Subject: (urth) Silkhorn as Blue god

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 04:11:05 +0000

I don't know if this has been noted before but at the end of
OBW, the narrator is telling several stories at once in typical
confusing fashion, shuttling between them with each new paragraph.
Parsing out one thread it seems to me that not only is Horn conflated
with Silk, but that character is conflated with Babbie, and blind Pig 
(and perhaps blind Tartaros also), with the suggestion of possession by 
Whorl gods via a sacred Window. At the very end of the book, there is a 
very similar vibe as at the end of UotNS, where Severian is recognized 
as a god of a watery planet.

Horn is camping on a river island and calling to Babbie. Then:

>Someone on shore called again for Babbie and I understood that he meant
>me; it never so much as occured to me then that I had sometimes been 
>called "Silk" or "Horn"...I waded ashore and set off through the forest
>at a trot...I found him in the forest, sitting in the dark under the
>trees. I could not see him. It was too dark to see anything. But I knelt
>beside him and laid my head upon his knee, and he comforted me.

Later, the narrator meets a couple kids (Brother and Sister) in the woods.
He teaches them how to fish and hunt. The kids see and interact with the 
Vanished people sometimes. The narrator says:

>Last night I dreamed that Pig, Hound and I ran into an abandoned house to 
>get out of the rain. It seemed familiar and I set off to explore it.  I saw
>a clock--and the hands were on twelve. I knew that it was noon, not midnight,
>althought the windows were black as pitch...

>..Nothing about my dream of an angry and vindictive Scylla who talked like
>Oreb, the dream that woke me screaming and so terrified Brother and Sister:
>"Window! Window! Window!"

>I asked them [Brother and Sister] about the Vanished Gods. They said there 
>was one in the forest, so I told them about him. And a lot more, things that 
>I should keep to myself. I tried to teach them how to pray, and found they 
>already knew although they did not have the word.

---

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:04:09 +0000

--- On Sun, 12/9/12, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Subject: (urth) Silkhorn as Blue god
To: "urth at urth.net" <urth at urth.net>
Date: Sunday, December 9, 2012, 8:11 PM

>already knew although they did not have the word. ??? ???????? ?????? ??? ? 
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All of these things have textual explanations, though. Windcloud got to know Silk and Horn because they both lived in his house for a time, possibly the hus Babbie. Pig carried Silver Silk in him and the eye is necessary to get the fragment out (and back to Silk's body, too?), Babbie winds up carrying most of Horn in that scene, our narrator changes from 1st person Horn with dominant control of narrative to Silk in denial with fragment of Horn left at that particular point, in IGJ the depiction of Horn's time on green is now in 3rd person and the 1st person narrative is mostly present tense and preachy preachy preachy, clearly Silk. - The Rajan is a god insofar as Silver Silk is. Pretty sure that the flashing lights at the end of RTTW indicate silver silk is returning to Silk's body, which has been animated by Horn, and will be mixed until the end of OBW, the scene you reference.

The vanished god is the big tree he sits under that lets Horn say "good-bye"
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From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:35:43 +0000

>Marc Aramini: All of these things have textual explanations, though. Windcloud got to know Silk and 
>Horn because they both lived in his house for a time, possibly the hus Babbie. Pig carried Silver Silk 
>in him and the eye is necessary to get the fragment out (and back to Silk's body, too?), Babbie winds 
>up carrying most of Horn in that scene, our narrator changes from 1st person Horn with dominant control 
>of narrative to Silk in denial with fragment of Horn left at that particular point, in IGJ the depiction 
>of Horn's time on green is now in 3rd person and the 1st person narrative is mostly present tense and 
>preachy preachy preachy, clearly Silk. - The Rajan is a god insofar as Silver Silk is. Pretty sure that 
>the flashing lights at the end of RTTW indicate silver silk is returning to Silk's body, which has been 
>animated by Horn, and will be mixed until the end of OBW, the scene you reference.
 
>The vanished god is the big tree he sits under that lets Horn say "good-bye"

Thanks for the detailed response Marc. I always appreciate your eye for detail. The reason I think the 
narrator essentially turns into a pig is that he responds to the call for "Babbie", he then trots through
the forest and nuzzles his head into someone's lap for comfort. Interestingly, Babbie is weirdly humanized
in an earlier passage. Seawrack is arguing that Horn doesn't recognize Babbie as a person. Horn then does
acknowlege that Babbie helped row the boat on occassions, even with an acknowlegement of Babbie having hands.

I have to disagree about the big tree being the Vanished god. I do agree with you that there is an intimate
connection between trees and Vanished People/Neighbors. But the Vanished gods seem to be something else, from
what I see.

First, The Mother is rather explicitly acknowledged to be a goddess of the Vanished People and she is not of
the human nor Neighbor race. (supporting quotes below). Second, The Mother is rather explicitly connected to
Scylla (and Echidna I think, perhaps in daughter-bride fashion as we saw for Abaia). Thus I would expect other 
Vanished gods to have a similar connection to the Whorl gods. I see both piggish Phaea and blind Tartaros 
seeming to be a part of SilkHorn at the end of OBW.

>,Having the sea as we in Old Viron did not, the Neighbors had also a goddess of the sea. She may have been their
>water goddess as well, as Scylla is back home; I cannot say.

>She waits. For what I do not know. It may be for her worshippers to return again. Or for us to become her new
>worshippers, as we well may.

>Perhaps merely for death.  She shaped for herself, I believe, a woman of the Vanished People so they would 
>love her. We are here now and so she shaped for me a woman of my own race--a woman beside whom Chenille 
>would stand like a child--who could sing and speak to me. Beneath it, the old sea goddess waited and was
>not of the human race nor of the race of the Vanished People whom I was to come to know.