{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4465",
    "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": 4465,
    "subject": "Wolfe the closet Gnostic.",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2005-06-24T18:41:40+00:00",
    "last": "2005-06-24T18:41:40+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<32130921.1119663698372.JavaMail.root@wamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "James Wynn",
        "address": "thewynns at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2005-06-24T18:41:40+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Wolfe the closet Gnostic.",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Crush said\nIf Wolfe were determined to avoid the chance of people thinking he was \nendorsing the\nGnosticsm then he should have avoided making Silk so appealing or \nnaming his hero\nin The New Sun after a Gnostic sect."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Kieran says"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "It is this sort of postmodern meta-analysis that I find most \nannoying."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I seem to have found my way under a lot of people's skins today. \n\nI'll take your points out of order."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Third, do you think Wolfe, the author of such works as \"The \nDetective of Dreams\" and \"Westwind,\" would write a pro-Gnostic set of \nnovels?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I don't thinks so. I said so. However, those novels are not *anti-Gnostic*\neither. A Gnostic Christian might very happily write those stories. \nThat's why Gnosticism was so difficult for Apostolic Christians to\ntamp out. Christian systematic theology among the apostolic probably\nflorished originally just to deal with the Gnostics.\n\nHowever, I doubt that a Gnostic Christian would attempt to show the\n*reasonableness* of the Trinity. And I think Wolfe did that in The Book\nof the Short Sun. So there you have it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Fifth, name play gets a bit silly.   Silk was common in New \nTestament times, and was called \"damask\", since it was manufactured in \nDamascus.  No doubt by choosing the name \"Silk\", Wolfe was making an \nallusion to the role Syria plays in international terrorism."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "ho hum. Are you saying that one should not make too much of Severian's\nname? When Wolfe clearly was so careful in selecting all his characters' \nnames in the Sun Cycle? Heck, when it comes to name-games Wolfe\nstarted it right in the pages of The Long Sun: Tussah->Silk->Chenille.\nSilk sits around contemplating the curious connection between his\nname and that of the chem soldier Sand! Wolfe certainly created the \nVironese naming convention just to encourage name-play. \nHe was careful in every circumstance in assigning designations to things.\nI don't find anything silly about name-play in the Sun Cycle.\nNot to do it to some degree is to totally miss a large part of the story."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Second, Severian's name was chosen 13 years before Silk was \ncreated.   Do you think that when Wolfe set out to create a character \nthat people whose wardrobe fans would emulate at sci-fi cons, he \nintended to write a pro-Gnostic work over a decade later?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Severian is named after a Gnostic cult. Silk is an \"enlightened\" \n[that's a term used by Gnostics to describe how Jesus became the\nChrist] savior in a world made by a demiurge...the savior is contacted\nby the true God *outside* the world. That seems to suggest a\nknowledge of Christian Gnostic heresies and a deliberate riffing on it\nfor whatever purpose. "
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "First, Gnostic is such a syncretic and malleable tradition that it \nis possible to read it into almost anything in which a powerful ruling \nfigure is overthrown by appealing to a more benign, more powerful \nfigure."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "There's a good deal more to the connection than a ruling figure\nbeing overthrown. But you are are right to an extent, and I posted\nsomething similar today."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Fourth, why should having an appealing hero make him necessarily \npro-Gnostic?   Isn't Silk closer to Moses than to Christ?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In some ways, yes. But then, the Rajan, who has Silk's face, breaks\ncommunion with Olivine. Severian...there's that name again...\nrelives the Temptation of Christ with Typhon as Satan. \n\nBut I was responding to Chris saying that Wolfe would NEVER want\npeople to think he was promoting Gnosticism. My point was that he \ncould have done a better job if that were his intention. Silk is a Gnostic\nhero, I'm not saying that's all he is, but he is that. I don't know *what*\nexactly Wolfe is driving at with the Gnostic setting, but he was not \ntrying to *attack* Gnosticism.  He seems pretty lackidaisical about it\nto me.\n\n\n~ Crush"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}