Dionysus and the Outsider

Lee Berman · 16 Dec 2010, 14:39 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:39:04 -0500
Subject: (urth) Dionysus and the Outsider
Message-ID: <SNT123-w30870333C96CEB56D62C64CF150 at phx.gbl>

>Jerry Friedman-  Sorry, I didn't read a lot of the posts about Dionysus, so I may be duplicating 
>something someone else said.  But people are saying that the Outsider was the son of Thyone, that 
>is, Dionysus.  I read the passage quite differently.  Silk says there are two gods whose names are 
>unknown: the son of Thyone and the Outsider.  So they're two different gods.  They're mentioned 
>together and have anonymity in common, though, so some might draw conclusions from that.

I think you are missing something important. The above about the God of Wine and Thyone takes place 
in a theological lesson SilkHorn is giving to Hound. Later, after Hound has had time to mull things 
over, he asks Silk if it wouldn't make sense for the two unnamed gods to be the same entity.  SilkHorn
highly praises Hound's insightfulness and remarks that he may have already told Hound too much.

I can't see ANY reason for SilkHorn to worry about giving away too much truth about the gods. On the
other hand I can see this being a great concern for Gene Wolfe and I think it is really he who is 
worried he has given away too much. (Dionysus has certainly been a key that unlocks many doors
in the Sun series for me).

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