Subject: (urth) Promises of Spring, or, The Presence of the Unstated

From: Nigel Price <nigel.aprice at virgin.net>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 22:53:47 +0000

On the subject of Adam's interesting "Wintry thoughts" and Nutria's helpful
response (I'm waiting to see where Mantis is going before I comment!)...

My previous reference to the possible divergence between the world-views
Wolfe writes about and his own religious beliefs was partly cautionary, and
partly admiring. Others have picked up and followed through on the first
aspect, but I would also want to stress the second. Wolfe applies and
extends the science fictional delight in speculation and the exploration of
"what if" scenarios to include matters theological as well as scientific. He
is not, of course, alone in doing this, but he does it superbly well.
Occasionally, he does it for playful effect, but mostly, and especially in
his longer fiction, his concerns are deeply serious.

I would certainly agree that Wolfe is essentially a tragic rather than
comedic author. His fictions, whether science fictional or fantastic in
emphasis, are characteristically dark. Adam's comments on his narrow range
are well made, and (Adam, correct me if I'm wrong!) descriptive rather than
evaluative.

The absence of, or lack of emphasis on, romantic love may simply reflect his
choice of mode or genre, rather than, as Nutria suggests, a lack of interest
or expertise. Given his tragic themes, an abundance of happily married
couples and contented lovers would be inappropriate. They would  undermine
the sombre mood of many of his stories.

The same might be said of the absence of clearly redemptive motifs. I have
already described my initial confused response to reading Wolfe's books and
trying to understand the author's underlying beliefs. Now I've read more of
his works, my impression is that Wolfe is doing something quite deliberate
with the presentation, or non-presentation, of his own Christian beliefs. I
take Nutria's point about certain strategic absences in his books pointing
"off the page" to humanity's need for God. As ever, he makes the point well,
but I think that there's more to it than that. In the same way that Wolfe,
as far as possible, deliberately removes plot explanations, leaving but a
single reference or clue to each key fact needed to explain what is really
going on in the story, so he also, I think, plays a sort of game of literary
minimalism in which he sees how much explicit evidence of God's existence
and work he can remove from his stories without actually denying his faith.

This is just another aspect of Wolfe's familiar literary shiftiness, that
wilfully obscure and playfully misleading quality for which I and many
others here love him to bits but which at times drives many of us to
distraction. He hates explicitness in stories and loves indirection and
misdirection. In his writing, he is the builder of the Solar Labyrinth, that
maze which compounds the difficulty of solution by constantly moving the
walls as the shadows shift with the passing of the sun. This puzzle building
is part of Wolfe's essential artistry, his joy and heart's delight, and to
read him is to go gleefully along with the game or else scream out in sheer
frustration.

We're used to his unreliable narrators, disguised explanations and sudden
shifts of theme away from the things we want to know. Well, consider his
choice of locations and stories as part of that same literary mind set.
Where would it be really difficult to find any obvious signs of God at work?
Where would there be the fewest signs of Christian belief? How about a story
set in a universe where the parousia is so long delayed that even Jesus'
name has been forgotten? Where those in holy orders have become torturers?
What about a story set in a pagan world well before the time of Christ? Or
how about a sealed, pocket universe, made by a mad dictator and ruled by a
family of artificial pagan gods who have devised their own religion and
their own parody of the church?

Wolfe clearly likes a challenge, but the game seems to be not to exclude
God, but to show that even when you make it apparently "impossible" for him
to be there, he is still, inescapably, there, and all sorts of unlikely and
apparently inappropriate things turn out to reveal, even if only fleetingly,
partial and distorted images of his love and power. He is the Increate, but
for Wolfe, it would seem that all created things retain evidence of his
fingerprints - somewhere.

That's what I think is going on. Wolfe is a writer of tragedies and dark
romances whose delight is to hide clues to what is really happening.

Nigel

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 00:05:31 +0000

Bouncing off some of Nigel's points ... I'm not quite ready
to pronounce the coming of Summer, but ...

> I would certainly agree that Wolfe is essentially a tragic 
> rather than comedic author.

Yes/no ... and likewise yes/no to the original statement that
the Christian worldview is "comedic." It depends on what you
mean by "worldview." The Christian view of _this_ world is
tragic. This world is flawed, as fatally as MacBeth or 
Oedipus; its degradation, decay, and doom are inevitable. As 
far as this world is concerned, entropy is the last word. 

But, the Christian view then says, this world is not the end 
of the story ... 

Wolfe writes stories set in this world, in the sense that 
all his stories are set in the Fallen World. The comedic 
happy ending, if any, are precisely where Nutria located them: 
"off the page," outside the frame, not in this world. As far
as the page goes -- as far as the explicit content of the 
story is concerned -- yes: Wolfe is a tragic writer. But I,
at least, always hear in the background a whispered "...but..."

* * * * * 

> [...] my impression is that Wolfe is doing something quite 
> deliberate with the presentation, or non-presentation, of his 
> own Christian beliefs. ... In the same 
> way that Wolfe, as far as possible, deliberately removes plot 
> explanations, leaving but a single reference or clue to each 
> key fact needed to explain what is really going on in the 
> story, so he also, I think, plays a sort of game of literary 
> minimalism in which he sees how much explicit evidence of 
> God's existence and work he can remove from his stories 
> without actually denying his faith.

That's an interesting point ... and one that I find extremely
difficult to understand, especially in the aftermath of the 
Long/Short books, in which over and over God/the Outsider 
repeatedly intervenes in subtle but active and difficult-to-
ignore ways. Wolfe, as usual, allows the sceptical reader an 
"out" for most of these, but (like the crane-ial accident 
theory of Silk's enlightenment) they generally feel _less_ 
convincing than an outright supernatural explanation.

> Wolfe clearly likes a challenge, but the game seems to be not 
> to exclude God, but to show that even when you make it 
> apparently "impossible" for him to be there, he is still, 
> inescapably, there, and all sorts of unlikely and apparently 
> inappropriate things turn out to reveal, even if only 
> fleetingly, partial and distorted images of his love and 
> power. He is the Increate, but for Wolfe, it would seem that 
> all created things retain evidence of his fingerprints - somewhere.

Bingo. Ultimately, I think that in Wolfe's work, God plays,
over and over, variations on the "Hound of Heaven" game
(http://www2.bc.edu/~anderso/sr/ft.html) -- wooing and 
pursuing His errant creatures, who in the end either give
in to Him or (that tragic thisworldview) become the willing
instruments of their own destruction ... the former most
clearly seen, I think, in stories like "The Detective of
Dreams" and "Westwind," the latter in novels like 5HC.

(PEACE remains ambiguous... what does Weer finally choose?
Or does he?)

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 19:22:49 +0000

> But, the Christian view then says, this world is not the end

That's *a* Christian view of the world.  There have been Christians who
believed that Christ and the Holy Spirit working in the Church would make
the world better and better (but never fully restored) until the return of
Christ.  (More in the 19th century than the 20th, for obvious reasons.)

-- Rostrum

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 20:34:20 +0000

> That's *a* Christian view of the world.  There have been 
> Christians who believed that Christ and the Holy Spirit 
> working in the Church would make the world better and better 
> (but never fully restored) until the return of Christ.  (More 
> in the 19th century than the 20th, for obvious reasons.)

Fair enough ... I tend to use terms like "the Christian view" 
to refer to the mainstream views (i.e., those shared by Catholicism,
Eastern Orthodoxy, and most of the larger and older Protestant 
groups). I have indeed seen this view -- though even then they 
usually refer to the restored world as if it were a new creation. 

I'm not at all sure why this would have been more prevalent in 
the XIX century, so I guess the reasons aren't all that obvious.

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 21:58:20 +0000

Blattid rightly says:
Yes/no ... and likewise yes/no to the original statement that the Christian
worldview is "comedic." It depends on what you > mean by "worldview." The
Christian view of _this_ world is > tragic. This world is flawed, as fatally
as MacBeth or  Oedipus; its degradation, decay, and doom are inevitable. As
far as this world is concerned, entropy is the last word.

>Blattid responds:

Crush drones on and on without invitation:
Although I'm not RC I've lived most my life in heavily or primarily RC
regions (in NE US and SW US), and I'm pretty sure that Rostrum's described
position is at least **a** widely and traditionally held view of RCs. And
until the early 20th century it was 'mainstream.'

The position Blattid defined is one with which John Calvin would not only
find acceptable but central. Among Protestants (until the last century) this
view of the world and how the story would play out may have even been THE
major difference between Calvinist and non-Calvinist denominations. That
doesn't mean Calvin originated the position or that many RCs did not hold it
as well. Although I was unaware of it, clearly many lifelong RCs DO hold
this position. But the RCs I know are much less interested in eschatology
than their Protestant siblings in Christ.

I'm led to believe that this disinclination goes back to the century after
Christianity's legalization. The book of Revelation was one of the books
that was added to the canon with *some* controversy.  And although it was
quoted from in Jude, the eschatological book of Enoch fell into disuse at
this time and nearly disappeared. This is because of a widely held belief
that the already obvious withering away of the Roman Empire was the
fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy of a stone (Christianity), made without
hands which blasts away the Empire of Iron and permanently replaces it (Dan
2). If one sees this as the sum total fulfillment, why does one need more to
the story?

This position became less appealing to Protestants (perhaps RCs as well)
when the horrors of WWI and WWII (in which Christianized European nations
were central) made it seem less likely that the world was constantly and
gradually improving toward a reign of Christ. Germany had reverted to
paganism, and all the others were becoming more secular.

So... does Wolfe's thematic use of the book of Revelation in tFHoC and
tBotLS mean that he sees it as legitimate prophecy still to be fulfilled or
that he sees it as available "myth" and uses it as he uses so many other
world myths.

--- Crush

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