The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned by Rudesind

brunians at brunians.org · 07 Jul 2010, 13:09 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2010 09:09:51 -0400
Subject: (urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned by
 Rudesind
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W256DB5C8585628C8109423CFB30 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W256DB5C8585628C8109423CFB30 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <518880c17b59383986c11218a321beec.squirrel at brunians.org>

Good insights, Lee.

The problem with this list is that there are a certain number of pedants.

.


>
>>Jane Delawny- Was intending to ask about this on list but Tim got
>>in there ahead of me - making me wonder if there might be a 'consensus'
>>regarding Borski ... if he's on this list I have missed him, Ohai Robert
>>if you're out there, I have read your stuff with huge amounts of interest
>>but also some skepticism!
>
> Yeah, Borski was on this list, before my time, in the early 2000's I think
> it was. I think there is sort of a concensus that he took some of his
> ideas
> and ran with them so far and so fast that they are difficult for anyone
> else
> to follow. And that he left the list because he couldn't stand the
> criticism.
> Still I appreciate his efforts to publish his ideas and get them out
> there.
> Some of the other old grand masters hold their cards too close to the
> vest,
> perhaps also fearing such criticism. This doesn't allow us to pick their
> brains or participate in the interactive process which I enjoy.
>
>>David Stockhoff- Any thoughts on the question of Fechin having painted
>> Inire
>>as a little boy, thus proving that he is Rudesind, who was painted by
>> Fechin
>>as a little boy?
>
> I don't think I'd ever hope to prove something but rather find
> suggestions. And
> in that scenario, Rudesind says a great artist visited him, when he was a
> boy
> artist, to see his work. "It was Fechin, Fechin himself!". Was Fechin, the
> great artist or the boy? Naturally we jump to the conclusion that the
> great
> artist was Fechin. But the painting of the boy included paint brushes
> (and a tangerine). Many famous artists have done their own self-portrait
> depicting themselves with brushes (including Picasso, Van Gogh, Rembrandt,
> Chagall AND Nicolai Fechin) so that could be a sly way of hinting that the
> boy,
> Rudesind, was Fechin, not just as subject, but artist also.
>
>>A.P. Marques- But what's interesting about it?.. That's what I've been
>> asking
>>all along. You only see coincidences because you want to. As Horn or
>> someone
>>said, everything is connected to everything else. By lowering the bar for
>>connectedness as has been done here, one can find coincidences
>> everywhere.
>>But the 'incidence' part of the coincidences is entirely of yallr own
>>making. You are connecting dots that you have put there yourselves. That
>>could be interesting if it lead to something, but to what does it lead?
>
> A nice metaphor as we see Severian on his back, looking at stars and
> making
> connections into constellations (including, preciently, a peryton/Hethor
> spying on him). I have not created the dots any more than Severian has
> created
> all the stars (well, maybe he created one). Gene Wolfe created all the
> dots. The
> question is which, if any, should be connected.
>
> For example, we have Father Inire's mirrors, Hethor's mirrors and mirror
> sails
> on Tzadkiel's ship. Three dots. Should we connect them? I think most would
> say
> yes, they all seem to work as teleporters, sometimes for weird creatures.
>
> Father Inire is an alien. Hethor was a sailor on an interstellar/universal
> spaceship. Both show suggestions of an unhealthy attraction to young human
> women.
> Should we connect these two characters based on that and the mirror
> connection?
> Or should we not connect them because it disrupts our image of Father
> Inire and
> doesn't fit with the story we know and love?
>
> FWIW I find much of Greek mythology to have a similar weird
> understructure. Was Zeus
> the mighty, heroic god that I (and Gene Wolfe?) admired as a child, who
> defeated the
> monstrous Titans, including Typhon, and ruled among the clouds with
> fatherly grace?
> Or was he a creepy guy who killed his father and married his sister and
> spent his
> spare time using his power to seduce/rape young girls and boys like Europa
> and
> Ganymede? He is both, right? But I had to mature as a reader and as a
> person before
> I could see both sides.
>
> For me, BotNS is built (NOT coincidentally) like House Absolute. There is
> a main
> structure and a second, secret house which has been built co-extensively
> within it.
> As the Secret House was constructed by Father Inire, I find it appropriate
> to think
> the secret structure of BotNS is centered on that character. If you don't
> think there
> are undiscovered mysteries in the story or don't find the search enjoyable
> I can
> understand that. The main story is really great and I spent years enjoying
> it on that
> level alone. But I always felt there was more.
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> The New Busy is not the old busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox.
> http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_3
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net