{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1212",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1212,
    "subject": "Memory, Identity, Spirit, Blood (beware of the spoilers?)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-02-21T13:23:23+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-21T13:23:23+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0323@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes",
        "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-21T13:23:23+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Memory, Identity, Spirit, Blood (beware of the spoilers?)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "0. Okay, I've just finished RttW & have 200+ messages \nsitting here waiting for me to read them (which will \nprobably take me damnear as long as reading the book \ndid). But some first impressions and ponderings, \nuntaint by others' comments, before I begin reading...\n\n1. My first reaction is, of all things, disappointment. \n\n1.1 I admit, right up front, that it is quite possibly \nthe best thing Mr Wolfe has written to date. Yet somehow... \nI just didn't _like_ it as much as I did the previous volumes.\n\n1.1.2 Perhaps I was expecting the Sun, Moon, and Stars, with \nthe contents of Schrafft's candy store and/or Sak's Fifth \nAve. thrown in for good measure; perhaps my expectations were \nso high that nothing would have made me happy.\n\n1.2 But there it is. Mr Wolfe keeps getting better, but\nsomehow he missed me on this one. (I will still reread it\nin future; I'm sure there's much I missed, and perhaps in\nrereading I'll get more \"pure reading satisfaction.\" I\ncertainly found that to be the case with Long Sun.)\n\n2. At this point, it appears that one of Wolfe's \"great \nthemes\" is the relation of memory and identity. \n\n2.1 I reread the whole eleven volumes prior, beginning \naround Christmas time, and came parlously close to the \nBig Secret of RttW in IGJ -- you may recall, Mucor shows \nup for the first time and says, \"Hello, Silk. Hello, Horn.\" \nOkay, says I, there's something important here. \n\n2.2 Then, in RttW, Pig sees Mucor and it all comes together: \nMucor -- in her \"astral\" form -- sees, and is seen, with \neyes of the spirit (which is, perhaps, why some people see \nher more clearly than others. So it's clear that, in some \nspiritual sense, \"the narrator\" is both Horn and Silk -- \nSilkhorn? \n\n2.2.1 The blattidaean brain chunked on that awhile, and \ncame to comparison with Maytera Marble (who was also Maytera \nRose), and her trouble \"integrating the software\" of the two \npersonae. Calling Seawrack Hyacinth now makes a great deal \nof sense, n'est-ce pas?\n\n2.2.2 Much in the earlier volumes also comes clear as\nnarrative irony, beginning with the Rajan's comment\nearly on that \"I am the only person in Gaon who does not\nknow where Silk is.\"\n\n2.3 But I have wandered from my point. Memory and identity.\nWhat is their relation, in Wolfe's projected worldview? \n\n2.3.1 It is tempting to suggest that memory == identity, \nso that when memories get blended (as they do with \nMarble-Rose and with Horn-Silk and, apparently, with \nPassilk), the result is effectively a new person. But that\ncauses as much trouble as it would solve: does Latro have\nan identity at all? (Come to think of it, is that one of\nthe themes of SOLDIER OF X)? Does Severian have an absolute\nkind of identity the rest of us do not? Are the identities\nof ordinary persons, who do forget stuff, fluid?\n\n2.3.2 And if so, is identity a separate concept from \nspirit? Is Horn's spirit present in Silkhorn? His memories\nclearly are. Mucor seems to see both Horn and Silk. A\ntentative \"yes, Horn's spirit is present\" would seem \napropos. Then what about Silk's spirit? Again, Mucor seems\nto see Silk, not just Horn.\n\n2.4 A plausible reconciling point: Comparison with the\nphenomenon of possession as it occurs in the _Whorl_. \nBoth persons seem to be present -- Chenille and Kypris,\nChenille and Scylla, Auk and Tartaros, Oreb and Scylla.\nIn none of these cases do the personalities completely\nblend, but (as Chenille points out) the god, leaving,\ntakes a part of the person with, and leaves a part of \nhim/her-self behind. Some blending takes place. If the\npossession were to go on long enough, would it become\ncomplete?\n\n2.4.1 But Scylla's possession of Oreb is certainly long\nenough. Perhaps the \"software\" of a scanned human is \nincompatible with that of a bird? But if so, you would\nthink she couldn't \"download\" into him at all.\n\n2.5 Into this mix, then, we can throw the inhumi, and \ntheir bizarre ability to gain some kind of human \nidentity, and some kind of human spirit, by drinking \nthe blood of humans. (By the way, am I the only one \nwho kept thinking of \"Attack of the Giant Leeches?\" \n-- yeah, probably...) It's not at all clear to me that\nthey actually pick up memories from their victims --\nbut they seem to gain personality traits. \n\n2.5.1 Or do they gain memories this way? How do (did)\nthe inhumi learn to speak Common? And are these \nmemories heritable? (Lamarckian tennis, anyone?) \n\n3. From memory and identity to blood. The symbolism \nof bread and wine in these books is so thick only an\ninhumu could miss it, especially in the extraordinarily\npowerful scenes in which Silkhorn twice sacrifices the\ntwo elements (for Olivine and at the Neighbors' altar).\n\n3.1 The blood symbolism outside these two scenes is \nso extensive as to require very little comment; but \nperhaps I should observe that (as noted in Exodus and\nreturned to popular mythology by Dwight Frye in, of\nall movies, _Dracula_) \"The blood is the life.\" \n\n3.1.1 That being the case, the inhumi gaining human \nspirits through their sanguinary appetites becomes a \nlittle more comprehensible. After all, we (at least \nthose of us who belong to the Catholic and other \nchurches of a strongly \"sacramental\" nature: which, of\ncourse, is a category that emphatically includes Mr\nWolfe) drink the blood of our Host in the hope of \ngaining some of His nature. The blood is the life.\n\n3.1.2 Is the life, then the spirit? Horn's spirit-life,\ncarried across the abyss to where Silk's spirit-life is\ndying, entering his body, possessing him(?), returns \nlife to the body that would die because its life has\ndied? But Silkhorn expatiates for a while on the idea\nthat the spirit is _not_ the life; that it is forced to\nvacate its \"house\" when the life is gone.\n\n3.2 But about bread.\n\n3.2.1 Horn sets out to find three things: Silk, corn, and\neyes. Corn, grain, bread: the dying and returning god, a\npattern that fits both Horn and Silk in different ways, and\nboth Passilk and Silkhorn astonishingly well. (One wonders\nwhether there may be a further scanning, and Silkhorn may\njoin Passilk in Mainframe. Certainly he cannot intend to\nreturn to Viron?)\n\n3.2.2 His death is the necessary step that makes it possible\nfor Horn to bring corn back to the starving people of New\nViron -- the Wasteland, where he, now lame, might almost rule\nas the Wounded King (but won't). \n\n3.2.3 His death is the necessary step that makes it possible\nfor Silk to bring justice to the peoples of Gaon and Soldo.\n\n4. In the end, Silkhorn gives an eye so he can return to \nBlue and bring Marble the eye Olivine has given him...\nan eye for an eye, as charity instead of vengeance.\n\nEnough. On, now, to read the far more insightful comments of others.\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}