{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3691", "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": 3691, "subject": "Andrew's thesis of Heroes", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-12-19T03:57:21+00:00", "last": "2002-12-20T16:18:31+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice K. Turner", "address": "aturner6 at nyc.rr.com" }, "date": "2002-12-19T03:57:21+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Andrew's thesis of Heroes", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From Andrew Bollen--hi there:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There are several Large Mysteries, but for me the major one is the\nrelationship between Silk, SilkHorn and Severian. I cannot help but see a\nprogression, from Silk, to SilkHorn, to Severian. The raw Silk is\nsomething\nof a wet - unwilling or unable to really take the reins of leadership in a\ncrisis, rushing to his woman & leaving his people leaderless and adrift; a\nParis filling Moses' sandals Contrast this with SilkHorn - a veritable old\ntestament judge, time after time mending fractured communities, dealing\nout\nrobust justice.\n\nWolfe does this wonderfully, I think. We see Horn at that start of Short\nSun, judge of his little family, strong and courageous, but limited in his\npotential. He dies on Green, when circumstances overwhelm those limits.\nMelded with Silk, his strengths live on, but now as the strengths of a\nHero,\nrather than an constrained within the confines of an ordinary mortal. All\nthrough Blue, I was thinking: Surely this yearning for Silk is an error; I\ncannot imagine Silk being of any use at all in this gritty, down-and-dirty\nworld. I loved the way this view was both validated & transcended, in the\ndevelopment.\n\nSilkHorn becomes a wonderful combination of Odin/Mercury, Heracles (not\nleast in the yearning everybody has for his aid, in his supposed absence -\nso reminiscent of the Argonauts' yearning for the absent Heracles in the\nArgonautika; I would be amazed to find Wolfe did not intend this\nparallel),\nand Moses.\n\nAnd this combination owes much to Horn. I cannot imagine Silk inspiring\nthe\nkind of fear & awe that SilkHorn does, were he to lack the stern qualtiies\nof Horn.\n\nBeyond Horn-qualities, there is an aspect to SilkHorn whose origin I do\nnot\nquite understand. This is the magician aspect, which is exactly correct\nfor\na character who is part Hermes, part Moses (who was clearly a magician).\nThis does not come from Horn, and I cannot see any evidence of it coming\nfrom Silk. From the text, it must be a gift in some way from the Vanished\nPeople, and of course there is a passage where a gift is explicitly\ngranted.\nBut the whole extended cycle is very intimately bound up with the idea of\npersonalities and qualities layering on to each other, either by\ntransmission or by recycling through time. It would be much more fitting\nfor\nsuch a layering to be involved with this aspect also. Is there any\nevidence\nof SilkHorn melding with a Vanished Person?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I am sort of a vanished person (lower case) on this list myself, but Andrew\nmakes some great points and inspires me. Andrew, this is a fine thesis,\nthough almost certainlyWolfe entirely backpedaled it--I mean that he had no\nnotion of the invention of Silk or what would become of him at the time he\nwas planning Sev's adventures. No, I do not think there is any such meld. I\nthink it is useful to think of the VPs as angels, and of SilkHorn's gifts as\nhaving been angelically conferred, rather than conferred by Sev. who is\ncertainly a magician, as Jesus was (water into wine, loaves and fishes,\netc.). And there's certainly a reference to Fairyland, the magic ring and so\nforth. (Let me assure you that the confluence goes back to the Middle Ages\nand, to me at any rate, is quite valid. Hi Rat.) Lives of the saints are\nchockfull of miracles of much this sort. Mint was also miraculously endowed,\nand clearly a mythically heroic Joan of Arc figure. Greek heroes (like\nHercules) become demigods, and that, perhaps, is what you are after. (I\nnever before this moment thought of equating a saint with a demigod, but now\nI feel like writing a PhD thesis on it!)\n\nI think it is also useful to think of Apheta as a sort of Mary Poppins (in\ncharge) angel rather than a demiurge (I'm sorry, I can't respond directly to\nyour second post as I still can't cope (Ranjit!!) with the new digest\nwithout a whole new reply to your second post and my attention span is only\n15 seconds long.) She makes quite a point of downplaying herself and her\npowers. Of course Mary P. wasn't so sexy!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now to Severian. I think it is completely natural to see a progression\nfrom\nthe Moses/judge figure SilkHorn to the sort-of/kind-of Christ figure\nSeverian (no doubt there are theological problems with this, but I don't\nthink that Wolfe worries about them, so we need not). We are led to\nunderstand that the raw Severian was refined into this role through\nrecycling in time. My \"gut feel\" is that part of the process must have\ninvolved a melding with SilkHorn, somehow or other.\n\nPerhaps this is wrong; the only concrete evidence I have for this is\nWolfe's\ncomment somewhere to the effect that Silk is a member of Severian's Order,\nfor whatever that is worth. But surely there is a connection between the\ntwo, not just a matter of some circumstantial genetic argy-bargy as has\nbeen\nproposed, but with a deaper meaning. Otherwise, why have the characters\ninhabit the same fictional space at all? The apex of the whole cycle is\nSeverian's role in the redemption of humanity. Anything not part of that\nstory surely does not warrant two further multi-volume narratives. So I\nthink that Long Sun/Short Sun must be seen as a \"precursor\", convoluted &\ntwisted in time, of course, but not in theme." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[some snippety]\n\nYes indeed, but it's after-the-fact logic. Trying to pull it all together.\nWhich is what makes RttW such an annoying book (it has other annoying\nfactors too). And, for the record, I did *not* find URTH an annoying book,\nas others have done; I found it both integral and uplifting in a awful way,\nand it might be my favorite GW book, just for the wonderful descriptions of\nthe ship.\n\nAlso thanks for that Graves tree poem--I love that. Who cares if he used\nsomeone else's translation. His words make the hair stand up from the back\nof the neck, his own definition of true poetry.\n\n-alga" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Bollen", "address": "abollen at internode.on.net" }, "date": "2002-12-20T16:18:31+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Andrew's thesis of Heroes", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Alga wrote some nice, interesting things - thanks Alga! Just a quick comment\non this:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes indeed, but it's after-the-fact logic. Trying to pull it all together.\nWhich is what makes RttW such an annoying book (it has other annoying\nfactors too)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, absolutely. I mean, if Long Sun/Short Sun isn't designed as a\n\"precursor\" to BOTNS in the way I tried to describe, then RttW is pretty\ninept in places - eg the meeting the young Sev in Nessus thing is just too\nmuch like the kind of thing you find in over-extended sci-fi series, once\nthey have reached the flatulent stage.\n\nI guess that's one reason why I'm hoping there's more to it ..." } ] } ] }