Subject: (urth) Sev and Silkhorn

From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 15:08:59 +0000

At 09:24 PM 7/9/2003, you wrote:

>I want to find something similar in young-Sev/Silkhorn. It may be that a
>crucial difference between "Sev the Cruel" and "our Sev" is embodied in and
>caused by his compassionate destruction of Thecla. This prefigures his
>compassionate destruction of Urth as the New Sun, and it is an act of Love
>which maybe "Sev the Cruel" was incapable of, and thus incapable of bringing
>the New Sun.
>
>Perhaps it's not too much opf a stretch to see SilkHorn's influence as the
>cause of this difference. Part of Silk's charisma is to bring out the best
>in everybody he meets, where any good exists at all: he is pretty much an
>avatar of the proposition that the only divinity is Love.
>
>So that's one parallel I am comfortable with. But more broadly, I would like
>to see Silkhorn as the self-caused "completion" of Sev in the same way that
>Sev is the completion of Ymar.

         I think your first parallel is right on. Silk plants seeds in 
young Sev. I notice that he meets Pastor Silk right after his baptismal 
resurrection. In Sev's own books, it is that baptism that sets him on his 
road as a true seeker of truth and penitence, not as a mere torturer with 
that title over him (though it's a long road and he fails more often than 
not). Wolfe has added in the influence of Silk: Sacrament and then Word, so 
to speak.
         "Self-caused" strikes me as out of accord with the themes of the 
books. In both cases, the completions are God-caused, in Sev's case through 
His agents, in Silk's with His own direct intervention.
         IMO, this tendency to multiply Sevs and to try and see every main 
character as a version of Sev is a red herring. We want to be careful not 
to see more Sevs than there really are!
         If I were going to try and schematize the relationships -- and I'm 
not sure of this at all -- I'd link Silk as a new and good Typhon. Both men 
are "over" Sev, as teacher/example or ruler. Silk has the "higher" 
position, being directly engaged with the Increate, while Sev has the lower 
one, interacting with the Increate's agents. Don't know if this really 
works thematically, but it seems to me that Silk and Sev should be seen as 
different persons.
         FWIW.

Nutria

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