Julie Bozza
asked
Bryn Hammond:
You've used the following quote from Jamuqa as a chapter epigraph: 'Tchingis belongs to the cynics.' Can you tell me a bit about what that means? It's probably very obvious, but my ponderings keep circling back on themselves.
Bryn Hammond
This was a rare instance of me going with an in-story quote and not an epigraph from an external work.
It’s drawn directly from a passage in Jamuqa’s point-of-view, on page 188 of your paperback. He’s talking about Jurchedei and Guyildar but it suits Tchingis’ enlistment of the Tartars too – rough folk, debased by contacts with China, despised on the steppe.
The Uru’ud and Mangqot chiefs were like Jamuqa: not easy believers, austerely slow to trust, and they knew most originals were trouble. But if they found an original with his feet on the ground, who demonstrated his trust in them – nor just in their hearts of gold but in their ugly hides – that almost never happened. Because they almost never had a chance they might go on his quest as far as your Bo’orchus or further. Your Bo’orchus didn’t know what dedication to one man was, who’d have been happy with a dozen others. Tchingis belonged to the cynics. But that was Jamuqa’s perspective.
He’s started to see this as a unique thing about Tchingis, as he observes him in Tartary, and, being Jamuqa, nothing’s more important than that he can genuinely include (not simply convert) people whom other idealists are probably afraid of. It’s a thing about Tchingis that together he and I struggled to put into words. When I’d finished with that passage I thought, I haven’t quite captured your logic, Jamuqa, but I know you have a thought that matters. It seemed like a theme-quote for the Tartary chapter. Tchingis has proved he can convince the least likely, and they feel about him this way. Or Jamuqa thinks so.
Thanks ever so much for the fun question.
It’s drawn directly from a passage in Jamuqa’s point-of-view, on page 188 of your paperback. He’s talking about Jurchedei and Guyildar but it suits Tchingis’ enlistment of the Tartars too – rough folk, debased by contacts with China, despised on the steppe.
The Uru’ud and Mangqot chiefs were like Jamuqa: not easy believers, austerely slow to trust, and they knew most originals were trouble. But if they found an original with his feet on the ground, who demonstrated his trust in them – nor just in their hearts of gold but in their ugly hides – that almost never happened. Because they almost never had a chance they might go on his quest as far as your Bo’orchus or further. Your Bo’orchus didn’t know what dedication to one man was, who’d have been happy with a dozen others. Tchingis belonged to the cynics. But that was Jamuqa’s perspective.
He’s started to see this as a unique thing about Tchingis, as he observes him in Tartary, and, being Jamuqa, nothing’s more important than that he can genuinely include (not simply convert) people whom other idealists are probably afraid of. It’s a thing about Tchingis that together he and I struggled to put into words. When I’d finished with that passage I thought, I haven’t quite captured your logic, Jamuqa, but I know you have a thought that matters. It seemed like a theme-quote for the Tartary chapter. Tchingis has proved he can convince the least likely, and they feel about him this way. Or Jamuqa thinks so.
Thanks ever so much for the fun question.
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