{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1241", "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": 1241, "subject": "hello! and a little on religious orthodoxy", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-02-27T12:09:52+00:00", "last": "2001-02-27T12:35:56+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "maa32", "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu" }, "date": "2001-02-27T12:09:52+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) hello! and a little on religious orthodoxy", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I normally only post to the Urth list, but due to the minimal amount of \ncongress there in recent weeks I have decided to subscribe to the whorl list \nas well. The recent trend in religious discussion is very interesting to me, \nand as a practicing Catholic I think that Wolfe's creations are more \neffectively interpreted with an orthodox perspective in mind (I don't buy into \nthe \"death of the author\" very much, or even the somewhat New Critical concept \nof a text as something completely independent of the author's intentions). \nPositing Lombard's quaternity for Quadrifons is, I agree, extremely unlikely \nfrom the most precursory examination of the creeds Wolfe must recite \nincessantly (one in being with the Father, etc). These creeds reaffirm the \ndenial of heresies (homo- vs. hetero- ousious) All of Wolfe's novels play \nwith religious symbolism to a greater or lesser extent (the apples before the \nfall down the stairs at the beginning of Peace, for example, or the title of \nthe same novel, which I believe comes from the plea: Lamb of God, you take \naway the sins of the world; Lamb of God, grant us peace).\n I think the most interesting question one can ask is whether or not Wolfe \nseriously considers the doctrine that at the true resurrection the body and \nthe spirit are reunited in perfection. In this orthodox understanding of the \nresurection, the body cannot be seen as an evil and flawed temporal construct, \nbut as a necessary component of perfection. How should we consider \ndisembodied \"souls\" like Horn or even (at times) Mucor? Are they the total \nbeing? Is the soul enough? For a fascinating discussion of the relation \nbetween the \"real\" identity of a man and the parts of his body, Ultan's \nlecture to Severian at the beginning of Shadow is an ideal place to start. \n(can the smallest finger of a man contains his whole essence, etc). At the \nend of The Urth of the New Sun, it is very clear that Severian's soul has been \nhoisted from one body to another. Is he the same Severian in essence without \nthat body, or are they inextricably linked? I think the same kinds of ideas \nare being thrown around when we consider \"Horn\" in Silk.\nMarc Aramini\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-02-27T12:35:56+00:00", "subject": "RE: (whorl) hello! and a little on religious orthodoxy", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Whoa -- good post, Marc." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Marc wrote:\nas a practicing Catholic " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Convert or cradle? You've seen my posts; I'm pursuing a theory\nabout Wolfe-readers... Actually, about SF readers in general..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think that Wolfe's creations are more effectively interpreted\nwith an orthodox perspective in mind (I don't buy into the \n\"death of the author\" very much, or even the somewhat New\nCritical concept of a text as something completely independent\nof the author's intentions). " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Completely\" independent, no, but definitely having some \nindependence. Surely you've had the experience of writing\nsomething and having someone else point out to you that it\nplainly meant something you hadn't intended? \n\nSamuel R. Delany tells the story (somewhere in one of his\nnon-fiction books) of a sentence in his FALL OF THE TOWERS\ntrilogy. It seems that a student had written a paper on this\ntrilogy, which made great use of a sentence that began something\nlike: \"The transport carrier, not in ruins...\". The non-ruined\nstated of this carrier was in direct contrast to its \nsurroundings, and the student had made interesting use of\nit in interpreting the whole trilogy. The problem was that\nit was a typo; it should have read \"...now in ruins...\"\n\nThat's both an egregious and a simple example: the point is,\na writer writes a text and sends it out into the world; no\nreader can be perfectly aware of his intentions, and attempting\nto derive intentions from the text is a dangerous pursuit,\nbecause the text never perfectly reflects the intent.\n\n(A story of mine, published some while back in REALMS OF\nFANTASY, drew one interesting note. The individual in\nquestion pointed out to me that it was a religious allegory,\nsomething of which I was quite unaware, but which I have\ncome to believe was, in fact, my intent at an unconscious\nlevel. Unconscious levels are a marvellous thing for \nwriters, allowing them to take credit for things clever \nreaders discover, simultaneously allowing them to \ndeflect criticism of flaws...)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "All of Wolfe's novels play with religious symbolism to a\ngreater or lesser extent (the apples before the fall down\nthe stairs at the beginning of Peace, " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dear Lord. I never noticed that. Did anyone point it out \nduring the PEACE-a-thon a few months back...\n\nVery nice.\n\n(Returning to memory/identity:)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think the most interesting question one can ask is whether or\nnot Wolfe seriously considers the doctrine that at the true\nresurrection the body and the spirit are reunited in perfection." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think one answer to some of the problems this raises is to\nremember Augustine's (I think it was Augustine) response to\nthe person who asked what would happen to a cannibal and his\nvictims at the Resurrection: that God would as necessary\nrecreate the substantia of the body with new materia -- which,\ncome to think of it, is very much in line with the idea that\nour bodies will be very different after the Resurrection, an\nidea that American Protestants often refer to by the somewhat\nclunky term \"resurrection bodies\".\n\nThe point being that having a body is essential to the\nbeing of a human; having _this_ body is not necessarily\nso." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In this orthodox understanding of the resurection, the\nbody cannot be seen as an evil and flawed temporal \nconstruct, but as a necessary component of perfection. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's so even without the doctrine of the general\nresurrection; the alternative is Manicheeism." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How should we consider disembodied \"souls\" like Horn\nor even (at times) Mucor? Are they the total being? \nIs the soul enough? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Taking a step back from the question, Mucor, at least, is\nsaid to send out her spirit, not her soul. A distinction \nI often have trouble grasping, but which has some \ntheological significance, I gather.\n\nIt's clearly Mucor's \"I\" that travels. (Yet that \"I\" \nalso remains, in some sense, aware of her body; the \nAyuntamiento is apparently able to force her back into \nher body by torturing it.) \n\nHorn, on the other hand, is completely and permanently(?)\ndiscorporated on Green. His \"I\" comes to inhabit Silk's\nbody.\n\n[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At the end of The Urth of the New Sun, it is very clear\nthat Severian's soul has been hoisted from one body to\nanother. Is he the same Severian in essence without that \nbody, or are they inextricably linked? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think the problem here, and it's a big one, is the question\nof what \"the same\" means. Even without having been rebodied,\nor the need for it, he would have been radically changed by\nsome of his experience -- for example, the inclusion of \nThecla and the various autarchs into his memories." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think the same kinds of ideas are being thrown around\nwhen we consider \"Horn\" in Silk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. Wolfe is getting at something big on the memory/\nidentity front, viz the alzabo, the analeptic alzabo, \nthe special case of Sev/Thecla and Sev/Autarchs, the\n\"scanning\" of persons into Mainframe, Typhon/Piaton, \nPassilk and Silkhorn and maybe Passilkhorn, godly\npossession in general, Mucor... \n\nBut Mucor almost doesn't fit; her personality does \nnot seem to merge with those she possesses in any way \n(perhaps because she is somehow capable of retaining\nconsciousness without any \"medium\"; perhaps because\nshe remains in her own body even while possessing \nanother; perhaps because her \"astral body\" is so \nintegral...). Typhon/Pas is equally strange, but then \ntheir personalities remain in their own individual\nskulls.\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }