{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/268", "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": 268, "subject": "Dr Talos's Play", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "1997-11-24T08:26:45+00:00", "last": "1997-11-24T08:26:45+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1997-11-24T08:26:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Dr Talos's Play", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " 24/11/97\n 09:13\n RE>Dr Talos's Play\n\nPaul C Duggan wrote (re raising sons from stones):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I had originally thought that that was a reference to Jesus words about\nbeing able to raise up stones as sons of abraham..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually, that makes just as much sense as my theory. I wonder which is\nright?\n\nRe Nephilim:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Huh? Part of the Bible but not the \"christian universe\"? I guess most\nassume they perished in the flood (except for grendels mother :-)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Christianity teaches that there was only one Son of God. And as for\nperishing in the flood... if the Son of God can walk on water, then why\nnot the Sons? :-)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "CRCulver wrote:\nLOL, look up Nephilim in \"The Devil's Dictionary,\" that wonderful satire\nby Ambrose Bierce, and you'll see that you and that definition agree in\nopinion." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sadly I don't have a copy. Care to share this definition with Paul C\nDuggan and I?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mantis wrote:\nRe: the length of the play and the completeness of the drama we are\nshown. First off, please count the number of times the stage\ndirection \"stage darkens\" appears--this traditionally indicates the\nend of one \"act\" and the beginning of the next \"act.\" " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It also indicates the division between one \"scene\" and the next \"scene\",\nwhich is what I would call these divisions. An \"act\" normally consists\nof a number of scenes, these do not, but each changes the locale." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "...I count five, myself, but I also\nthink the play has been cut off: so six acts, at least." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ironically, if the divisions are acts, five would be an appropriate\nnumber. Horace established the five-act play, and it became the model \nfor Renaissance drama, which Dr Talos's play resembles more than any\nother kind.\n\nIn any event, I still don't see any justification for extrapolating a\nsymbolic \"divine week\", I'm afraid. \n\nHowever, let me confess that in doing a little more research to defend\nmy theory that what we see of the play is all there is, I instead found\nevidence which shoots my theory down in flames! In the chapter in Claw \nthat follows the play, Severian says that what what was supposed to\nhappen at the point Baldanders broke free was that \"Baldanders would \nrest the flambaux from me, pretend to break my back, and so end the \nscene.\" This indicates, I can't deny it, that there are indeed more \nscenes to come.\n\nMantis goes on to say, with some justifaction:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Second, if this =really= is all the play that there is, then how do\nyou explain the presence of the following characters in the list\npreceeding the play: Angelic Beings, The New Sun, The Old Sun, The\nMoon?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can't, Mantis, and I should have spotted this - but then, neither do\nyou explain why Severian ends his transcript where he does. Or why, in\nShadow, Severian describes as \"the final part\" of the play a scene that\nis precisely the final scene of the transcript. If the play doesn't end\nhere, why is Severian saying it does? \n\nThe simplest explanation I can come up with (apart from the one in which\nGene Wolfe fails to proof the final draft of Claw properly) is that\nSeverian is talking about the play =as it was performed= rather than as\nit existed as a whole. The play the peasants saw ended with Baldanders\nbreaking free, and so, by mischance, does the play the House Absolute\nsees, so this is the play Severian reports to us. He does say, in \nChapter XXIV of Claw, that he wants to record the play \"as it might have\nbeen recorded by some diligent clerk in the audience.\" And what we get\nis indeed the play that clerk would have seen." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"How else can the play end but on a knife-edge, with the New Sun\nbattling Darkness and everything else still in doubt?\"\n\nUh, is this a trick question? It can end with the triumph of the\nNew Sun, naturally! Be careful--you are assigning allegorical\nqualities to a play already steeped in mythos: the battle at the\ntruncation is not between \"the New Sun\" (a character on the list who has\nnot yet appeared in the play--though he probably was spotted by the\ncountessa) and \"Darkness\" (a character who does not exist in the\nplay); rather, it is between the Familiar (a torturer) played by a\ntorturer and Nod (a titan who would retake the throne of Zeus) played\nby a titan who would retake the throne of Zeus" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It seems hardly fair of you, Mantis, to criticise my reading of the\nbattle as overly allegorical when actually I'm making your own point\nthat the play \"is constantly being acted out in the course of all five\nbooks.\" Of course \"Darkness\" and \"the New Sun\" don't appear in the\nplay as characters, but they are still the main contenders in the Book\nof the New Sun story on which the play is based. I could just as easily \ncriticise your critique for bringing in \"Zeus\" when he manifestly \ndoesn't exist in the play.\n\nI think we have to see the play as two plays: the Whole Play, which\nexists mainly in Dr Talos's head (but also \"on the fragments of soiled\npaper we passed from hand to hand that afternoon\"), and the Performed\nPlay the play that is actually enacted. The Whole Play may have any\nnumber of additional scenes, we just don't know, but the Performed Play\nis the one Wolfe shows us, and for that reason, I think, the one we are\nsupposed to think about. " } ] } ] }