{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1241", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1241, "subject": "New Vocabulary", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "1998-11-02T19:48:00+00:00", "last": "1998-11-02T19:48:00+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1998-11-02T19:48:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Vocabulary", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Re: Miles & Jolenta.\n\nOh dear, yes, that =does= look like a misread on my part!\n\nAs Tony Ellis points out, it is a misreading based upon an\ninterpretive splice upon two adjacent sentences. (With some backfill\nfrom surrounding text.)\n\nTHE TEXT\n\"Seeing my own face, multiplied again and again. A girl with hair\nlike red gold and enormous eyes\"\n\nCLEAREST READING\n\"Seeing my own face, multiplied again and again. [And then seeing the\nface of] A girl with hair like red gold and enormous eyes [, eyes\nwhich have nothing to do with the blue eyes we will discuss shortly].\"\n\nBROTHER-TO-LOVE-OBJECT READING\n\"Seeing my own face, multiplied again and again. [It was a face\nsimilar to that of what came next, a death-dream-screen-dissolve to] A\ngirl with hair like red gold and enormous eyes [in extreme close-up]\"\n\nSOMETIMES-I-WISH-I-WAS-A-PRETTY-GIRL READING\n\"Seeing my own face, multiplied again and again. [I was literally] A\ngirl with hair like red gold and enormous eyes\"\n\nThe ambiguity is resolved in each case by inserting interpretation. I\nfully agree with the consensual \"Clearest Reading,\" and since I don't\nsee either of the other two readings leading to any larger solution,\nI wouldn't argue for either of them. But I am interested in\nseeing/showing how these \"misreadings\" arose (in my personal case I\nthink it is more from the details about faces and eyes, mirrors and\nreflections, in the surrounding text; as well as the ever mysterious\nquestion of \"How did Severian make the outrageous guess of\nJonas-in-Miles and how could it possibly be right?\"); and once again,\nthis illustrates why we ought to develop a new vocabulary for our own\nuse.\n\n(FWIW, the misreading I presented as one of two possibilities, I\nmeant to be the \"Brother of love object.\" Not \"twin,\" since in\nTBOTNS there =are= a lot of twins, so that \"twin\" carries extra-strong\nsignificance, but non-twin, non-clonal, sibling. Nor had I\nconsidered it, but yes, I can readily see how the same path of\nreading can easily lead to \"Pretty girl\" reading.)\n\n(Also I feel the need to stress that I didn't/don't believe in a\nsibling for \"Jolenta\" as a vehicle for the spirit of \"Jonas.\" I was\npresenting it as an outrageous outcome of what we are now labeling a\nmisread: I was saying, \"look, this situation is so weird it seems like\nit would result in either this one strangeness or this other oddity.\"\nAdding two new models to my two old models for a total of four\nJonas/Miles models. But yes, we can abandon these misread models and\nstill have the two old models--which is three models too many!)\n\n(To speak nothing of the razor.)\n\nFor tangential example:\n\nThere is a group of readers who periodically state that \"Nilammon\" (I,\nch. 38) is a corruption of \"Neal Armstrong.\" Well, bunk. \"Nilammon\"\nis the name of a saint, one of the many such names in the texts--we\ndon't need to resort to language degeneration to explain that one.\n\nSo it can be safely declared a misread.\n\nHowever.\n\nThe context in which \"Nilammon\" is uttered is very conducive to\nthoughts of Neil Armstrong--the life of the saint seems to have\nlittle bearing. The two guys are looking at a \"fantastical portrait\"\nof a fully armored guy on a desert plain. They recognize it as being\nof a pre-terraformed Lune. We recognize it as a picture of an\n(American) astronaut on the Moon, and the first of those was Neil\nArmstrong, so we might assume it is a picture of Neil Armstrong. In\nmarking the transition from desert to forest, they say \"Now there's\ntrees enough on it [Lune] to hide Nilammon, as the saw goes.\"\n\nSCATTERED NOTES TOWARDS A NEW VOCABULARY\nI was thinking about this some weeks ago and started notes on the\nsubject of metaphor clues within the text, in the perhaps mistaken\nbelief that often our arguments revolve around interpretation of\nmetaphors and allusions. And the Wolfe text is chockfull of\nmetaphors and allusions, more than the \"average\" text.\n\n=Sometimes the metaphor/allusion is true but Severian doesn't know it=\n Example: the prostitute \"Thecla\" is a clone of Thecla, rather than\njust some utterly unrelated woman with a stage name which happens to\nbe the same as the name of Severian's love object.\n\n=Sometimes the metaphor/allusion is of contrast or opposites=\n Example: the jungle sorcerers under their canopy of vines vs. the\npelerines under their tent cathedral.\n Example: the salamander as burning rose vs. Thecla's perfume scent\n\"burning rose\" (in a wooly sense there is a very strong connection\nbetween Catherine and salamanders, and Thecla is certainly confused\nwith Catherine in Severian's visions, but we normally do not think of\nThecla as being a salamander; nor do we consider the salamander to be\nsomehow Thecla; nor \"Thecla\" to be the secret true name of the\nsalamander; etc.).\n\n=Sometimes the metaphor/allusion is first false, then true=\n Example: the coin of Vodalus (which by being false, is shown to be\ntrue).\n\n=Sometimes the allusion is contrary to expectation=\n Example: Severian being taken to Vodalus likens forest to Lake of\nBirds and then to drowned Nessus. [This one being a shade of near\nprophesy.]\n Example: Severian in Lake Diuturna thinks of corpses in Saltus\nmine trailings (rather than the corpses in the Lake of Birds). (III,\nch. 30)\n Example: Severian on ship Tzadkiel thinks it similar to Saltus\nFair (V, ch. 16).\n Examples: all the more fiery phrases about how all men are\ntorturers by training and all women are torturers by nature. (we\nexpect the cliches about men being from Mars but are\nsurprised/scandalized when the franchise is extended to women)\n\n=Sometimes the metaphor/allusion is magic=\n Example: Severian learns of twins Severian/Severa and Agia (an\nimportant twin) suddenly appears. (a magic invocation)\n\n=Sometimes the metaphor/allusion is slight, fleeting,\nless-than-concrete; i.e., a normal metaphor as used by most people\nmost of the time=\n Example: the tread of the alzabo like something from the Bear\nTower, but the alzabo isn't actually either a bear (admittedly it\ndoes have bear-like qualities) or something from the Bear Tower.\n Example: tread of Master Ash like an old man growing young, but\nSeverian walks around with him and this doesn't actually happen\n(although it does happen with Father Thyme in EMPIRES OF FOLIAGE AND\nFLOWER).\n\n. . . and so on . . .\n\nDifficulties arise when, for example, two readers assign the same\nmetaphor/allusion to different categories. If one reader's\napplication requires that Allusion Number One be \"magic\" and the\nother reader's application requires that the same Allusion be\n\"fleeting,\" then naturally the two readers are at loggerheads.\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }