What the elm?

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 06 Jun 2007, 18:31 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 11:31:14 -0700
Subject: (urth) What the elm?
In-Reply-To: <4BB1A159-5DE4-4650-BE1E-53234D90ABF6 at gmail.com>
References: <1f7617370706061021l58ab60d9mb061d38f49a33bef at mail.gmail.com>
	<4BB1A159-5DE4-4650-BE1E-53234D90ABF6 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1f7617370706061131k6f515373u3a0b6b7b5f81636e at mail.gmail.com>

On 6/6/07, Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com> wrote:
> Knowing (or guessing) the connection to the Aeneid doesn't help in
> the interpretation of Peace unless Wolfe borrowed much more than just
> an elm.  Peace is packed so full of fragmentary and subverted stories
> that another classical allusion is hardly illuminating.
>
> If we were to unearth Vergilian (or Dantean) monsters in the
> menagerie of Weer's musings, or if we find some other Aenean
> analogue, then perhaps the connection would be more than merely
> interesting.

Indeed!

Well, I have suggested before in this forum that ... oh, damn, suddenly
my mind is going blank on characters ... the voice Weer hears calling
him (over the intercom?) at the "end" of the book ... is a psychopomp,
trying to lure him forth from his grave/Purgatory to Heaven. There might
be something in classical myth that fits here.

I also believe fwiw that the elm itself was trapping him (though it may
not have been a _physical_ elm a-tall, a-tall) in his coffin/sleep/death
until the book's "beginning." Thus its fall begins the process that ends
with the voice of the psychopomp; the next thing to happen is Weer's
(self-)judgment and his journey to his eternal fate.

I do not speculate on what that fate may be.

That being the case, I was perhaps a *little* disingenuous in using
your post as a launching place for my own comment on the
potential for over-zealous analysis of the Lupine textus; it was
actually quite a bad example for my point, given that I think the
elm is, in fact, hugely significant.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
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http://www.danehyoakes.com
Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations,
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salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards
reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.

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