{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2110",
    "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": 2110,
    "subject": "Re  Ziggurat/ John Keats",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-26T10:35:27+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-26T10:35:27+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0768@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Allan Lloyd",
        "address": "lloyd at nexus.kc3.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-26T10:35:27+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re  Ziggurat/ John Keats",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I just noticed a small reference in the Ziggurat to Keats' poem \"La\nBelle Dame sans Merci\" on page 275. Wolfe finishes the paragraph with\nthe words \"No bird sang\". This is a close quote from the first and last\nverse of the poem, and the first verse is almost a scene setter for the\nstory\n\n            O What can ail thee, knight-at-arms,\n            Alone and palely loitering?\n            The sedge is wither'd from the lake,\n            And no birds sing.\n\n            O What can ail thee knight-at-arms,\n            So haggard and so woe-begone?\n            The sqirrel's granary is full,\n            And the harvest's done.\n\nThe poem goes on to tell how the knight \"met a lady in the meads, full\nbeautiful-a faery's child\" and rides off with her to her \"elfin grot\",\nwhere, after a night of love he awakes to find himself \"on the cold\nhillside\".\n\nJan does seem to be, in Emery's eyes, a Belle Dame sans Merci (which I\nalways used to read in my schoolboy French as \"the beautiful lady that\nnever said thankyou\") and Emery sees himself very much as the rejected\nlover. The cold hillside, the abduction of the children specifically\ncompared to faery abduction in the text, and the tradition of time\nmoving differently in the faery realm all have echoes in the poem. I\nknow the story then goes in different directions, but I think Wolfe was\nmaking a conscious reference to Keats. \n\nThe other thing I found interesting was that on first reading the story,\nI was reminded of the general atmosphere of a James Tiptree Jnr story.\nIt's hard to be specific, and would maybe be worth some more study, but\nTiptree also named a story with a Keats quote from the same poem (\"and I\nawoke and found myself on the cold hill's side\", a story about sex with\naliens) and in the previous story in Strange Travelers the childs name\nis Tiptree (shortened to Tippy). Spooky or what!\n\n                      Allan"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}