Subject: (whorl) Mother Godspeak

From: Robert Borski <rborski at charter.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 23:39:35 +0000

Adam S., in a non-confused mode, professing:

<I may be missing something again, but I don't see the problem here. The
Mother is a goddess of the Neighbors; why wouldn't she have been able to
learn their language and teach it to Seawrack? And Seawrack could have
taught Horn enough to translate the few lines he does (there's no need to
assume it's an impromptu translation; he could have heard the same song in
the boat with Seawrack).>

How then do you reconcile this with Horn stating, "I asked the Greater
Scylla on the Red Sun Whorl how I could find Seawrack again. She told me how
to communicate with her sister here."

In other words, if I understand you properly, Horn has to go all the way
back to Urth and find out from the "Greater" Scylla how to communicate with
her "sister," the Mother? So the Greater Scylla can speak Neighborese? Where
the hell did _she_ learn it? The Berlitz Teach-Yourself-Neighbor in 10 Days
or Less? (I tried ordering a copy from Amazon.com, but they're currently
out.)

Sorry, but I still don't understand how the Mother, Silk or Seawrack
comprehends the language of the Vanished People.

Robert Borski

*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.
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---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 22:06:25 +0000

> or Less? (I tried ordering a copy from Amazon.com, but they're currently

I'm not quite clear what your point is.  It seems you either believe that
the Mother only speaks the Neighbors' languague, so Horn would have to know
it to communicate with her, or you think my position implies this.  But
Mother talks to Horn in OBW, when she "transfers" Seawrack to him.  (This is
before any possible admixture of Pas, if you were going to argue that Horn
has translated the Mother's words from the Neighbors' language without
telling us.)  What the Greater Scylla taught Horn was how to summon the
Mother, as Alex David Gorce says.

> comprehends the language of the Vanished People.

The Mother learned it from the Neighbors.  She could have learned it from
Neighbors she had saved or abducted as she did Seawrack, or from
eavesdropping on sailors, to give just two possibilities.

--Adam

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From: Robert Borski <rborski at charter.net>
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:53:26 +0000

<What the Greater Scylla taught Horn was how to summon the Mother, as Alex
David Groce says.>

Adam and Alex:

All right, let me try to state this as simply as I can.

Call me an ignoramus* by default, but I still do not understand how the
Greater Scylla of Urth knows how to summon the Mother of Blue  _in any
language._

We're all of us a little chagrined, I believe, by the use of coinicidences
in Wolfe's fiction--e.g., Horn randomly picking to disinter Jahlee, who just
happens to be the mother of Krait. Such coincidences seem unnatural and
forced when confined to a small enough (relative scale) venue like an entire
planet. But to have the Whorl travel over 300 years, put into orbit around
twin planets, land colonists, and then learn that one of the indigenous
goddesses of Blue can be summoned by a sea monster from the Whorl's original
point of destination seems more than a little incredible to me. Ditto for
the Mother's matching retinue of sirens, underwater boats, and "feignings."
Is she, like the Scylla of Urth, plotting to take over Blue? Seems like
rather a poor choice given the the Neighbor's abandonment of the planet, and
certainly the Whorl colonists do not seem like any rich prize. So why is she
still hanging around? Yes, I suppose it's possible that all these various
alien beings speak a kind of space esperanto, as Alex suggests, but this
seems to me a little bit like Star Trek, where everybody except the Klingons
speak English. And I don't really see any evidence for it.

Now if Horn had employed his ring to summon up a few of his Neighbor
friends, and they told him how to summon the Mother, that I would buy; but
to have Horn make the astral journey back to Urth, however many
light-or-dream years away it is, and then be told by Greater Scylla how to
summon up sister-of-convenience-the-Mother seems more far fetched than I'm
ever going to be willing to accept. But I guess that's just me, apparently.

*Any of you Christian scholars know who once claimed that ignoramus was the
Latin word for agnostic? I've forgotten.

Robert Borski

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 10:07:36 +0000

on 3/14/01 1:53 PM, Robert Borski at rborski at charter.net wrote:

> point of destination seems more than a little incredible to me.

It may not be a coincidence.  We know that Cilinia had pledged herself to
the Greater Scylla, who undoubtedly knew of her sister's presence on Blue.
Cilinia could have somehow convinced or tricked Typhon into choosing
Blue/Green as the Whorl's destination.

In any case, this has nothing to do with my original point that Typhon
doesn't need to have been a Neighbor for Horn to be able to translate
Seawrack's song.

> ever going to be willing to accept. But I guess that's just me, apparently.

What, then, is your interpretation of Horn's statement "I asked the Greater
Scylla on the Red Sun Whorl how I could find Seawrack again.  She taught me
how to communicate with her sister here"?  It can't be that Scylla taught
Horn to speak the Neighbors' language, as your earlier post seemed to imply,
because:

1) Horn doesn't need to speak the Neighbors' language to communicate with
the Mother;

2) According to your reading Horn already knew the Neighbors' language (and
in any case the translation scene was prior to the meeting with Greater
Scylla).

--Adam

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From: George Terry <gmterry at ucdavis.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 08:24:50 +0000

>Latin word for agnostic? I've forgotten.

C.H. Spurgeon, I think.

**************************************************************************
George Terry
Computer Resource Specialist
Center for Engineering Plants for Resistance Against Pathogens
(CEPRAP)
University of California, Davis
(530)752-6531
gmterry at ucdavis.edu
**************************************************************************

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From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 12:59:11 +0000

> C.H. Spurgeon, I think.

A quick google for "ignoramus and agnostic" confirms that George is
almost certainly right.

--
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce