Other Mullings-over...

(from Pendleton Book Blather, 2014)

"The skein of your life is already woven, your fate is fixed." - Herger from The Thirteenth Warrior

"...a person doesn't die when he should but when he can." - Col. Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude

"...Cassandra didn't get nearly the kicking she deserved." - 'Lazarus Long'

A person who is 'fey' is perceived to have a doom; one cannot choose to be fey, but rather it is a discovery one comes to during the course of life. One such is compelled by the nature of their experience and personality to cause a change in the way of the world, large or small. These are the iconoclasts, eccentrics, marchers-to-ones-own-drums, gadflies. But books only get written about people whose doom encompasses them and...therein lies the elbow room that allows free will to get a grip. Even the most glorious and awful persons of history made conscious choices that made them or broke them.

I got the impression from the attitude of Herger in The Thirteenth Warrior that, although the Norns had already created the tapestry of earthly life, it was NOT predictable or forseeable; there was room for manuever, and that made all the difference. One could not change the manner of one's death, for instance, but one could live one's life badly or well and let posterity judge it.

Buliwyf's (and by extension his companions') destiny WAS tied up in the quest to save Hrothgar's kingdom, but the Norsemen probably did not think that the witch was interfering with anyone's fate by pointing this out, but rather directing their attention to a more comfortable (and honorable?) way to meet it. A real Cassandra would have been extremely unpopular and justifiably so.

St. Augustine used the first half of this argument to explain (away) the apparent freedom mankind 'enjoyed' under God's omnipotence. This led to the poisonous idea that bucking God's will was pointless and ultimately damning... and it also aided the Church in convincing Christians to toe the line. The Jesuits had to come back later and remind Christians that what you do in THIS life is also important, because the Roman Church had been reeling under some pretty bad press and they thought it was probably a good idea to make the Church a little more appealing for people outside their usual clientele (i.e. not ignorant peasants). But nobody trusted them much and everyone figured it was just another cynical Counter-Reformation strategy.

Lastly, we come to Col. Buendia. He alone, of all the characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude, seems to have realized what the Norsemen believed to be true; that life is what you make of it, and talented people owe the world a debt for their talent. A busy life leaves little time for an orderly death. Did Dante relagate suicides to such a deep circle of Hell because he considered it a kind of betrayal of humanity?