Mamelta is Kypris?

I said to Chris

Chris responded:

Perhaps that discussion occurred during the Missing Year. The details centered around the Mamelta appearance and Silk's dream in which Mamelta, Marble, and Hyacinth's appearance (in Hy's case, Kypris said explicitly that she used to look like her) are confabulated. I wish I could remember every reference put forward right now, but I can't. The theory is not beyond the realm of deniability, but frankly I found it brought so much into focus that I didn't understand about the book that I was convinced. And subsequent realizations regarding the text confirmed it. Maybe someone has the original emails and can repost them? ~ James Wynn

This was one of my theories. First off, her name begins with Ma, as Pas starts with Pa. She has blue eyes, something Crane says is very rare, and so does Silk. Silk descends the ladder and looks up at her genitals at the same time that he sees the stars, and gets the feeling of "home". He has a vision before he runs into her that says he won't sleep until his "mother" comes, but we don't get to see that. Instead, Mamelta shows up. Kypris also had blue eyes and dark hair, and Silk was inexplicably attracted to Mamelta. I don't know if I have any of the old links. Marc Aramini

I have tried, in the past, to look for another incarnation of Kypris but I never thought of Mamelta. I think you just may be right about this.

Marc Aramini skrev: You may remember that a while ago I became interested in the idea that Mamelta was Kypris - for several reasons. The first was her black hair and blue eyes - a Hyacinth look-a-like, and we know that Kypris loves Hy because of how closely she resembles herself as a living girl. The second was from a vision on page 534 of Litany of the Long Sun "the woman who slept in the glass tube, the tube in which he himself now slept beside Chenille, who was Kypris, who was Hyacinth, who was Mamelta, with Hyacinth's jet-black hair," Chenille and Hyacinth were both possessed by Kypris - and since Mamelta has Hyacinth hair, and Kypris had Hyacinth hair, and they are all related here, I figured it would be neat if Mamelta were Kypris. Then I found this bit of niftiness: p 424 "But quite soon now, as the swift floater sailed over a landscape grown liquid, his mother would come to kiss him good-night; he liked to be awake for it, to say distinctly, 'good night to you, too Mama,' when she left. He resolved not to sleep until she came" Here, Silk resolves not to sleep until his mommy comes (here, it is Mama). Well, who does he meet in the next chapter? Mamelta! And later, what do we get in Epiphany of the Long Sun (Calde,actually) on page 220: "The Outsider was the dancing man on a toy, and the water the polished toy-top on which he danced with Kypris, who was Hyacinth and Mother, too." Kypris is Mother! and she is probably Mamelta, too. Now I understand why the Mamelta scene is so familiar - it is like the Dorcas scene in Shadow of the Torturer - except instead of Grandma, we get Silk's mom! In the scene where he leaves his body, I am certain that the tall man with blue eyes is Pas, and the mother (not the one who raised him) was Mamelta. So Silk is the son of the father of the gods and his lover, the only creature that he has mercy for. And Mamelta is Kypris; she goes down and repairs the circuitry that allows the exodus to begin. She dies in the lake (as St. Mamelta does - quick note though, on the www.Catholic.org site, Mamelta is listed as a male saint, but female on some other ones). So she allows her son to begin the descent, even though she doesn't remember him. And his love for Hyacinth ... is really his love for his mother. --- aramini1 at cox.net skrev:

[...]

Well ... and for what it's worth ... the scene is also familiar, at least to those who have read Proust, because it echoes a great deal of the 'Ouverture' from "Du Cote de Chez Swann." Young Marcel spends a lot of time agonizing about how he can't get to sleep unless Mama comes up and gives him a goodnight kiss, etc. --Dan'l

Re. the confabulation of Kypris, Hyacinth, Mamelta and the woman in Silk's death vision who was his biological mother: While it's true that Kypris said that Hy looked much like she herself had looked when she was a real woman, I wouldn't attach too much meaning to it. Iirc, Hy's tits were phony; who knows how much of her looks were artificial? One thing she couldn't change was her height. Chenille said of her, "the top of her head doesn't even hit my shoulder". She was short and petite, which is why Silk was so amazed when she overpowered the pilot on the airship. He made a big deal of it; it was part of what put him on the roof of the airship contemplating suicide. Silk's birth mother was also short. FWIW. Mamelta, otoh, was a big girl. She was described by Silk as a "tall, raven-haired woman". If the silent woman in Silk's death vision, his biological mother, was supposed to be a representation of the flesh-and-blood original of Kypris, Typhon's mistress, what did Silk see? Was she short or tall? -Roy

Roy says:

I believe the "looks like I used to bit" refers to her black hair and maybe her eyes (I'll have to recheck that). Kypris used to look like Hy in the same way she used to look like Mint (thus her attempt to possess her). She looked like Hy in the same way and for the same reasons that Marble said she looked like Teasle or Dahlia with black short hair. Black short hair in both cases.

Yeah, does anything strike you as fishy about that? Like maybe he wasn't only in dispair about Hy being too good a fighter?

I'm pretty sure right now that the "souls" of people in the Mainframe looked the way they saw themselves. Tartaros had no form because he had no concept of his looks. He told Auk: ********************* "What your augurs and sibyls see, if they see anything, is the self-image of the god who chooses to be seen. You say that you could nearly make out the face of my father's concubine, her self as she imagines that self to appear. I feel confident that it was a beautiful face. I have never meta any woman more secure in her own vanity. In the same fashion, we sound to them as we conceive our voices to sound...What you see [of me], Auk, is that part of me which can be seen. That is to say, nothing, I came blind from the womb, Auk, and because of it I am incapable of formulating a visual image for you. ****************************** It seems to me that the self-images of the divine modules must have been manipulated for Echidna or Typhon or Scylla to see themselves as monsters. But they could not be overhauled or implanted. Tartaros implies this just prior to this when he says that he could not be made to see even as a god. Is it the same for humans. I believe it is, even though I don't have an suitable human example. I do however have an example of a human soul: in Jahlee. The Rajan is approached by a drunk woman from behind. He hears her voice and thinks it is Chenille. ****************** "They're y'are." I looked around at the swaying woman behind me and said, "Chenille?" "Tha' lady on Green? No, 's me." Jahlee dropped onto Auk's stool and leaned across the table on her hands. "Guesh my faish's not sho good, huh?" "Don't smile," I told here. "I won'. I'sh jush show hungry. I foun' thish woman in a alley." "Not so loud, please." "drank 'n drank, 'n I fell down 'n I knew I better shtop." ~ RTTW pg 155 *********************** This is about as straightforward as you get for this kind of thing from Wolfe -- Jahlee's mother fed on Chenille. Chenille's soul is in Jahlee. She was drunk, she sounded just like Chenille when she was drunk. What does the soul in Jahlee look like? **************************** I went over to watch Rigoglio, and in a moment more found Jahlee clinging to me like the lianas, her body warm and damp with perspiration (as those of inhumi never are), and fragrant with some heavy, cloying scent. Long sorrel hair that proceeded from no wig draped us both like the vines of Silk's arbor. When I tried to free myself from her, she grinned at me. "I've got teeth here. Real teeth, Rajan. Adieu to my famous tight-lipped smile! Look what I can do now." She grinned again, more broadly than ever...Jahlee joined me there, naked still save for her long hair....I spoke to Hide. "Honesty compels me to tell you that Jahlee is not an inhuma at present. She is a human being here, exactly as we are, and I believe for the same reason..."...[Hide said] "You really look a lot more like my real father here. You're taller than he was and older, but you look more like him than you used to." RTTW pg 315-320 **************************** Sorrel is reddish brown color. Chenille's hair, as Roy noted in his other post, was not red or reddish. It was dark. How dark I can't say right now; I don't believe black, but dark. But her image of herself was having reddish hair mingled with dark brown roots. Sorrel. Later the Rajan described Jahlee when she is an inhuma again: ******************************* "The third member of our party is my daughter Jahlee. She is of medium height, red-haired and attractive, with a smooth almond-shaped face and a sly smile many find captivating." ~ RTTW pg 20 ********************************* Is he describing her soul or the way the way she looks to others? Well, I don't think he considers an inhuma to be his daughter, so I think he himself is describing her soul, but it may be one in the same. Likely it is. Sooo...what did Kypris/Silk's mother look like in the mainframe? She looked the way she saw herself. Not as she truly looked. I'm sorry if it seems I've made much out of little, Roy, but it is important to clarify this point before I answer your other post. ~ J

I'm not following you. Mint's hair was cut short, like a nun's, to deliberately look unattractive to men. Hy was doing the opposite. The exact quote from Kypris is: "I was there last night. Yes. But not for you. Only because I play with Hy sometimes. Now she reminds me of the way I used to be, but all that will be over soon. She's twenty-three." The "Now" implies there was a time when Hy didn't look so much like her. Before the boob job and whatever other cosmetic changes were made in a deliberate attempt by Hy to conform her looks, so far as possible, with the image of the goddess she saw in the monitor. She tried to do the same thing right after her wedding, to apply cosmetics to her face in such a way as to suggest the shape of the heart on her cheap wedding ring, with the assistance of the hotel monitor.

in

You can't compare the "soul" of those transported by astral projection with computer generated images. They are unrelated. I know you're not going to try to tell me that Oreb saw himself as a thirteen-year-old girl when they projected to Urth. That was Scylla in him, as we all know, and she didn't transport looking like a monster. She looked like the kid she had been at the time she was scanned.

Could you give me the textual foundation for that latter supposition?

She

You meant IGJ. This is how Silk described Chenille's hair: "her tightly curled hair was the color of ripe raspberries." (NIGHTSIDE, chap. 10) He also called it "fiery". The cat on the hilt of the dagger was "scarlet". I don't think any woman's idealized self-image includes dark roots showing under hair dyed her preferred color. And I've never seen a horse the color of raspberries. I believe her hair was short as well as curly, not long like Jahlee's in the above quote, but I'm not sure.

He was describing her as she looked to any humans they encountered while traveling, the same as other inhumi trying to pass as human. It was her disguise, an illusion. And even then she wasn't tall, like Chenille. She looked different at different times, as in Gaon and at the farmhouse.

Do you really think there was a computer terminal under all that rubble, probing a dead man's eyes and reading a dead man's thoughts, and sending the data to Mainframe? Silk was dead, as all those present believed. The gods of Mainframe have no power to raise the dead, and Quetzal said so. He didn't believe the Outsider's powers to be any different from the computer gods. He was wrong. Silk's resurrection was a miracle orchestrated by the Outsider. His death vision came from the Outsider, not Mainframe. So the people Silk saw in his death vision looked exactly as the Outsider portrayed them -- unless the Outsider deceived him. -Roy

I didn't see this mentioned on list... The Wizard Knight is nominated for best novel AND 'Golden City Far' is nominated for best novella. http://www.worldfantasy.org/awards/

I said:

Roy responded:

I disagree. The Rajan didn't describe her at this point has having many faces. He is describing an event in the past but describes her in the present tense suggesting continuous action. Kind of like the difference between "esta" and "es". Not "sometimes she looks like..." but "she looks like...". Furthermore, he described her using her explicit appearance of her soul during dream-travel. You're welcome to any opinion you wish, but I'm not going along. And why on earth would you think Jahlee would have to physically look like Chenille to have her soul? We don't agree on much, I know, but I know you to be a careful reader. Do you really really believe the inhuma actually looked physically like the persons whose souls they inherited? Physically, she didn't look anything like Chenille. Physically, Krait didn't look anything like Sinew. Unless they chose for humans to see them that way (which btw is exactly the people see the gods in the Mainframe, according to Tartaros). In the dark bar, the Rajan heard the tenor of her voice and for a moment believed it was Chenille. I don't think there is any other reasonable explanation for that. I said:

Roy responded:

1) As for "reading a dead man's thoughts" Wolfe doesn't explain how the Mainframe reads the thoughts of dead people to permit Remora and Hyacinth and Silk talk to their mothers when they go to the Sun's end. That ship has sailed. Whether you find it believable or not (I find it tough to swallow, myself), it is really beyond hand-wringing as far as the novels go. 2) Someone else also recently asserted that Silk was not in the Mainframe but actually in Heaven. This is how the scene is described: ************************* The Trivigante airship was a brown beetle, infinitely remote, the Aureate Path so near he knew it could not be his final destination. He lighted upon it, and found it a road of tinsel down a whorl no bigger than an egg. Where were the lowing beasts? The spirits of the other dead? ************************ The text here supports the reading that he was in Heaven, that Silk was not merely in the Mainframe.However, it also supports the naturalistic reading as well. Silk IS on the Mainframe's "Aureate Path" as the text says (unless you think Wolfe is suggesting there is a tinsel road to Heaven) but from where he is he can note that it is not the ultimate goal or even much of a goal at all. It is tinsel...phony. Like the "clockwork" nature he discovered the Whorl to have when he was enlightened. So are these people in the Mainframe or are they from the true afterlife? It seems to me that Wolfe is having it both ways. Anyway it doesn't really matter as far as the current question is concerned. "The Short Sun" segment makes it clear that the appearance of souls is the same for real human souls.

I don't consider that relevant.

a) Your theory about what Kypris meant by "now" is interesting. I'm not so sure that's what she meant, nor what "soon" meant to her (as in "that will be over soon"), and Kypris doesn't elaborate. b) Do you think Hy could see the goddess although she was not a virgin? I think Tartaros stated unambiguously that that was it was not possible for men who had slept with women or women who had had sex with men to see god or goddess.

I don't consider that relevant. J

What continuous action? He also described himself and Hide and Oreb in the present tense a few pages earlier. And Oreb still looked just like a night chough, "smaller than a hen", not the puffed up thing he was during astral travel. Jahlee was a wicked inhuma. She looked as desirable as she could make herself look just to tempt Hide and Silkhorn and any other man she could. She was an animal.

No. That seemed to me to be what you were trying to establish with the sorrel hair and the quotes about how Jahlee looked during astral travel.

The inhumi don't have vocal cords anymore than they have hair. Fake voice or fake face, what's the difference? Part of the problem here is that I don't concede Jahlee contains Chenille's "soul", and I have yet to see proof she does. Was it the Chenille in her that caused her to try to kill Nettle?

Not quite. Either Silk died and went to Mainframe or he didn't. If he did (ignoring the how of it), the data went to the computer. When he came back to life, what happened to the data? If it was erased, who erased it? If it wasn't erased, the computer contains invalid data which, given Silk's importance to the plans of Pas, should have caused major ripples in the schemes of the ship's gods. If when he died he didn't go to Mainframe, things would go on as before, which is what happened, as I see it.

I don't think Silk went to "Heaven". His soul just left his body briefly. Somewhere someone in LS said something to the effect that gods can only communicate with people by using symbols and terms that they can understand. The only concept of an afterlife Silk was familiar with was what he had been taught about Mainframe afterlife. So that's how the Outsider communicated with him.

If he did, he was wrong. Sometime after his wedding night, while on the airship, Silk saw Kypris again, when she made him that famous offer to become Pas. (EXODUS, 346) So, yes, I believe Hy could see Kypris. -Roy

Well, Roy, most of your last response was merely argumentative. I guess we disagree about Jahlee and that's that. I wish you had tried harder, though.

Oh. I see. You misunderstood. I was saying that the Rajan was describing her soul, not her physical appearance.

Errr...because the Rajan explicitly misstook that voice for Chenille's. And it is clear from her response to the Rajan that Jahlee was not intending to mimic her. And we have the parallel example of Tartaros stating the the voices of the simulations are as they perceive them to be. You're not even trying, here.

Yes. But that reasoning is circular, since you haven't noted any proof that would convince you, and I doubt there is any.

That's a silly refutation. The nature of the inhumi's inherited souls is clearly defined enough for you to be able to distinguish it from "possession". I guess we've done all the damage we're going to do here. I'll move on to your other post. J

If he did, he was wrong. Sometime after his wedding night, while on the airship, Silk saw Kypris again, when she made him that famous offer to become Pas. (EXODUS, 346) So, yes, I believe Hy could see Kypris. OR, Silk and Hyacinth did not consumate their vows. Why this would be, I'm not sure, but it could be the reason Silk was suicidal on the airship. Don

What about the old Crying Game theory brought up some time ago? ----- Original Message ----- From: don doggett<mailto:kingwukong at yahoo.com> To: The Urth Mailing List<mailto:urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net> Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 12:15 PM Subject: Re: (urth) Mamelta is Kypris?

If he did, he was wrong. Sometime after his wedding night, while on the airship, Silk saw Kypris again, when she made him that famous offer to become Pas. (EXODUS, 346) So, yes, I believe Hy could see Kypris. OR, Silk and Hyacinth did not consumate their vows. Why this would be, I'm not sure, but it could be the reason Silk was suicidal on the airship. Don

He had sex alright; he bragged to Horn about it while on the roof of the airship: ************************************* "I won't ask if you've lain with a woman, Horn; it's too personal a matter to broach save in shriving, and I know you too well to shrive you. Should you wish to be shriven, I hope you'll go to Patera Remora." "All right." "I had not until my wedding night. Indeed, it remains my only such experience. You needn't tell me that Hyacinth has lain with scores of men. I knew it and was acutely conscious of it; so was she. I can't say what our experience meant to her, and perhaps it meant little or nothing. To me it was wonderful. Wonderful! I came to her as one starving. And yet?" Still very frightened, Horn jerked his head. "I know." "Good. I'm glad you understand. There was a taint that came from neither Hyacinth nor me, but from the act itself. After two hours, or about that, I rested. We had done what men and women do more than once, and more than twice. I was happy, exhausted, and soiled. I felt that Echidna, particularly, was displeased; and I doubt that I would have had the courage if I had not rejected her in my heart after her theophany. You were there, I know." Horn nodded again. "She's a very great goddess, Cald?." "She is. Great and terrible. It may be that I was wrong to reject her?I won't argue the point. I only say that I had, and felt as I did. As I've said, the Outsider enlightened me a second time then. I won't tell you all that he told me?I couldn't. But one thing was that he created Pas. The Seven, as everyone knows, are the children of Pas and Echidna; it had never occurred to me to wonder whence they themselves came." (EXODUS, 341) ************************************************* I think this quote answers Crush's question, which was:

My conservative opinion is that Silk's rejection, in his heart, of Echidna is what allowed him to continue to see the gods in violation of her rule. In other words, the inability of those with carnal knowledge to see the gods was a function of belief. The Outsider outranked the gods, and Echidna was a hypocrite. The taint Silk felt goes back to Genesis. -Roy

--- "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: ****************************

Obviously from the text, Silk and Hy had sex. I recall now that one of the theophanies in a window shows a reconstituted Pas choking the life out of Echidna. My guess is that this is when Scylla fled into Oreb and when Echidna's ban ceased to have effect. Don

Don said:

So, you figure that the Echidna interface is a security module that prevented the other modules from displaying their forms to the human "objects" if they do not meet the required criteria. With Echidna on the run, she shut down her security functions to reserve power for hiding from Pas or she had become too corrupted to perform that task. It's not bad supposing. It's conceivable. But I think it is suggested that the "Echidna Rule" continued 20 years afterward. In RTTW pg 110, the Rajan was talking to Hound in Viron: *********************** "Does Scylla appear in your Sacred Windows?" "Oh, that...Not like it used to be I suppose. She comes to the window in the Grand Manteion two or three times a year, or the augurs say she does." ~ RTTW pg 110 *********************** Now this could be read to say that Hound simply had never been at the Grand Manteion when the theophanies occurred. But the way he says it, as though "of course I didn't see with my own eyes", makes me think that the augurs saw her because they had not had sex with a woman and reported it to Hound because as a married man he had. So I think this suggests the Echidna was not the security control. The original Echidna was the one that insisted all of the divine interfaces (gods) had that control, and so that was the way it worked regardless of the persistence or corruption of the Echidna interface. J

Or it could be that there are few functioning windows anymore. Half the time the Whorl is in a state of interrupted power. Whatever the case, I don't think that Tartaros was wrong in the way Roy seems to be suggesting. At the time he spoke, the "rule" was in effect. Something must have changed and it appears to have something to do with Pas' return. Don