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lecturessurpause · 6 years ago

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(Trilogie) A la croisée des mondes - Philip Pullman (OU « Faut-il écouter sa raison? »)

Disclaimer : Cet article est à vocation analytique, il s’adresse exclusivement aux personnes ayant lu la trilogie dans son intégralité puisque étant perclus à balle de spoilers.

Alors, faut-il écouter sa raison? Bien sûr que non.

Entreprise totale que les épreuves de Lyra, Will, consœurs et consorts, relatées dans la saga dont il sera question ici. Original, complexe et élaboré, le récit prend place dans un premier temps au sein d'un univers proche du notre aux premiers abords mais finalement très éloigné. Ensuite, il nous balade dans divers mondes (dont le notre), terrains minés par une guerre opposant comme nous l'apprendra à la fin la sorcière Serafina Pekkala, la sagesse et le pouvoir.

Ce qui frappe souvent c'est la proposition constante de forces de natures opposées, et la manière dont parfois Pullman parvient à les entremêler ou à les associer :

De la magie scellée dans des créatures mécaniques espionnes, un appareil mécanique à aiguilles permettant d'interpréter passé, présent et futur : science et magie, nature et technologie.

Parfois, ces "mélanges" affectent des créatures elles-même, ainsi les mulefas parviennent à l'aide de cosses dans lesquels ils plantent leurs griffes à rouler tels des véhicules naturels. Les tualapis, leurs ennemis, sont des oiseaux se déplaçant dans les airs et ressemblant au loin à des voiliers...

Les éléments contraires qu’ils soient associés ou non pointent une dualité inhérente au récit dans sa globalité. Ainsi, beaucoup de personnages ont leur pendant, leur moitié. On peut d’ailleurs le voir d’après les différents peuples croisés dans les différents univers : Des sorcières à la féminité exclusive, sans âge et d'une grâce imposante et des ours guerriers en armure à la bestialité mâle. Des anges, aux traits si délicats et lumineux qu'on ne les voit presque pas et des harpies, volatiles grotesques et décharnés à faces humaines qui hurlent des horreurs à tue-tête.

En ce qui concerne les personnages eux-mêmes, Lyra et Will sont indéniablement complémentaires, si la première fonce tête baissée avec un aplomb évident et une imagination incroyable, le second dispose d'une intelligence froide, d'un tempérament calme et peut se montrer brutal voir même tuer.

Les parents de Lyra, Madame Coulter et Lord Asriel, deux titres plus que des prénoms ne possèdent d’humains que l’apparence et forment une paire d’êtres hors-norme. Enfant de leur union, Lyra les verra d'abord comme modèles, puis les reniera l’un après l’autre avant dans le dernier acte de l’œuvre de se questionner quant à leur devenir.

Lady Coulter est une séductrice, passée maîtresse dans l'art de la manipulation et Lord Asriel est l'homme le plus ambitieux de toutes les dimensions confondues : il souhaite littéralement tuer dieu. Ce qui est intéressant c'est de relever leurs cupidités réciproques et de voir à quel point ils personnifient absolument le désir de pouvoir cher à certains humains. Si Marisa est une actrice, qu'elle improvise sans cesse, son amant est terriblement insensible, figure hautaine par excellence. Les parallèles et jeux de variations entre ces deux-là et le couple Lyra et Will semblent évidents, ils transperce l'intrigue même! Ce genre de renvois inter-duos, il y en a bon nombre courant l'épopée.

C'est un peu là la patte de Pullman, celle d'un théatreux briton qui a pour autorité majeure Shakespeare. Les codes observables concernant les échanges, dialogues d'une idée à l'autre, symétries des protagonistes, duplications et autres exagérations volontaires sont clairement ceux propres aux planches. Il n'est pas étonnant d'ailleurs d'apprendre que Pullman s'adonne régulièrement à la réécriture de pièces célèbres. Cela se ressent dans les dialogues notamment, on a même le droit parfois à des tirades vraiment pas piquées des hannetons.

Toujours dans la même énergie, des extensions aux êtres sont proposées de diverses façons afin d'appuyer une bonne fois pour toute que si on devait donner un chiffre à cette saga, ce serait le "2". La plus célèbre « extension » est le dæmon, dont nous allons parler un peu plus bas. Mais on relèvera également que chaque individu possède une mort sous forme de créature échevelée vêtue de haillons. En creusant plus loin, on peut considérer les "Gallivespiens", minuscules espions chevaucheurs de libellules à la force surhumaine comme des êtres obligés d'évoluer avec une moitié (ici la libellule donc) à l'instar des panserbjornes (veritable nom des ours en armures) et de leurs armures (véritable prolongement de leur être) mais aussi les mulefas et leur fameuse cosse. Dans le même genre la fameuse Autorité (l'équivalent de dieu ou plutôt l'entité qui se fait passer pour le créateur, n'est jamais « rencontrée » pour ainsi dire. Elle n'existe que par le biais d'une extension physique, un ange répondant au doux nom de Métatron. Pour détruire l'Autorité (reposant en lieu sûr au sein de la "montagne nébuleuse") il suffit donc de tuer l’ange en question.

Le concept de "dæmon", lui se rapproche d'une vision intériorisée et animale du soi profond. Lorsque l'individu est enfant, le dæmon continue de changer de "forme", c'est seulement à l'âge adulte qu'il se "fixe". Pullman se base sur des références littéraires telles Shakespeare (yes always him) mais également des réflexions et thèses psychologiques. Si la notion de dæmon n'intervient que dans l'univers de Lyra, on se rend vite compte qu'elle demeure globale et que tout être en possède un, c'est juste que dans les autres univers les gens sont incapables de les voir.

On apprendra à la fin de la série, toujours de la bouche de Serafina Pekkala, que si les dæmons de sorcières sont en mesure de parcourir de très longues distances (ce qui n'est pas le cas des dæmons de "mortels"), c'est parce qu'une séparation "volontaire" entre l'individu et sa conscience, entre l’être et son dæmon est le rite de passage pour devenir sorcière. Cette "séparation" peut-être perçue comme une émancipation entre le corps et l'esprit, un état de perception supérieur, la paix intérieure. Lorsque la "séparation" est forcée par un élément extérieur, là le sujet et son dæmon meurent.

Le dæmon évoque également une inspiration totémiste, croyance sibérienne et chamaniste. Ce qui nous amène à Grumman. Le père de Will, l'homme aux nombreux noms, vient de notre monde mais à passé sa vie à voyager à travers les dimensions. La figure en question est intéressante, et ce essentiellement par le mysticisme qu’il dégage. On notera le parti pris de Pullman de commencer son histoire dans un monde qui n'est pas le notre. Une démarche de narration plus classique aurait fait de Will ou de son père le héros initial, celui par qui tout commence. On croise finalement peu l'individu en question, mais on constatera tout de même que c'est une force de la nature, qui même mort est encore prêt à livrer bataille. Lee Scoresby, personnage issu du monde de Lyra devient vite son allié, ses deux là ayant manifestement quelques atomes crochus.

Tout au long d' "A la croisé des mondes", il y a comme un aura d'inéluctabilité. Que Pullman adopte une posture fataliste sert sans doute au mieux la notion de quête initiatique propre aux sagas. Et cela à tendance à ajouter un cachet légendaire à l'ensemble.

Car ce qu'il ne faut pas oublier dans toute cette histoire c'est le caractère quasi "hérétique" qu'on attache au projet littéraire. En réalité, il faut bien comprendre que le but de l'auteur n'a jamais été de proposer à ses lecteurs un brûlot anti-chrétien mais plutôt une dénonciation du totalitarisme, de la pensée unique.

Pullman est petit-fils d’ecclésiaste et "A la croisée des mondes" est davantage un travail à visée allégorique qui utilise de nombreuses notions chrétiennes et prend place autour des croyances qui y sont rattachées. Il est à noter que l’auteur s’inspire en partie du poème épique "Le paradis perdu" de John Milton, par exemple. Poème qui relate la chute de Lucifer, l’ange déchu. Pullman s’en inspire surtout pour tout ce qui a trait à la tentation et aussi dans la figure de Lord Asriel très proche de celle du prince des enfers. L’histoire relatée demeure celle de l’écrivain car elle y propose ses idées et partis-pris.

Bon nombre d’œuvres appartenant à la fantasy s'inspirent des croyances, contes et légendes quelles qu'elles soient et d'où qu'elles viennent. Tolkien lui-même a rédigé un essai nommé "Du conte de fée", c'est dire. Il n’est donc pas étonnant de voir ici une réinvention, réinterprétation du christianisme.

Les croyances, légendes et contes peuvent avant tout être perçues comme des allégories. C'est là le constat de Pullman, traverser le simple aspect initial, y trouver quelque chose, ne pas raisonner de manière factuelle. Vers une liberté d’interprétation.

En définitive, la saga à son extrémité apparaîtra au lecteur plus comme une leçon de vie qu'un objet scandaleux. Si l'issue est déchirante, la dernière dualité proposée étant celle des deux héros, Lyra et Will, elle est profondément réaliste. Dès lors le fatalisme de Pullman était en réalité feint depuis le début, les destinées ne servant que l'accomplissement prophétique. L'amour des deux jeunes gens a bousillé tout le reste sur son passage. En fait, la destruction de l'autorité a libéré l’œuvre de son aspect prophétique et ça c'est puissance.

Malgré tout, le gros de l’œuvre s’articule autour de trois objets (d'aucuns diraient macguffins), trois objets pour trois romans : l'aléthiomètre, le poignard subtil et le miroir d'ambre. Le premier sert à interpréter, trouver des réponses aux questions, le second à perforer la réalité pour en faire apparaître d’autres, quant au miroir, il permet d'observer la poussière en tant que tel. Si on ne connaît pas les inventeurs des deux premiers, le miroir, lui a été créé par la scientifique Mary Malone. Comme dit précédemment, ces objets mélangent magie et science. Mary Malone, elle, est l'équivalente du serpent, du jardin d'Eden (le monde des mulefas est le jardin, le royaume des morts, l'enfer). Ce qui est intéressant avec ce personnage c'est qu'avant de devenir scientifique, elle était bonne sœur, avant de décider de "vivre sa vie". Elle représente la croyance, dépourvue de tout asservissement à des règles précises, préétablies par des ordres supérieurs, à savoir l'idée générale de la série. Qu'elle "tente" Will et Lyra est intéressant puisqu'elle les éveille à l'amour, plutôt qu'à la soumission aveugle. On pourrait même dire qu’elle les éveille à la poussière.

La poussière est un concept bien entendu compliqué, reçu comme la notion de "conscience", conscience de soi mais également de ce qui nous entoure, ce serait de la matière quantique, qui ne s'intéresserait qu'aux adultes, les enfants n'ayant pas encore une conscience totale. Cette matière noire est vivante et elle peut même former des êtres faits uniquement de conscience, les anges. Ce principe de conscience demeure une façon de l'expliquer, une attribution plus littérale pouvant être donnée : la poussière serait ni plus ni moins que l'énergie vitale. Cela rejoint visiblement les objectifs de Pullman présentés plus haut.

Pour conclure, on pourrait écrire longuement sur « A la croisée des mondes », tant ce n’est pas une lecture de tout repos, on pourrait oublier de parler du vaisseau d’intentions qu’on aurait oublier des tas d’autres choses. C’est un récit-monde, voir un récit-mondes et sa densité en fait sa richesse, ce qui est certain c’est qu’on en sort changé.

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zarohk · 6 years ago

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Marisa Coulter: Our love is a miracle!

Lord Asriel: Except, when you think about it, it’s actually not…

@mulefa-and-tualapi

Marisa Coulter: This is a miracle!

Lord Asriel: That’s right! It is a miracle!

Lord Asriel: Except, when you think about it, it’s actually not. It’s science. Which I’d argue is actually better and more convenient than a miracle because you don’t have to spend the next two thousand years worshiping the scientists. You can just be like “thanks”.

#his dark materials #lord asriel #marisa coulter #source: last week tonight

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readbookywooks · 8 years ago

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Marzipan

Next morning Lyra woke up from a dream in which Pantalaimon had come back to her and revealed his final shape; and she had loved it, but now she had no idea what it was. The sun hadn't long risen, and the air had a fresh bloom. She could see the sunlight through the open door of the little thatched hut she slept in, Mary's house. She lay for a while listening. There were birds outside, and some kind of cricket, and Mary was breathing quietly in her sleep nearby. Lyra sat up and found herself naked. She was indignant for a moment, and then she saw some clean clothes folded beside her on the floor: a shirt of Mary's, a length of soft, light patterned cloth that she could tie into a skirt. She put them on, feeling swamped in the shirt, but at least decent. She left the hut. Pantalaimon was nearby; she was sure of it. She could almost hear him talking and laughing. It must mean that he was safe, and they were still connected somehow. And when he forgave her and came back - the hours they'd spend just talking, just telling each other everything... Will was still asleep under the shelter tree, the lazy thing. Lyra thought of waking him up, but if she was on her own, she could swim in the river. She happily used to swim naked in the river Cherwell with all the other Oxford children, but it would be quite different with Will, and she blushed even to think of it. So she went down to the water alone in the pearl-colored morning. Among the reeds at the edge there was a tall, slender bird like a heron, standing perfectly still on one leg. She walked quietly and slowly so as not to disturb it, but the bird took no more notice of her than if she'd been a twig on the water. "Well," she said. She left the clothes on the bank and slipped into the river. It was seawater coming in on the tide, and it was strange to Lyra, who had never swum in salt water before. She swam hard to keep warm, and then came out and huddled on the bank, shivering. Pan would help dry her, normally. Was he a fish, laughing at her from under the water? Or a beetle, creeping into the clothes to tickle her, or a bird? Or was he somewhere else entirely with the other daemon, and with Lyra not on his mind at all? The sun was warm now, and she was soon dry. She dressed in Mary's loose shirt again and, seeing some flat stones by the bank, went to fetch her own clothes to wash them. But she found that someone had already done that: hers and Will's, too, were laid over the springy twigs of a fragrant bush, nearly dry. Will was stirring. She sat nearby and called him softly. "Will! Wake up!" "Where are we?" he said at once, and sat up, reaching for the knife. "Safe," she said, looking away. "And they washed our clothes, too, or Dr. Malone did. I'll get yours. They're nearly dry..." She passed them in through the curtain of leaves and sat with her back to him till he was dressed. "I swam in the river," she said. "I went to look for Pan, but I think he's hiding." "That's a good idea. I mean a swim. I feel as if I've got years and years of dirt on me... I'll go down and wash." While he was gone, Lyra wandered around the village, not looking too closely at anything in case she broke some code of politeness, but curious about everything she saw. Some of the houses were very old and some quite new, but they were all built in much the same way out of wood and clay and thatch. There was nothing crude about them; each door and window frame and lintel was covered in subtle patterns, but patterns that weren't carved in the wood: it was as if they'd persuaded the wood to grow in that shape naturally. The more she looked, the more she saw all kinds of order and carefulness in the village, like the layers of meaning in the alethiometer. Part of her mind was eager to puzzle it all out, to step lightly from similarity to similarity, from one meaning to another as she did with the instrument; but another part was wondering how long they'd be able to stay here before they had to move on. Well, I'm not going anywhere till Pan comes back, she said to herself. Presently Will came up from the river, and then Mary came out of her house and offered them breakfast; and soon Atal came along, too, and the village came to life around them. The young mulefa children, without wheels, kept peeping around the edges of their houses to stare, and Lyra would suddenly turn and look at them directly to make them jump and laugh with terror. "Well, now," Mary said when they'd eaten some bread and fruit and drunk a scalding infusion of something like mint. "Yesterday you were too tired and all you could do was rest. But you look a lot more lively today, both of you, and I think we need to tell each other everything we've found out. And it'll take us a good long time, and we might as well keep our hands busy while we're doing it, so we'll make ourselves useful and mend some nets." They carried the pile of stiff tarry netting to the riverbank and spread it out on the grass, and Mary showed them how to knot a new piece of cord where it was worn. She was wary, because Atal had told her that the families farther along the coast had seen large numbers of the tualapi, the white birds, gathering out at sea, and everyone was prepared for a warning to leave at once; but work had to go on in the meantime. So they sat working in the sun by the placid river, and Lyra told her story, from the moment so long ago when she and Pan decided to look in the Retiring Room at Jordan College. The tide came in and turned, and still there was no sign of the tualapi. In the late afternoon Mary took Will and Lyra along the riverbank, past the fishing posts where the nets were tied, and through the wide salt marsh toward the sea. It was safe to go there when the tide was out, because the white birds only came inland when the water was high. Mary led the way along a hard path above the mud; like many things the mulefa had made, it was ancient and perfectly maintained, more like a part of nature than something imposed on it. "Did they make the stone roads?" Will said. "No. I think the roads made them, in a way," Mary said. "I mean they'd never have developed the use of the wheels if there hadn't been plenty of hard, flat surfaces to use them on. I think they're lava-flows from ancient volcanoes. "So the roads made it possible for them to use the wheels. And other things came together as well. Like the wheel trees themselves, and the way their bodies are formed - they're not vertebrates, they don't have a spine. Some lucky chance in our worlds long ago must have meant that creatures with backbones had it a bit easier, so all kinds of other shapes developed, all based on the central spine. In this world, chance went another way, and the diamond frame was successful. There are vertebrates, to be sure, but not many. There are snakes, for example. Snakes are important here. The people look after them and try not to hurt them. "Anyway, their shape, and the roads, and the wheel trees coming together all made it possible. A lot of little chances, all coming together. When did your part of the story begin, Will?" "Lots of little chances for me, too," he began, thinking of the cat under the hornbeam trees. If he'd arrived there thirty seconds earlier or later, he would never have seen the cat, never have found the window, never have discovered Citt¨¤gazze and Lyra; none of this would have happened. He started from the very beginning, and they listened as they walked. By the time they reached the mudflats, he had reached the point where he and his father were fighting on the mountaintop. "And then the witch killed him..." He had never really understood that. He explained what she'd told him before she killed herself: she had loved John Parry, and he had scorned her. "Witches are fierce, though," Lyra said. "But if she loved him..." "Well," said Mary, "love is ferocious, too." "But he loved my mother," said Will. "And I can tell her that he was never unfaithful." Lyra, looking at Will, thought that if he fell in love, he would be like that. All around them the quiet noises of the afternoon hung in the warm air: the endless trickling sucking of the marsh, the scraping of insects, the calling of gulls. The tide was fully out, so the whole extent of the beach was clear and glistening under the bright sun. A billion tiny mud creatures lived and ate and died in the top layer of sand, and the little casts and breathing holes and invisible movements showed that the whole landscape was aquiver with life. Without telling the others why, Mary looked out to the distant sea, scanning the horizon for white sails. But there was only hazy glitter where the blue of the sky paled at the edge of the sea, and the sea took up the pallor and made it sparkle through the shimmering air. She showed Will and Lyra how to gather a particular kind of mollusk by finding their breathing tubes just above the sand. The mulefa loved them, but it was hard for them to move on the sand and gather them. Whenever Mary came to the shore, she harvested as many as she could, and now with three pairs of hands and eyes at work, there would be a feast. She gave each of them a cloth bag, and they worked as they listened to the next part of the story. Steadily they filled their bags, and Mary led them unobtrusively back to the edge of the marsh, for the tide was turning. The story was taking a long time; they wouldn't get to the world of the dead that day. As they neared the village, Will was telling Mary what he had learned about daemons and ghosts. Mary was particularly interested in the three-part nature of human beings. "You know," she said, "the Church - the Catholic Church that I used to belong to - wouldn't use the word daemon, but St. Paul talks about spirit and soul and body. So the idea of three parts in human nature isn't so strange." "But the best part is the body," Will said. "That's what Baruch and Balthamos told me. Angels wish they had bodies. They told me that angels can't understand why we don't enjoy the world more. It would be sort of ecstasy for them to have our flesh and our senses. In the world of the dead - " "Tell it when we get to it," said Lyra, and she smiled at him, a smile of such sweet knowledge and joy that his senses felt confused. He smiled back, and Mary thought his expression showed more perfect trust than she'd ever seen on a human face. By this time they had reached the village, and there was the evening meal to prepare. So Mary left the other two by the riverbank, where they sat to watch the tide flooding in, and went to join Atal by the cooking fire. Her friend was overjoyed by the shellfish harvest. But Mary, she said, the tualapi destroyed a village further up the coast, and then another and another. They've never done that before. They usually attack one and then go back to sea. And another tree fell today... No! Where! Atal mentioned a grove not far from a hot spring. Mary had been there only three days before, and nothing had seemed wrong. She took the spyglass and looked at the sky; sure enough, the great stream of shadow particles was flowing more strongly, and at incomparably greater speed and volume, than the tide now rising between the riverbanks. What can you do? said Atal. Mary felt the weight of responsibility like a heavy hand between her shoulder blades, but made herself sit up lightly. Tell them stories, she said. When supper was over, the three humans and Atal sat on rugs outside Mary's house, under the warm stars. They lay back, well fed and comfortable in the flower-scented night, and listened to Mary tell her story. She began just before she first met Lyra, telling them about the work she was doing at the Dark Matter Research group, and the funding crisis. How much time she'd had to spend asking for money, and how little time there'd been left for research! But Lyra's coming had changed everything, and so quickly: within a matter of days she'd left her world altogether. "I did as you told me," she said. "I made a program - that's a set of instructions - to let the Shadows talk to me through the computer. They told me what to do. They said they were angels, and - well..." "If you were a scientist," said Will, "I don't suppose that was a good thing for them to say. You might not have believed in angels." "Ah, but I knew about them. I used to be a nun, you see. I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn't any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all." "When did you stop being a nun?" said Lyra. "I remember it exactly," Mary said, "even to the time of day. Because I was good at physics, they let me keep up my university career, you see, and I finished my doctorate and I was going to teach. It wasn't one of those orders where they shut you away from the world. In fact, we didn't even wear the habit; we just had to dress soberly and wear a crucifix. So I was going into university to teach and do research into particle physics. "And there was a conference on my subject and they asked me to come and read a paper. The conference was in Lisbon, and I'd never been there before; in fact, I'd never been out of England. The whole business - the plane flight, the hotel, the bright sunlight, the foreign languages all around me, the well-known people who were going to speak, and the thought of my own paper and wondering whether anyone would turn up to listen and whether I'd be too nervous to get the words out... Oh, I was keyed up with excitement, I can't tell you. "And I was so innocent - you have to remember that. I'd been such a good little girl, I'd gone to Mass regularly, I'd thought I had a vocation for the spiritual life. I wanted to serve God with all my heart. I wanted to take my whole life and offer it up like this," she said, holding up her hands together, "and place it in front of Jesus to do as he liked with. And I suppose I was pleased with myself. Too much. I was holy and I was clever. Ha! That lasted until, oh, half past nine on the evening of August the tenth, seven years ago." Lyra sat up and hugged her knees, listening closely. "It was the evening after I'd given my paper," Mary went on, "and it had gone well, and there'd been some well-known people listening, and I'd dealt with the questions without making a mess of it, and altogether I was full of relief and pleasure... And pride, too, no doubt. "Anyway, some of my colleagues were going to a restaurant a little way down the coast, and they asked if I'd like to go. Normally I'd have made some excuse, but this time I thought, Well, I'm a grown woman, I've presented a paper on an important subject and it was well received and I'm among good friends... And it was so warm, and the talk was about all the things I was most interested in, and we were all in high spirits, so I thought I'd loosen up a bit. I was discovering another side of myself, you know, one that liked the taste of wine and grilled sardines and the feeling of warm air on my skin and the beat of music in the background. I relished it. "So we sat down to eat in the garden. I was at the end of a long table under a lemon tree, and there was a sort of bower next to me with passionflowers, and my neighbor was talking to the person on the other side, and... Well, sitting opposite was a man I'd seen once or twice around the conference. I didn't know him to speak to; he was Italian, and he'd done some work that people were talking about, and I thought it would be interesting to hear about it. "Anyway. He was only a little older than me, and he had soft black hair and beautiful olive-colored skin and dark, dark eyes. His hair kept falling across his forehead and he kept pushing it back like that, slowly..." She showed them. Will thought she looked as if she remembered it very well. "He wasn't handsome," she went on. "He wasn't a ladies' man or a charmer. If he had been, I'd have been shy, I wouldn't have known how to talk to him. But he was nice and clever and funny and it was the easiest thing in the world to sit there in the lantern light under the lemon tree with the scent of the flowers and the grilled food and the wine, and talk and laugh and feel myself hoping that he thought I was pretty. Sister Mary Malone, flirting! What about my vows? What about dedicating my life to Jesus and all that? "Well, I don't know if it was the wine or my own silliness or the warm air or the lemon tree, or whatever... But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit. "And then someone passed me a bit of some sweet stuff and I suddenly realized I had been to China. So to speak. And I'd forgotten it. It was the taste of the sweet stuff that brought it back - I think it was marzipan. Sweet almond paste," she explained to Lyra, who was looking confused. Lyra said, "Ah! Marchpane!" and settled back comfortably to hear what happened next. "Anyway," Mary went on. "I remembered the taste, and all at once I was back tasting it for the first time as a young girl. "I was twelve years old. I was at a party at the house of one of my friends, a birthday party, and there was a disco - that's where they play music on a kind of recording machine and people dance," she explained, seeing Lyra's puzzlement. "Usually girls dance together because the boys are too shy to ask them. But this boy - I didn't know him - he asked me to dance, and so we had the first dance and then the next, and by that time we were talking... And you know what it is when you like someone, you know it at once; well, I liked him such a lot. And we kept on talking and then there was a birthday cake. And he took a bit of marzipan and he just gently put it in my mouth - I remember trying to smile, and blushing, and feeling so foolish - and I fell in love with him just for that, for the gentle way he touched my lips with the marzipan." As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, she felt other doors opening deep in the darkness, and lights coming on. She sat trembling as Mary went on: "And I think it was at that party, or it might have been at another one, that we kissed each other for the first time. It was in a garden, and there was the sound of music from inside, and the quiet and the cool among the trees, and I was aching - all my body was aching for him, and I could tell he felt the same - and we were both almost too shy to move. Almost. But one of us did and then without any interval between - it was like a quantum leap, suddenly - we were kissing each other, and oh, it was more than China, it was paradise. "We saw each other about half a dozen times, no more. And then his parents moved away and I never saw him again. It was such a sweet time, so short... But there it was. I'd known it. I had been to China." It was the strangest thing: Lyra knew exactly what she meant, and half an hour earlier she would have had no idea at all. And inside her, that rich house with all its doors open and all its rooms lit stood waiting, quiet, expectant. "And at half past nine in the evening at that restaurant table in Portugal," Mary continued, "someone gave me a piece of marzipan and it all came back. And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mystery and joy. I thought, Will anyone be better off if I go straight back to the hotel and say my prayers and confess to the priest and promise never to fall into temptation again? Will anyone be the better for making me miserable? "And the answer came back - no. No one will. There's no one to fret, no one to condemn, no one to bless me for being a good girl, no one to punish me for being wicked. Heaven was empty. I didn't know whether God had died, or whether there never had been a God at all. Either way I felt free and lonely and I didn't know whether I was happy or unhappy, but something very strange had happened. And all that huge change came about as I had the marzipan in my mouth, before I'd even swallowed it. A taste - a memory - a landslide... "When I did swallow it and looked at the man across the table, I could tell he knew something had happened. I couldn't tell him there and then; it was still too strange and private almost for me. But later on we went for a walk along the beach in the dark, and the warm night breeze kept stirring my hair about, and the Atlantic was being very well-behaved - little quiet waves around our feet... "And I took the crucifix from around my neck and I threw it in the sea. That was it. All over. Gone. "So that was how I stopped being a nun," she said. "Was that man the same one that found out about the skulls?" Lyra said after a moment. "Oh - no. The skull man was Dr. Payne, Oliver Payne. He came along much later. No, the man at the conference was called Alfredo Montale. He was very different." "Did you kiss him?" "Well," said Mary, smiling, "yes, but not then." "Was it hard to leave the Church?" said Will. "In one way it was, because everyone was so disappointed. Everyone, from the Mother Superior to the priests to my parents - they were so upset and reproachful... I felt as if something they all passionately believed in depended on me carrying on with something I didn't. "But in another way it was easy, because it made sense. For the first time ever I felt I was doing something with all of my nature and not only a part of it. So it was lonely for a while, but then I got used to it." "Did you marry him?" said Lyra. "No. I didn't marry anyone. I lived with someone - not Alfredo, someone else. I lived with him for four years, nearly. My family was scandalized. But then we decided we'd be happier not living together. So I'm on my own. The man I lived with used to like mountain climbing, and he taught me to climb, and I walk in the mountains and... And I've got my work. Well, I had my work. So I'm solitary but happy, if you see what I mean." "What was the boy called?" said Lyra. "At the party?" "Tim." "What did he look like?" "Oh... Nice. That's all I remember." "When I first saw you, in your Oxford," Lyra said, "you said one of the reasons you became a scientist was that you wouldn't have to think about good and evil. Did you think about them when you were a nun?" "Hmm. No. But I knew what I should think: it was whatever the Church taught me to think. And when I did science, I had to think about other things altogether. So I never had to think about them for myself at all." "But do you now?" said Will. "I think I have to," Mary said, trying to be accurate. "When you stopped believing in God," he went on, "did you stop believing in good and evil?" "No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels." "Yes," said Lyra firmly. "Did you miss God?" asked Will. "Yes," Mary said, "terribly. And I still do. And what I miss most is the sense of being connected to the whole of the universe. I used to feel I was connected to God like that, and because he was there, I was connected to the whole of his creation. But if he's not there, then..." Far out on the marshes, a bird called with a long, melancholy series of falling tones. Embers settled in the fire; the grass was stirring faintly with the night breeze. Atal seemed to be dozing like a cat, her wheels flat on the grass beside her, her legs folded under her body, eyes half-closed, attention half-there and half-elsewhere. Will was lying on his back, eyes open to the stars. As for Lyra, she hadn't moved a muscle since that strange thing had happened, and she held the memory of the sensation inside her. She didn't know what it was, or what it meant, or where it had come from; so she sat hugging her knees, and tried to stop herself from trembling. Soon, she thought, soon I'll know. Mary was tired; she had run out of stories. No doubt she'd think of more tomorrow.

#AmberSpyglass

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salty-mexicanwiriwiri · 5 years ago

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I'm thinking about this creatures a lot,since I'm quite interested to see how they turned out in the tv series. I don't feel like I captured the intelligence and kindness in the zalif face, but still here it is.

#zalif #mulefa #tualapi #amber spyglass

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readbookywooks · 8 years ago

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There Is Now

Mary couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, something made her sway and lurch as if she were at the brink of a precipice, and she snapped awake, tense with fear. This happened three, four, five times, until she realized that sleep was not going to come; so she got up and dressed quietly, and stepped out of the house and away from the tree with its tentlike branches under which Will and Lyra were sleeping. The moon was bright and high in the sky. There was a lively wind, and the great landscape was mottled with cloud-shadows, moving, Mary thought, like the migration of some herd of unimaginable beasts. But animals migrated for a purpose; when you saw herds of reindeer moving across the tundra, or wildebeest crossing the savanna, you knew they were going where the food was, or to places where it was good to mate and bear offspring. Their movement had a meaning. These clouds were moving as the result of pure chance, the effect of utterly random events at the level of atoms and molecules; their shadows speeding over the grassland had no meaning at all. Nevertheless, they looked as if they did. They looked tense and driven with purpose. The whole night did. Mary felt it, too, except that she didn't know what that purpose was. But unlike her, the clouds seemed to know what they were doing and why, and the wind knew, and the grass knew. The entire world was alive and conscious. Mary climbed the slope and looked back across the marshes, where the incoming tide laced a brilliant silver through the glistening dark of the mudflats and the reed beds. The cloud-shadows were very clear down there; they looked as if they were fleeing something frightful behind them, or hastening to embrace something wonderful ahead. But what that was, Mary would never know. She turned toward the grove where her climbing tree stood. It was twenty minutes' walk away; she could see it clearly, towering high and tossing its great head in a dialogue with the urgent wind. They had things to say, and she couldn't hear them. She hurried toward it, moved by the excitement of the night, and desperate to join in. This was the very thing she'd told Will about when he asked if she missed God: it was the sense that the whole universe was alive, and that everything was connected to everything else by threads of meaning. When she'd been a Christian, she had felt connected, too; but when she left the Church, she felt loose and free and light, in a universe without purpose. And then had come the discovery of the Shadows and her journey into another world, and now this vivid night, and it was plain that everything was throbbing with purpose and meaning, but she was cut off from it. And it was impossible to find a connection, because there was no God. Half in exultation and half in despair, she resolved to climb her tree and try once again to lose herself in the Dust. But before she'd even gone halfway to the grove she heard a different sound among the lashing of the leaves and the streaming of the wind through the grass. Something was groaning, a deep, somber note like an organ. And above that, the sound of cracking - snapping and breaking - and the squeal and scream of wood on wood. Surely it couldn't be her tree? She stopped where she was, in the open grassland, with the wind lashing her face and the cloud-shadows racing past her and the tall grasses whipping her thighs, and watched the canopy of the grove. Boughs groaned, twigs snapped, great balks of green wood snapped off like dry sticks and fell all the long way to the ground, and then the crown itself - the crown of the very tree she knew so well - leaned and leaned and slowly began to topple. Every fiber in the trunk, the bark, the roots seemed to cry out separately against this murder. But it fell and fell, all the great length of it smashed its way out of the grove and seemed to lean toward Mary before crashing into the ground like a wave against a breakwater; and the colossal trunk rebounded up a little way, and settled down finally, with a groaning of torn wood. She ran up to touch the tossing leaves. There was her rope; there were the splintered ruins of her platform. Her heart thudding painfully, she climbed in among the fallen branches, hauling herself through the familiar boughs at their unfamiliar angles, and balanced herself as high up as she could get. She braced herself against a branch and took out the spyglass. Through it she saw two quite different movements in the sky. One was that of the clouds, driven across the moon in one direction, and the other was that of the stream of Dust, seeming to cross it in quite another. And of the two, the Dust was flowing more quickly and at much greater volume. In fact, the whole sky seemed to be flowing with it, a great inexorable flood pouring out of the world, out of all the worlds, into some ultimate emptiness. Slowly, as if they were moving themselves in her mind, things joined up. Will and Lyra had said that the subtle knife was three hundred years old at least. So the old man in the tower had told them. The mulefa had told her that the sraf, which had nurtured their lives and their world for thirty-three thousand years, had begun to fail just over three hundred years ago. According to Will, the Guild of the Torre degli Angeli, the owners of the subtle knife, had been careless; they hadn't always closed the windows they opened. Well, Mary had found one, after all, and there must be many others. Suppose that all this time, little by little, Dust had been leaking out of the wounds the subtle knife had made in nature... She felt dizzy, and it wasn't only the swaying and rising and falling of the branches she was wedged among. She put the spyglass carefully in her pocket and hooked her arms over the branch in front, gazing at the sky, the moon, the scudding clouds. The subtle knife was responsible for the small-scale, low-level leakage. It was damaging, and the universe was suffering because of it, and she must talk to Will and Lyra and find a way to stop it. But the vast flood in the sky was another matter entirely. That was new, and it was catastrophic. And if it wasn't stopped, all conscious life would come to an end. As the mulefa had shown her, Dust came into being when living things became conscious of themselves; but it needed some feedback system to reinforce it and make it safe, as the mulefa had their wheels and the oil from the trees. Without something like that, it would all vanish. Thought, imagination, feeling, would all wither and blow away, leaving nothing but a brutish automatism; and that brief period when life was conscious of itself would flicker out like a candle in every one of the billions of worlds where it had burned brightly. Mary felt the burden of it keenly. It felt like age. She felt eighty years old, worn out and weary and longing to die. She climbed heavily out of the branches of the great fallen tree, and with the wind still wild in the leaves and the grass and her hair, set off back to the village. At the summit of the slope she looked for the last time at the Dust stream, with the clouds and the wind blowing across it and the moon standing firm in the middle. And then she saw what they were doing, at last: she saw what that great urgent purpose was. They were trying to hold back the Dust flood. They were striving to put some barriers up against the terrible stream: wind, moon, clouds, leaves, grass, all those lovely things were crying out and hurling themselves into the struggle to keep the shadow particles in this universe, which they so enriched. Matter loved Dust. It didn't want to see it go. That was the meaning of this night, and it was Mary's meaning, too. Had she thought there was no meaning in life, no purpose, when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that. "Well, there is now," she said aloud, and again, louder: "There is now!" As she looked again at the clouds and the moon in the Dust flow, they looked as frail and doomed as a dam of little twigs and tiny pebbles trying to hold back the Mississippi. But they were trying, all the same. They'd go on trying till the end of everything. How long she stayed out, Mary didn't know. When the intensity of her feeling began to subside, and exhaustion took its place, she made her way slowly down the hill toward the village. And when she was halfway down, near a little grove of knot-wood bushes, she saw something strange out on the mudflats. There was a glow of white, a steady movement: something coming up with the tide. She stood still, gazing intently. It couldn't be the tualapi, because they always moved in a flock, and this was on its own. But everything about it was the same - the sail-like wings, the long neck - it was one of the birds, no doubt about it. She had never heard of their moving about alone, and she hesitated before running down to warn the villagers, because the thing had stopped, in any case. It was floating on the water close to the path. And it was coming apart... No, something was getting off its back. The something was a man. She could see him quite clearly, even at that distance; the moonlight was brilliant, and her eyes were adjusted to it. She looked through the spyglass, and put the matter beyond doubt: it was a human figure, radiating Dust. He was carrying something: a long stick of some kind. He came along the path quickly and easily, not running, but moving like an athlete or a hunter. He was dressed in simple dark clothes that would normally conceal him well; but through the spyglass he showed up as if he were under a spotlight. And as he came closer to the village, she realized what that stick was. He was carrying a rifle. She felt as if someone had poured icy water over her heart. Every separate hair on her flesh stirred. She was too far away to do anything: even if she'd shouted, he wouldn't have heard. She had to watch as he stepped into the village, looking to the left and right, stopping every so often to listen, moving from house to house. Mary's mind felt like the moon and the clouds trying to hold back the Dust as she cried out silently: Don't look under the tree - go away from the tree - But he moved closer and closer to it, finally stopping outside her own house. She couldn't bear it; she put the spyglass in her pocket and began to run down the slope. She was about to call out, anything, a wild cry, but just in time she realized that it might wake Will or Lyra and make them reveal themselves, and she choked it back. Then, because she couldn't bear not knowing what the man was doing, she stopped and fumbled for the spyglass again, and had to stand still while she looked through it. He was opening the door of her house. He was going inside it. He vanished from sight, although there was a stir in the Dust he left behind, like smoke when a hand is passed through it. Mary waited for an endless minute, and then he appeared again. He stood in her doorway, looking around slowly from left to right, and his gaze swept past the tree. Then he stepped off the threshold and stood still, almost at a loss. Mary was suddenly conscious of how exposed she was on the bare hillside, an easy rifle shot away, but he was only interested in the village; and when another minute or so had gone by, he turned and walked quietly away. She watched every step he took down the river path, and saw quite clearly how he stepped onto the bird's back and sat cross-legged as it turned to glide away. Five minutes later they were lost to sight.

#AmberSpyglass

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