a subcreator's field notes, 3: The Primacy of Language
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I'm determined to write a short one this week, not least because I don't have too much to report. In fact, I've set a timer going for 30 minutes, and two of those minutes have nearly ticked away.
Let's return to the roots of this thing: subcreation. It's a topic I intend to study fully — in fact, I intend to make a deep and thorough study of Tolkien's creative process. Not so I can imitate him precisely; I'm not about to invent 15 languages. But from what I've learned so far, the language creation process was primary to his worldbuilding, not some mere ancillary detail. So the question of how I will approach the languages of Turiya is not trivial. I know that I intend to study Sanskrit, Latin, Biblical Hebrew, and Koine Greek, as well as how Tolkien used language as the basis for his worldbuilding.
If a language conveys the soul of a people, then it makes sense that language should be at the heart of any subcreative fiction work. And at the very least I know I will have to use language to contrast the stark difference in "worldview" between the Turiyans and the Singlari; the numinous, mystagogic view (which reverences life as a mystery to be lived) and the scientistic view (which sees life as a problem to be solved, or even one that has been solved, except for a few pesky details).
To give one example, there is a Sanskrit word, duradarsana, which refers to seeing from a distance. It can refer to a siddhi (a supernatural ability) of remote viewing; and it's also used to refer to TV screens. There's a real sense in which the operation of a digital screen is no less mysterious than, a palantir — a remote viewing orb from Lord of the Rings. That the screen can be explained only deepens the mystery. Or else the mystery is entirely irrelevant or illusory, depending on your darsana — that is, your point of view.
I would like to play ambiguities like this one, so the reader does not necessarily know which is being referred to, and has to piece it together based on the context, and which character is speaking or thinking. Gene Wolfe does quite a lot of this in The Book of the New Sun.
△AR