Subject: (urth) Problems of Interpretation

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2010 18:01:30 +0000

Nice post.

I generally agree with what you say about "the author's stated
intentions or explanations of a text," for two reasons. The first is
what Tolkien and Lewis called the "Personal Heresy," the idea that the
most important tool for interpreting a text is the author's biography;
the second is that I have experienced people finding meanings in texts
of mine which I never (consciously) put there but which, when pointed
out to me, made complete sense.

But that latter is why I refuse the idea that facts about the author
are completely irrelevant. The meaning which was pointed out to me had
to do with some of my most deeply-held beliefs.

My position, then, is this: the writer's worldview cannot help but
inform the way he writes about the world, and the type of meaning s/he
consciously _or unconsciously_ uses to structure his/her materials.

This does not mean, for example, that "the meaning" of every Lupine
text must be Catholic-Orthodox; in fact, given some of his texts, that
would be ludicrous. But it does mean that his deeply held Catholic
beliefs (as well as his other deeply-held beliefs, including his
conservatism and his engineering orientation) _will_ be involved with
his creation of worlds. Just as important, however, is his close
control over what his _narrators_ believe about their worlds.

Take TWK as an example: On the one hand, the cosmology of TWK is
clearly _not_ Christian. On the other, it seems to be a non-Christian
cosmology embedded in a _larger_ Christian cosmology. Does that make
it a "Christian book?" I think not; that "larger cosmology" is too
attenuated to be even visible to most casual readers. Certainly Able
never works that one out.

In this context, I think it is interesting that the only parts of the
Solar cycle in which explicitly "supernatural" events take place is
the Long Sun, and the third-person sections of RttW. The "miraculous"
events in both the New and Short Suns have
quasi-scientific/engineering explanations either on display or shortly
below the surface. (Indeed, even the most important "miracle" in Long
Sun, Silk's enlightenment, is offered a rationalistic explanation by
Crane: though I believe that we are to understand that the narrator
rejects that explanation.) The reason this is important is because
these are precisely the parts of the Solar Cycle narrated by someone
who was not present at the events in question. Wolfe may be making a
point about the mythopoeic process here.

Some specific comments.

> Personally, I
> have to say that any text that can only be understood in relation to something
> outside of it (an interview, a conversation with the author, etc.) is a flawed
> text.

It seems to me that _no_ text can be understood purely on its own
terms. All(?) texts (and this is certainly true of Wolfe) depend on
allusion to other texts to help produce their overall richness.

> Wolfe makes the problem of the intentional fallacy particularly...problematic.

Indeed: but then, I have always regarded it as problematic.
Intentionality isn't a binary function, it's a cloudy range, from pure
allegory (such as _Pilgrim's Progress_), where to ignore the author's
intentions is to misread; to quasi-allegorical works (like Narnia and
"Leaf by Niggle"), where the author's intention controls the reading
pretty closely; to stories (like _To Kill a Mockingbird_) where the
author's intention is clear but other meanings are plausible; all the
way to the sort of work (mostly "pure entertainment" like pulp
fiction) where the author deliberately disclaims any intentions and
attempts to act as a transparent reporter.

Where on this scale does Wolfe fall? (Which Lupine text?)

> With puzzles, the author is always right. With interpretation,
> that's less always the case. But with many of Wolfe's stories, it's difficult to
> tell when we just haven't understood the clues and when we're dealing with an
> ambiguity that requires an act of interpretation on the reader's part. ...
> The difficulty with Wolfe is that it's often hard to tell where the one stops
> and the other begins.

Indeed, in interpreting Wolfe it is often difficult to tell what is a
"puzzle" and what is "interpretation." For example: there is
intriguing (if not necessarily compelling) textual evidence, e.g., for
the "Horn died in the pit/the Neighbors are the trees" set of
theories. _If_ Wolfe deliberately planted this evidence and expects
the clever reader to find it and understand that Horn did die in the
pit and that the Neighbors are the trees, _then_ it's a puzzle. _But_
the answer to that puzzle radically changes the legitimate space for
interpreting the text!

> (To make this relate to Wright, I think he's has every right to read New Sun
> *against* the religious meaning many of us might assume Wolfe intended. If
> that's the reading the text ultimately supports - and, granted, that's the point
> of the debate with him - then that's what it supports. It doesn't matter at all
> what Wolfe thought he was writing or what we'd like it to mean if the text
> ultimately goes in a Wright's direction. Lot of *IF*s there, of course, but I
> think it's just really bad logic to say that Wright has to be wrong, a priori,
> because Wolfe is Catholic or because he's said in interviews that the book has a
> "true" religious meaning, or what have you. It always has to go back to the best
> reading of the books as we have them.)

Agreed so far as you go. But I think that a useful/interesting reading
needs to take the author's worldview into account, even if it
ultimately shows that the author has "betrayed" his/her intentions and
written something inconsistent with them. In fact, if I understand
correctly, the claim that it is (almost) always possible to show that
(almost) any author has done so is the key (one might say the hinge)
of the Deconstructionist movement in criticism. Then -- again, not
having read Wright, this is pure speculation -- if Wright is saying,
"Wolfe may believe X, but his text says ~X," I'm good with that; but
if Wright is simply _ignoring_ Wolfe's worldview, I think he's off the
rails.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:48:42 +0000

> Jane Delawney-
> Sorry I appear to have missed the original reference (I get overwhelmed
> with internet stuff quite often, blame my age) but regarding Ash and
> Vine, I have always assumed that these are cognates / references to Ask
> and Embla (Ash and Vine, in translation) the first human couple of
> post-Fimbulwinter, post-Ragnarok Midgard in Norse tradition.

> Dan'l-

I think this quote by Dan'l is very insightful and well-put. The 
solution to certain puzzles affect the way the text is read. And the way 
one is inclined to read the text affects what solutions are tenable. 
Someone once asked an atheist friend of mine why he didn't believe in 
God. He responded: "I don't see any evidence of it". My thought at the 
time was that I saw evidence to the contrary everywhere.

---------------------

But on to my main point:

These references first by Jane (regarding Ask and Embla) and now again 
by Dan'l have got me thinking again about the Neighbor-Trees theory. 
Dan'l only mentioned half the issue (maybe less than half). There are 
intriguing associations between the Neighbors and the Trees. But even 
more so, there is evidence of an equivalency between the inhumi and the 
vines. At one point, someone claimed the Rajan's staff--made from a 
vine-- was an inhumi, that it had a face, that the Rajan talked to it at 
night.

Furthermore, the trees and vines are referenced as husband and wife:
"Have I made you see Green's jungles? The swamps and their dire 
inhabitants? The immense trees and the lianas clinging to them like 
brides? [iGJ]

A few pages later he compares Jahlee-in-tream-travel to a vine in the 
same terms:
"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."

The references are there, but I haven't been able to figure out how it 
could be (not uncommon for me). How the trees could be Neighbors I can 
get. But the inhumi as vines?

So, anyway, this post is intended as a "proof of concept". An attempt to 
show that it is at least possible.

Suppose the Neighbors that Horn encounters in the woods are in 
dream-travel. That's not hard. But suppose their physical beings are not 
much like their soul traveling bodies. Suppose they are trees. Suppose 
that soul-traveling is their almost constant active state.

"The trees are bigger up the river. Bigger and older, and not so 
sleepy." [oBW]

Suppose the trees and vines originated on Green. And suppose they 
achieved their soul travel ability through some power inherent in the 
vines, or alternately the vines have inherited something by clinging to 
the Neighbors. But the vines are not sentient beings. Yet, through their 
physical connection with the Neighbors, when the Neighbors soul 
traveled, the clinging vines came along for the ride to become the 
inhumi--non-sentient animals.

The Neighbors--as active in soul travel as humans but as free to travel 
as the Rajan-- created their cities, fought their wars, and transported 
seeds and vines to Blue. I personally presume that the Neighbors did not 
have the ability for space travel until the Whorl arrived. So the inhumi 
were used for that purpose.

An inhumi who is born on Green, must simultaneously be born physically 
as a vine. And an inhumi that is born sentient is connected 
spiritually/psychically to its vine. So when the Rajan made a staff from 
a vine, the inhumi --not killed by the destruction of its body-- 
communicates with the Rajan through it's vine-now-staff.

Not only does this explain the Tree/Vines references (and add irony to 
soup the colonists eat made from vines) but it explains something that 
has always seemed more Fantasy than Science Fiction: the inhumi's power 
to absorb the souls of those on whom they fed and impart that soul to 
their children. The inhumi can do this because they are essentially 
SPIRITUAL/psychic beings.

u+16b9

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:15:49 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> Suppose the trees and vines originated on Green.

The books state that the Neighbors were native to Blue (lists, OBW, IGJ), so
if they are trees they did not originate on Green.

> And suppose they
> seeds and vines to Blue.

The migration of the Neighbors was the other way around. They were native to
Blue and only later went to Green. That is why there are few ruins to be
seen on Blue, but the ruins on Green still stand.

That is what Silkhorn told Hide in that chopped-up conversation about the
Vanished People they had while camped at the edge of that swamp after
leaving Blanko. See particularly pages 352-53 of IGJ.

> I personally presume that the Neighbors did not

Silkhorn believed that the Neighbors had spaceships (ibid., 353). Inhumi
were introduced into the _Whorl_ by the Neighbors, presumably when they
first boarded the ship as it neared the Short Sun system (RTTW, 232). If the
rules for spirit travel are the same for Neighbors as they are for humans,
the spirit bodies of any inhumi they bring along will lose their fangs and
other inhumi characteristics, as was the case for Fava, Jahlee and Juganu.
Quetzal had fangs and was every bit an inhumu, therefore he did not get
there by spirit travel.

-Roy

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 03:45:42 +0000

> Roy C. Lackey wrote:

List oBW:
"Blue's sentient race."
List iGJ:
"The name by which the sentient native race is known on Blue's western 
continent, the Vanished People."

Hmmm...I'm a member of America's sentient race but my race did not 
originate there. American is the name by which the native race is known 
in the Northwestern continent. Others are known as Canadian. But that 
says nothing about their origins.
Still, I would have rather hoped that Wolfe would leave more breadcrumbs 
if the Neighbors had originated on Green. But then, he doesn't always 
(or often) leave as many breadcrumbs as I think he ought. I'd say mark 
this as inconclusive with the weight toward NOT FROM GREEN. Still, on 
the whole its fifty-fifty.

> leaving Blanko. See particularly pages 352-53 of IGJ.

Okay, this conversation hurts. I'm inclined to trust the Rajan on the 
general history of the Neighbors.
I could say that the Neighbors transported their seeds to Green and that 
was where they encountered the inhumi lianas except that the Rajan says, 
or strongly implies, that the inhumi were preying on the "great beasts" 
of Green before the Neighbors arrived.

> Quetzal had fangs and was every bit an inhumu, therefore he did not get

I agree they did not transport the inhumi to the Whorl by spirit travel. 
I'm not saying that. How they got them to the Whorl has always been a 
mystery. I'm sure no one would allow an alien lander to dock. It is 
possible the inhumi flew there. The Rajan believes the Neighbors "must 
have" had landers. He doesn't say why he is so certain, but, again, I'm 
inclined to trust him. Maybe because they were trees? I don't know. 
Still, if the Neighbors had landers, where are they?

The Rajan says the Neighbors went to Green from Blue and that is where 
they became "wise", presumably where they became "Neighbors". My 
construct is still technically possible but verrrry cumbersome. Alas, 
I'm still not sure how the inhumi could be vines.

u+16b9

---

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 04:28:22 +0000

I've been following the discussion with some interest. It really seems like
Horn died in the pit. Aside from the other evidence mentioned, the chapter is
called The End and Horn explicitly calls it his grave. Maybe I was conditioned
by Severian's eidolon resurrection but I can remember thinking even on first
reading that, "okay, this guy really just died". So something inexplicably brought
him back to life. I don't know the answer but I thought it must have something
to do with Krait since that's who Horn sees him as he regains consciousness. I 
am interested in hearing more about James' theory regarding greenbuck and the 
Neighbors. It would help explain that other mystery- why Horn is so instantly 
recognized and accepted by the Neighbors.
 
>Roy C. Lackey- Silkhorn believed that the Neighbors had spaceships
 
I think maybe this is also supported by the pit? It is large and circular
and the vegetation in it is all new growth. Moreover there is a ring of
blue glass encircling the pit. Fused sand from the heat of take-off rocket 
exhaust?
 
Seawrack notes a similarity of the constructions in the pit to those she has
seen underwater. Evidence of a Flood?

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 06:34:02 +0000

James Wynn wrote:.
> the whole its fifty-fifty.

Not even. Later in that same conversation with Hide, Silkhorn all but spells
it out (IGJ, 355). The Neighbors were native to Blue. Further, on the same
page Hide asked: "What happened when all the Vanished People here were
dead?" Silkhorn answered: "I'm not sure it ever occurred." "A very few may
have survived; a very few may survive here still." There are more than a few
trees on Blue, including the big, old ones up the river on Shadelow you
alluded to.

I'll go one step further and give the quote that *should* put an end to this
issue. It is from one of the Neighbors who gave Blue to humans: "From this
whorl we sprang." (OBW, 271)

[snip]
> possible the inhumi flew there.

FWIW, Jahlee said that was too far for the inhumi to fly.

>The Rajan believes the Neighbors "must

I don't care to argue the point, but Jahlee's "slender tower" (RTTW, 59) on
that cliff on Green has elements suggestive of the remnants of a spaceship.

-Roy

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 07:05:13 +0000

> Roy C. Lackey -
> Later in that same conversation with Hide, Silkhorn all but spells
> it out (IGJ, 355). The Neighbors were native to Blue. Further, on
> the same page Hide asked: "What happened when all the Vanished People
> here were dead?" Silkhorn answered: "I'm not sure it ever occurred."
> "A very few may have survived; a very few may survive here still."
> There are more than a few trees on Blue, including the big, old ones
> up the river on Shadelow you
> alluded to.

As I said, I believe the Rajan when he says that the Neighbors came from 
Blue. Point made. But the fact that there are lots of trees means 
nothing...zero. I'm not sure why you think it does. The Neighbors who 
were wiped out would not have been destroyed in their tree form. Their 
corporal forms would have continued to live on. That's what happens when 
you die in soul travel. Your body lives on and your soul dies. The dead 
Neighbors would have become nothing but regular ol' trees, right?

u+16b9

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:47:21 +0000

> Lee Berman-
> Neighbors. It would help explain that other mystery- why Horn is so instantly recognized and accepted by the Neighbors.

Once again, for Lee....

Horn on the ruinous island sees a Neighbor in the form of a greenbuck. 
He chases after it, falls in a pit, breaks his neck and dies. The reason 
I say he breaks his neck (aside from being a likely way to die 
instantaneously in that circumstance) is that Babbie and Seawrack see 
him in that pit and know he is dead without having to go down there. The 
Neighbor feels guilt at having caused Horn's death (in a sense). This is 
the guilt that haunts our Narrator throughout the story, and this guilt 
is the reason that he is adamant on being Horn instead of Silk....if he 
declares himself Silk or neither Horn nor Silk, it would mean that he 
had killed Horn and that there was no way to truly repair it. At the end 
of the story, he is reported to say:
*********************************
RTTW (HB) pg 411
  "We will sail tonight...Would you be willing to make my farewells to 
Hoof and Hide?...I've been dreading it--in a sense, I have killed their 
father, though the Outsider surely knows that I never meant him the 
least harm. I don't want to have to face his sons..."
  ********************************
The Neighbor's perspective on taking a life was detailed in the 
conversation between the Rajan and Hide when they are talking about 
Hide's dream of seeing Mora and (I believe) dark Fava. I suspect there 
are hints about several things in that conversation, but the part I 
quote below explains how the greenbuck Neighbor sees guilt over causing 
the death of another being.
*********************
RTTW (HB) pg 24
"I spoke of killing a man with this. I hadn't intended to kill him, but 
I was afraid he was going to kill us. I thought he might kill you or 
Jahlee, and kept hitting him as hard as I could; when the fighting had 
ended, I looked at him, and he was dead."
"It wasn't your fault, Father."
"Of course it was, and his as well. It was---it is---my fault that I 
killed him. It is his fault that I bear the guilt of killing him, 
because he gave me good reason to fear him."
*********************
The Neighbor revives Horn by possessing and repairing the damage (or 
seeming to at least). It takes three days to do that.

_______________________
There's a lot in this thematically. 1) Christ was dead three days in the 
grave and was resurrected.
2) Secondly, 'The Book of the Long Sun' is mapped over the life of 
Aristaeus at related by Robert Graves. Aristaeus's son Aktaion saw 
Artemis naked (Seawrack), and was changed into a deer, and torn apart by 
his own hounds (Not Horn is killed by his own mutinous men).
3) Thirdly, "Neighbors" is a term for fairies as noted by a character in 
An Evil Guest. One is likely to encounter a white stag on the border of 
Fairieland (which is the land of the dead) at which point --ala the 
Mabinogion-- find a Aelf King/changling has taken your identity. 
Alternately, one enters Fairieland through a fairie circle, in this 
case, Horn's circular grave.
___________________________

Now the "new Horn" is Horn's body and memory with the Neighbor *as his 
soul*. The Neighbor, who we'll call HORN seeks to absolve his guilt by 
completing Horn's mission. He-Pen-Sheep and She-Pick-Berry seem to have 
a lot of discourse with the Neighbors call him "Neighbor-man" OBW (HB) 
pg 261&262

  Later HORN meets with Neighbors who give him a ring and the deed to 
Blue as a representative of his people. As he walks through the woods, 
the trees get out of his way. They choose him because he is a mixture of 
Neighbor and human. A Mediator--a orthodox and gnostic Christian 
designation for Christ. One of the Neighbors shakes Horn's hand and they 
"share blood".

**********************
oBW (HB) pg 272
"My name is Horn." I offered him my hand. He took it, and this time I 
felt his hand and remembered hard, and seemed to be covered with short, 
stiff hairs. Beyond that I will not say. "My name is Horn also, " he 
told me. I felt that I was being paid an immense compliment, and did not 
know how to reply.
**************

There's a obvious kind of mystery going on here.  When he shares blood 
with this Neighbor who afterward calls himself "Horn", the Narrator has 
access to some of his former psyche or that of the Neighbor. But it is 
clear that "Horn" has ceased to be merely that boy who arrived from the 
Whorl. The Narrator says a few pages earlier that he does not remember 
this event merely in fairly accurate terms, but precisely as it 
occurred. This is because he remembers it simultaneously from two 
separate points of view: himself and the Neighbor with whom he clasped 
hands. This suggests that the Neighbors might have a loosely communal 
consciousness or a communal personality like the Shadow Children or the 
children who were turned into a flock of geese in "Peace". Or maybe the 
Neighbor is HORN's spiritual self. Later on Green, as the Narrator lays 
dying he uses his ring to summon help to heal him again.
*******************
  IGJ (HB) pg127
"Through the ring a Neighbor saw him, and she came to him in his agony. 
He told her what was in his heart; and when he had finished, she said, 
"I cannot make you well again, and if I could you would still be in this 
place. I can do this for you, however, if you desire it. I can send your 
spirit into someone else, into someone whose own spirit is dying. If you 
wish, I will find someone in the whorl in which you were born. Then 
there will be one whole man there, instead of two dying men, one here 
and another there."
******************* /
/
 From what she says, HORN's agony is not just in that he is dying 
but//in that he is going to fail his mission. The Neighbor's solution 
solves both those problems: giving him a workable body and putting him 
on the Whorl. She complicates matters in some ways by choosing the 
object of Horn's mission. Silk has slashed his wrists and arms in front 
of Hyacinth's casket.  She sends HORN into Silk. Now he is the Neighbor, 
what the Neighbor remembers of Horn's memories, and Silk's body and 
memories. I call him the Rajan, because that is what Wolfe calls him.

**************************
  iGJ (HB) pg 122
"Was this you for real Incanto? Were you on Green? By Echidna's babies, 
I think you were!" I shook my head and told him it had been someone 
else, a man whose name I have forgotten, a man who wore a ring with a 
white stone. My own name is Horn, no matter what Oreb may say. 
***********************

You see, there is Horn and there is HORN and there is the Rajan...the 
man who begins writing the Book of the Short Sun, Incanto, Pike's Ghost. 
At the end of the story,  he ultimately realizes that he is neither most 
truly Horn nor Silk, but the soul inside or, perhaps, something entirely 
different from all three.

And if there were any other doubt, there is "Silk's" inhuman but very 
Neighborly new abilities such as dream-traveling and "sharing blood"
********************
iGJ (HB) pg 267
" 'We're going to attack you within an hour, Incanto. You'll be--' He 
fell silent, staring at me. 'Can you hear something I don't?'
'Sing song,' Oreb suggested; and I did, following Seawrack's own 
intonation and pronunciation to the best of my very limited ability. [snip]
'That is the language of the Neighbors, whom you call the Vanished 
People,' I said when I could no longer sing for weeping.
'I can--' Terzo began. Then again, 'I can almost hear it myself.' He 
fell silent.
_I put my hand upon his shoulder_ . 'Listen, and you will hear her. 
Those who truly listen do.'
He heard the music then, I know..
*******************************

u+16b9

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From: Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 22:40:38 +0000

Lee Berman wrote:

> But the part about minor gods being invited friends of Pas/Typhon is most interesting. Easy to see
> how this could apply to Kypris. But who is the invited friend of Typhon from Urth who becomes mentioned
> in the Writings as The Outsider?
>
> I'm thinking it needs to be an Urthly resident who, like the Outsider, is associated with Dionysus.

Is it clear that Horn still sees the Outsider as a minor god? Silk
stopped seeing him as one; Horn, as a devotee of Silk, is likely to
have done the same.

Somewhere in _Long Sun_ someone, I think Marble, says that the
Outsider was worshipped on the Short Sun Whorl - that does not seem to
fit a friend of Typhon (but does fit the Increate).