{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/992",
    "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": 992,
    "subject": "The Anatomy of Melancholy",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-31T13:28:24+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-31T13:28:24+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0011-0205@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alex David Groce",
        "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-31T13:28:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) The Anatomy of Melancholy",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "To speak very broadly indeed, which I think is sometimes necessary \nwith Wolfe, it does strike me that the tonus (as distinguished from the \nintellectual doctrinal structuring) of Wolfe's major works is anything but \nChristian. Except maybe in certain parts of the book we are now \nconsidering, the melacholia is profound: _In Blue's Waters_ , and many of \nthe later stories, are acts of heroism (it seems) against a very deep \nsadness, which Christians (and others) might put a term to. I myself would \ntend to cod gnosticism here: it feels like the occlusion or bondage of the \nblinding world, to me. "
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "There are certainly some gnostic-seeming elements, but I think the key\nmay be to realize that Wolfe (even more than, say, Flannery O'Connor,\nwho was often seen as writing despairing or fundamentally pessimistic\nfiction despite her claims otherwise) is artistically interested in\nChrist-crucified more than Christ-triumphant, even in the moments of\nrevelation and transcendence (as at the end of URTH) in his work.\nRereading \"The Death of Doctor Island\" brought this point home.  Wolfe\nloves Chesterton but really there is a huge difference in their\nartistic attitudes to Christianity: Chesterton can't bear to damn a\ncharacter, even if it (possibly) hurts the work to avoid it (THE BALL\nAND THE CROSS, for example) while Wolfe emphasizes, especially in his\nshort fiction, the extreme -jeopardy- of creatures with free will.\nThe deep sadness in Wolfe's work is a result of this, and while it is\ndoctrinally bounded, that bound is probably beyond fictional\nexploration, as being beyond time.  Wolfe's work is time-haunted in\nthe extreme--especially with Severian there is an equation between\napproaching divinity and stopping time (and raising the dead); but\nthat approach is asymptotic within the fiction's scope."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32\n--\nAlex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}