Subject: (urth) Witch spirit and Tales of Silk and Horn

From: aramini1 at cox.net <aramini1 at cox.net>
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:14:44 +0000

I am still about fifty posts short of catching up, so perhaps some of this was covered, but I wanted to respond to a few things i read before I forgot.

A)Wizard Knight: I find it interesting that Org is clearly some kind of mutant chameleon, with scales, a reptillian head, and the ability to blend into the background - but Able doesn't seem to categorize him as a "Lizard"man.

Also, the witches ghost is interesting to me in that she speaks to Able through the wind and the rain instead of with a real voice (in the hut where he meets Mani), just as Apheta does in Urth.  Her spirit seems to be hanging out throughout The Wizard, too.

B)
I was reading a few posts called Tales of Silk and Horn and I wanted to say one small thing about that.  I think the simplest scheme to describe who inhabits Silk's body at any given point in the narrative is that Horn's body dies on Green, his spirit is sent hurtling into Silk, whose spirit has been so wounded (or has vacated his body) that it is no longer extent in the body.  

Then, the quest to find Silk actually ENDS when Horn gives his (ok, Silk's) eye to Pig, allowing Silver Silk, who is a download of Silk from the mainframe into Pig, to re-enter the body of Silk by escaping Pig's eye , creating Silk+Horn.  Then, Horn begins writing.  He says his goodbyes and leaves the body of Silk, and then Silver Silk, who was never the real Silk, takes up the tale of Horn and his death at the beginning of In Green's Jungles, but denies that he is Silk until he is forced into it, so that in the text, Silk admits that he is in fact Silk at about the same place that Silver Silk is freed from Pig and placed in Silk's body.

So it is a copy of a copy of Silk that we are left with, like the copy of a copy of Severian at the end of Urth.

Hmm.

Marc

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 00:50:04 +0000

It's an interesting angle, but the point of those posts was an issue of what 
constitutes the soul/spirit/identity. Without diving too deeply into it, the 
terms "soul" and "spirit", etc, were being used as shorthand in a way that 
evolved through the thread, so they can't be substituted freely. So your 
hypothesis is if anything even more problematic in this sense, because now 
you're dealing with three entities instead of two.

Saying that Silver Silk was "never Silk" commits you to what I was referring 
to as the "simple view". But, on the simple view, the download/upload 
process is merely memories and inclinations, not "real" spirit, or identity. 
And that's all Silver Silk would be, from that perspective: not Silk, not 
*anyone* in the sense of being an actual person - there would be no spirit 
associated with Silver Silk.

If you take the complex view, in contrast, you can't say that Silver Silk 
"was never Silk" because he was as much "Silk" as the original at the time 
of the download, and has as much claim to the title as the organic version.

So this plotline would just about double the possible branches on the tree 
of interpretation. And it would double (or more) again if you take into 
account the possibility that Pas (or someone else) might have downloaded 
partially into Silk before or after his upload (or before AND after, for 
that matter).

>B)
>I was reading a few posts called Tales of Silk and Horn and I wanted to say 
>one small thing about that.  I think the simplest scheme to describe who 
>inhabits Silk's body at any given point in the narrative is that Horn's 
>body dies on Green, his spirit is sent hurtling into Silk, whose spirit has 
>been so wounded (or has vacated his body) that it is no longer extent in 
>the body.
>
>Then, the quest to find Silk actually ENDS when Horn gives his (ok, Silk's) 
>eye to Pig, allowing Silver Silk, who is a download of Silk from the 
>mainframe into Pig, to re-enter the body of Silk by escaping Pig's eye , 
>creating Silk+Horn.  Then, Horn begins writing.  He says his goodbyes and 
>leaves the body of Silk, and then Silver Silk, who was never the real Silk, 
>takes up the tale of Horn and his death at the beginning of In Green's 
>Jungles, but denies that he is Silk until he is forced into it, so that in 
>the text, Silk admits that he is in fact Silk at about the same place that 
>Silver Silk is freed from Pig and placed in Silk's body.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Urth Mailing List
>To post, write urth at urth.net
>Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

---

From: StoneOx17 at aol.com <stoneox17 at aol.com>
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 04:12:51 +0000

In a message dated 1/6/2005 12:15:10 AM Eastern Standard Time, 

> inhabits Silk's body at any given point in the narrative is that Horn's 
body dies 
> on Green, his spirit is sent hurtling into Silk, whose spirit has been so 
wounded 
> (or has vacated his body) that it is no longer extent in the body.  

> Then, the quest to find Silk actually ENDS when Horn gives his (ok, Silk's) 
eye 
> to Pig, allowing Silver Silk, who is a download of Silk from the mainframe 
into 
> Pig, to re-enter the body of Silk by escaping Pig's eye , creating 
Silk+Horn.  
> Then, Horn begins writing.  He says his goodbyes and leaves the body of 
Silk, 
> and then Silver Silk, who was never the real Silk, takes up the tale of 
Horn and 
> his death at the beginning of In Green's Jungles, but denies that he is 
Silk until 
> he is forced into it, so that in the text, Silk admits that he is in fact 
Silk at 
> about the same place that Silver Silk is freed from Pig and placed in 
Silk's body.

Let me say that I really like this idea.  Does this make up for my trying to 
demolish your circular interpretation of WK in my last post?  

> So it is a copy of a copy of Silk that we are left with, like the copy of a 
copy of 
> Severian at the end of Urth.

But couldn't this be the real Silk now?  Are souls subject to mechanical 
manipulation and physical laws, or does the Outsider have direct authority
over them?

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 08:27:10 +0000

> Then, the quest to find Silk actually ENDS when Horn gives his
>(ok, Silk's) eye to Pig, allowing Silver Silk, who is a download
>of Silk from the mainframe into Pig, to re-enter the body of Silk
>by escaping Pig's eye , creating Silk+Horn.

Is there any unambiguous example where the gods transfer eye-to-eye rather
than exclusively eye-to-Sacred Window?

I can think of one instance that suggests this is impossible.
Kypris-In-Chenille tells Silk that Maytera Mint had a partial download of
Kypris (because she forced herself to look away). She tells Silk that they
need to get Mint to a Sacred Window before she has some sort of breakdown.
But if eye-to-eye transfers were possible, Chenille only needed to get alone
with Mint and look her in the eye. Thus, it seems, eye to eye transfers are
not possible.

~ Crush

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 18:45:37 +0000

on 1/5/05 11:14 PM, aramini1 at cox.net at aramini1 at cox.net wrote:

> eye to Pig, allowing Silver Silk, who is a download of Silk from the mainframe
> into Pig, to re-enter the body of Silk by escaping Pig's eye , creating
> Silk+Horn.

I won't rehearse my disagreement with the "PigSilkHorn" scenario again, but
I did want to mention something that I just noticed (if this has been noted
already, I apologize). When precisely is "Silver Silk" downloaded into
"Horn"? Twice, in the scene in Pig's hospital room, it is stated that Horn
looks into a glass (371-2), and I've seen it suggested that it is at one of
these moments. But this won't work, for two reasons. First, both these times
are before the bandage has been removed from Pig's eye, so Silk cannot have
left Pig yet. Second, Silk is still present in Pig during Pig's last
conversation with Horn (374). If Silk's soul does go from Pig to Horn, it
must be offstage, in the gap on the page between the last reported words
spoken by "Pig" and Hari Mau speaking to Horn in the lander.

> Silver Silk, who was never the real Silk, takes up the
> tale of Horn and his death at the beginning of In Green's Jungles, but denies
> that he is Silk until he is forced into it, so that in the text, Silk admits
> that he is in fact Silk at about the same place that Silver Silk is freed from
> Pig and placed in Silk's body.

But neither of these passages were written by Silkhorn; the juxtaposition of
the two is the editors' work.

--Adam

---

From: aramini1 at cox.net <aramini1 at cox.net>
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 22:20:33 +0000

> the two is the editors' work.

My point was that Wolfe has consciously constructed the book in such a fashion - not Silkhorn.  

Marc

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 09:31:09 +0000

I should like to point out that the downloading of "Silver Silk" into 
the Narrator remains speculative. There are several explanations 
(not all mutually exculsive) of how the Narrator comes to realize 
that he is Silk and what, precisely, it means. Furthermroe, there is, 
so far as I know, no direct or usefully indirect textual evidence to 
suggest that the SSilk persona is "reloaded" into the Narrator at
_any_ point. 

For those who hold that SilverSilk is downloaded into the 
Narrator,I suggest it would be worth spending a bit of effort
finding support for the theory before elaborating its details more.

--Dan'l

-- 
www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
Freedom has no barcode.
     --J.G. Ballard

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 11:58:08 +0000

>the Narrator remains speculative.
> --Dan'l

I thought of another reason why this is probably not possible. Scylla
remains trapped in Oreb all that time. If she could have transferred out
eye-to-eye, would she have stayed there?

Anyway, I thought Silver Silk wanted out of Pig so he could rejoin Kypris.
That's what he told the Narrator. For him to jump into Silk's body and take
a ride to Blue strikes me as the opposite of what he would have done. I
would think that if he entered Silk, he would immediately go to a Window and
escape.

~ Crush

---

From: harlekin at earthlink.net <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 15:16:33 +0000

-----Original Message-----
From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Sent: Jan 7, 2005 12:58 PM
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: Re: (urth) Witch spirit and Tales of Silk and Horn

If the transfer happened, it was probably eye to whatchamacallit (oh yeah, sacred window) and then window to new eye.  Scylla was hiding in Oreb, then when he left the whorl, she was stuck.

Don