{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3692",
    "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": 3692,
    "subject": "Llew Llaw Gyffes",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-12-19T16:12:00+00:00",
    "last": "2002-12-19T16:12:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0212-2479@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "James Wynn",
        "address": "crushtv at hotpop.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-12-19T16:12:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Llew Llaw Gyffes",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, for most of it, you would have to accept some of my presuppositions\nabout Chenille and Tussah (realizing he was definitely human really opened\nthings up for me) which I've yet to prove. But Silk (like Llew Llaw Gyffes)\nis grown from a hidden indeterminate mass after the death of Pryderi (who\nwhen born was found wearing brocaded silk - chenille). One gets the sense\nthat LLG is Pryderi reborn somehow - although it is never so stated.\nActually, if you accept that Pryderi an LLG are \"sun heroes\" then it is\ninescapable that they are the same person.\n\nPryderi's name is said by the Mabinogion to mean \"sense\" while his\nfather/not-his father Prydain's name is said to mean \"head\" (a very Vironese\nnaming convention). \"Llew Llaw Gyffes\" is said to mean \"bright lion of the\nsteady hand\" which made me immediately think of Silk with his cane. But this\nname is even better connected to someone else. :)\n\nIf you accept certain narrative suspicions I have (which I came by\nindependently), then story of LLG overlays nicely with the story of the\nfamily of Tussah.\n\nYes, Andrew, that riddle was the one to which I was referring. Graves posits\nthat the poem is deliberately \"pied\" and it is the job of the reader to\nfigure out how. It seems to me that Wolfe has done exactly that with\ninnumerable ancient myths and folklore in the LS/SS.\n\nWhile I suppose it is possible to make too much of it, it is difficult not\nto make a lot of it. Every time I examine something, I find another old\nstory moving perpendicular or parallel to the one's I've already seen. It's\na kind of \"magic square\" where the numbers add up the same way up, down,\nacross, and diagonally.\n\n-- Crush\n\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom: Andrew Bollen [mailto:abollen at internode.on.net]\nSent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 11:01 PM\nTo: urth at urth.net\nSubject: Re: (urth) Trees & transformations\n\n\nCrush - 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\n...It's obviously possible to make too much of this. Wolfe may borrow or\nallude\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."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}