Dionysus

Gerry Quinn · 09 Dec 2010, 21:17 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 21:17:42 -0000
Subject: (urth) Dionysus
References: <SNT123-W27A91B4014443F6081607CCF2E0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <918BE4E41DBC464BB53FB52DFC56ED5C@jill>


From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>
>>Gerry Quinn: So Wolfe, so familiar with every obscure god or South 
>>American jungle bird, remains
>>uniquely provincial when it comes to the meaning of 'vine'?  But surely, 
>>someone who knew that
>>Dionysius was associated with wine would, if he heard of an association 
>>also with vines, draw the
>>obvious conclusion that this means grape vines? I think the association by 
>>way of ivy is stronge,
>>if one feels the need to make such a association..
>
> Gerry, again I think in your rush to convert interpretation of Gene Wolfe 
> to mathematical principles
> you are missing the point. We are talking about the thought processes of 
> an author as he creates
> a story. The commutative property of addition does not always work for 
> understanding the human brain.
> Ordering and sequence matter (thus Tzadkiel-shapechange equals 
> Inire-shapechange is a backwards
> "argument" and of course leads to a silly conclusion nobody would make).

I am not trying to convert anything to mathematical principles.  I point out 
that everybody knows grapes grow on vines, and that Dionysius was associated 
with grapes (via wine).  Consequently there's an obvious association with 
grape vines.  Surely nobody, knowing this, would take a reference to 
Dionysius as 'god of vines' to mean something other than grape vines, 
without exploring whether the simple interpretation of grape vines was not 
in fact the correct one?  Especially an author as careful as Wolfe.


> If, as I think James was trying to suggest, Gene Wolfe had an idea for 
> creating parasitic plant creatures
> which were thematically related to Dionysus, vines would be a meaningful 
> choice as a connecting
> concept. The thought process could be Dionysus-> God of Vines-> 
> Inhumi-plants. If Wolfe were American.
>
> If Wolfe was British or some other non-American speaker of English I could 
> understand your objection
> to James' suggestion. Perhaps a British mind would first associate the 
> word "liana" when thinking of
> parasitic jungle plants making a backward connection to Dionysus a bit 
> ridiculous (god of lianas? feh!).

Well, that *is* the connection being made, isn't it?


> Gerry your position seems to be:
>
> "Gene Wolfe is a worldly, educated, highly intelligent man. Therefore his 
> thinking must be the same as mine.
> Since I need grapes to connect Dionysus and vines so must Gene Wolfe. We 
> can throw out seven decades of him
> living in the USA, interacting with Americans, speaking American english 
> and being exposed to American media as
> unimportant to his writing. If I, Gerry Quinn, think something, it pretty 
> much has to be right. There is no
> point in listening to what Americans think about this. Why do they 
> matter?."
>
> In a way I understand. There are no cultural differences in math.

This is not at all my position and I think you know it.

I thought the claim was that Dionysius is sometimes called 'god of vines', 
and Wolfe, being American, might have interpreted this to mean lianas rather 
than grape vines?  As I said, it seems unlikely to me.

 - Gerry

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