{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3912", "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": 3912, "subject": "What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "messages": 9, "voices": 9, "first": "2003-04-06T15:21:35+00:00", "last": "2003-04-11T10:59:20+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matt DeLuca", "address": "archdragon at wotmania.com" }, "date": "2003-04-06T15:21:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My pen halts,though I do not. Reader you will walk no more with me.It is time we both take up our lives.\n -Severian\n Citadel of the Autarch\n\n_____________________________________________________________\nhttp://wotmania.com\nfeed your wot addiction" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Brandon Mason", "address": "suck_at_life at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-04-07T15:46:01+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"I'm a bad man trying to be a good one.\"\n\nSeverian in Urth of the New Sun" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Phoebe Davis", "address": "meezer_gal at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-04-07T21:29:41+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Desperately hard to pick a favorite - this is certainly in the running:\n\nJust as I despaired -- she was there, filling me as a melody fills a cottege. I was with\nher, running beside the Acis when we were a child. I knew the ancient villa moated by a\ndark lake, the view through the dusty windows of the belvedere, and the secret space in\nthe odd angle between two rooms where we sat at noon to read by candlelight. I knew the\nlife of the Autarch's court, where poison waited in a diamond cup. I learned what it was\nfor one who had never seen a cell or felt a whip to be a prisoner of the torturers, what\ndying meant, and death.\n\nI learned that I had been more to her than I had ever guessed, and at last feel into a\nsleep in which my dreams were all of her. Not memories merely - memories I had possessed\nin plenty before. I held her poor, cold hands in mine, and I no longer wore the rags of\nan apprentice, nor the fuligin of a journeyman. We were one, naked and happy and clean,\nand we knew that she was no more and that I still lived, and we struggled against neither\nof these things, but with woven hair read from a single book and talked and sang of other\nmatters.\n\nThe Claw of the Conciliator\n\nPhoebe" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Brandon Mason wrote:\n\"I'm a bad man trying to be a good one.\"\n\nSeverian in Urth of the New Sun\n\n\n__________________________________________________\nDo you Yahoo!?\nYahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more\nhttp://tax.yahoo.com\n\n-- " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2003-04-07T21:31:48+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The one about The Mile Long Space Ship, in the library in TFHOC\n\n hartshorn\n\n\n----- Original Message ----- \nFrom: \"Phoebe Davis\" \nTo: " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Joshuafalchion", "address": "joshuafalchion at aol.com" }, "date": "2003-04-11T03:17:48+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can't say this is my favorite quote, but it always tugs my heart whenever I \nread the Book of the New Sun. It comes from Shadow, chapter XII, and Thecla \nis the speaker:\n\"I ought to hate you ... But I don't. Not for your sake ... if I hate my \nlast friend, what would be left?\"\nNot the wisest or most insightful quote, perhaps, but it resonates with me on \na very deep level." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-11T05:01:35+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is a great topic.\n\nI have three especial favorites. They're all from tBotNS, and\nthey're all (I'm afraid) rather long.\n\n1. I think Wolfe isn't generally so much a writer of memorable\nlines but of gorgeously constructed sequences that build up,\nat times, to climaxes of astonishing power, lines that are\nmemorable because of what has come before them. This comes\nfrom SHADOW, chapter XXIV:\n\n [Dorcas said] \"...Your face was full of beauty, of a kind\nof nobility. When the world is horrible, then thoughts are high,\nfull of grace and greatness.\"\n I looked at her, thinking she was mocking me, but she was\nnot.\n \"The world is filled half with evil and half with good. We\ncan tilt it forward so that more good runs into our minds, or\nback, so that more runs into this.\" A movement of her eyes took\nin all the lake. \"But the quantities are the same, we change\nonly their proportion here or there.\"\n \"I would tilt it as far back as I can, until at last the\nevil runs out altogether,\" I said.\n \"It might be the good that would run out. But I am like\nyou; I would bend time backward if I could.\"\n \"Nor do I believe that beautiful thoughts - or wise ones\n- are engendered by external troubles.\"\n \"I did not say beautiful thoughts, but thoughts of grace\nand greatness, though I suppose that is a kind of beauty. Let\nme show you.\" She lifted my hand and slipping it inside her\nrags pressed it to her right breast. I could feel the nipple,\nas firm as a cherry, and the warmth of the gentle mound\nbeneath it, delicate, feather-soft and alive with racing blood.\n\"Now,\" she said, \"what are your thoughts? If I have made the\nexternal world sweet to you, aren't they less than they were?\"\n \"Where did you learn all this?\" I asked. Her face was\ndrained of its wisdom, which condensed in crystal drops at the\ncorners of her eyes.\n\n2. My second example is just an amazing illustration of what\nscience fiction can do that no other kind of writing can. In\nSWORD, chapter XIII. Severian tries to sleep \"in the lee of a\nnaked rock\" in the mountains, and mostly fails. The passage\nis actually quite long, and all excellent; but I excerpt her\nmy favorite part of it:\n\n ... I spent the remainder of the night staring at the\nstars; it was teh first time I had ever really experienced the\nmajesty of the constellations, of which Master Malrubius had\ntaught us when I was the smallest of the apprentices. How\nstrange it is that the sky, which by day is a stationary\nground on which the clouds are seen to move, by night becomes\nthe backdrop for Urth's own motion, so that we feel her\nrolling beneath us as a sailor feels the running of the tide.\nThat night the sense of this slow turning was so strong that\nI was almost giddy wiht its long, continued sweep.\n Strong too was the feeling that the sky was a bottomless\npit into which the universe might drop forever. I had heard\npeople say that when they looked at the stars too long they\ngrew terrified by the sensation of being drawn away. My own\nfear - and I felt fear - was not centered on the remote\nsuns, but rather on the yawning void; and at times I grew so\nfrightened that I gripped the rock with my freezing fingers,\nfor it seemed to me that I must fall off Urth. No doubt\neverybody feels some touch of this, since it is said that\nthere exists no climate so mild that people will consent to\nsleep in unroofed houses.\n I have already described how I woke thinking that\nHethor's face (I suppose because Hethor had been much in my\nmind since I talked to Dorcas) was staring into mine, yet\ndiscovered when I opened my eyes that the face retained no\ndetail except the two bright stars that had been its own.\nSo it was with me at first when I tried to pick out the\nconstellations, whose names I had often read, though I had\nonly the most imperfect idea of the part of the sky in\nwhich each might be found. At first all the stars seemed a\nfeatureless mass of lights, however beautiful, like the\nsparks that fly upward from a fire. Soon, of course, I\nbegan to see that some were brighter than others, and that\ntheir colors were by no means uniform. Then, quite\nunexpectedly, when I had been staring at them for a long\ntime, the shape of a peryton seemed to spring out as\ndistinctly as if the bird's whole body had been powdered\nwith the dust ground from diamonds. In a moment it was gone\nagain, but soon returned, and with it other shapes, some\ncorresponding to constellations of which I had heard, others\nthat were, I am afraid, entirely of my own imagining. An\namphisbaena, or snake with a head at either end, was\nparticularly distinct.\n When these celestial animals burst into view, I was\nawed by their beauty. But when they became so strongly\nevident (as they quickly did) that I could no longer\ndismiss them by an act of will, I began to feel as\nfrightened of them as I was of falling into that midnight\nabyss over which they writhed; yet this was not a simple\nphysical and instinctive fear like the other, but rather\na sort of philosophical horror of the thought of a cosmos\nin which rude pictures of beasts and monsters had been\npainted with flaming suns.\n\n3. Finally, as if to prove that Wolfe can run down an\nepiphany as well as the next post-Joycean, this bit from\nCITADEL, chapter XXXI. Severian, having just told of his\ndiscovery that the Claw is the thorn of the rosebush,\nconsiders:\n\n At that time I did not think of it, being filled with\nwonder - but may it not be that we were guided to the\nunfinished Sand Garden? I carried the Claw even then, though\nI did not know it; Agia had already slipped it under the\nclosure of my sabretache. Might it not be that we came to\nthe unfinished garden so that the Claw, flying as it were\nagainst the wind of Time, might make its farewell? The idea\nis absurd. But then, all ideas are absurd.\n What struck me on the beach - and it struck me indeed,\nso that I staggered as at a blow - was that if the Eternal\nPrinciple had rested in that curved thorn I had carried\nabout my neck across so many leagues, and if it now rested\nin the new thorn (perhaps the same thorn) I had only now\nput there, then it might rest in anything, and in fact\nprobably did rest in everything, in every thorn on every\nbush, in every drop of water in the sea. The thorn was a\nsacred Claw because all thorns were sacred Claws; the sand\nin my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of\nsacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the\nsannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the\nPancreator. But everything had approached and even touched\nthe Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his\nhand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic.\nI drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and\nthrew them into the waves that I might not walk shod on\nholy ground.\n\nNext?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "John Barach", "address": "jbarach at telus.net" }, "date": "2003-04-11T06:12:44+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Here's one of my favourites:\n\n We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that\n invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard,\n defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they\n are given coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of\n the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their\n acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military\n life -- they are soldiers from that moment, though they\n may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not\n know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe\n that we must know of such things to be influenced by\n them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most\n debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be\n sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge;\n rational people know that things act of themselves or not\n at all (Shadow and Claw, p. 14).\n\nJohn\nhttp://katajohn.blogspot.com" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2003-04-11T10:59:20+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "At 12:01 AM 4/11/2003, Blattid cited:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " What struck me on the beach - and it struck me indeed,\nso that I staggered as at a blow - was that if the Eternal\nPrinciple had rested in that curved thorn I had carried\nabout my neck across so many leagues, and if it now rested\nin the new thorn (perhaps the same thorn) I had only now\nput there, then it might rest in anything, and in fact\nprobably did rest in everything, in every thorn on every\nbush, in every drop of water in the sea. The thorn was a\nsacred Claw because all thorns were sacred Claws; the sand\nin my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of\nsacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the\nsannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the\nPancreator. But everything had approached and even touched\nthe Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his\nhand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Though different, this reminds me of *The Little Prince* -- the \nfox's explanation of why the Prince prizes his rose above all others, even \nthough it is on the other hand just one rose among many. We can be sure \nthat Wolfe has read *The Little Prince* (who hasn't), though I doubt if his \nselection of a rose-thorn was directly inspired by it (for the imagery is \nancient and pervasive).\n The beloved rose is, of course, the Church, when God is the lover. \nAnd the Prince is a semi-Christ-figure, seeking sheep, caring for the rose, \ndying so as to make the starry heaven \"real\" to the narrator. Wolfe is \nsurely trading on such traditional imagery with his rose, fountain, and \nship -- the fountain associated with the Spirit of God, and both rose and \nship with the Church. No accident that (female) Perelines hold the \nrose-thorn in trust.\n FWIW.\n\nNutria\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Spectacled Bear", "address": "spectacled.bear at pobox.com" }, "date": "2003-04-11T10:41:13+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) What is your favorite quote of any work of Wolfe?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 07:12 2003-04-11, John Barach wrote:\nHere's one of my favourites:\n\n We believe that we invent symbols...." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When I came to read these books again after a gap of many years,\nI found that this passage had been stamped on my memory like the\npattern on a metal coin; it was as perfectly familiar as if I had\ncommitted it to memory. Yet I had not done so deliberately; it had\nworked on me by itself, just as Severian says.\n\nSpectacled Bear." } ] } ] }