Subject: (urth) Saint names

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:29:23 +0000

Dan'l writes:

>I suspect that he _does_ [have a purpose in his choice of saint names] but 
>that we haven't >worked out the relationships yet. I'm certainly not 
>familiar enough with the ancient saints to do this.

Using the internet I've been able to explore the lives of some saints. There 
are a lot of convenient sites available. This one provides a thumbnail 
sketch of each-
http://www.catholic-forum.com/Saints/patron02.htm-  and there are sites 
which go into greater detail for each saint.

I've perused the main characters in BotNS and the only clear (to me) 
parallels I've found are that Saint Dorcas was resurrected and Saint Thecla 
wore men's clothing to avoid being molested as she travelled with Paul.  I 
am interested in any further connections people can find.

(I'll note that, like Dorcas in BotNS, Saint Thecla sat in a window, but 
maybe that is an incidental connection? you could drive yourself crazy with 
those)

Since Gene Wolfe wrote BotNS pre-Internet, I have to imagine he wrote 
thinking people would have only The Catholic Encyclopedia and other 
inconvenient sources to interpret his work and didn't make the references 
hopelessly obscure and impenetrable. What purpose in that?

-bsharp

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From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:49:01 +0000

Sorry, the link in the previous post got an extra hyphen in it, rendering it 
worthless. This link should work:

http://www.catholic-forum.com/Saints/patron02.htm

-bsharp

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 17:04:14 +0000

> which go into greater detail for each saint.

H'mmm. I see some interesting things.

One St. Severian was a martyr whose flesh was torn off his body
with iron rakes - i.e., tortured to death. He was a Roman Senator,
which may be relevant to Severian's governmental connections.

(Interestingly, another St. Severian was also tortured to death, but
he was canonized well after GW wrote tBotNS.)

Palaemon and Gurloes were monastic leaders. (Hermit community
in the case of P.)  Malrubius was a monastic, founder of a church,
and a martyr.

Vodalus was a missionary and a miracle-worker, and, interestingly,
not a miracle-worker.

Agia and Agilus, interestingly, are both French. I find myself wondering
if Wolfe used any kind of pattern regarding where the various saints
came from...

> hopelessly obscure and impenetrable. What purpose in that?

I don't think he particularly expected people to "get" this stuff: but he's
writing, among other things, very clearly in the shadow of the great
High Modernists, Joyce and Proust. Proust provides the fascination with
memory; Joyce, the joy in putting in obscure details and patterns for
his own amusement. The Joycean play isn't intended for us so much
as for himself.

At least, that's how I see it.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
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