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Chlouvānem/Literature: Difference between revisions
→Lila lili vi and the late Kaiṣamā
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Literarily, the book's themes proved the key towards a merger of the two currents of socialist realism and agrarianism into the style nowadays called "individual-friendly socialist realism", with a radical shift of focus from the works of society to the components of that society that built all of those works. Late in the Kaiṣamā period, the strictly socialist element faded away, with a general rediscovery of folk roots and a taste for pure, unpretentious ars narrandi, that led to the contemporary successful style called "fairytale realism" (''yaldidhusmanædani'').<br/>Another, more politically active topic of Kaiṣamā-era literature had a more epic matter, focussing on the expansion of the communist world in the countries undergoing decolonization from Western powers, particularly in eastern Védren. | Literarily, the book's themes proved the key towards a merger of the two currents of socialist realism and agrarianism into the style nowadays called "individual-friendly socialist realism", with a radical shift of focus from the works of society to the components of that society that built all of those works. Late in the Kaiṣamā period, the strictly socialist element faded away, with a general rediscovery of folk roots and a taste for pure, unpretentious ars narrandi, that led to the contemporary successful style called "fairytale realism" (''yaldidhusmanædani'').<br/>Another, more politically active topic of Kaiṣamā-era literature had a more epic matter, focussing on the expansion of the communist world in the countries undergoing decolonization from Western powers, particularly in eastern Védren. | ||
====Chlouvānem fantasy: the Mervés cycle==== | |||
One of the most peculiar and important writers of the Kaiṣamā is undoubtedly Lajñyāvi Ṛcñahaidī ''Kalyahīṃsa'' (6310-6391), half Chlouvānem-half Skyrdegan native of Hålša, the largest city and main cultural centre of the Hålvaram plateau and the Chlouvānem North. She was the first major contemporary Chlouvānem author whose works spread through the grey market, gaining a cult following across the Kaiṣamā.<br/> | |||
Ṛcñahaidī’s work has since been canonized as the prime example of high fantasy in Chlouvānem literature, writing many short stories and a few novels (mostly in Chlouvānem, but one novel and some short stories are in Skyrdagor) all<ref>In her whole production, one of the most prolific in the history of Chlouvānem literature, only six short stories and two non-fiction books (both about her native city, Hålša: one about the cultural scene in the city in the early Kaiṣamā, another about urban slang in the vernacular in the same period) are not set in her conworld.</ref> set in a conworld, ''Mervés'' {{IPA|[ˈmɛrweːʃ]}}, set in an early modern age with clear aesthetic influences from the Imperial Age of Skyrdagor and characterized - a first in Chlouvānem literature - by a number of conlangs, the most important and developed one being Hrákenic (endonym ''hrákna'' {{IPA|[ˈʁaːkʰnɑ]}}, in Chl. ''hrākhenyumi dhāḍa''), the language of the Hrákin, an anthropomorfic reptilian race<ref>While speculative, the biology of this reptilian race has been described by Ṛcñahaidī with copious scientifically plausible details; it should be noted that the author, later in her life, named among her greatest influences her maternal uncle, Hamilǣṣṇyāvi Ṛcñahaidī ''Lāyašāgin'', a biologist at the Ecumenical School of Hålša.</ref> dominant on Mervés. After finishing school in a monastery in Mārmalūdven, Ṛcñahaidī became the first major figure of the Kaiṣamā to live following the Yunyalīlta but never siding with the power of the Inquisition. Hers was not a rebellion or an attack against it, but she lived her life mostly ignoring the Inquisition instead, choosing an "anarchical" and almost nomadic way of life, joining the Kaušitaših legion (which she worked with as a volunteer, devoted to her own monastic-derived interpretation of the Yunyalīlti faith) and living mostly in legion-owned ''ulāñšāme'' throughout her life, most prominently in her native Hålša but also - especially later in her life - in other cities of the North, including Iŋelsŏnd (a city in Fathan, at the time part of the Inquisition), Måmatempuñīh, and finally Myszelkjar in Gorjan (also part of the Inquisition until 6372), where she spent the last fifteen years of her life. | |||
Completely casting the Kaiṣamā's ideology away from her work, Ṛcñahaidī's Mervés cycle shows a maniacal detail towards the conworlding aspect, which she defined as her main artistic goal, creating a representation of humanity by creating a recreation of it. But the early modern society of Mervés also had allegories of the contemporary world, with various short stories presenting the point of view of poor people, outcasts, people living at the fringe of society - and in some way, the whole epic cycle seems to be narrated from that point of view. It is not hard to see across Ṛcñahaidī's work a reflection of her beliefs that led her to live the anarchical life she lived: in her work, true honesty and moral integrity are in the outcasts, in those who do not recognize any god-given power over them. Especially in the early part of her work, written in the early part of the Kaiṣamā (before the ''Lila lili vi'' "revolution"), Ṛcñahaidī's anarchism was less directed to being against the formal power, challenging the informal power instead; that is, social norms and morals, by detailing sexual life of the Hrákin and other races of Mervés; actually, not that much more sexually libertine than the Chlouvānem, but not hypocritical about it. The fight against hypocrisy is perhaps a key factor in Ṛcñahaidī's creation of Mervés, and in her whole worldview - she had six children with no known father and never got married, something unthinkable for Chlouvānem society of her time. | |||
The main reason of Ṛcñahaidī's importance lies, however, not in the intrinsic nature of her work, but in the impact the Mervés cycle had on Chlouvānem (and the Kaiṣamā's) society. The conworlding lore, the conlanging, the sense of straightforward escapism and freedom made her works popular grey market reads already in the early part of the Kaiṣamā, works that nearly anyone read and knew, providing idioms to the slang of the then-Chlouvānem youth that persist in some sociolects of today's languages of the Inquisition, and most importantly inspiring other artists - for some as simple inspiration (Lānūṣurah acknowledged that she had started reading Ṛcñahaidī's works approximately at the time she was gathering ideas for ''Lila lili vi''), while the conworld itself lent plenty of lore that other artists used and set their works within, or made derivative works of, especially in music and theatre. "Fantasy music" is a whole subcultural phaenomenon (with some of the ideals of ''ṣmola'' and musical themes heavily inspired by ''kerachomā'') aesthetically and thematically inspired predominantly by the Mervés cycle; even more representative of how far her popularity went is how the Bhārmāligūyi theatre in Līṭhalyinām even wrote and represented an experimental pièce based on Ṛcñahaidī's novel ''Varūkthami gaimah'' (The Bow of Varúktˤa), part of the Mervés cycle, in 6368, a decade before the fall of the Kaiṣamā and fourteen years before the first official publication of any fiction work by Ṛcñahaidī<ref>Her book about the urban slang in the vernacular of Hålša was first published in 6366, shortly after she wrote it.</ref>. | |||
===''Læjāktoma'' (comics)=== | ===''Læjāktoma'' (comics)=== | ||