits with rest of the analysis quite well. In TSK, chapter 12, Mary talks to the Angels and is guided to the window to complete her role as the Serpent and this what Pullman wrote:

“Mary Malone pushed back the chair and stood up, trembling. She pressed her fingers to her temples and discovered the electrodes still attached to her skin. She took them off absently. She might have doubted what she had done, and what she could still see on the screen, but she had passed in the last half-hour or so beyond doubt and belief altogether. Something had happened, and she was galvanized.” (The Subtle Knife, page 251, Knopf Edition).

“Up until this moment she had been moving on pent-up excitement, but as got out of her car in the dark of the small hours and found he night cool and silent and still all around her, she felt a definite lurch of aprehension. Suppose she was dreaming? Suppose it was all some elaborate joke?

Well, it was too late to worry about that. She was committed. She lifted out the rucksack she’d often taken on camping journeys in Scotland and the Alps, and reflected that at least she knew how to survive out of doors; if worst came to worst, she could always run away, take to the hills...”  (The Subtle Knife, page 252, Knopf Edition).

“Deceive the Guardian  — well, she’d done that; but she had no idea what she would find inside the tent. She was prepared for some sort of archaelogical dig; for a dead body; for a meteorite. But nothing in her life or her dreams had prepared her for that square yard or so in midair, or for the silent sleeping city by the sea that she found when stepped through it.” (The Subtle Knife, page 254, Knopf Edition).

This is the beginning of her journey: “Into this wild Abyss (a world of Angels and worlds and Dust, all introduced to her out of a sudden) the wary Fiend (Mary, although believing in it, is constantly cautious about everything that is happening, she is a scientist after all, it is her role to question everything) stood on the brink of Hell (the university, now crowded with security under Boreal’s orders, a place to which she spent years confined to by her work and then the guarded tent, a place she is stuck with until her role is fulfilled) and looked a while (she pushes the chair and stares at the conversation she just had with Angels; she also stares, astonished, at the window, before going through it) pondering his voyage, for no narrow frith he had to cross. (In the second excerpt, Mary finally questions what she’s doing, but in the end, she proceeds with her journey, regardless of what await her.)”

Asriel’s take on the verses is fast and focused on one single point (that we see in the book, given he has no POV, he could have pondered his voyage the moment he sees the city in the Aurora). It’s on chapter 21 of Northern Lights:

Lyra’s father stood there, his powerful dark-eyed face at first fierce, triumphant, and eager; and the the color faded from it; his eyes widened in horror, as he recognized his daughter.

“No! No!” He staggered back and clutched at the mantelpiece. Lyra couldn’t move. (...) He seemed appalled; he kept shaking his head, he held up his hands as if to ward her off; she couldn’t believe his distress. (...) Their daemons [Roger’s and Lyra’s] fluttered out into the warmth, and after a moment Lord Asriel passed a hand acorss his brow and recovered slightly. The color began to return to his cheeks as he looked down at the two.”  (The Golden Compasss, page 364-365, Knopf Edition).

Asriel is already into this wild Abyss (also he is literally there, but shall we not discuss this? lmao)  that is multiple worlds and Dust business, so he watches, triumphant, as the last of his requirements arrive, but it’s Lyra. So he watches her, and loses his mind over it; his pondering is not exactly quiet as he yells at her for being there. He is completely out of his mind that she is his sacrifice; he thinks he is willing to pay any price for his journey, but Lyra makes his crossing much harder to accept. But when he sees Roger, he stops, calms down. “The wary Fiend, stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while”, this was likley the most emotional Asriel has ever felt lol and as he realises Roger is there, he ponders his next move (talking to Lyra, then proceeding with his journey).

He does not actually hesitate at the Bridge, except for his conversation with Mrs. Coulter, but once she says she won’t go with him, he touches Stelmaria, turns around and leaves. He has already accepted his journey.

Xaphania, as we know, is the original Rebel Angel, so we do not have her actual journey, but it’s possible to represent her through the actual poem, after all, she is Lucifer, she has stood on the brink of Hell and pondered her voyage (that of her war and that of when she gave consciouness to humankind and others).

The fallen angels story comes from The Book of Enoch (who, guess what? is that bitch Metatron) and it tells the story of how the angels rebelled against God, following Lucifer and how they were cast out for their sin of disobedience. However, in the book, Archangel Michael (also known as the First Angel) is the one who casts out the angels for their defiance.  Xaphania, essentially, fights the first angel because she finds out he has been lying about being the creator and she, as well as the others, are cast out by him.

I did some light research (cause 1. I refuse to read that book 2. It gets weird fast when you research this theme) and the biggest consensus I found was that "Their consciousness therefore “fell” to lower levels of vibration and awareness as they were, by cosmic law, “cast out into the earth” by Archangel Michael and his legions of good angels.”  (I found this on a spiritual site, so take “good angels” with a pinch of salt and by pinch, I mean the whole salt bowl). This matches Pullman’s own plot for Xaphania and the rebel angels, as she is the one who brought consciouness into the world, although she did so out of her own will.

One thing that stood out the most to me while reading about this, is that the angels in the Book of Enoch were forced to descend and exist as humans, creating what we refer to as Nephilim. When they fall, they do so as consciouness, and while Xaphania is the literal Satan figure, by being the physical angel, Asriel and Mary are human; I do not think they are angels, of course, but from a metaphorical point of view, to think of them as pieces of the Rebel Angel consciouness, once Xaphania fell, is quite beautiful.

Fun fact: while researching, I found out that Lucifer is a latin name for Venus when it shows itself on its morning appearances; Venus is associated often to women and the female in general, which makes Xaphania’s female shape quite interesting and not that outside of the original idea.

That are others instances where Asriel and Mary ponder their journeys, but these are the most important ones because they are the first time they do it. Funny enough, Asriel do not ponder at the Abyss lmao This is one messy text, but I hope you had fun if you read it all bye

[argentvive]

The Furnace Man and the Mermaid: A Terrifying Chemical Wedding in The Secret Commonwealth

I wrote about Chapter 20, “The Furnace Man,” briefly in a response to @ssmhhh​--

https://argentvive.tumblr.com/post/637713923004678144/have-you-done-an-any-analysis-of-ch-20-the 

Obviously I barely scratched the surface of the alchemy in the chapter.  Pullman is writing alchemy on two levels here:

1.  Physical alchemy, with an actual alchemist, Johannes Agrippa, doing real alchemy in an alchemical laboratory

2.  Literary alchemy:  Lyra, the Philosopher’s Stone To Be, is tried and tested and emerges with greater knowledge and a clearer purpose

I. Setting

Lyra is in Prague, where she is recruited by a stranger to help a man who has been separated from his daemon--the “furnace man,” Cornelis van Dongen.  

With the help of the notebook she retrieved from the corpse of Hassall (Lyra’s original alchemist in TSC), Lyra finds Agrippa’s address and the trio reach his laboratory.  Here’s the description:

[The room] had a vaulted ceiling, black with the smoke of centuries. A large furnace stood in the very center, under a copper hood that went up through the ceiling as a chimney. Around the walls, hanging from the ceiling, or standing on the floor were a thousand different objects: retorts and crucibles; earthenware jars; open-topped boxes containing salt, or pigment, or dried herbs; books of every size and age, some lying open, some crammed into shelves, philosophical instruments, compasses, a photo-mill, a camera lucida, a rack of Leyden jars, a Van de Graaff generator; a jumble of bones, some of which might have been human; various plants under dusty glass domes; and an immensity of other objects. Lyra thought: Makepeace! It reminded her powerfully of the Oxford alchemist’s laboratory. (TSC, p. 385)

Let it never be said that Pullman doesn’t know his alchemy.  Here are a few images of real alchemy laboratories.  

First, and most authentic, from Heinrich Khunrath, Amphiteatrum sapientiae aeternae (1595), here’s a rendering of his own laboratory in Prague.  (Recall that the aletheiomster was invented in Prague by “Pavel Khunrath,” almost certainly an homage to the real Khunrath.)

Next, a genre painting by the Dutchman Adriaen van Ostade, “The Alchemist” (1661).  Although this is a couple of decades later than the heyday of alchemy, I include it since Van Dongen is also described as a Dutchman, and the haphazard messiness fits.  Although there’s a wooden ladder, rather than wooden steps, as in the book.  

There are many others, but I thought The Alchemists, by the Italian painter Pietro Longhi (1757), shows the alchemical apparatus particularly well, including the alchemical furnace, the athanor, on the right, smoking away.  

II.  The Alchemist.  The alchemist is Johannes Agrippa, presumably based on the real alchemist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) that I wrote about here:

https://argentvive.tumblr.com/search/Heinrich+Agrippa

Here’s how he is described:

And standing by the furnace, in the red glare from the burning coals, was a man in rough workman’s clothing, stirring a cauldron in which something pungent was boiling. He was reciting what might have been a spell in what might have been Hebrew. What she could see of his face showed him to be of middle years, proud, impatient, and strong, the master of considerable intellectual force....

For a moment she was reminded of her own father, but she moved away from that thought at once.... (p. 385)

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Pullman underlined the linkage between Agrippa and Lord Asriel:

Other links are nice to be able to put in,” Pullman says. “For example, there’s the magician in Prague, the furnace man, who brings together his son and his son’s daemon in this act of parental destruction that starts off his machinery. That was kind of an echo of what happens at the end of The Golden Compass where Lord Asriel sets things in motion by dividing Roger from his daemon. That was an act of fission if you like, and this is an act of fusion. They both involve destruction and things developing out of destruction.”

The line about “things developing out of destruction” is pure alchemy, of course--remember the maxim “no generation without corruption.”  But at this point in the chapter the main point being underlined is that Agrippa, like Asriel, will function as an alchemist FOR LYRA.  

Some alchemical mermaids I’ll write about in the next post.  

Cabala mineralis, from Adam McLean, alchemywebsite.com.

Solidonius manuscript.  Restored by Adam McLean

[rhaized]

Ope, my asks were turned off because apparently I can't tumblr 😅 (should be on now!). But to answer @lostberryqueen 's ask about my WIPs (and ty!):

4. Professor story. All I have is a summary (a very nerdy summary 😜):

Mrs. Coulter is an assistant professor in experimental theology studying Rusakov particles in a way no Institutional Review Board would approve. Lord Asriel, associate professor routinely on research leave, tries to beat her to it. Their daughter, meanwhile, enrolls at their college as an understudy--without realizing who they are to her and what it is they are setting out to do.

2. The Duty of the Old Ch. 10. I'm almost done with this chapter and it should be up this weekend!

As she sat there and started to wonder what question she'd first like to ask if even she could figure out how, the machine started whirling. The hands started moving as it began to tick, light and faint. The large hands moved quickly and furiously while the red hand fluttered and spattered. Lyra and her daemon both gasped.

"What did you do?" he asked her, his voice a high-pitched hoot.

"Nothing!" she exclaimed, watching everything move with a profound sense of curiosity. At least, she didn't think she did anything to make it move like that. It was after a few minutes that the large hands started to settle on the same symbols over and over again.

In this way, it felt like the alethiometer was trying to tell Lyra something. It sounded stupid, to say it that way, but the device almost felt alive. Conscious. Anxious to tell her something perhaps she didn't actually ask but that it wanted to answer for her. She gazed down at the symbols, barely able to make them out in the dim bathroom lighting. The large handle kept pointing to three of them in a consistent pattern: the Madonna, the baby, and the candle.

"What does that mean, Pan?" Lyra asked him. The machine quite purposely kept highlighting those three symbols over and over again, like a rhythm in music.

[silveryinkystar]

At the Edge of the Abyss (Ch.1)

Rating: G

Warnings: Referenced (Canon) Character Death, The Amber Spyglass Spoilers

Summary: "Belacqua? No, you are Lyra Silvertongue." An old friend's declaration comes true once more as the light in the gloom in the land of the dead.

Chapter 1: Midnight     (Read on Ao3)

Lee wasn’t sure how long it had been since Lyra had arrived at the world of the dead. He was also unsure of the general passage of time since his own passing. While it was daunting to think of his life in the past tense, he couldn’t ever imagine doing so without Hester. And so, he had slowly counted every second – or what seemed to be seconds in a space where time looped around and wove through the world in a confusing web of knots that made no sense whatsoever – he’d been separated from his dear soul.

(Elsewhere, a Scholar would propose that the dead lay beyond the influence of time in a world different from all the rest. This, condemned for heresy, would unfortunately prove false by the time the Scholar joined the ranks of the dead.)

Lee wasn’t even sure he existed in physical form anymore. His very being appeared to be nothing more than a manifestation of his consciousness, perhaps in lieu of his dæmon.

“Mr. Scoresby?” Lyra called. He looked up from his careful guard at her. Her face was gaunt in the meagre light, and blood had soaked through the bandage near her temple. The fire in her eyes that he’d always seen, burning with curiosity and defiance, now was awfully dim, though steely determination glinted brightly enough for him to regain some hope in this dank and dismal place.

“Yeah?”

“Did I ever tell you what happened after I fell out of the balloon?”

He felt something swoop in his chest, but it couldn’t have been his still heart. Hell, he hadn’t seen Iorek since before Svalbard, had only barely heard news of him from Serafina Pekkala. He shook his head.

“No,” was all he said.

Lyra launched into what was admittedly an enthralling tale that sufficiently distracted him from the gut-wrenching despair that had seeped through every corner of this place. The boy next to her, with the knife, smiled slightly at her retelling, particularly when she reached the part when she met him, and Lee sneaked a look at John. John caught the glance and shrugged lightly, looking enraptured with the story.

Lee let himself relax, though he was still cautious of where they were headed, and listen to the rest of her story about how Lord Asriel had managed to create a doorway into other worlds with a frightening explosion. He let his darling child who he’d come to care for within days of meeting her, whose brazen tongue and artless charm had stolen his heart and any paternal affection he hadn’t known he had to give. When her voice, hoarse from the chatter, faded away, all he could say was, “You tricked Iofur Raknisson?”

She nodded vigorously, and he was glad to see that she’d gained back some of her sprightliness after sinking into her element of telling stories.

“It seems strange, I know, because you can’t normally trick a bear. But Iofur didn’t want to be a bear, see, he wanted to be a human, but that en’t possible, so the Gobblers – the Oblation Board – were able to fool him and say that it was. He wanted a dæmon and everything, so I pretended I was Iorek’s.”

Lee blinked, and beside him, John looked no less confused. Lee had to admit that that was some impressive amount of logic involved, as well as utter nonsense she’d strung together into a convincing argument. He wasn’t entirely surprised; Lyra was the only one he knew who could pull off the most impossible plans without many lasting consequences. He could never be prouder.

Soon enough, too soon enough for Lee, they reached the spot that connected them to the world where they could set the dead free. He sighed wistfully, knowing that he would only a few hours or so left with her, a majority of which he would spend fighting a war beyond any dimension he was capable of imagining.

It was all worth it, in the end, because it meant that the universe would still be there at the end of the day, and Lyra would return to a safer home. And, he thought, he’d finally be with Hester again.

[miitopiaheadcanons]

My voice claim for the Dark Lord is Caleb Hyles!! To get a better aesthetic for his voice, listen to his covers of "Friends On The Other Side", "Wolf In Sheep's Clothing", and "What's the Use Of Feeling, Blue?"!! (I primarily think his voice in "Friends on the Other Side" fits best tbh)

HMM I LIKE THIS! VERY GOOD IDEA IMOTBH ITS DIFFICULT TO SEE EVERYONES DIFFERENT DARK LORDS WHEN MY OWN EDL HAS THE SAME VOICE AS VINNIE FROM FAMILY GUY JUST A BIT HIGHERACTUALLY OMG IF ANYONE WANTS TO HEAR HIS VOICE LOOK UP “ANIME PLOT” ON YOUTUBE AND CLICK ON THE VID BY ASRIEL ZOMBIESTHAT IS DARK LORD CH I N I CA NT HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH- MOD POPSTAR B 🍔

[sazandorable]

ok, so, last year i preordered La Belle Sauvage, picked it up and started reading it within days of it being published, and realized I was indeed gonna have to reread the trilogy before because I was far from remembering it well enough. I’d originally read His Dark Materials as a teen in french and I’d been planning to reread it English, so I’d already bought this complete edition (the 3 volumes in one book + lantern slides and some annexes), but I hadn’t yet started. So I started, reread the first chapter of Northern Lights —

stopped there for six months because LORD ASRIEL but that’s gonna be an entire separate post because LORD ASRIEL —

anyway, 6+ months later I finally managed to go back to it, and it’s such an experience, so i’m gonna liveblog it a bit i guess because Wow I Love It So Much.

(introduction)

So here is a story that was the best I could do at the time, written with all the power and all the love I had, about the things I think most important in the world. I think it was worth writing. I hope you think it’s worth reading.

Mr. Pullman, I would die for you.

Writing-wise, this is the first time since I read The Silence of the Lambs a few years ago that I’m really going “!!!!” and taking mental notes on the actual writing, story-telling and deliberate dispensing of information from a book. I knew Pullman was good, but man, he is reaaallllly good. The worldbuilding with dæmons, the current climate, the internal working of Jordan College, Lyra’s status... I’m currently 3 chapters in and Lyra’s just been subtly but clearly set apart from the other kids without ever really saying why or why she lives at Jordan College, which makes sense because she sortof knows her status but doesn’t question it. 

The first two chapters are also so... theatrical. Everything is extremely visual and spatial. Lights. Dramatic gestures. The gag of the butler stealing weed. The foreshadowings and the suspense over the equipment and closed boxes. The whisperings, the back and forth of the people walking in and out and Lyra shuffling in and out of the wardrobe. It’s such a particular atmosphere and I love it so much.

(I also can’t believe this book is only 23 chapters long and Lyra spends the entirety of 2 of them inside a wardrobe.)

“Are you going to leap out and snatch the glass from his trembling fingers?”

(ch.1) she is absolutely, literally going to do exactly that.

There are soooo many things that I didn’t catch (and probably bored me to death) as a child. Like the weird/different names in throwaway comments throwing you off just slightly. New France, New Denmark, John Calvin being a pope, anbaric and naphtha lights, scientific instruments being called “philosophical” (which makes sense!!) and “experimental theology” which is just SUCH A GREAT PHRASE

But also so much dry humor or beautiful wistfulness, as well, that I also mostly didn’t really get because I didn’t have the distance. Stuff like the Scholars just getting high after dinner, which I definitely didn’t get that at the time, or the narration going “And inevitably...” about kids being cheerful little savages, but also I’m extremely fond of the short discussion between the Master and the Librarian (ch.2):

The Master and the Librarian were old friends and allies, and it was their habit, after a difficult episode, to take a glass of brantwijn and console each other. So after they’d seen Lord Asriel away,

I’M GLAD I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO NEEDS A BREAK TO RECOVER FROM LORD ASRIEL. that sentence was probably not intended to be as hilarious as it is to me but it is.

Similarly:

[The Oblation Board] is a semi-private initiative; it’s being run by someone who has no love of Lord Asriel. Between them both, Charles, I tremble.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA but also SAME but also HMMMMMMMMM YEAH GETTING BETWEEN THE TWO OF THEM CERTAINLY WOULD INDUCE... TREMBLING.

And then:

“That’s the duty of the old,” said the Librarian, “to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.”

They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.

I got a little heart twinge. Honestly, the adults are so sweet about Lyra?? (the Intercessor as well later on). Reading this as an adult is truly such a different experience.

Also they just explained most of the plot, I can’t believe I’m going to be able to actually follow and enjoy the politics & church side of the story.

And of course, fucking Lyra, the greatest little girl and child ever written. 

Wanting to see the human head and hear more about scalping.

ASKING to see the head.

Being described as just being a barbarian.

Waging warfare.

Speaking like the servants and street kids (this was attempted but failed in the French translation, I think, at any rate I don’t remember noticing it).

Walking in the streets to pick a fight while smoking a stolen cigarette.

And finally (ch.3):

“Let’s play kids and Gobblers!”

So said Lyra to Roger the Kitchen boy from Jordan College. He would have followed her to the ends of the earth.

I mean, once again, Same, but also *I-know-what-happens-at-the-end-of-this-book slow raise of both middle fingers in the direction of Mr. Phillip Pullman*