{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/241", "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": 241, "subject": "Cerberus (was \"The Quiet Ur", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1997-10-31T09:14:56+00:00", "last": "1997-10-31T11:01:01+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1997-10-31T11:01:01+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Cerberus (was \"The Quiet Ur", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " 31/10/97\n 10:16\n Cerberus (was \"The Quiet Urth\")" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Nutria wrote:\nOk, let's use this as an example of what I mean. You say Satan\nimagery, I say pun. 666 is \"the number of the Beast\", rather than\nspecifically the number of Satan, and 666 Saltimbanque St is the\nHouse of the Beast: the \"Maison du Chien\", or House of the Dog.\nThe protagonist's extended family is also a kind of Beast, \nthe five-headed Cerberus of the title." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, since cerberus is the guardian of hell, I'd say that you cannot\ncompletely exclude the religious motif. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wolfe does not positively portray\nanything Christian that I know of in this book, but his pictures of evil\nseem largely to be Biblical and Danteaen." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmmm... I have to nitpick here: I would say Danteaen only. Yes,\nDante makes Cerberus the guardian of Christian Hell, but he was\nborrowing from Classical (ie Pagan) mythology. Nor was Dante's\nHell a place of \"evil\" in the conventional sense, but rather a place\nof human suffering. I still don't see any Biblical\\Christian imagery\nin Fifth Head." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And I think \"saltimbanque\" means\n\"counterfeit.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Interesting! Can anybody confirm that Saltimbanque = counterfeit\nfor us?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "True versus false humanity is really the theme, I think, of\nthe three novellas," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Agreed." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "but Wolfe does associate false humanity with hell,\nanti-christ, a false immortality, sterility, cruelty, etc. Also, a\nwhore-house is a traditional image of the counterfeit or false church." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "All true, but I'm still not convinced that Wolfe wants us to make\nsuch associations with this particular collection of novellas. If the\nwhore-house in Fifth Head was supposed to be a false church I\nwould expect the rest of the story to reflect this, but as far as I\ncan see it doesn't.\n\nThe strongest parallels I can see are with Australian aboriginal culture,\nand more specifically with its destruction at the hands of white\nsettlers. " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "1997-10-31T09:14:56+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Cerberus (was \"The Quiet Ur", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 31 Oct 1997, Tony Ellis wrote:\nNutria wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Wolfe does not positively portray\nanything Christian that I know of in this book, but his pictures of evil\nseem largely to be Biblical and Danteaen." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Hmmm... I have to nitpick here: I would say Danteaen only. Yes,\nDante makes Cerberus the guardian of Christian Hell, but he was\nborrowing from Classical (ie Pagan) mythology. Nor was Dante's\nHell a place of \"evil\" in the conventional sense, but rather a place\nof human suffering. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just to nitpick your nitpick, in Biblical thought (contrary to Milton and\nothers), as in Dante, Hell is not the headquarters of \"evil\" but a place\nof suffering. Satan is not pictured as the ruler of Hell but its most\nfamous prisoner.\n \nAnd since this message has no Wolfe content anyway, I'll continue with the\nobservation, after reading Cordwainer Smith's \"A Planet Named Shayol,\" \nthat where at one time people wrote gory descriptions of Hell with the\npurpose of putting a genuine fear of God into people, several modern\nscience fiction writers have written gory stories about Hell with the\n(seemingly intended) effect of making the reader say, \"surely this cannot\nbe.\" \n\nObWolfe: I put off reading \"Peace\" because it sounded less interesting\nthan Wolfe's other stuff, but I really enjoyed it, found the ending quite\nsatisfying, and am finding that it's staying with me as much or more than\nany of his other books.\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }