# Andrew and Marc and Silk and Horn and Babbie *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 23 Jan 2003* > 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. --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *23 Jan 2003, 16:38* The one thing we all seem to agree upon is that the weird scene at the end of OBW is a major turning point, and key to any full interpretation of _SS_. I've never been quite able to buy Marc's Horn-into-Babbie reading of this scene for practical reasons -- in fact, the classic Lupine problem of authorship -- who _writes_ this scene? If we accept Marc's reading, by the time of narration, Horn is "gone" from the Narrator's body. But it's written from the point of view of the person who primarily experiences ... whatever it is. Silk can not know what Horn's departure feels like from Horn's point of view; yet in this reading, that is exactly what is being narrated. Andrew's reading has some merit. I'm particularly whacking myself on the head over his reading of Evensong -- this is so true to the basic Silk pattern; with Evensong, the Narrator is (in a sense) going through the whole Hyacinth experience all over again, in a kind of mirror-image. I'm not going to dispute Andrew's reading at this point; I think it warrants some time. It certainly answers some questions, but it raises others ... in particular, I have trouble seeing how the Babbie _persona_ could be extricated back out from the Silk/Horn/? melange and put back into Babbie. (But then, perhaps he carries some Hornishness with him ... which would explain the astrally travelling Babbie scene which Marc has indicated.) Possible areas for investigation to support or deny this reading: o Is the Narrator's attitude toward Babbie significantly different when Babbie returns in RttW from what it was in OBW? If so, how? o Can we disentangle the "I" references in the scene at the end of OBW in a way that makes some kind of artistic sense? Is there a pattern to who is speaking when? o Why would the Babbie persona be necessary to save the Narrator at that point? By which I mean, why Babbie specifically? And what happened to Babbie while this was going on? o Does this help to explain how Babbie got back to the Main continent of Blue? --- ### Andrew Bollen *23 Jan 2003, 23:46 · follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* > Blattid wrote: > I have trouble seeing how the Babbie _persona_ could be extricated > back out from the Silk/Horn/? melange and put back into > Babbie. Need this be very different than Mucor's possessions, Mora/Fava's? Perhaps the agency is actually Mucor (although I don't know of any instance where we are told she cause a "3rd party possession".) > Why would the Babbie persona be necessary to save the > Narrator at that point? By which I mean, why Babbie > specifically? Well, if the agency was in fact Mucor, this makes sense. More generally, Babbie is strong (SilkHorn is exhausted), brave (Silk is falling into his Silkish pit of despair), and devoted to Horn. > And what happened to Babbie while this > was going on? Perhaps he's sleeping? (I know, Babbie is nocturnal.) ---