{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6580", "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": 6580, "subject": "Short Story 70: To the Dark Tower Came", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2014-07-26T01:21:51+00:00", "last": "2014-07-26T01:21:51+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-07-26T01:21:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 70: To the Dark Tower Came", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "“To the Dark Tower Came” first appeared in Orbit in 1977 and is collected\nin *Storeys from the Old Hotel.*\n\nSUMMARY WITH SUBJECTIVE COMMENTS:\n\nGloucester and Kent, “who would die that day”, discuss the senility of\ntheir ruler in a very cold tower. Gloucester provides a fake history for\nthe word senile, saying it comes from the verb sendan (Anglo Saxon for “to\ntransmit”) and Nilus, which he claims is a “mythical” river in Africa where\nold ruins were scattered (we know the Nile is real though, right? And that\nthe real root of senile is the latin senex/senilis to connote “old”).\n\nThey peer out a small window through ivy, and Kent says he sees fog, but\nGloucester states they are clouds, but that they will still manage to get\ndown eventually. Kent believes if he jumps out and leaves the window\nunguarded, a bear or jaguar might enter. Gloucester says, “poor creature”,\nbut his pity is a bit ambiguous in its placement — does he feel that way\nregarding Kent or any beast entering the tower? They discuss their desire\nto be gone and to courtier no more, and Kent reveals one of his ancestors\ncould fly (Clark Kent, of course). Gloucester gives his own take on\nSuperman (Nietzsche style), and then vast wings outside prompt Kent to put\nhis head and shoulders through the small window. Though the walls of the\ntower appear flat, “Kent knew it to be round .. (Some indeed, said that\n[the radius of the tower] was infinite).”\n\nKent climbs out onto the dark green foliage over an enormous void. A\nvampire flies outside dislodging men and women climbing the ivy. Then it\ncatches them in their fall and does something uncertain to them, enfolding\nthem in wings “like a scud of sooty smoke” that makes them disappear.\n\nGloucester assumes the mass of the tower is so great that it has its own\natmosphere, with its center being the resultant of the attraction between\nthe tower, earth, and moon. He calls the tower the “Spire Sans Summit.”\nThey speculate that it connects the earth and the moon, and Gloucester\nsays, “There are footprints on the surface of the moon, you know. Even\nthough the king would have us believe all this is happening long before\nthat time.” They descend.\n\n“The room below might have filled all the tower, from wall to wall, with a\ndomed ceiling higher in the center than the room was wide; so that it\nseemed like a world unto itself.” Gloucester is thankful that it is an\norrery rather than a throne room, though Kent says it still might be one.\n\nA sun burns with thermonuclear fire and the walls painted with the zodiac,\nand a wounded bison says, “Long have I ruled — a hundred years and more” in\nthe king's voice. The voice says he has starved his enemies and built his\ntower.\n\n“In the dream of serving others, they have served me. Pisces the whale I\npenned in a tank of glass, sheltering her from the waters I poisoned. Does\nnot that show the love I bore her” The poison was needed for the making:\nscientist and sorcerer am I. (The consonance begun by Gloucester continues\nthroughout).\n\nGloucester here says that “The lower parts of the tower are worse than the\nhigher. Or the higher are worse than the lower, as may be,” as rats as\nlarge as buckets gnaw through a hole near the bison's feet.\n\nThe king continues to talk, claiming that he can renew himself and that if\nhe dies the tower would fall with him, with rats at the foundation. Kent is\ninjured badly by the septic teeth of the rats, and then Gloucester “clove\nits spine with a single stroke.” Gloucester promises to carry Kent wherever\nhe wants to go, and then the boy king comes, invisible at first because the\nsun is at his back. “The boy wore a crown. He was about thirteen, but his\neyes were the cold, mad eyes of the king. Maidens followed him; these had\nno eyes at all — only little flames, like candles burning, in the empty\nsockets.” He claims he does not remember the names of Kent and Gloucester,\nand Gloucester replies, “In the beginning you called us Youth and Learning,\nsir; you promised us a great deal.” Clearly, Kent is supposed to be Youth.\n\nThe king says that if they behave themselves, he will fulfill his earlier\npromises, but walks away when asked if he will heal Kent.\n\nKent says, “Call back the king, Gloucester, and carry me to the window.\nWith one single bound I will leap this tall building; and that is something\na boy should see.”\n\nDISCUSSION:\n\nOne of the themes of the story is certainly semiotic slippage (wait a\nminute, said the skeptical scholar...) In this case, I feel that it is an\nexamination of the smallest unit of semiotics, called a sign — in this\ncase, S.\n\nGloucester speaks in consonant sibilance from the first page when he starts\nin on senility, and it continues throughout: “So you say it’s fog. All\nright, sir, climb out. So soon as your feet are on good, solid, ground — I\npride myself sir, on being a sound sullen scholar; and when there is\nnothing more to be done, we triple ?S” men recast the data — integrate,\nintegrate, integrate, and three pump handles.\n\nI suppose the appearance of the integration symbol in math here serves as a\ncommand that looks like an S but has a rigorous application, transforming\nthe letter s from an idealized unit or phoneme into a process command that\nfollows precise mathematical rules, and then finally into a symbolic near\nrepresentation that serves a less mental and more practical function in the\nform of old ?s? shaped pump handles. The S, placed on a man, obviously\nsummons images of the impervious Superman, who Kent will emulate (thus\nbeing both Clark Kent and Shakespeare’s Earl of Kent from King Lear).\nGloucester’s take on Superman is closer to that of Nietzsche or George\nBernard Shaw than DC comics: Gloucester claims he was “A symbolic figure —\nhe represented the strong man who, ridding himself of the superstitions of\nthe past, devoted himself to improving his own powers and achieving mastery\nof others. Actually there have been a number of people who’ve tried it, but\nsomeone always shoots them.”\n\nFascinatingly, the idea of Nietsczhe’s Ubermensch posits an existence\ndevoid of spiritual or otherworldly aspirations, and the surrealistic\nsetting of “To The Dark Tower” belies and undercuts this possibility (note,\ntoo, that Kent’s plunge off the Tower will kill him). However, it does set\nup an interesting examination of something diseased and crazy ruling in the\norrery, set up to look like the solar system. Gloucester claims that the\nNile river is nothing but a fiction, and the orrery is an artificial but\nenormous room in the tower with an artificial sun and planets and an insane\nruler, which seem to encompass the entire tower, which spans the moon and\nearth. The gnostic, fake, highly engineered reality on display has little\nbehind it — the King is not actually hiding behind the wainscot, but when\nhe does appear, he cannot at first be seen because the sun is at his back\n(note the light of the sun almost effacing the existence of the son, here).\n\nWhat do particular images stand for? It seems that the bison which is shot\nby an arrow and called the monarch of the plain, so important in American\nHistory, also seems to grow from the wooden panels of the zodiac (of which\nWolfe is a Taurus born in May, the bull). The bison has been shot to the\nheart (in addition to resonating with the hunting to extinction and the\nloss of that innocent early America, also invokes Sagitarius the archer).\n\nSince Wolfe admits that this story came almost fully grown from a dream,\nwith a bit of polishing, any interpretation has to question — how much\nconscious polishing?\n\n“Once in a rare while, I have a dream so vivid and organized that it can be\nwritten with a minimum of polishing; these dreams are always like\nnightmares, like 'To the Dark Tower Came.' I can't imagine why anyone would\nwant to psycholanalyze me, but if anybody does, that's the place to start.”\n\nIs there enough polish to escape a surreal and imagistic impression with a\nmore concrete, scientific, and traditional narrative structure? Symbolism\n(Wolfe's favorite S concept, no doubt) in Wolfe is always tricky because it\nis surprisingly concrete — in New Sun, water somehow becomes healing,\ndeath, and resurrection in almost every metaphor, and on a re-read it is no\nsurprise that healing will involve a deluge. The symbols somehow become\nconcrete within the plot (as, at least I believe, the Shadow Children\nriding Marshmen in *Fifth Head of Cerberus* clues us into Shadow Children\ninfecting Marsch). This concrete and literal use of symbols sets Wolfe\napart from some other authors (Vronsky riding a horse to death is certainly\na symbol of how he will treat Anna Karenina, for example, but edit out that\nscene and nothing will have changed in the plot — we will merely have less\ninsight into his character in advance).\n\nBorski once posited that the tower represented higher education, and its\ncorruption of literary values and perhaps anti-religious stances shows the\nacademics being cast off the tower by a rather shadowy, winged, vampiric\ninfluence. I am not willing to ascribe this reading to the text, but I do\nfeel that somehow there is a commentary on religion and learning and the\neffects they have on youth. Why does Kent/Youth need to die to inspire the\nboy-king of thirteen to regain sanity? Is it a symbol of sacrificial\nheroism?\n\nLITERARY AND CULTURAL REFERENCES:\n\nThe opening quote from King Lear, in which Edgar spouts nonsense, is\nunfortunately potentially rife with allusive powers: “Child Rowland to the\ndark tower came, His word was still, - Fire, foh, and fum, I smell the\nblood of a British man.” While we know that *King Lear* is clearly\nreferenced here with Gloucester and Kent, it is conceivable that “The Song\nof Roland”, Browning’s poem “Child Rowland to the Dark Tower Came”, and\nJack and the Beanstalk are all invoked. (Does Wolfe dream doggerel\nShakespeare quotations? ) Certainly the quote shows how even mad verse with\nno meaning gains great significance culturally over time — we can read that\nand are instantly reminded of a poem and the story of a Giant falling to\nhis death. Since Shakespeare begins with S, I think he should be the focus\nof our analysis.\n\nQuickly, Lear involves a possibly senile king allowing false words of love\nfrom two insincere daughters to sunder his kingdom as he casts out a less\nobsequious but more loving one. The Earl of Kent is banished for objecting\nto the injustice of this decision, while Gloucester's legitimate and\nillegitimate sons come into conflict, with the illegitimate one tricking\nGloucester into mistrusting his son Edgar (whose quote begins our Wolfe\nstory). Edgar disguises himself as a madman, and also Kent returns in\ndisguise to serve Lear. Gloucester is blinded and wants to jump to his\ndeath, but is dissuaded by Edgar, who convinces Gloucester he has\nmiraculously survived a great fall. This plot element of King Lear\nresonates most with the jump of Kent in the end of Wolfe's story as he\nseeks to become Superman — and inspire the King, perhaps hoping to cure him\nof his insanity in his renewed, impressionable young state. When Lear dies\nin the Shakespearean play, he wants to leave the kingdom to Kent and Edgar,\nbut Kent refuses, saying that he must leave. Gloucester and the King die in\nthe play, but in Wolfe's story Kent is the only one to die (in a suicidal\nleap).\n\nJack and the Bean Stock and the mighty foliage with the castle in the sky,\nending with a mighty fall, could also mimic that leap at the end of Wolfe's\nstory, but the *King Lear* analogies seem strongest.\n\nBesides the tower of the Browning poem, there is little relationships\nbetween Wolfe's story and the poem. In Browning's version, it seems that\nRoland travels across a decimated and forlorn landscape, his fellow knights\nignominiously dead, guided by a mystic he mistrusts but follows anyway, to\nalmost pass by but finally see the dark tower and blow his horn, ending the\npoem. The Song of Roland, a more heroic work, involves the conflict between\nthe Muslims and Charlemagne. Roland here is betrayed by his Uncle, and\nrefuses to blow his horn to call for reinforcements from Charlemagne until\nhis entire regiment perishes from his Uncle Ganelon's treachery. I have\nalways felt the blowing of the horn in the Browning poem acknowledged a\nfutile kind of death given symbolic form in the appearance of the dark\ntower (a goal which is reached but never entered), but there are no horns\nin Wolfe's story, so I see little reason to list either of these works as\nintrinsic to the understanding of the story, as the tower is present in\nShakespeare's nonsense verse as well.\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nThe treatment of S and Gloucester’s association with a mathematical command\nand a physical tool shows the interesting take on letters as almost\nhieroglyphic representations that Wolfe plays with in all manner of ways —\nin describing the letters of the name Johann as character attributes in\n“Silhouette”, in scenes in New Sun in which the word “last” contains a\nserpent and a sword, in “Cues” where missing and misplaced letters are\nindicative of a certain tarot deck, and in the short story “Alphabet” where\ncreation itself seems to be a written endeavor. Certainly the influence of\nBorges and the theosophical musings that liken existence to a word from the\nmouth of God, and even spirit as Logos, influence this presentation. In\nmany ways, “To the Dark Tower” is about this deep symbolic depth in our\nsystems of representation, and perhaps it shows a kind of almost rational\nprogression from dream images to ideal representations onward to the\ncreation of practical symbols and functions that are somehow all indirectly\nrelated, but related nevertheless.\n\nI feel that this is one of the more obvious forays into metafiction that\nsome of Wolfe's more postmodern work occasionally approaches, such as “The\nLast Thrilling Wonder Story”, and as such it is difficult to pin down\nexactly how concrete the conflict and symbols can actually be — ie, can we\ntell what the penned Pisces is, or who the flame eyed attendants of the\nking are?\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nBesides showing the vast connotations of the letter S (or things that look\nlike it), why should the story be so sibilant? Why are there no serpents?\n\n\n\n What do the Bison and the Pisces saved from poisoned waters really\nsymbolize? I have posited that the Bison is the demiurge through its ruling\nof an unspoiled America (Land of the Free and what not) and through its\nconnection to the Bull/Taurus that is Gene Wolfe's Zodiac sign, speaking as\nthe “King” as demiurge and author and also assuming something of the\nqualities of the Judeo Christian God, returning as boy, but that is mere\nsupposition.\n\nWho is the King? He says that he is “scientist” and “sorcerer”. The\nstatement “In the dream of serving others, they have served me” creates a\nfairly Christian ideology (as well as reconstituting himself as a young\nboy), but immediately mentioning the penned whale saved from poison creates\na slightly more negative impression. He seems to be able to transcend time\nand his tower is possibly infinite, but is he truly omnipotent if the rats\ncan eat away his tower and existence fail? It seems that this reality is\nmeant to be “behind” ours and outside of time, because Gloucester knows\nthere are footprints on the moon even though his setting is supposedly the\npast. What are the rats that eat the tower? Is the idea of the death of God\nintrinsic to the concept of the Ubermensch poisoning the King, too? Instead\nof the Superman killing God, the superman here, devoid of actual super\npowers, sacrifices himself to perhaps help renew and inspire the King. Is\nthe story about the hubris of reaching for the heavens in a tower to the\nsky, and is the final sacrifice Kent makes successful?" } ] } ] }