{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1370",
    "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": 1370,
    "subject": "Horn into Silk",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-04-18T19:27:54+00:00",
    "last": "2001-04-18T19:27:54+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0640@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-04-18T19:27:54+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Horn into Silk",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "on 4/18/01 1:32 PM, James Jordan at jbjordan4 at home.com wrote:\nI'm still not sure who the narrator is\nsupposed to be at the end of the book. If anything, that's the point of\nWolfe's failure as far as I'm concerned. I did not care to \"meet Silk\"\nagain in such a way. (\"Hurray! It's Silk again!\" Gimmeabreak!) It also\nseems rather pointless, since the novel SEEMS to be about Horn's\ndevelopment, and just to wipe him out, or submerge him into Silk -- well,\nit does not work for me!"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm not generally a fan of religious-allegorical interpretations of Wolfe,\nbut in the case of SS, there's a strong case for seeing \"Horn\"'s realization\nthat he is Silk as a symbol of rebirth in Christ.  Literally, Horn and Silk\nare two different people, but symbolically they are the same person before\nand after being redeemed.  After all, Silk's recognition of who he is\nliterally wipes out all the sins Horn committed in his own body, most\nnotably the rape of Seawrack; it also frees Silk from the guilt of adultery\n(though not of fornication), since he's not married to Nettle.  And the sins\nthat Silkhorn committed in Silk's body can be explained as due to the\npresence of Horn's spirit, which departs before the moment of realization.\n\nAs I've said before, I've never read the New Testament, which is a\ndisadvantage in interpreting Wolfe.  But I happened to come across a passage\nwhich is so apposite to this point, and also to Allan's post about \"bad\nHorn,\" that I'll quote it here.  It's Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 7:15-24:\n\n\"I cannot understand my own behaviour.  I fail to carry out the things I\nwant to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate.  When I act\nagainst my own will, that means I have a self that acknowledges that the Law\nis good, and so the thing behaving in that way is not my self but sin living\nin me. The fact is, I know of nothing good living in me--living, that is, in\nmy unspiritual self--for though the will to do what is good is in me, the\nperformance is not, with the result that instead of doing the good things I\nwant to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want.  When I act against\nmy will, then, it is not my true self doing it, but sin which lives in me.\n\nIn fact, this seems to be the rule, that every single time I want to do good\nit is something evil that comes to hand.  In my inmost self I dearly love\nGod's law, but I can see that my body follows a different law that battles\nagainst the law which my reason dictates.  This is what makes me a prisoner\nof that law of sin which lives inside my body.\n\nWhat a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body doomed to\ndeath!\"\n\nThe resemblance to Horn in his more self-abasing passages is striking.\n\n--Adam\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}