Dionysus

Lee Berman · 29 Nov 2010, 04:20 · from 2010-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 23:20:03 -0500
Subject: (urth) Dionysus
Message-ID: <SNT123-W64FC1D8416BF10E41F3BA9CF240 at phx.gbl>

Thanks to James Wynn for the explanation of his connection of Hephaestus 
and the Silk story. I liked it and thought the "Thetis" aspect was the most
compelling. I was intrigued because I had once considered that Father Inire,
being bent and creative, most resembled Hephaestus of the Greek pantheon. But
he doesn't seem important enough for Wolfe to base such an important character 
on.

However another Greek god, also succored by Thetis, might be important enough
(James does mention this god and I wondered why..), that being Dionysus.

There is a disjointed but continued religious conversation between SilkHorn and 
Hound in RttW. In it, Hound is basically told that the unnamed Outsider is the god
of wine, son of Thyone, i.e. Dionysus. Some say that Dionysus while a minor Olympian
god son of Zeus, was actually a much older one of the original chaotic God reborn. 
Thus the status of Dionysus in the Olympian pantheon is similar to the status of
the Outsider in the Whorlian pantheon. A minor old-timer but somehow too intrinsically
important to leave off the list of gods.

Hound is told a confusing story suggesting that the Outsider is both father to and son
of Pas. This also seems to parallel the relationship between Zeus and Dionysus.

I think the recent advice of Stanislaus is important here. The worship of polytheistic 
gods must be understood in terms of groupings. And in this case, the worship of Dionysis/
Bacchus is quite intertwined with the worship of Pan/Faunus. I suspect we are all familiar
with the image of a bacchanalic orgy with drunken goatmen chasing nymphs around and the like.
Hound asks about the reason Silk is sometimes referred to as Silver Silk and Silent Silk. My
guess is that this is an allusion to a couple satyrs/fauns who are associated with the Dionysus
cult, Silvanus and Silenus.

There are a couple reasons I find Dionysus as an interesting unifying idea. One is a possible
connection to Father Inire. The name Inire could be inspired from an epithet or nickname of 
Faunus which is Inuus. Now if there had been a variety of goats appearing in Severian's story 
the connection might be easy to make. Perhaps too easy? The various monkey references could be
related to the fact that Inuus is an archaic monkey genus. Moreover I've found two of the 
species in this genus especially interesting: Inuus sylvanus (barbary ape) and Inuus silenus
(lion monkey).

Another possible connection is that the festival that Dr Talos and his company perform at is
called a "thiasus". This could refer to a festival honoring any greek/roman god but it is by
far most commonly used to refer to a festival to celebrate Dionysus. I think Wolfe has said
that Severian may be considered an aspect of The Outsider but somehow Father Inire seems to 
be included in the connection in some way. (more later)

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