Dreamsongs of Ice and Fire Pt 2: The Human Heart in Conflict With the Head

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Truth and Enlightenment vs Meaning and Romanticism in GRRM’s works

GRRM loves writing about his characters’ struggling with inner conflicts, to the extent that he has made Faulkner’s quote about such his own personal mantra. It makes sense that he also uses his writing to try to work out his own internal struggles. What I’m interested in here is the struggle between the head and the heart, or more specifically, between A) Rationalism, and its ideals of reason and enlightenment, and B) Romanticism, and its ideals of irrational passion, deep meaning, and the sublime. 

GRRM has long been a hopeless Romantic: immersing himself in the traditions and lore of fictional lands, a believer in the power of words and imagination to bestow a greater meaning to our often dull and aimless everyday experiences. And yet, let’s not forget that GRRM also pursued his passions for chess and journalism. Analytical thinking and hard facts are also important parts of his worldview, and they often exist in tension with his more Romantic self. This tension has featured prominently in some of his past works. Here are some that come to mind:

With Morning Comes Mistfall: This story advocates for the value of upholding a mystery, and against the ravenous exploitation of discovery as progress. Structurally, the story focuses on two people espousing opposing positions and someone caught in between, but by the end GRRM sides pretty unambiguously with Sanders and the need for mystery. In fact, the skeptical Dubowski was written so unsympathetically that he comes off as a straw man character to me. As someone who does research for a living, yet also sees how such work is easily exploited for materialistic gain rather than enlightenment, I can certainly appreciate the conflicted feelings that GRRM evokes here via his journalist character, and in my more cynical days I can totally relate to the tragic ending of this story.  Not all truths are equal in value, and mystery has its own worth, but modernity cares not for such distinctions.

A Song for Lya: This was written around the same time as Mistfall, and it too showcases a narrative structure of two people representing opposing viewpoints, with a third person caught in the middle. Lyanna represents the Romantic thirst for the sublime, while Dino represents a colder individualism. He’s almost the embodiment of homo economicus, driven wholly by rational self-interest. Robb finds himself repulsed by Dino’s coldness and his guarded nature. And yet, late in the story, Robb realizes that he is in fact a middleman between the two. He spent much of his life striving for perfect harmony with his partner Lyanna, sharing many of the same Romantic drives, but her commitment to Final Union turned out to be a step too far for him. Robb found that he has some Dino in him after all.

Robb acknowledges that some capacity for rational individualism is probably important—or at least it’s an aspect that he himself can’t shake. Robb’s dilemma highlights GRRM’s own status as an atheistic Romantic. A big part of him craves the transcendent sublime, but there’s some nagging suspicion that it’s all a trick. He thus sides with Team Truth, albeit grudgingly. If With Morning Comes Mistfall shows a version of Rationalism that’s a bit too extreme for our author, A Song for Lya does the inverse: it shows an extreme of Romanticism that reveals a personal limit.

The Stone City: This and Bitterblooms both show us circumstances in which human knowledge and thirst for exploration reached a limit that could not be surpassed. In The Stone City, the Damoosh spacetime properties seem to work against the humans and other races trapped at Greyrest. Additionally, the jump gun technology used by the Dan’lai seems to be driving these foxmen mad. Nothing functions as it should, and everything seems futile and absurd. This dysfunction is set against an ancient city that has outlasted several other races that have come and gone before its current occupants, furthering the story’s feeling of inexorable breakdown. Escape, whether real or imagined, seems like the only option.

Bitterblooms shows an even more dramatic state of societal ruin, but it dresses its gothic sci-fi setting in the dazzling raiment of fantasy: to Shawn and the people of Carinhall, every example of advanced technology appears as magic to them. Furthermore, Morgan Le Fay represents the alluring escapism of fantasy stories: her seduction is nothing but a web of comforting lies. Morgan is manipulative, and her deceit strongly resembles classic Odyssean snares such as Circe and the Isle of the Lotus Eaters. Still, the story is ultimately ambivalent about the role of fantasy here: for a people so destitute, the comforting lies seem like a mercy: a necessary respite from relentless hardship and indignity.

What about ASOIAF? The setting of the story is quite interesting: it’s medieval in many respects, with the important exception of the maesters. This institution provides the Westerosi nobility with knowledge and technological feats that are closer to the Renaissance era of our world. Thus, at the start of the story, Westeros seems to transitioning from the “dark ages” to an age of early Enlightenment.

And yet, for all their learning, the maesters aren’t prepared for the problems that come. While reading Mistfall, I found that the dynamic between Dubowski and Sanders reminded me of the one between Maester Luwin and Old Nan. Luwin is ever the skeptic, inferring naturalistic mechanisms and dismissing talk of supernatural forces as nonsense from bedtime stories. Crucially, in ASOIAF, the Romantic Old Nan tends to be right! Much more than Luwin, anyway. The maesters mostly mean well, but they are unequipped to deal with the irrational forces that are stirring in the world. Given all of the knowledge that is now lost, the wisdom of the age lay not in truth but in fiction—in the myths and stories. The key will likely lie in Romanticism rather than in Rationalism.

Now, within the story’s strain of Romanticism there is a lot of back-and-forth between the moral idealism of someone like Sansa or Brienne and the misanthropic truth-telling of someone like Sandor and Jaime. Crucially, what seems to be a clash of opposing forces here ends up more like a dance of coordinated counterbalancing, with both parties learning and growing from their respective opposite. But let’s also not confuse Sandor’s Byronic truth-telling with the truth of Rationalism; his truths are resolutely Romantic. In contrast, the smug certainty and easy optimism of the maesters is more like decadence among the arbiters of knowledge and truth. It’s Enlightenment failing to live up to its promise.

Still, there may be a role for Rationalism in the resolution of the story. What about that knowledge that was lost? GRRM seems to be wrestling a bit with its nature and significance. Characters like Samwell, Tyrion, and Rodrik the Reader all help to emphasize the value of preserving and learning from the collected knowledge of past generations. Additionally, Bran will probably also be critical for the regaining and preserving of lost knowledge through his access to the weirwoods. Given this, I think we can say that enhanced knowledge will have a very important role in the story’s endgame, so that mankind has a chance to recover from yet another dark age. And yet, there is also a budding theme of knowledge having played a key part in the fall of the Dawn empire and the Valyrians: dark sorceries and twisted sciences that simultaneously empowered its practitioners, and corrupted them. For GRRM, knowledge really is power, but power is so easily abused. As such, a very fine balance must be struck to avoid both the excesses and the deficiencies regarding Enlightenment.

The ruins of countless dead societies in the story serve as continual reminders of the doom that awaits Westeros and Essos. While I do think that our protagonists will manage to pull away from the brink of total extinction, their success will ride on the knife’s edge balance between the society’s collective knowledge and its ideals and imagination. Perhaps the resolution between the head and the heart will end up requiring a mutual counterbalancing of the two pursuits, not unlike the dynamics between Sansa/Sandor and Brienne/Jaime with respect to their initially opposing inclinations. At very least, the institutions of knowledge will have to learn humility for the things that they don’t know, and a sense of caution and reverence for the powers that their knowledge enables.

If love and hate can mate, then maybe the head and heart can both pull the cart.

Your thoughts, feelings, and everything in between are welcome.

[Quoth the raven,]

The battle between head and heart is the real conflict in this story.  But do not mistake this for George saying there is no right decision.  There is.  It is known to the character but he/she chose another path.  The right choice is in conflict with what the character loves and desires.  Just look at what Jon Snow did to the Night's Watch.  He knew what he should do.  Forget Arya and let her deal with her own problems.  We readers know this.  But Jon's love for Arya made him choose a destructive path which, I think, will lead to the failure of the Night's Watch to protect the people.  The wall is foolproof.  The Others cannot pass as long as the men of the Night's Watch stayed true.  The Others have a prophecy too and it says a flawed man, a man with the most fatal kind of flaw for a lord commander, will someday command the wall and open the way for them.  The Others are just the existential threat which man can avoid if they make the right decisions.  The story is not about the Others.  Jon's story is an example of what can happen when people follow their desire instead of doing their duty.  The head knows what to do.  Survival is enhanced when the head is doing the thinking and deciding the action.  But the desires of the heart throws reason aside and that leads to trouble.

I don't make any claims that following the head will lead to sunshines and rainbows.  But doing so will lead to the least harm and the most benefit for the given situation.  That is why a sadistic prick like Tywin can manage quite effectively even though he is morally compromised.  He rules with his head even when Jaime was in Robb's jail cell. 

[LynnS]

Oh! Excellent essay!  Thanks for posting.  Where is Part 1?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

35 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Oh! Excellent essay!  Thanks for posting.  Where is Part 1?

Thanks!

Here is Part 1, on gods and hive minds:

 

[LynnS]

2 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Here is Part 1, on gods and hive minds:

Thank you.  Can I link your OP to Heresy?  It's instructive for our current conversation.  And do you mind if I link your website as well?    

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 minute ago, LynnS said:

Thank you.  Can I link your OP to Heresy?  It's instructive for our current conversation.  And do you mind if I link your website as well?    

I don't know what Heresy is, but sure! All is public info, come one come all.

[LynnS]

4 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I don't know what Heresy is, but sure! All is public info, come one come all.

LOL! Here's a link:

I read your essay of Phylogenic Records - Atrocity Exhibition.   I first became aware of the atrocities of Nazi Germany my first year of high school; when I read Leon Uris book The Exodus.  That's almost fifty years ago now.   I find your work fascinating.  I will be spending some time there.  Thank you indeed!

 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

5 minutes ago, LynnS said:

15 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I don't know what Heresy is, but sure! All is public info, come one come all.

 

Ah, I see! I'm a newbie here, so I don't even think I have checked out any of the longer running threads.

5 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I read your essay of Phylogenic Records - Atrocity Exhibition.   I first became aware of the atrocities of Nazi Germany my first year of high school; when I read Leon Uris book The Exodus.  That's almost fifty years ago now.   I find your work fascinating.  I will be spending some time there.  Thank you indeed!

That one was not so fun to dig into, but was certainly helpful to think about. One, because on my blog I am mainly focusing on the deep history of transgressive music genres like industrial, punk, and post-punk, and so it's necessary to cover how tolerance for transgression emerged, and how the taboos evolved. But also, it just seems more and more relevant to our current age, unfortunately.

More than anything, though, the blog is my chance to write outside of technical scientific stuff, so hopefully the pieces will get better as I write and write.

[LynnS]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

That one was not so fun to dig into, but was certainly helpful to think about. One, because on my blog I am mainly focusing on the deep history of transgressive music genres like industrial, punk, and post-punk, and so it's necessary to cover how tolerance for transgression emerged, and how the taboos evolved. But also, it just seems more and more relevant to our current age, unfortunately.

More than anything, though, the blog is my chance to write outside of technical scientific stuff, so hopefully the pieces will get better as I write and write.

It's a fascinating investigation and very interesting to read.  I just read your post on Dreamsongs Pt 1.  I haven't read many of these earlier works.  It's really helpful.

[chrisdaw]

Decisions of the head are of ice, made by calculation. Decisions of the heart are fire, motivated by emotions. It'll come down to the returned Jon who will be seemingly driven by pure calculation having to decide to allow the sacrifice of his bastard child to save the world, or not. And that's the line ASOIAF will have been fashioned to delineate, every heartless decision Jon will have made until that point will be forgiven as a necessary sacrifice to save the world, but to not attempt to protect his child will be too far ice.

[James West]

7 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

Decisions of the head are of ice, made by calculation. Decisions of the heart are fire, motivated by emotions. It'll come down to the returned Jon who will be seemingly driven by pure calculation having to decide to allow the sacrifice of his bastard child to save the world, or not. And that's the line ASOIAF will have been fashioned to delineate, every heartless decision Jon will have made until that point will be forgiven as a necessary sacrifice to save the world, but to not attempt to protect his child will be too far ice.

You have it backwards.  Decisions of the heart, emotions, impulsivity, are made by Ice.  Just look at the tragedy of Jon Snow.  Jon is the classic example of somebody who screws up because he is a slave to his own emotions.  He decides with his heart like Robert decides with his sausage.  

[chrisdaw]

11 minutes ago, James West said:

You have it backwards.  Decisions of the heart, emotions, impulsivity, are made by Ice.  Just look at the tragedy of Jon Snow.  Jon is the classic example of somebody who screws up because he is a slave to his own emotions.  He decides with his heart like Robert decides with his sausage.  

No I do not have ice and fire the wrong way around. His decision to save Arya was one of fire, passion, emotion. He pays for it with his life. When he comes back he will view it as a mistake, a mistake he does not intend to make again, hence armoured all in ice, all warmth having fled from him.

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

If love and hate can mate, then maybe the head and heart can both pull the cart.

I think I equate the polarity between love and hate with the condition of the soul:

This is where Dany's soul is transformed by spiritual fire:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Daenerys III

Day followed day, and night followed night, until Dany knew she could not endure a moment longer. She would kill herself rather than go on, she decided one night …

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

Her soul has been transformed and she is in a sense elevated or transcendent.  I think she holds the key to the transformation of the heart of darkness/soul of ice.  "If ice can burn, then love (fire) and ice (hate) can mate." This is a transformation that involves the souls of ice and fire.  Love is the antidote to hate; life replaces death; light drives away the darkness.

[Springwatch]

Heart of fire, soul of ice, is how it goes (according to the red priests, anyway).

But each seems to include a whole range of behaviours - look at Mel, feeling both ecstasy and almost unbearable pain. I'd guess early Jaime and Cersei fit here too, ruled by their passions, quick to rage, quick to love.

I'm not so sure about ice people, but I think they must include both Barristan and Roose - so the full range from duty and honour to treachery and cruelty.