# winged figure *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 05 Mar 1998* > 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. --- ### Alice Turner *05 Mar 1998, 07:29* Dan, Since you're open to resonance, remember that "Tracking Song" has a distinct North American flavor, and that a very important figure in Western NA myth is Great Raven (or simply Raven), who made the world. There is only one winged being seen on the Great Sleigh (and it may the hallucination of a dying person), and since the Great Sleigh crew has been seen by many of the people Cutthroat encounters, none of whom mention wings, I think it's fairly safe to say that they don't look like a cartload of cherubim. -alga- > 2. The winged beings as beyond-humans resonate with Wolfe's own > Hierogrammates, shaped by humans according to human ideals (`united, > compassionate, just') never actually achieved by the human race itself. > > I can't quite draw an exact analogy, but I'm always willing to believe that > Wolfe often works impressionistically rather than with exacting exactness. > I think he's willing to deviate slightly from his clever constructs in > order to deliver a haunting image or a well-timed surprise. ---