Dionysus

Gerry Quinn · 04 Dec 2010, 23:11 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 23:11:29 -0000
Subject: (urth) Dionysus
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  From: James Wynn 
    Gerry Quinn-
    Maybe I am being over-simplistic, but my impression is that Silk's spirit is dying, but not his body (as the Neighbour says).  As you put it, a mourning ritual gets out of hand, but not fatally to Silk's body. Conversely, Horn is in the opposite situation.  His body dies, while his spirit flies to Silk's body.

    What happens Silk?  I think his spirit remains dormant in his old body, now occupied by Horn's spirit.  (Aspects of Pas seem to be there too; although uploading is distinct from possession, I suspect a certain amount of spirit mingling has taken place here too.)

  Even if your reading of "one whose spirit is dying" is the one intended (and it might well be), it comes to the same thing. We have examples of dying spirits in The Book of the Short Sun (Jane offered a good one. There are others.) If Silk's spirit was dying, then it would need another spirit to animate the body. If Silk's body was animated by Horn's spirit, there's no reason to believe it would heal Silk's dying spirit because the "wound" it had suffered was Hyacinth's death. HORN's problem was not that his spirit was dying but that his life was dying. There is no justification in the story for that spirit to subsequently die while Silk's lives.

  If Silk's spirit dies, his body needs Horn's spirit. And that's what I argue happened.
You say there's no justification in the story... but then what do you think happens at the end?  My impression is that Silk returns somehow.  At the least, what remains at the end seems not to be Horn - it might be some kind of merger of Horn and Silk I suppose.  [I can't say I like the ending of RttW, it's all very Wizard of Oz... but as I said I guess I need another read or two to be very sure of my opinions.]

Horn took some bad beats - and weren't there indications before now that he had some suicidal tendencies?  As to why Silk's spirit resurrected, I don't know.  Maybe he got a nudge from the Pas part of him ;-)

- Gerry Quinn

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