{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6738", "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": 6738, "subject": "Short Story 145*: Counting Cats in Zanzibar", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2015-04-25T02:35:11+00:00", "last": "2015-04-25T02:35:11+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2015-04-25T02:35:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 145*: Counting Cats in Zanzibar", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "#COUNTING CATS IN ZANZIBAR\n\n“Counting Cats in Zanzibar” was first published in 1996 in *Isaac Asimov’s\nScience Fiction Magazine*. It is collected in *Strange Travellers*.\n\n##Summary:\n\nOn an Indonesian vessel in the Sulu Sea near the Philippines, a widow talks\nwith a young man who has given her money for passage. Her first action is\ncounting that money. She dons the underpants she found in Kota Kinabalu\n(the capital of Sabah in East Malaysia) and hides her money. The tropics\nseem to say, “Breathe deep of me while you can” to her. She considers that\nshe could escape to Zamboanga in the Philippines or to Darwin in the\nGalapagos Islands with the money she has.\n\nHer companion greets her with a grammatically corrected quote from\nKipling’s “Mandalay” (see Literary Allusions below) — a quote which was\noriginally intended to represent nostalgia for a free, youthful, and\nforeign passion, but here simply implies the dawn. He says that now she is\nsafe for the duration of the trip.\n\n\"'But you’re not,' she told him, and nearly added Doctor Johnson’s\nobservation that to be on a ship is to be in prison, with the added danger\nof drowning.\"\n\nHe asks about her claim that “things” talk to her, and she responds,\n“Machines. Animals, too. The wind and the rain.” He asks if they ever give\nher quotations, and she responds that perhaps one has. In a glimpse of\nforeshadowing, she watches the shadow of a shark pass under the hull,\nthough she thinks of her companion as a shark in this scene. They further\ndiscuss Kipling’s poem and the extent of the British Empire, and she claims\nthat she is actually Dutch rather than British, though he thinks she talks\nlike an American.\n\nIn extreme dialect which she claims would have been a real accent in\nDickens’s day, she says that she has heard a widow is worth at least 25\nordinary women. When asked if she can speak Dutch, she responds in German:\n“Gewiss, Narr!” — which means, “Certainly, you fool!” (or something to that\neffect). [While Dutch is a Germanic language, she is clearly not employing\nit here]. She hears the thrum of an ancient engine as a warning:\n“Dontrustim-dontrustim-dontrustim.”\n\nShe says, “I never thought you were really so anxious to go that you’d pay\nme five thousand to arrange this.”\n\nThe scene cuts to them at breakfast, with her quoting W. Somerset Maugham:\n“To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.” She\ninterprets the signs of their server for her companion, calling him “the\nbig policeman”. He asks if she is a widow, since “only a widow would\nremember that business about widows coming over people.”\n\nShe responds with an altered biblical reference from the book of Job in\nwhich she replaces a war horse with an inorganic ax: “Aha, a deduction The\nbattle ax scenteth the battle afar.” (See Literary Allusions below for the\nimplications of this substitution). After further banter in which she says\nshe will not tell the truth, she states, “You’re looking for an excuse to\nseduce me,” and clasps his hand, which “felt like muscle and bone beneath\nliving skin. Then, quoting Felix Riesenberg’s description of the sea as a\ncold and careless male seducer, she even further hastens their flirtation —\nsoon revealing that she is ?wearing pink underdrawers, — aflame with\npassion.” At the same time, she contemplates his artificial nature and even\neliminating him:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How many of these polyglot sailors would it take to throw him overboard,\nand what would they want for it? How much aluminum, how much plastic, how\nmuch steel? Four would probably be enough, she decided; and settled on six\nto be safe. Fifty dollars each should be more than sufficient, and even if\nthere was quite a lot of plastic he would sink like a stone." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He says she would be nice looking if she wore makeup, and then eats what\nthe server brings without comment. They discuss the possibility that he is\na policeman, and she attempts to get a reaction from him:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "?I wasn’t going to tell you, but this brown stuff is really made from the\npenises of water buffaloes. They slice them lengthwise and stick them into\nthe vaginas of cow water buffaloes, obtained when the cows are slaughtered." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Then they wrap the whole mess in banana leaves and bury it in a pig pen.\n\nHe merely says that they must sweat a lot, considering the “salty tang”.\nShe asks if he can joke, and he says he isn’t sure, but that he came from\nBuffalo, New York to get her (punning on her food story, she thinks at\nfirst). She asks if he is going to arrest her and why he would pay so much\nso that they could be perhaps the only two passengers on the ship, also\nshowing her facility with the language of their server.(Her \"*Silakan gula*\n\" means, \"Please, sugar\").\n\nShe says that she stole nothing, leaving the country with one bag and less\nthan 20,000 dollars.\n\n“And you’ve been running ever since.”\n\n“For the wanderer, time doesn’t exist.”\n\nHe responds, “This is something you should say, not me ?But I’ll say it\nanyhow. You stole God’s fingertip — But you didn’t break the law. He’s\noutside everybody’s jurisdiction.”\n\nWhen the sugar arrives, he says that both he and humans can only taste four\nbasic categories. He then goes on to say that he has a list of seven\npseudonyms she has used in her perennial flight — when she claims to be\nDutch, she is Tilly de Groot. She says she really is Dutch and of German\ndescent, and identifies herself as The Flying Dutchwoman. When he almost\nsays her maiden name, she cuts him off, proclaiming it, “Something I’ve\nforgotten.”\n\nAt this point, she quotes Anias Nin’s autobiographical novel *Seduction of\nthe Minotaur*: “The farther she traveled into unknown places, the more\nprecisely she could find within herself a map showing only the cities of\nthe interior.”\nHe nods as if he understands, and begs her to come home, to the company\nwhich is responsible for implementing the creation of artificial\nintelligences such as himself. He starts to mention her husband’s\ndiscovery, and her expression reveals that it was not really her husband’s\nafter all: “Yes. The first hint came from me. I thought I could control my\nexpression better.”\n\nHe says, “Thanks for my life. I was thinking of that picture, you know”\nThe finger of God reaching out to Adam? All this time I’ve been thinking\nyou stole it. Then when I saw how you looked — You didn’t steal God’s\nfinger. It was you.\nShe reveals that her husband developed it, but they decided to keep it\nprivate. After his death, she “wiped out his files and smashed his hard\ndrive with the hammer he used to hang pictures” for her.\n\nHe says that he is capable of lying, and warns her of this fact.\n\n“But not of harming me, or letting me be harmed.” He responds, “I didn’t\nknow you knew,” but she has already seen and heard that in the news and in\nmagazines.\nHe reveals he wanted to get her alone so that they could talk and “maybe\nhold hands or something” — so that she could see he isn’t so bad. He asks,\n“Are you afraid we’ll outnumber you” Crowd you out? We cost too much to\nmake. There’s only five of us, and there’ll never be more than a couple of\nhundred, probably. He says there are more than a billion people in China,\nand she quotes Samuel Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes”: “Let\nobservation with extensive view, survey mankind from China to Peru.” (See\nLiterary Allusions below).\n\nHe says even in a hundred years there will only be two or three of his kind\nin China, not even enough to fill the room. “But they will fill it from the\ntop,” she says.\n“That’s the trouble, huh” Even if we treat you better than you treat\nyourselves? We will, you know. We’ve got to, it’s our nature. (Here he\nasks if a green orange is ripe - it seems that in tropical climates, the\nlack of cold weather prevents ripe oranges from ever turning orange - which\nseems to be a metaphor for external appearances and the proper location,\nsomehow). He mentions that the previous night she quoted the\ntitle-inspiring *Walden* statement about how it wasn't worth the time to go\nhalfway around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.\n\nShe says that in the night, she realized even when he wasn't talking he was\ntelling her over and over what he really was, and, \"What you may not know\nis that even while you lie -especially while you lie, perhaps - you cannot\nprevent yourself from revealing the truth. You can't harm me, you say.\"\n\nSpeculating on some level that he must resent that, since it is what humans\nwould do, she also says, \"You quoted that bit from Thoreau back at me to\nimply that my travels had been useless, all of my changes of appearance,\nidentity and place futile. Yet I delayed the coming of your kind for\nalmost a generation.\"\n\nHe says she can return with him as companion and bodyguard, also saying,\n\"You're going to be kind of a saint to us. To me, you already are.\"\n\nShe quotes Shakespeare's *Love's Labour's Lost*:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"From women's eyes this doctrine I derive - they sparkle still the right\nPromethean fire. They are the books, the arts, the academes, that show,\ncontain, and nourish all the world.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "She refuses to be his Prometheus, and takes half his orange, so \"it should\nnot perish in vain.\"\n\nHe says she is pathetic with her few books and belongings, always\ntraveling. She invites him to her cabin. He reveals that he is two years\nold, but \"Like you said for travelers time isn't real.\"\n\nShe tells him to come after sunset, and then they can throw the books out\nthe porthole, which he doesn't want. He promises her a whole library when\nshe gets home: \"Real ones, CD-ROM, cube, whatever.\"\n\nShe reveals that in the night she spent a hundred dollars to get the radio\noperator to send a message three times, indicating who she was sailing\nwith, and stating that she expected him to try and kill her.\n\nHe says he wouldn't do that, and she says he would be subjected to a great\ndeal of checking, with added circuitry to avoid danger.\n\n\"Not when I bring you back in one piece ... You're thinking about killing\nyourself, about trying again. You've tried twice already that we know\nabout.\" She says it has been four times, once even putting a pistol in her\nmouth which tasted too much of oil to pull the trigger. She ends by saying,\n\"If I give you my word that I won't kill myself before you see me tonight,\nwill you accept it?\" He says he wants her promise not to do it at all, and,\nlooking upon her rice \"as she pretended to consider\", she promises upon her\nhonor and everything she holds dear to not take her life or attempt to take\nit, and to tell him if she changes her mind.\n\nHe asks if she wants to die. \"They catch you by the throat, questions like\nthat. ... It's when you want to live. Life is a mystery as deep as ever\ndeath can be; yet oh, how sweet it is to us, this life we live and see!\"\nShe makes him promise to leave her alone until the night comes.\n\nWhen he tries to say good-bye to her using her married name, she claps her\nhands over her ears. She tells the server that she is afraid in his tongue,\nand he calls over several sailors." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "She described what she wanted, and seeing that they were incredulous lied\nand insisted, finding neither very easy in her choppy Malay. Thirty\ndollars apiece was refused, fifty refused with reluctance, and seventy\naccepted. \"Kalam ini,\" she told them. (\"This night.\")\"Sweat kami peri\nkamarku.\" [The final words mean \"When we leave my room\"]\nThey nodded." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That night, after they become lovers and lie side by side, she wants to go\noutside to look at the stars. She compares the moon to a clipping from one\nof God's fingernails, and they watch a shuttle from Singapore leave for a\nlarger ship headed to Mars, and she realizes he wants to go there.\n\nShe says, \"I need to warn you ... I tried to this morning but I don't think\nyou paid much attention.\" His eyes seem full of wonder as he looks at the\nsky. She says he is in danger, and must act to save himself, as his\ninstincts demand. She assures him that she wants to live as much as she did\nin the morning, but he needs to consider what will happen to him if she\ndoesn't make it back under his care." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A gentle wind from the east sang of life and love in beautiful words that\nshe could not quite catch; and she longed to stop her ears as she had after\nbreakfast when he was about to pronounce her husband's name." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "She says that whoever tries to put an end to the Flying Dutchmen, a vessel\nthat never reaches its port and sinks, will become the new Dutchman. She\nasks him a favor - to read a Kipling poem in her book. He gravitates onto\nanother quote first:\n\"If you think you're too small to be effective, you've never been in bed\nwith a mosquito.\" She says that one has helped her through some bad\nmoments. He says mosquitoes don't have to bite him to inconvenience him. He\nturns to the Kipling poem \"The Undertaker's Horse\" and reads, \"It may be\nyou wait your time, Beast - quit the sunlight, cut the rhyming, drop the\nglass - follow after with the others, where some dusky heathen smothers us\nwith marigolds in lieu of English grass.\" He asks if she sees him as the\nBeast.\n\nShe says there lovemaking was like incest:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Her instincts warned her to keep her feelings to herself, but if they were\nnot spoken now ... \"I felt, almost, as though I were doing all those things\nwith my son. I've never borne a child, except for you. ... You shouldn't\nbe in the world at all. We shouldn't be ruled by things that we have made,\neven though they're human, and I know that's going to happen. But it was\ngood - so very,very good - to be loved as I was in there. Will you take my\nbooks, please? Not as a gift from your mother, because you men care nothing\nfor gifts your mothers give you. But as a gift from your first lover,\nsomething to recall your first love? If you won't, I'm going to throw them\nin the sea here and now.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He says he wants them both. She tells him to read them and remember what he\nread. They kiss, and she holds her breath until she realizes that he has no\nneed to breath, \"and might hold his breath forever.\" She whispers good-bye\nto him, and he says he has much more to tell her, in the morning." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Nodding was the hardest thing that she had ever done. On the other side of\nthe railing, little waves repeated \"No, no, no, no-\" as though they would\ngo on thus forever." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"In the morning,\" he said again; and she watched his pale, retreating back\nuntil hands seized and lifted her. She screamed and saw him whirl and take\nthe first long, running step; but not ever he was as quick as that. By the\ntime his right foot struck the deck, she was over the rail and falling." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The sea slapped and choked her. She spat and gasped, but drew only water\ninto her mouth and nostrils; and the water, the bitter sea water, closed\nabove her." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At her elbow the shark said, \"How nice of you to drop in for dinner!\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "##Commentary:\n\nWhile a fairly straightforward tale, the irony and pathos on display for\nboth the primary characters makes any claim of an authorial moral position\ncomplicated. The artificial lifeforms tries to save her, and the tender\nmoments they share on board are real, transforming from worship to\nsomething more touching. The widow begins her day counting the money that\nshe will ultimately use to secure her own death at the hands of the sailors\nfor seventy dollars apiece and damn her artificial companion to a life like\nhers, eternally on the run — as she says, when you try to stop the curse of\nthe Flying Dutchman, you become simply another iteration of the curse.\nOstensibly, her death will serve the greater good for purely organic and\nnatural humans, who will not be placed in a position inferior to a group\nwith some innately superior features. Yet at the heart of the story lies\nthis vast emotional pain: that two lonely people find each other, and an\nideological purpose drives one to destroy her own life and doom the other\nto a kind of life forever on the run, though it would be easier for them\nboth to simply, perhaps naively, stay with each other rather than destroy\nthe thing they have found.\n\nThe story is bookended by actual personified dialogue from things generally\nconsidered unable to speak: The freshness of the sun and the cool actually\nsays, “Breathe deep of me while you can” and the shark which consumes her\ngreets her with, “How nice of you to drop in for dinner!” Of course, the\nfinal line of dialogue from the shark is particularly jarring, for it is\npresented as an actual quote.\nThis concept of hearing a voice where there should be none is commented\nupon by the (artificial) male character, and she responds that machines and\nother objects actually do talk to her — of course, he speaks to her, too.\nImmediately upon saying this, “she watched the dim shadow that was a shark\nglide under the hull and back out again. No shark’s ever talked to me, she\nthought except him.” This symbolic association of the artificial human and\nthe shark is quite telling, for it is the ability she has to make the\ninanimate speak to her and to humanity at large which results in the\nnecessity of her death. No matter how she tries, she cannot silence the\nvoices of the objects around her, for which she serves as the animating\nfingertip of God. The shark will speak to her at the end, in one of the\nmost ironically disjunctive endings to be found in Wolfe’s body of work,\nafter all of the romantic and touching implication of the previous scene.\n\nWhile a simple tale, it is particularly dense with allusions. Some of them\nare simply witty, and others have a thematic application. Perhaps in some\nway this is a manner of holding on to a vanished past and giving meaning to\nan empty, constantly moving present. The yearning for the exotic, the\ndisappointment of the modern world, and the zeitgeist of the expatriate\nartistic generation are all on display in these quotes and references,\ncreating much the same mood and atmosphere for “Tilly De Groot” in her\nself-imposed exile as the despair and emptiness that lurks in the backdrop\nof famous, sometimes suicidal modern figures like Hemingway. Tilly’s\nposition can be boiled down to the idea that no matter how noble the\nconstruct’s motives may be, it is still by its very nature and existence a\nthreat to humanity. This is not a very common attitude espoused by Wolfe’s\nstories, but strains of this could also be seen in “All the Hues of Hell”,\nwhere natural and artificial life intersected at a point rife with the\nimagery of hell. She believes that the only thing that can save the\nsituation is orchestrating her own death - though it seems that she has\nfound someone (or something) which would worship her and give both of their\nlives meaning. It is her stubborn refusal to accept this and select death\nalone over life together that makes the story such a complicated one\nemotionally.\n\n##Name(s):\n\n*Tilly De Groot*: the pseudonym of the widow when she is using her Dutch\npersona, supposedly the name of her mother’s friend. De Groot means “big”\nor? large?, and Tilly means “mighty in battle”. She refuses to hear both\nher maiden name and her old married name, denying who she once was.\n\n##Literary allusions:\n\nIn typical Wolfe style, this rather straightforward near future SF tale is\nsaturated with poetic and literary allusions, though one almost certainly\nrelies on Asimov’s future schema for the guidelines which govern robots,\nthe infamous Three Laws of Robotics. It seems that, more or less, the\nartificial intelligence which “Tilly de Groot” has helped create is also\ngoverned by an inability to hurt a human being, and Tilly’s own ability to\nstretch the truth and passively cause her own death are dark mirrors of the\nmandate for truthfulness and the caveat against inaction allowing harm in\nAsimov’s laws (though this particular artificial life form says he can lie,\nthough Tilly would be able to read through his deceptions, anyway). Tilly\nalso seems to bear a kind of relationship to Asimov’s robot psychologist,\nDr. Susan Calvin, who at least once is prompted to destroy a robot which\nhas become entirely too human — though in this case, Tilly acts to destroy\nherself to change the popular perception of artificial life, killing the\nidea that they are safe and harmless to humanity rather than killing an\nindividual robot.\n\nOne of the features of Wolfe’s near future SF seems to be an intense\nsaturation of quotes and poetic and literary allusions, from works such as\n“The Nebraskan and the Nereid”, “The Woman Who Loved the Centaur Pholus”,to\neven “In Looking Glass Castle”, and this tendency seems one of Wolfe’s most\ntraditional narrative ploys. Much like a 19th century novelist, many of\nhis works are purposely situated in a relationship to a particular\nphilosophical, literary, or historical context. A complete lack of\nfamiliarity with the source allusion sometimes makes his short stories seem\nmore mysterious than they actually are (such as “Melting”) — though when he\nplays with obvious and well-known tropes, the resonance can be satisfying\non even one read (as in “In the House of Gingerbread”). In this particular\nstory, the surface struggle between artificial life and humanity and the\nsuicidal decision of Tilly, made to stop the advance of the intelligence\nthat she helped to create in an effort to preserve mankind, is obvious\nwithout the allusions. However, it is still worth tracing them.\n\nIn this particular story, I think that the theme is one of appropriated\nwords: the inanimate objects which come to life speak with the words of\nhumanity, and in all of the quotes and references we have the sense that\nall of their discussions are thematically predicated upon a subtext which\ncame before but is not necessarily strictly appropriate — thus revealing a\ntheme of ideas removed from their context, as free will and intellective\nability are taken out of their human context and applied to something very\ndifferent than a human being, though it wears the external shape of one,\nand even speaks as one. Yet still, there is something vital and true which\nthey reach in their brief communion, and these quotations are all Tilly\nholds on to form the past - quotations that she bequeaths to her artificial\nlover.\n\nThe title references Thoreau’s *Walden*, one which challenges the idea that\na change in landscape will actually change the human soul : \"It is not\nworth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar?. No\nmatter where one goes, the essence of humanity and individuality will be\nessentially the same, and the same things one might do at home will be\nthere in the new, exotic location, with no escape from the self and who one\nreally is.\n\nIn addition to the title quote, soon the artificial man says, \"The dawn\ncomes up like thunder out of China across the bay,\" a reference to Rudyard\nKipling's poem “Mandalay”, though the original reads, — An' the dawn comes\nup like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!? The poem is from the point of\nview of an old soldier who has returned to London but yearns for the\nexotic, passionate world of his youth assigned to Burma, where idolatry\ncould be burned away with passion — a poem of nostalgia and a yearning for\notherness. It is notable that the artificial life form cleans up the\ngrammar and makes the quote uniform in its adherence to standard English,\nthen claims that English people do not really talk in the vernacular\n“Tilly” uses to describe the worth of widows. Tilly has a kind of\ncontradictory impulse, yearning for her past but running from it even to\nthe point of death.\n\nTilly also quotes Johnson several times - the first, in context, concerns\nhis manservant Francis Barber, who served aboard a ship, a service from\nwhich Johnson sought to free him, saying: \"No man will be a sailor who has\ncontrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being\nin a jail, with the chance of being drowned.\" (Boswell)\n\nIn addition, \"To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times\na day,\" famously quotes Maugham (who spent a large portion of his life in\nFrance, no doubt to escape lunch and dinner)? praising the modern English\nbreakfast, but condemning the other meals. The quotes are not limited to\nEnglish Literature, though many of them seem to feature the British\nEmpire. A much older biblical reference, in \"The battle-axe scenteth the\nbattle afar,\" is an alteration of a passage concerning a fearless horse\nwhich enters battle simply for the joy of it in Job 39:25. This shift from\nthe original beast that serves blindly to personifying a steel instrument\nof war is of course related to the unnatural being with whom she speaks —\nthis time, it is not a flesh and blood horse which revels in the battle,\nbut the instrument itself given strange volition — comparing him to a\nbattle ax rather than a flesh and blood horse. It is her subtle method of\nrevealing that she already knows he is not a flesh and blood creature.\n\n\"The sea has always been a seducer, a careless, lying fellow,\" is a quote\nfrom Felix Riesenberg in *Vignettes of the Sea*, which continues in very\ngender specific language: \"The sea has always been a seducer, a careless\nlying fellow, not feminine, as many writers imagine, but strongly masculine\nin its allurement. The king of the sea, with his whiskers of weed and his\ntrident and dolphins, truly represents the main and gives it character. The\nsea, like a great sultan, supports thousands of ships, his lawful wives.\nThese he caresses and chastises as the case may be. This explains the\nfeminine gender of all proper vessels.\" Tilly uses the quote once again to\nhighlight his inhuman and uncaring nature — though he is masculine, he is\nas devoid of an individual identity in this metaphor, instead represented\nby a vast, cold, and careless temptation.\n\nTilly also quotes Anais Nin’s *Seduction of the Minotaur*, an introspective\nlook at a woman who has travelled to Mexico from her home in New York,\nexploring the solitary isolation of humanity conjoined with the disjunction\nbetween modern civilization and a more traditional society, almost pulled\nfrom the past. Of course her journey reveals the self, having the same\ntheme as the quote from *Walden* which forms the title of this short story.\nTilly’s travels to remote locations are ultimately a failed attempt to\nescape her own knowledge. (The Wolfe-Wiki incorrectly attributes this quote\nto Jeanette Winterson’s *The Passion*.)\n\n\"The finger of God reaching out to Adam\" obviously refers to Michelangelo’s\npainting, but here it is the secret that only Tilly represents — the gift\nof life and sentience to the lifeless, the ability to speak and listen to\nthe inanimate. What happens once that creation has free will and volition?\nShould humanity take upon itself this power and responsibility?\n\nThe main character later quotes the first two lines of Johnson’s satire of\nJuvenal, “The Vanity of Human Wishes”:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Let Observation with extensive View," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Survey Mankind, from China to Peru;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And watch the busy Scenes of crouded Life;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "O'er spread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Where wav'ring Man, betray'd by vent'rous Pride," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppres'd," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "For Gold his Sword the Hireling Ruffian draws," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "For Gold the hireling Judge distorts the Laws;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Wealth heap'd on Wealth, nor Truth nor Safety buys," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Dangers gather as the Treasures rise." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "New Forms arise, and diff'rent Views engage," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Superfluous lags the Vet'ran on the Stage," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Who frown with Vanity, who smile with Art," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And ask the latest Fashion of the Heart," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What Care, what Rules your heedless Charms shall save," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Each Nymph your Rival, and each Youth your Slave?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "An envious Breast with certain Mischief glows," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And Slaves, the Maxim tells, are always Foes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Against your Fame with Fondness Hate combines," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Rival batters, and the Lover mines." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "With distant Voice neglected Virtue calls," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Less heard, and less the faint Remonstrance falls;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Tir'd with Contempt, she quits the slipp'ry Reign," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And Pride and Prudence take her Seat in vain." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Above, we can see some of the themes of the story, such as her fear that\nthe creation of new forms will make humanity superfluous, the concept that\nslaves are foes, and the certainty that gold can buy any outcome. The poem\nconcludes with an almost existential plea (though couched in a theistic\nphilosophy), that humanity must create its own happiness, which is not\ntruly found in the external world:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yet with the Sense of sacred Presence prest," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "When strong Devotion fills thy glowing Breast," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Obedient Passions, and a Will resign'd;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "For Love, which scarce collective Man can fill;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "For Patience sov'reign o'er transmuted Ill;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "For Faith, that panting for a happier Seat," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Thinks Death kind Nature's Signal of Retreat:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "These Goods for Man the Laws of Heav'n ordain," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "These Goods he grants, who grants the Pow'r to gain;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "With these celestial Wisdom calms the Mind," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And makes the Happiness she does not find. (Johnson)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The quote which begins \"From women's eyes this doctrine I derive...\" is\nfrom Shakespeare's *Love's Labour's Lost*, one which views women as an\nideal and inspiration. However, the play also shows the characters in their\nobsessive need to fulfill a role and actually deny or delay love, and we\nsee the same effect here: all of the work that our artificial man has put\ninto retrieving his spiritual mother and lover is wasted.\n\nThe final poem quoted is from Kipling's? The Undertaker's Horse?. Here are\nthe last three stanzas, which might be of interest to even casual readers\nof Wolfe:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It may be you wait your time, Beast," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Till I write my last bad rhyme, Beast?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Quit the sunlight, cut the rhyming, drop the glass ?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Follow after with the others," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Where some dusky heathen smothers" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Us with marigolds in lieu of English grass." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Or, perchance, in years to follow," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I shall watch your plump sides hollow," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "See Carnifex (gone lame) become a corse?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "See old age at last o?erpower you," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And the Station Pack devour you," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I shall chuckle then, O Undertaker’s Horse!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But to insult, jibe, and quest, I’ve" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Still the hideously suggestive" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Trot that hammers out the unrelenting text," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And I hear it hard behind me" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In what place soe?er I find me:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "?Sure to catch you sooner or later. Who’s the next? (Kipling, “The\nUndertaker’s Horse”)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Obviously the threat of death is here given the form of a randomly trotting\nhorse that always follows somewhere, though in the second to last stanza\nthe poet imagines that perhaps he shall see the end of this beast, the\nvehicle of death at last devoured by the station pack.\n\nThe quote, \"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never\nbeen in bed with a mosquito? has been attributed to both Betty Reese, and,\nwith slightly modified verbiage, to the Dali Lama — of course it means that\neven small, insignificant things or gestures can still inconvenience and\ndisturb a creature or thing many times greater in size or importance. Here,\none woman's death will change humanity's attitude toward artificial life.\n\n##Connection with other works\n\nThe pity and pathos on display here, ending in a rather disjunctive ending,\nmirrors the feel of \"In the House of Gingerbread\", though that story played\nwith fairy tales rather than quotations and the science fictional concept\nof artificial life. Wolfe's take on artificial intelligence is never\nsimple, and the character here is actually loving and heroic, though Tilly\nbelieves humanity should never be ruled by the works of its own hands.\nThis is perhaps close to \"Eyebem\" and harshly opposed to the concepts in\n\"Of Relays and Roses\" or the picture of chems from *The Book of the Long\nSun*. Our main artificial intelligence in this story is far more noble and\nless subtextual creepy than Kyle from \"All the Hues of Hell\".\n\n##Resources\n\n-Boswell, James. *The Life of Johnson*. Project Guttenberg. 25 January\n2013. Web. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1564/1564-h/1564-h.htm\n\n-Johnson, Samuel. “The Vanity of Human Wishes.” Rutgers.edu. 2010. Web. 24\nApril 2015. http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/vanity49.html\n\n-Kipling, Rudyard. \"Mandalay.\" Poetry Lover's Page. 2013. Web. 24 April\n2015. http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/mandalay.html\n\n-Kipling, Rudyard. “The Undertaker’s Horse.” The Kipling Society. 2015.\nWeb. 24 April 2014.http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_horse.htm\n\n-Riesenberg, Felix. *Vignettes of the Sea*. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and\nCo., 1926." } ] } ] }