Shadow Children and Inhumi

Mark Millman · 30 Nov 2010, 20:38 · from 2010-November.txt.gz

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From: markjmillman at gmail.com (Mark Millman)
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:38:20 -0500
Subject: (urth) Shadow Children and Inhumi
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	<B1CA7F44880B4F788F3A4DFB41E2DD6D@jill>
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Dear Mr. Berman and Mr. Quinn,

On Tuesday 30 November 2010 at 9:12 AM, Gerry Quinn replied to Lee Berman:

LB> James wonders if there is any relationship
LB> of this secret vine origin to Dionysus, god
LB> of the vine. I wonder if there is any possible
LB> relationship of any of this to Master Ash's
LB> missing mate Vine? I dunno. But her name
LB> has to mean something, doesn't it?

Maybe, but it may not mean much.  See below for my interpretation.

LB> If there is a Dionysian deity popping up in
LB> various guises throughout Severian's story,

That seems to be a big if, except in so far as Wolfe imitates
classical models.  Remember, Nessus and the Commonwealth are Byzantium
and its empire.

LB> Master Ash would likely be among them,
LB> perhaps.
>
GQ> Ash seems less Dionysiam than Silk, if
GQ> that is possible!

Indeed; as a cloistered researcher, Apollonian is the way to go for
him--if one finds this a productive interpretive schema.

GQ>?Maybe Vine came from Viron.

I certainly hope not, considering the gap between the works.

In fact, I rather do hope that you're writing tongue in cheek for the
next couple of paragraphs.

GQ>?Her name would imply that, right?

Again, I hope not.  Wolfe may have developed the Vironese naming
convention with this in the back of his mind, but it strains credulity
to suggest that Vine's name somehow looks ahead to _Long Sun_.

GQ>?But what to make of Ash - he falls just a
GQ> little outside the Vironese animal / vegeta-
GQ> ble / mineral classification... a cyborg of
GQ> some kind? ?A reconstructed entity?

Volcanic ash is mineral in nature, so he might, if Wolfe had been
thinking of Vironese naming during the writing of BotNS, have been a
chem.  But Ash is also a tree, so if he's a cyborg his organic parts
ought to be female, like those of Marble's.  But see below.

GQ>?But he could refer to the ashes of Urth, if a
GQ> frozen snowball can be in some metaphor-
GQ> ical sense ashes.
GQ>
GQ> Then again Wolfe was at pains to point out
GQ> that Ram was not from Viron. ?Is there
GQ> some mystery behind Ram - or might it be
GQ> that sometimes a name does not mean
GQ> something, or at least it does not mean
GQ> anything of global significance!

For those who haven't encountered, or don't remember, Norse mythology,
Ask and Embla are the first man and woman, created from plants.  "Ask"
means "ash tree", although I certainly do think that Wolfe took
advantage of the pun that you suggest above.  The meaning of "Embla"
is disputed; I've seen suggestions that it means "elm", "alder", and
"vine".  Given Wolfe's expressed views on the proper relationship
between men and women, I'd have suspected he'd incline to the last;
but in fact, in "Onomastics, the Study of Names" in _The Castle of the
Otter_, he explicitly says that he understands "Embla" to mean "vine".
 In the essay's last paragraph, Wolfe writes:

"Thinking it a good omen to give the last man the name of the first, I
have called him Ash, translating the Teutonic _Ask_.  Ask's wife was
Embla (Vine).  Odin, Hoenir, and Lodur are said to have created this
couple from a dead tree and its equally dead parasite, so their very
existence indicates the hope of rebirth."

No doubt Wolfe also had in mind the fact that Norse mythology is one
of the few that predicts the world's ultimate--i.e., not cyclical,
with its implication of rebirth--destruction by the forces of chaos,
darkness, ice, and fire.

Interestingly, Meschia and Meschiane of Persian myth are also created
from trees.  There's a nice parallelism there.

I will not, by the way, listen to theories about Neighbors and inhumi
prompted by this information, particularly not if they attempt to
interpret Master Ash and Vine, and Meschia and Meschiane, as being in
any way related to the creatures of Blue and Green, except as the
mythological figures may have served as inspiration for the
(potential) fictional idea.

GQ> The name /association game can be played
GQ> indefinitely but there must be some point at
GQ> which the remainder of the text becomes a
GQ> more reliable reference point.

Indeed.

Please note that it -is- possible to over-interpret.  Some of the
recent postings, in my opinion, have done so to a tremendous and
bewildering extent.

Best,

Mark Millman

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