{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/701",
    "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": 701,
    "subject": "An eye for an eye?",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-19T00:49:06+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-19T00:49:06+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0136@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William H. Ansley",
        "address": "wansley at warwick.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-19T00:49:06+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) An eye for an eye?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Alex David Groce <Alex_Groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu> wrote:\nHere we go:\n\nGalatians 4:13-15:\n--\n13 As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel\nto you. 14 Even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me\nwith contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God,\nas if I were Christ Jesus himself. 15 What has happened to all your joy? I can\ntestify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and\ngiven them to me.\n--\n\nNow, it seems likely that with the set-up of Maytera Marble's blindness and\nHorn's quest for her, and the fact that \"Horn\" in his new body is missing an\neye, we will probably have an example of someone tearing out their eyes and\ngiving them to someone else coming up in the future of SHORT SUN.\n\nIt seems like this is a reversal of the passage above, where 15 is what has\ngiven rise to the suggestion that Paul's illness was some kind of vision\nproblem.  Horn is the St. Paul figure here, and is probably going to give up\nhis own eye for Marble's eye at some point.  On the other hand, if it is\nSilk's\nbody that Horn is in, perhaps this happened before Horn came to inhabit Silk's\nbody, and so we have a literal case of the Paul figure taking on the\nsufferings\nof the Christ figure.  And then there's the Odin conflation floating\naround all\nof this...\n\n\nvizcacha brings up the Moses analogy also, which suggests that Silk himself\nmay not ever set foot on Blue.  Moses, of course, died before he reached the\nPromised Land, but came back later at the transfiguration in the Gospels.  Is\nHorn the means by which Silk is setting foot on Blue only after death?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Alex,\n\nAt first I was very annoyed with you. I sat down at my computer all set to\nimpress the heck out of the readers of this discussion group with the\nclever things I had figured out about Horn's and Marble's eyes and what\nshould appear when I checked my email but your message on the very same\nsubject.\n\n(\"Why, oh, why,\" I berated myself, \"did I waste all that time on\nleatherskin legs?\")\n\nBut, after a moments thought, I am grateful. I never would have come up\nwith that passage from Galations, which adds a wonderful extra dimension to\nthe eye swap meet, if that's what it was.\n\nI think I know who Horn gave his eye to and I don't think he gave it up to\nget an eye for Marble. I think we are going to have two instances of people\njoyfully tearing out their eyes and giving them to someone else before _The\nBook of the Short Sun_ is over.\n\nHorn gave his eye to Pig. And Marble's daughter gave up one of her eyes for\nher mother.\n\n-----------\nBecause I could not leave Pig blind, these people were able to bring me\nhere, and so ended any chance of success I may have had. [p. 308]\n-----------\n\nWho is Pig? I don't know. in \"Proper Names in the Text\" he is referred to\nas \"a mercenary of the LONG SUN WHORL.\" Horn mentions him a few times,\nalthough I don't have time to look for any more page numbers now. He has to\nbe someone Horn met on the _Whorl_ after he returned to it, unless Horn\nleft an awful lot more out of _The Book of Silk_ than we think. He seems to\nhave meant a great deal to Horn; I am pretty sure he says at some point\nthat he loved Pig more than anyone other than Silk.\n\nOlivine is \"a young chem of VIRON,\" according to \"Proper Names in the\nText.\" I think she is also Marble's daughter or half-daughter(?). The eye\nHorn intends to give to Maytera Marble is hers. \"I put Olivine's eye in the\npocket.\" [p. 310]. Olivine is definitely Hammerstone's daughter.\n\n-----------\n(What I would not give for Hammerstone now. Olivine, lend us your father\nplease.) [p. 290]\n-----------\n\nOn page 84, Marble tells Horn that she and Hammerstone \"had begun a\ndaughter.\" She also says, \"We never got far with her, and I don't suppose\nshe'll ever be born unless my husband takes a new wife, poor little thing.\"\nThis is why I said \"half-daughter(?)\" above. What do you call the relation\nbetween a chem and the mother that started building her if she was\ncompleted by her father and his new wife?\n\nOf course, even if Olivine does give up one of her eyes freely to Horn for\nhim to give to her mother, the fact that Horn gave up one of his eyes may\nhave triggered the event, even if it wasn't, strictly speaking, a trade.\n\nWilliam Ansley\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}