Subject: (whorl) Silk & Quetzal & Hy & aloe

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 1997 05:11:00 +0000

[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Reply:  Item #7542240 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#

Turn back!  Save yourself!

>>Spoiler Alert<<

Oh, now you've done it.

Re: aloe's list of Theophanies and Possessions.  Nice work!  (In the
possession part, your "leaves her presumably at Limna manteion
sometime before II, 207" probably wants to have `manteion' deleted,
right?  Since I'm not aware of a Limna manteion.

But wait: Kypris (forgive the misspelling of Cyprus before!) cares
about graffiti?!  She reads it?  Where, when?  Inquiring minds want
to know!  <g>

And later, re: ghostpike; so you are saying that Quetzal can't see in
the dark under the nightland sky?  Fair enough . . . so when he
disappears in Blood's much darker cellar, we should be impressed that
he doesn't stumble?

(I'm sorry, I still can't see why he would come right back in.  He
would only exacerbate the problem of having been seen, which might
have been self-remedied with "Oh, that was a funny dream."  The text
around that episode is in the hypnogogic mode of waking dreamtime,
just like the similar dream sequence of Maytera Rose's death.
Actually, it is closer to the General Mint sequence at the end of IV,
where things become so weird with Maytera Marble taking off her
clothes and all [nevermind the almost unprecedented Rose/Marble and =Mint=
identity confusion] that it seems more and more like a dream.  Until
Silk comes riding in.  Corridors of time?  Very much so. Surreal deal.

Anywho, having seen Mucor and the the flying thing, he goes
downstairs for a chat with Oreb.  More waking up.  Then the creaking
bed detail: if Quetzal feels light for his size (he does, doesn't he?
 Or am I making that up?) how could he make the bed creak like a
"real" old man?  This is a quibble, because the main thing is I just
can't see why "Oh, a vision of my fairy godfather, Patera Pike" is
better serving to Quetzal and Quetzal's plans than "Oh, what a weird
dream" or even "Oh, that devil thing almost got me."  Wanna see the
face of Silk?  Visit during business hours--or summon him, you're his
boss, after all.)

I known aloe won't buy this, but Kypris's temptation to Silk on the
airship is for him to literally become the "missing piece" of Osiris,
if you know what I mean and I think you do.  Thus aloe's contention
that Pas isn't complete, that the resurrected Pas is a sham, fits
quite nicely with the orthodox reading of Osiris after his
reassembly.  Kypris is doing the Isis thing.  (I'll admit that my
additional twist, that Silk is Kypris's biological son, puts enough
torque on the whole shebang to skip it off into lala land as far as
aloe is concerned.  Oedipus, meet Aeneas; Aeneas, Oedipus.  Oh look,
and here's Cupid . . . Psyche can't be far off, can she?)

(Speaking of whom . . .) Re: Hyacinth, my outre' speculation in her case
is that she is ridden by Kypris 99% of the time we see her.  We don't
know Hy; neither does Silk.  Silk loves the Kypris in Hy, not Hy herself,
since he doesn't even know her.  He doesn't love Hy, Hy doesn't love
him (she might not even know him--see Chenille and Auk at Lake Shrine
for details), and Kypris doesn't love him; all this is bad enough, but
that Kypris could also be so cruel to him as to commit adultery is enough
to make him want to jump from the airship (rather than "to the rafters"
as Crane says wistfully [manipulatively] about Hy's "affection" for Silk.

More fun with puns: Horn is metamorphosized from bullhorn (or "herald's
trumpet," if you prefer) to inkhorn.

=mantis=

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