{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4838", "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": 4838, "subject": "Peace - Elm trees and empty dreams", "messages": 3, "voices": 2, "first": "2007-06-06T15:39:10+00:00", "last": "2007-06-07T06:24:14+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-06T15:39:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Peace - Elm trees and empty dreams", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Caveat lector: spoilers for Peace below.\n\nThe elm tree that falls in the first line of Peace is planted on the \ngrave of Alden Dennis Weer, the book's narrator. As the Sergeant \nsays in The Pirates of Penzance, \"This is perplexing.\"\n\nLeaving aside the mystery of a story told by a ghost, is there any \nsignificance to the tree being an elm? I cannot find, in the \narchives of this list, any discussion on this particular topic.\n\nGoogling for elm folklore found this tidbit:\n\nhttp://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythfolk/elm.html\nIt is interesting to note that both the yew's and the elm's mythology \nis intimately bound up with death and the transition into the \nUnderworld, and that both woods were used to such deadly effect in \nmediaeval warfare. Elm's connection with death does not end there, as \nits wood is traditionally used to make coffins, though the wood's \ndurability underground may also play a part in this choice. Perhaps \npeople who knew elms well were reminded of their own mortality when \nremembering the elm's reputation for dropping large boughs without \nwarning on otherwise still, warm days; \"Elm hateth man, and waiteth\" \nas the old saying goes.\n-----\n\nMore to the point, and the reason for this post, is the elm tree we \nencounter in Virgil's Aeneid. Full disclosure: I haven't read The \nAeneid yet. I made the connection when listening to some lectures \nfrom The Teaching Company.\n\nIn Book VI, Aeneas visits the underworld to consult with the spirit \nof his father, Anchises. The Cumaean Sybil leads him to the \nunderworld and guides him through it. \"Just in the gate and in the \njaws of hell,\" as Dryden translates, Aeneas finds an elm tree. \nHere's the relevant passage from Dryden:\n\nhttp://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.6.vi.html\nFull in the midst of this infernal road,\nAn elm displays her dusky arms abroad:\nThe God of Sleep there hides his heavy head,\nAnd empty dreams on ev'ry leaf are spread.\nOf various forms unnumber'd specters more,\nCentaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door.\nBefore the passage, horrid Hydra stands,\nAnd Briareus with all his hundred hands;\nGorgons, Geryon with his triple frame;\nAnd vain Chimaera vomits empty flame.\nThe chief unsheath'd his shining steel, prepar'd,\nTho' seiz'd with sudden fear, to force the guard,\nOff'ring his brandish'd weapon at their face;\nHad not the Sibyl stopp'd his eager pace,\nAnd told him what those empty phantoms were:\nForms without bodies, and impassive air.\n-----\n\nHere's the same passage in a modern translation by A. S. Kline:\n\nhttp://www.tkline.freeserve.co.uk/VirgilAeneidVI.htm\nIn the centre a vast shadowy elm spreads its aged trunks\nand branches: the seat, they say, that false Dreams hold,\nthronging, clinging beneath every leaf.\nAnd many other monstrous shapes of varied creatures,\nare stabled by the doors, Centaurs and bi-formed Scylla,\nand hundred-armed Briareus, and the Lernean Hydra,\nhissing fiercely, and the Chimaera armed with flame,\nGorgons, and Harpies, and the triple bodied shade, Geryon.\nAt this, trembling suddenly with terror, Aeneas grasped\nhis sword, and set the naked blade against their approach:\nand, if his knowing companion had not warned him\nthat these were tenuous bodiless lives flitting about\nwith a hollow semblance of form, he would have rushed at them,\nand hacked at the shadows uselessly with his sword.\n-----\n\nNow, we know Wolfe is familiar with The Aeneid, if only from his \nborrowing of the Cumaean. Peace could well be described as a book of \n\"empty dreams\", with \"tenuous bodiless lives flitting about\".\n\nIf the elm before Acheron did inspire the elm upon Alden, I wonder \nwhether we might find in Peace some traces of Briareus, Geryon, and \nthe others. Note that Dante, guided by Virgil, meets these monsters \nin the Inferno (which I also haven't read)." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Duffy", "address": "david.duffy at qimr.edu.au" }, "date": "2007-06-07T06:12:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Peace - Elm trees and empty dreams", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Matthew King wrote:\nCaveat lector: spoilers for Peace below.\n\nThe elm tree that falls in the first line of Peace is planted on the\ngrave of Alden Dennis Weer, the book's narrator. As the Sergeant\nsays in The Pirates of Penzance, \"This is perplexing.\"\n\nLeaving aside the mystery of a story told by a ghost, is there any\nsignificance to the tree being an elm? I cannot find, in the\narchives of this list, any discussion on this particular topic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I am positive that someone stated some time ago on the list that elms \nwere planted on graves to keep the spirit underneath at rest. However, a \nquick google suggests that usually rowans appear in this context.\n\nI did find a review of Thomas Campanella's _Republic of Shade_, \na history of elm plantings in America: \"a central symbol of New \nEngland and American life in the nineteenth and twentieth \ncenturies...planted on wedding days or on the birth of children\", and then \nin bulk to \"ornament\" towns. So planting them is very characteristic of \nthe time and place the story is set. I think _Peace_ is, among other \nthings, an elegy to that era (and thought a lot about it reading _My \nAntonia_).\n\nSo they may stand in as an American equivalent of the rowan (those planted \nare, I didn't know, a native tree), as osage orange is to _TWK_ and \nFaery.\n\nCheers, David Duffy." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Duffy", "address": "david.duffy at qimr.edu.au" }, "date": "2007-06-07T06:24:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) another Peace of elms", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I do have work to do, but apparently in the Iliad...\n\nAndromaca, the fine wife of Hector (Iliad, VI, 418)...says the following \nabout her Pelasgian father, Etion of holy Thebes, who had been killed by \nAchilles.\n\nAchilles, says she, had not taken from my father his weapons, but had \nburnt them together with his body, and over his ashes had erected a mound, \nwhile the mountain nymphs had planted elm trees around his grave [2].\n\n[2. The custom of planting elm trees near funeral mounds had once also \nexisted in the parts of Dacia. So, in a Romanian ballad, the hero Toma \nAlimos, feeling that his death is near, tells his horse to take him to the \ngrave with five elms trees ].\n\nhttp://www.pelasgians.bigpondhosting.com/website1/03_01.htm\n\nDavid Duffy." } ] } ] }