{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3690", "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": 3690, "subject": "Trees & transformations", "messages": 5, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-12-18T17:13:41+00:00", "last": "2002-12-19T05:01:21+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Bollen", "address": "abollen at internode.on.net" }, "date": "2002-12-18T17:13:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Trees & transformations", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I noticed Robert Graves mentioned on the list a while back. I do get a sense\nthat Wolfe refers to Graves at times. Eg - in an interview somewhere, with\nreference to Soldier in the Mist, he gives an account of the tranformation\nof Delphi from an earth-goddess shrine, to a patriarchal Apollonian place:\nit reads like something straight out of \"The Greek Myths\". And some of the\nMoses and Odin/Hermes imagery in Short Sun/Long Sun is kind of Gravesian.\n\nAnyway, fwiw I was catching up with Marc's rather beguiling tree theories,\nwhich made me think for some reason of all the Celtic tree stuff in \"The\nWhite Goddess\". And in particular, the story of Blodeuwedd, \"Flower Face\",\nthe woman made from flowers as wife for the hero Llew:\n\nNot of father nor of mother\nWas my blood, was my body.\n\nI was spellbound by Gwydion,\nPrime enchanter of the Britons,\nWhen he formed me from nine blossoms,\nNine buds of various kind;\nFrom primrose of the mountain,\nBroom, meadow-sweet and cockle,\nTogether intertwined,\nFrom the bean in its shade bearing\nA white spectral army\nOf earth, of earthly kind,\nFrom blossoms of the nettle,\nOak, thorn and bashful chestnut -\nNine powers of nine flowers,\nNine powers in me combined,\nNine buds of plant and tree.\n\nLong and white are my fingers\nAs the ninth wave of the sea.\n\n(Graves' translation from the Welsh.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Josh Geller", "address": "dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net" }, "date": "2002-12-18T17:28:47+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Trees & transformations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Andrew Bollen wrote:\n(Graves' translation from the Welsh.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I may be mistaken about this, but I do not believe that Graves spoke or\nread Welsh. He worked from translations.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Bollen", "address": "abollen at internode.on.net" }, "date": "2002-12-18T17:42:51+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Trees & transformations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Josh Geller wrote:\n(Graves' translation from the Welsh.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I may be mistaken about this, but I do not believe that Graves spoke or\nread Welsh. He worked from translations." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No doubt you're right. I googled the text from this site:\nhttp://www.unc.edu/~reddeer/white_goddess/00_white.goddess.robert.graves.htm\nl#hanes, which cites it as an RG translation, but maybe they're mistaken." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at hotpop.com" }, "date": "2002-12-18T19:36:49+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Trees & transformations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Doh! I hoped to be the first to reveal this connection between Silk and Llew\nLlaw Gyffes. It's not the only connection between the two either. It goes on\nand on.\n\nI've begun to wonder if Wolfe were not attempting in LS and SS to create a\nroot of all myths as Tolkien said was his original attempt in the\nSilmarillion.\n\n--Crush\n\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom: Andrew Bollen [mailto:abollen at internode.on.net]\nSent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 11:14 AM\nTo: urth at urth.net\nSubject: (urth) Trees & transformations\n\nI noticed Robert Graves mentioned on the list a while back. I do get a sense\nthat Wolfe refers to Graves at times. Eg - in an interview somewhere, with\nreference to Soldier in the Mist, he gives an account of the tranformation\nof Delphi from an earth-goddess shrine, to a patriarchal Apollonian place:\nit reads like something straight out of \"The Greek Myths\". And some of the\nMoses and Odin/Hermes imagery in Short Sun/Long Sun is kind of Gravesian.\n\nAnyway, fwiw I was catching up with Marc's rather beguiling tree theories,\nwhich made me think for some reason of all the Celtic tree stuff in \"The\nWhite Goddess\". And in particular, the story of Blodeuwedd, \"Flower Face\",\nthe woman made from flowers as wife for the hero Llew:\n\nNot of father nor of mother\nWas my blood, was my body.\n\nI was spellbound by Gwydion,\nPrime enchanter of the Britons,\nWhen he formed me from nine blossoms,\nNine buds of various kind;\nFrom primrose of the mountain,\nBroom, meadow-sweet and cockle,\nTogether intertwined,\nFrom the bean in its shade bearing\nA white spectral army\nOf earth, of earthly kind,\nFrom blossoms of the nettle,\nOak, thorn and bashful chestnut -\nNine powers of nine flowers,\nNine powers in me combined,\nNine buds of plant and tree.\n\nLong and white are my fingers\nAs the ninth wave of the sea.\n\n(Graves' translation from the Welsh.)" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "-- " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Bollen", "address": "abollen at internode.on.net" }, "date": "2002-12-19T05:01:21+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Trees & transformations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Doh! I hoped to be the first to reveal this connection between Silk and\nLlew\nLlaw Gyffes. It's not the only connection between the two either. It goes\non\nand on.\n\n--Crush" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Crush - I just came across your interesting site, and had a couple of\nquestions. In the intro, you say: \"[Wolfe has] recreated Gwydion's riddle as\nexegeted by Robert Graves in his The White Goddess..\" I assume you mean\n\"Gwion/Taliesin's\" riddle, no? The one which goes:\n\n\"An impartial Chief Bard\nAm I to Elphin.\nMy accustomed country\nIs the land of the Cherubim.\n\nJohannes the Diviner\nI was called by Merddin,\nAt length every King\nWill call me Taliesin.\n\nI was nine months almost\nIn the belly of the hag Ceridwen;\nI was at first little Gwion,\nAt length I am Taliesin.\"\n\netc.\n\nWould love to here more on this! As far as I can recall, RG's (rather\ntortured) exegesis is in terms of recreating the tree-alphabet from the\nanswers to the sections of the riddle, and finally a holy-name-of-god. A\nfair amount of the imagery involved seems to be correspond with Wolfe's\nimagery, but beyond that I am unclear on the connection. Ditto for the\nconnection between Llew and Silk?\n\nOther Wolfean tie-ins to Graves at random:\n\n- Jesus as \"Balaam the Lame\". The corresponding laming of Llew, as I think\nyou allude to.\n- The primeval Adam as \"Son of the terebrinth (tree)\" and the earth mother,\nwhich should interest Marc.\n- Gwydion the magician is Odin (and Mercury/Hermes, at least for RG and\nothers), and hence maybe some connection to SilkHorn, particularly in his\nmagician aspect. Also, I seem to recall RG conceived of Gwydion in his\nhistorical aspect as a major religious innovator, bound up with \"The Battle\nof the Trees\", which RG sees as a poetic record of a major shift in Celtic\nrelgiious observance (whose details totally escape me - hopefully my\ngoogle-assisted memories are not too distorted). This would be fitting for\nSilkHorn, of course, and the tree-stuff continues to speak in a rather\nhaunting way to Marc's thesis. Is there anything about SilkHorn which\nresonates with Gwydion's most remembered act - the creation of Bloedwedd\nfrom flowers? Dunno.\n- The whole tension between the ambiguous, female deities and powers of the\nSea & Wolfe's male heroes in the cycle, which is pretty damned Gravesian.\nGoogling RG once again, from the conclusion of \"The White Goddess\" -\n\n\"... there can be no escape from the present more than usually miserable\nstate of the world until a new Battle of the Trees is fought: \"A renewal of\nconflict / Such as Gwydion made,...\" and the supreme Godhead thereby\nredefined; until the repressed desire of the Western races, which is for\nsome practical form of Goddess worship, with her love not limited to\nmaternal benevolence and her afterworld not deprived of a Sea, finds\nsatisfaction at last.\"\n\nIt's possible (for me, anyway) to see a Wolfean debate - a respectful\ndebate - with that view, all through the work. Both SilkHorn and Severian\n(assuming they are not the same entiity) are at least engaged with the\nfemale powers of the Sea; and the ambiguity of the relationship is kind of\nreminiscent of RG's Jesus' relationship with ancient female, sea-related\ndeities; at once beloved and enemy.\n\nIt's obviously possible to make too much of this. Wolfe may borrow or allude\nto bits & pieces of imagery and thematic fragments, but I see them as mainly\n\"chrome\" on the important things - the narrative, the characterization, the\nmoral issues bound up in them." } ] } ] }