lots of stuff

James Wynn · 12 Jul 2010, 17:23 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:23:46 -0500
Subject: (urth) lots of stuff
In-Reply-To: <4C3B1E18.6010207 at gmail.com>
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	<4C3B1E18.6010207 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4C3B4FA2.9030900 at gmail.com>

On 7/12/2010 8:52 AM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
> Are there any other cases in the Sun books of
> - a proper name that isn't a real historical proper name
> - a proper name that is a pun/mangled version of a real historical 
> proper name?
> - a title that is a pun/mangled version of a real historical proper name?
>
> These are commonplace in fantastic literature, but I'm unsure when 
> it's Wolfe we're talking about. I do have the idea that there's 
> Wolfean precedent, but I can't recall where.

Well, I'm the guy who argues that the word "inhuma" comes from a complex 
and multi-layered word association with the name "Dionysus", so swim at 
your own risk. Puns are a tricky thing to emphatically prove, I know 
from experience. Usually, the punned terms and names have a ready casual 
association as well. But Inire is another matter. In answer to your 
question, I can't think of another instance in which Wolfe breaks his 
established naming precedents so emphatically...and well...*badly*. So I 
say Inire's singularity is part of the argument FOR a word game in this 
instance.

The hierodules Ossipago, Barbatus, and Famulimus are named after minor 
divine beings or, in Ossipago's case, a minor name for Hera. They are 
not named for saints (except in that saints are often Christianized 
minor divinities). It is not unreasonable to expect that Inire would be 
named for a minor god as well. What if "Father Inire" is a malformation 
of the actual name he gave...a name that was difficult for those whom he 
first encountered to pronounce or even hear properly. That would explain 
why he is the only one with the title "Father": When he said "Fenrir", 
they heard "Father Inire" or that was an approximation they chose. Just 
as Horn named his new girlfriend "Seawrack" because it was close to the 
foreign sounding name she gave. And, as with O,B, & F, "Fenrir" would be 
a name that suites Inire's role--not in nurturing Severian as they 
do--but something more final: bringing the New Sun and the end of Urth. 
I guess Fenrir isn't the only possible option but it certainly fits the 
bill. And Fenrir's actions are also associated with the name they gave 
him: the the Latin "finire", meaning "to end".

Or perhaps, for Fr Inire's name is a later malformation. The name Fenrir 
would place him from an ancient Time, as John Watkins suggests: the time 
of Typhon, Erebus, Abia, and the rest when powerful persons were named 
for monsters, not saints. True, the Cargo in _The Book of the Long Sun_ 
were named after saints, but they weren't "powers". On the other hand, 
Typhon's family certainly took the names of monsters when they became 
powers on the Whorl.

In _The Book of the Long Sun_ & _The Book of the Short Sun_ a great 
*deal* is made of names, which follow a conscious structure and show the 
connection of family members---not only based on flower and animal 
concepts but also on the structure of the names themselves. At one 
point, Silk mulls his possible brotherhood with Sand in some 
metaphysical sense because their names both start with "S" and have the 
same number of letters.

Typhon's name itself is stripped from Egyptian Sun mythology as the 
enemy of Osirus. That sets him as a foil against Severian. But then 
neither Osirus's nor Zeus's Typhon had two heads. So that's a kind of 
break with precedent as well since it associates him instead with 
certain Kabbalist figures and with two-faced Janus, the god of doorways 
(which sort of associates him with "Inire", doesn't it, since "inire" 
means "to enter"). Typhon's name in _The Book of the Long Sun_ is "Pas", 
claimed to be associated with a term for "father": tenuous in any _real_ 
sense, but (I argue) intended to associate him with the god Pan.

u+16b9

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