{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1896",
    "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": 1896,
    "subject": "Fairy Tale alchemy",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1999-11-02T10:04:40+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-02T19:14:14+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0338@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-02T10:04:40+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Fairy Tale alchemy",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Mantis remarked, in discussion of fantasy v. SF:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "\"Magical,\" yes, but most specifically it is \"alchemical.\"\n\nIf you pick up a modern book on alchemy, chances are it will have some of\nthose great old woodcuts regarding the stages of The Great Work: which is\n\"turning lead into gold\" for the laity.  Red Lion, Green Dragon, Black\nRaven, Virgin Milk--all sorts of wild stuff.  Anyway, in the midst of all\nthis Chemical Wedding, there appears a potent symbol: a two-headed being,\nusually a big muscular creature with a king's head and a queen's head\n(both\ncrowned, iirc).  Mind you, this is an =allegorical= representation of some\nfunky chemical process --it isn't meant to be some sort of Frankenstein's\nmonster that literally appears.\n\nBut this double-header is =not= the end-product: it is not the\nphilosopher's stone.  It is only a stage along the way.  So, true to form,\nit must be \"killed\" so that the next mode can emerge--this woodcut shows\nthe critter being put to bed in a tomb.\n\nTHUS, in addition to the Satan's Temptation of Christ elements in the\nscenes with Typhon and Severian, I have reason to believe that there is an\neven stronger thread of alchemical thought and tradition represented: one\nthat links up with other keystones of the text to form an adamantine\nchain.\n\nI strongly suspect that Damien Broderick knows exactly what I'm talking\nabout. (I also know that alga is rolling her eyes at all this!)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, no. Actually I agree---how not. The Gothic elements refer directly\nback to alchemy, most specifically in Baldanders's castle by the lake with\nhis \"experiments\" aided by \"elementals\" from the air and his great\nfamiliar/catamite/clone (and the whole parody, almost Pythoneque, in which\nBaldanders is both Frankenstein and creature, with Dr. Talos as a \"beard\").\nAlso much later when we find the homunculus/mandragora at the Citadel. But,\nas I have said before, these are almost certainly filtered from the direct\nGothic tradition (mostly English) by Wolfe's reading of Goethe's Faust, Part\nII (the one people don't read so much), which is a weirdly hallucinogenic\n\"take\" on the Gothic/alchemical novel with its castles and laboratories and\n\"philosopher's stones\" and transmutations.\n\nTyphon too appears in this general air of the Gothic.\n\nAnd mantis, I don't roll my eyes at your allusions, they start to roll when\nyou seize them (the allusions, not the eyes) with your mandibles and\nbrutally worry them into virtuality.\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0344@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Daniel Fusch",
        "address": "dfusch at hotmail.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-02T19:14:14+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Fairy Tale alchemy",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0338@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "alga and mantis,\n\nI concede the point. You're right--I hadn't looked that carefully at the \nsequence at Baldanders' castle. The connection to Faust is definitely \nthere--with the Homunculus, after all.\n\nI suppose I hadn't really connected alchemy with the Gothic tradition \nbefore--maybe \"Frankenstein\" is the meeting point, then.\n\nSo...if Typhon is--in one sense--an alchemical allusion, what is the \nsignificance of the allusion? Is Typhon representative of a desire to \nperfect the human form (by defeating death)?"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}