{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2319",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2319,
    "subject": "Hethor, Moby Dick, the Essex, Death, Limbo, Resurrection (etc.)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-07-23T21:49:29+00:00",
    "last": "2000-07-23T21:49:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0119@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Stephenson",
        "address": "pws at pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2000-07-23T21:49:29+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Hethor, Moby Dick, the Essex, Death, Limbo, Resurrection (etc.)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
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          "text": "Two thoughts inspired by the meeting with Hethor in chapter XXXV (the last)\nof Shadow.\n\nThe first has two threads.  Some time last year, I noted a similarity\nbetween Severian's night in the inn where he meets Baldanders and Dr Talos\nand the passage early in Moby Dick where `Ishmael' meets Queequeg.  This\nseemed to be uncontroversial --- several other people had already noticed\nthe parallels.\n\nSecondly, even earlier than that, I had replied to a posting where someone\nquoted Hethor from chapter XXXV:\n\n  I u-understand you more than you think, I the old captain, the old\n  lieutenant, the old c-c-cook in his old kitchen, cooking soup, cooking\n  broth for the dying pets!  My master is real, but wehre are your armies?\n  Real, and where are your empires?  Sh-shall false blood run from a true\n  wound?  Where is your strength when the b-b-blood is gone, where is the\n  luster of the silken hair?  I w-will catch it in a cup of glass, I, the\n  old c-captain of the old limping sh-ship, with its crew black against\n  the silver sails, and the C-c-coalsack behind it.\n\nThere's another similar paragraph half a page later.  I suggested, about\n40% joking, that this referred to W.S. Gilbert's `Yarn of the Nancy Bell',\nwhere an elderly naval man tells about how he gradually ate his way through\nthe crew when cast adrift after a shipwreck (`Oh, I am the cook and the\ncaptain bold, and the mate of he Nancy brig...').\n\nNow, maybe this is well known in some quarters (such as the fo'csle), but\nit's news to me:  there is a definite connection between Moby Dick and\ncannibalism at sea.  Here is the opening paragraph of a review from this\nweek's Times Literary Supplement:\n\n  The story is famous by association, because it begins where _Moby-Dick_\n  ends.  On November 20, 1820, the Nantucket whaleship _Essex_ was attacked\n  and sunk by a giant sperm whale 2,000 miles west of the Galapagos\n  Islands.  The twenty-man crew took to three boats.  It took them a month\n  to reach uninhabited Henderson Island, in the Pitcairn group, and three\n  men chose to stay rather than face the 4,000-mile journey to South\n  America.  Of those who sailed on, the first died on January 10.  Ten days\n  later, the survivors began eating rather than burying the dead.  The\n  boats were separated, one never to be seen again.  By the time the first\n  mate's boat enocuntered a whaleship, only three men were still alive.  On\n  the captain's boat, men were not dying fast enough to keep up with\n  consumption and lots were drawn.  The captain's cousin drew the black\n  spot and was shot.  His corpse, and another death, kept the captain and a\n  boy alive, until they were found near St Mary's Island, off Chile,\n  sucking the bones of their companions.  After three months in an open\n  boat, they were at the last extremity, scarcely able to comprehend their\n  rescue and unwilling to surrender the bones that had sustained them.\n\n(I nearly put a _sic_ next to the hyphenated Moby Dick, but decided it was\ntoo pedantic.  Don't write in.)\n\nI quote from the final paragraph, too:\n\n  After the second wreck, Pollard [the captain; the second ship was called\n  _Two Brothers_] was a Jonah, unemployable save as a nightwatchman on\n  Nantucket's wharves.  Melville, for one, was struck, after meeting him on\n  his round in 1852, by the captain's calm acceptance that his calamity was\n  just.\n\n(The review is by Allen Mawer and the books reviewed are _In the Heart of\nthe Sea: The tragedy of the whaleship \"Essex\"_ by Nathaniel Philbrick,\nHarperCollins, 0 00 257057 2, and _Shipwreck of the whaleship Essex_ by\nOwen Chase, Pimlico (paperback), 0 7126 6741 5.  The article is headed\n`Essex men at sea', a grim British social joke in thoroughly bad taste, and\nthe page is headed `Books for Pleasure'.  I like the TLS.)\n\nHaving read that, I can't believe that Wolfe could not have known about the\nEssex.  It does make Hethor seem to me more credible, though without at all\nremoving the mysteries.  In particular, I have racked my brains for any\nexplanation of the doll he had in his cabin, as described in his first\nmonologue in chapter XXX, `Night', though the nature of her `lemon-wood\nbox' is perhaps worth consideration.  (Why lemon-wood, anyone?)\n\n\nThe second point is not obviously connected with the first, and arises from\nmy extremely dilatory third reading of the Book (no doubt delayed by the\ncommittee stage).  Here we are a couple of pages later in chapter XXXV.\n\n  ``Master, where do we go?''\n\n  ``Out the gate,'' I said, and told myself I said it because I wanted him\n  to follow Dr. Talos and not me; the truth was that I was thinking of the\n  preternatural beauty of the Clawa, and how sweet it would be to carry it\n  to Thrax with me, instead of retracing my steps to the center of Nessus.\n  I gestured toward the Wall, which now rose in the distance as the walls\n  of a common fortress must rise before a mouse.  They were black as\n  thunderheads, and held certain clouds captive at their summit.\n\n  ``I will carry your sword, Master.''\n\n  The offer seemd honestly made, though I was reminded that the plot Agia\n  and her brother had conceived against me had been born of their desire\n  for _Terminus Est_.  As firmly as I could, I said, ``No.  Not now or\n  ever.''\n\n  ``I feel pity for you, Master, seeing you walk with it on your shoulder\n  so.  It must be very heavy.''\n\nQuoted out of context, I'm amazed I didn't spot it the first two times\nround (although I think it's also uncontroversial that there's quite a lot\nof material there).  Hethor isn't Simon of Cyrene, even to the extent that\nSeverian isn't Christ, but the last paragraph fits the corresponding\nbiblical episode precisely; _Terminus Est_ is likened to a cross elsewhere;\nand as the essays on the _Eyeflash Miracles_ pointed out, Wolfe certainly\nuses the crucifixion as a symbol of potential suffering.\n\nNow, I'd like to suggest this helps to explain the next parts of the\nnarrative:  the passage throught the Gate (without the city wall), the\nscattering of the fellowship, and the sudden shifting of the narrative to\nSeverian's awakening in the inn at Saltus.  There is, however, a particular\nflaw in this even if you grant the further parallels, which I'll come to.\n\nThe huge black gate of the city, containing `cacogens, I think .... beings\nto whom the avern was but what a marigold or a marguerite is to use' is the\ngate of death.  This is hinted at in the first chapter, itself called\n`Resurrection and Death' (presumably referring, however, to his near(?)\ndrowning), where Severian before the gate of the Necropolis speaks of his\nexile:\n\n  It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.  The locked\n  and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading\n  its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind nows as the symbol\n  of my exile.\n\nDeath and exile are parallels, a common enough theme in fiction.  The gate\nrecalls the entry to Dante's Hell, which suggests something further: the\nscuffle that takes place is somehow parallel to the `Harrowing of Hell',\nthe episode where Christ is supposed (at least in medieval mythology) to\nhave entered Limbo after his death and carried away the Patriarchs.\nUnhappily, not much is made of this episode in Dante (Inferno, canto V); it\nall seems to have gone surprisingly peacefully, considering.  A couple of\nyears ago (was it so long?) Mantis quoted some words from a bit further\ninto the Inferno (Canto XII, vv 34ff.) which might be relevant (see volume\n13, posts 55 and 60), although at the time the subject was the Mines of\nSaltus, and said:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Oh, right! \"The one who took/from Dis the highest circle's splendid\nspoils\" must be Herakles bringing Kerberus up for Labor Twelve. <g>"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "and I said (this is the third time I've\tquoted myself, help):"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "this is also a joke, right?  I'm out of my depth again (which is somewhere\nin Malbolges), but I think it's clear it refers to the earthquake which\naccompanied the rending of the curtain in the temple, followed by the\n`harrowing of hell', i.e. the visitor is Christ.  Yes, I realise everyone\nknew that anyway."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The gap in the narrative is then simple enough: the 40 hours between the\ncrucifixion and the resurrection.\n\nThe flaw in all this is perhaps obvious.  It simply lacks the emotional and\neven narrative charge of the events supposedly paralleled.  Severian and\nDorcas simply part company from the others and Severian wakes up in an inn\n(and there is no suggestion whatsoever, despite his possession of the Claw,\nthat _this_ time is any sort of `resurrection').\n\nWhile I think that's true, I'm not sure, however, that it puts an end to\nthe matter.  When I pointed out that Severian's meeting with the lochage\nearlier in Shadow was a little like Christ before Pilate, someone --- I\nthink Tony Ellis --- quite rightly made the same objection.  Yet the\nparallel is as clear there as it is with the carrying of the cross, above.\nFurthermore, we know Severian isn't Christ anyway.  It's as if the tiny\nechoes fit into his everyday life.  This, I believe, was quite common in\nmedieval iconography, where virtually everything in the world was supposed\nto have a mystical significance: to a mon, the monastery garden was the\n`horus inclusus' representing the Virgin's chastity; the roses were her\nsweetness; the thorns were the ones that surrounded her son's head; and so\non.  I think Wolfe is borrowing this sort of literary rearrangement of the\nworld for his own purposes.  Severian's awakening in the inn is, after all,\na _narrative_ resurrection, a resumption of the story after a gap of a\ncouple of days.  In Wolfe, the levels wind into one another, so that\nbelonging and exile, death and resurrection, the story and the untold world\nbeyond, merge into a greater whole.\n\ncorncrake"
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Peter Stephenson <pws at pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk>\nWork: pws at CambridgeSiliconRadio.com\nWeb: http://www.pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}