{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/685",
    "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": 685,
    "subject": "The Shrike and Dante",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-30T18:14:56+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-30T18:14:56+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0012-0022@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-30T18:14:56+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The Shrike and Dante",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "One of the scenes I've puzzled over most in FIFTH HEAD I call the Shrike\nEngima and it begins the \nfinal novella of the book, VRT.\n\nIn it the officer assigned to review Marsh's case record picks up VRT's\nschool composition book and reads the following, as Victor, in describing\ntwo birds, writes :  \"One was a skull-shrike, and the other was a bird that\nthe shrike had...\" The ellipsis ends the sentence, but I feel the next word\nwould be impaled if finished. The shrike impales its prey on thorns\n(Roncevaux is French for thorn) and moreover has a reputation for\nbloodthirstiness, often killing more than it can eat. At first I thought\nthis scene symbolically recapitulated the death of Maitre by Number Five,\nwho kills--impales--his father with a scalpel, but later, when the junior\nofficer assigned to review Marsch/VRT's case reads of Marsch's being\nscratched by thorns after an encounter with the tire-tiger, he interrupts\nhis reading and goes back and specifically rereads the two sentences about\nthe shrike. I therefore have always believed the shrike scene had\nadditional significance. But what? \n\nThen recently in a communique from Professor Andre-Driussi, Chair of\nLiterature at the Universite d'Urth, I was startled to read his conjecture,\nin responding to the murderous/suicidal impulses of the Wolfe clan, about\nhow maybe FIFTH HEAD was \"a descent in the Inferno, from the woods of the\nsuicides to the realm of the patricides.\"\n\nThis immediately kicked free all sorts of associations, from Number Five as\nDante, Phaedrea as Beatrice and Mr. Million as Virgil (another V--and there\nis a Virgil quote in FH that David recites).\n\nBut more importantly \"woods of the suicides\" reminded me that some of the\nsuicides in INFERNO's seventh circle--Piero Delle Vigne, the advisor to the\nEmporer Frederick, e.g.--were _imprisoned_ in a thorn bush. Once again I\nthought of the Wolfe clan, and specifically the very first member of the\nclan, who opted for suicide in allowing his brain to be scanned into Mr.\nMillion. Cool, I thought. There's also the quasi-suicides of the second and\nthird Maitres, who are killed by clonal versions of themselves\n\nBut then I went back to VRT and picked up the narrative, with the junior\nofficer coming back to Marsch's journal, which he has put down, no doubt\nhaving free asscociated Marsch's mention of thorns with Roncevaux (again,\nFrench for thorns).\n\nIn the very next extract he reads Dr. Marsch is bitten by VRT's abo\ncatgirl. i.e., he's metaphorically \"impaled,\" _completing_ the second\nsentence in Victor's school composition book. \n\nThe _very next_ entry in the journal, however, dated one day later, is\nclearly Victor's. \n\n\"Hand still bad, as you can see from the writing. Without the boy I don't\nknow what I'll do. He has done everything, most of the work, for the entire\ntrip.\" (p. 234)\n\nMarsch, in other words, has been killed by Victor (Marsch=bird impaled by\nshrike), and VRT, to complete the Dantean thorn connection, has committed\nmetaphorical suicide, abandoning his previous identity and taking on that\nof Marsch--all this adumbrated, hologram-style, at the beginning of VRT in\nwhat is not even two complete sentences. Zowie! No wonder I'm a Wolfe\nafficionado.\n\n Robert Borski "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}