{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/941",
    "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": 941,
    "subject": "To the Dark Tower Came",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-08T21:34:14+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-08T21:34:14+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0016-0020@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-08T21:34:14+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) To the Dark Tower Came",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "\"To the Dark Tower Came\" seems interpretable in several different ways, so\nI'm hoping others will post their interpretations. mantis has already\nlinked it to \"At the Point of Capricorn\" and I'm sure born-again poster Jim\nJordan could wrangle some Christian symbology from it. Anybody else care to\nwade into the fray?\n\nMe, I see TtDTC as being primarily allegorical--as befits a story\nliteralized from a vivid dream, I suppose, since this is how apparently the\nstory came to Gene Wolfe. \n\nThe tower represents knowledge; more specifically, the knowledge that has\nbeen accumulated during one's lifetime. One of its commonest names is Spire\nSans Summit; you never stop accumulating knowledge while you live, and you\ncan never acquire all that there is. There's also no up or down in the\ntower; knowledge can be pursued in any direction. There are lots of \"throne\nrooms,\" perhaps symbolizing kingdoms of knowledge, i.e., interests special\nto one's livelihood or avocation, where one is at least a localized\nauthority. Occasionally, the body of knowledge has a grander scale and\nperhaps might be deemed a universal truth or dictate of science; this might\nbe the orrery encountered.\n\nKent and Gloucester are Youth and Learning, respectively--GW tells us this\nhimself. (Also note Kent's association with his comic book namesake, the\nubermensch). The two might also be Astolpho and Oliver from The Song of\nRoland.  They are knights aspirants (the child-ren of the epigraph), or\ncourtiers in service to the king, who for obvious reasons I'll call Lear.\nLear symbolizes the brain, and he may be senile; but the etymology of\n'senile' is given an alternate spin by Gloucester, suggesting it may relate\nmore to antiquity (i.e., while the neocortex is recent, it sits atop a much\nmore primitive brainstem that we've inherited from our animal forebears)\nthan madness. Senile doesn't necessarily have to mean decrepit of mind\nhere, although by the story's end it sure seems to.\n\nGloucester and Kent have a semi-silly argument about whether what they're\nseeing outside the window is fog or clouds (\"It's a tv!\" scream I. \"No, it\nisn't!\" screams everyone else), at the conclusion of which Kent says, \"I\nbelieve in intellectual democracy; I know that I am right, but I concede\nthe possibility that you're right too.\" Perhaps Gene Wolfe is trying to\ntell us here that various intrepretations of his work are possible and each\nmay be valid. Witness the two different etymologies for 'senile.' Also\nthis, from the intro, in reference to Westwind: \"When I wrote this\nparticular story, I was speculating upon what God might do if only He had\nthe technology. Or at least that's what I believe now. Others have found a\ngreat many other things in there, and sixteen years is a long time.\"\nPerhaps this \"democracy of ideas\" explains why Gene Wolfe is so reluctant\nto answer specific questions about his work. Or as Gloucester asserts: \"I\nwon't argue definitions with you.\"\n\nThe ivy-climbers outside the tower conflate a number of ideas for me: they\nare the jack-and-jills who climb the beanstalk hoping to find gold at the\ntop, in the giant's castle, as well as perhaps Ivy Leaguers or Iv[or]y\nTower aspirants. Is Wolfe saying these people are pursuing false goals and\nthat smugness of intellect (or the assumption of exclusivity) is as foolish\nas staking one's future on a handful of magic beans? Are academics more\ninterested in salaries and tenure than teaching people to think? Is the\nvampire bat--\"shamed by its own malignancy\"--the student populace who wish\nto absorb intellectual nourishment from the faculty rather than nourish\nthemselves through self-development? (Note how the spittle of Kent/Youth\nresembles the skull of the vampire.) Both climber and bat seem contrasted\nwith those who *truly* attempt to improve the lot of mankind, but are\nassassinated (Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, et al). \n\n[The bat might also represent the harpies Astolpho rescues Prester John\nfrom in Song of Roland.] \n\nAccumulating knowledge is also difficult and sometimes tiring, Wolfe seems\nto imply. Note how both Kent and Gloucester wish \"to courtier no more.\" The\npursuit of knowledge may take one as well into labyrinthine realms, where\nthe maze is as much vertical as horizontal (cf. the tower as abyss) and the\ndark minotaur waits--in TtDTC this may be the zodiacal talking bison, who\nrepresents the dark side of Daedalean knowledge. (Einstein, seeking to\nunlock the universe, paves the way for atomic weaponry; \"A little knowledge\nis a dangerous thing,\" etc., etc.)\n\nBut perhaps the chief danger to an individual's pursuit of knowledge is\ntime itself, and biological aging--symbolized by the rats of the story. Not\nonly do they kill Kent/Youth, but they're eating away at the foundation of\nthe tower, and when Lear appears at the end of the story, he may be truly\nsenile in the conventional sense, having reverted to childhood, attended by\nbacchantes who might serve his physical needs, but whose eyes are votive\ncandles lit to a life no longer possible. \n\nAs for the psychoanalytical angle mentioned by Wolfe in his intro, while a\nFreudian might guess the dream symbolized a fear of impotence, my best take\non it is that Gene Wolfe fears the knibbling of rats at his brain and the\ndiminishment of his mental capabilities over time. \n\nAny of you yet experiencing tip-of-the-tongue phenomena, where the name or\nthe title you're seeking lays just beyond mental grasping and it's driving\nyou crazy? \n\nHi ho, the dairy-oh, the rat eats the cheese.\n\nCall me Gorgonzola.\n\nRobert Borski (Emile's brother)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}