Subject: (urth) male hyacinth

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 08:29:43 +0000

A couple months ago I posted on the evidence for a male hyacinth, and I was 
taken aback to discover that someone else thought that up independently - it 
was kind of a joke.  Let me briefly go over why I thought so: right before 
Silk meets Hyacinth for the first time, he finds all kinds of statues of boy 
toys for the gods: Ganymede and Catamitus, both boy lovers that I normally 
associate with Musk.  But Hyacinthus is the same kind of mythic figure: male 
lover of Apollo, stricken dead by the jealous wind.  But instead of Musk, he 
immediately meets Hyacinth, who has fake breasts.  Then later, in Calde of the 
Long Sun ,Patera Quetzal, when Silk claims that he slept with a woman, says he 
doesn't believe that his augur has done that.  It sounds like nothing, but 
Wolfe has a ton of those double entendres in his work.  I'm just surprised 
that someone else came up with the same thematic idea - the evidence isn't as 
sketchy as the evidence that suggest that Patera Pike is Blood's father, but 
it's pretty sketchy.  I don't see the chem part as convincing, but I think 
Hyacinth could certainly be an ex-male who had a little transformation enacted 
and it explains the sterility of Silk's relationship.
I don't know how seriously to take these things, really.  Not as seriously as 
a take a lot of the other stuff I post.
Marc Aramini

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 09:56:20 +0000

On 02/09/2002 09:29:43 maa32 wrote:

>immediately meets Hyacinth, who has fake breasts.

I too the statuary, Hyacinth's potential androgeny etc as re-inforcement
of Musk's character and lifestyle.  I'm far from convinced that - even
with Wolfe's infamous multi-layered work - there's any need to see more to
it than that.

If one posits that Hyacinth is ex-male, male , chem male or female one has
to answer what purpose it serves.  More what purpose would it serve to
have Silk fall in love with such a being.  That would seem contrary to
Wolfe's normal path in such matters and would require explanation.

Matthew

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