Kai Ruoseiz ha Nira
| Kai Ruoseiẓ ha Nira | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | April 9, 1862 Belasa, Kingdom of Khezan |
| Died | April 10, 1904 (aged 42) Belasa, Kingdom of Khezan |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Years active | 1877 - 1904 |
Kai Ruoseiẓ ha Nira (9 April 1862 - 10 April 1904) was an important Khezian poet and novelist.
Biography
Kai Ruoseiẓ ha Nira was born in Belasa, a small spa-town on Lake Melkanchuta in eastern Khezan, to a small noble family. His father, Ruos Ruoseiẓ III ha Nira, was a vintner using his local estate to make premium wines. His grandfather and great grandfather were also vintners and carried the Belasian vintage legacy. Kai was born the 8th son, and would later have 6 more younger siblings. Not given the same expectations as the oldest son during a time of turmoil with the closing stages of the hundred years long Khezi-Vanoshan Valley War, he was expected to grow up in time to participate, but most of the conflict had come to a close by the time of his teenage years.
Kai was known to be fond of art, and while not expected to inherit the estate, he did assist his father and brothers during his youth. His assistance was much requested that it was said the Belasian Winery functioned like clockwork with Kai to handle all clerical work, filing production and sales reports to the royal government at the time. During his teenage years, he wrote in several diaries detailing his life, and including fantastical art sketches of mundane things he found to have intrinsic beauty. Kai wrote that he had met with a court boy from the royal Khezan family, though neglected to remember his name and was embarrassed to admit so in his diary. He began to write his first novel, Under the Blossoms of the Vineyard, when he was only 16. His novel tackled themes of forgetfulness, and the importance of making memories that last further than oneself. His father found the writing interesting, and invited a family friend who knew a publisher to the estate to read the novel for himself. From there, the novel was an instant hit as the family friend agreed to deliver it to a publisher. Following the end of the war, Under the Blossoms of the Vineyard saw itself a meteoric success among the upper and middle classes in Khezan.
Kai's romanticist style was popular with many, and thanks in part to its success, he was finally able to earn his own living and to pursue his own career outside of the family estate. Using his funds, he took up art sketching in Kavam, where he drew over 400 works detailing the city and many of its passersby. By 1886, this work began to bore Kai, who found the sketching to become tedius after more and more nobles would request his portrait works, when his own passion was with nature and foreign culture. Using his spare time, he began to read into various languages and self-taught himself the Vos language allowing him to read more works than was limited by his native Khezan. Here, he taught himself linguistic structures and began his own personal scholarly adventure into finding the "True mother language of all languages". While his work found no definitive truth, he had noted the similarities within the Western Vaniuan languages and made a list of the kinship terms and other common words they shared in a corpus, The Languages of the Western Sea's Coast and Their Origins. While not as popular as his earlier novel, he was found to be of significant interest to Vos-speaking linguistic circles who invited him to teach in Tameyvah. He took this up for four months, but found many of the pupils to be "undeserving of his literary talent" which drove a wedge between himself and the director.
As he had done before, he decided to find a passion elsewhere, which he found in Vanoshan culture. Taking his educator funds, he charted a trip into Vanosha where he would stay and learn more about the culture of those still living nomadic lives. While in northern Vanosha, he was kidnapped by əbore, local warriors, for ransom. Despite this, the retinue treated him with respect and the warriors found Kai's fluency of the Vanoshan language to be intriguing. Kai, realizing this was a perfect chance to learn more about the Vanoshan culture, talked extensively with his captors and learned much about the Vanoshan culture, recording much of the conversations verbatim for later re-print. The father-figure of the group, who went by the name Sukbac, took good care of the young man and the two would become great friends. Sukbac eventually dropped the ransom within a month, and decided Kai was free to go, having entertained himself and the men extensively. The two said their words, and parted ways where Kai promised to invite them back to his family's estate should he gather permission.
With this experience, he returned back to Khezan to continue writing. Thanks in part to the stories Sukbac and his men told him, Kai wrote several novels in short time. In 1887, he released Stars of the Midnight Valley and Poems to a Lover in Velisa. In the next year, he wrote Eulogy to the Fir Trees, Pleasantries of the Unseen, and Illumination of the Third Eye: An Author's Aspirations for the Esoteric. While not all significantly popular, Kai wrote on several genres. With several of his passion works completed, he decided to take time to think deeply for his next body of work. Following five years of writing, he finally completed With the Butterflies of Heaven. The tale was an instant hit across Vaniua, where it was translated within ten years to 9 different languages.
Kai, by the 1890s, began to start suffering from health complications. An injury from a carriage accident in 1891 left him with a limp for the rest of his life. Forced to use a cane, and in agony with every a limp, he began to resort to laudanum to assist him in his everyday life. This became an addiction quickly, as he claimed it assisted his work, but despite this claim his works became noted for being more and more erratic. At one point, he had stirred controversy for publicly claiming Khezans and Vanoshans were from the same people in the ancient past, where his brothers forced him off the family estate. Nearly left destitute, he left for his family's spa estate in Garasadar to avoid public life. It was while here, that suddenly his health afflictions from prolonged laudanum use began to take its toll. Using esoteric methods of medicine in spite of his local doctors warnings, he suffered from vitamin deficiency after having locked himself in a sunlight-free room for 8 months. Further exposure to the outside world following this experience led to him contracting pneumonia, which he barely survived in 1899. After this experience, he began to slightly recover after having quit laudanum, but his health afflictions soon returned after he adopted smoking tobacco.
By 1904, his health had become so terrible, that he required simple assistance to move him around. Knowing his death was near, he requested to be brought back to his family estate so he would see his father one last time on his birthday. While he managed to reach the estate by the 7th, his father had passed the week before and was buried. Suddenly struck with depression, he refused to eat or drink anything until the 9th when it seemed life had returned to the poor middle-aged man. On the morning of the 10th, Kai was found dead in his sleep after he did not answer his sister Drobor's knocks.