do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

Nathan C. Tresch · 22 May 2011, 17:06 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: nathanctresch at gmail.com (Nathan C. Tresch)
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:06:52 -0700
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
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Thank you, David.

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 6:47 AM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

> I failed to complete a thought in the below. I'll answer a question with a
> question:
>
> Q: Why are there 17 Megatherians and 17 Ascians in their ruling Group? Are
> they the same?
>
> A: Why are there 12 Apostles and 12 Caesars? Are they the same?
>
>
>
>
> On 5/22/2011 9:25 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>
>>
>> On 5/21/2011 8:52 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>
>>> I think we'll have to disagree about what "Lives of" could mean.
>>> Jerry Friedman
>>>
>>>  I have my own theory.
>>
>> I  always assumed that the form of the title "Lives of the Megatherians"
>> was a simple imitation of Butler's "Lives of the Saints." Based on this, one
>> would think that the Beasts are the opposite of saints in a world even more
>> fallen than our own: human beings who are evil rather than saintly, and who
>> are in some sense "exalted" by their evil, thus deserving such treatment.
>> But the saints are not numbered. And we don't know from this what evil the
>> Beasts did except that it must have been great.
>>
>> Upon googling, I found that another precedent is Suetonius' "Lives of the
>> Twelve Caesars"---which I always knew as simply "The Twelve Caesars." This
>> example introduces (1) number (but a nice round "complete" and "lucky"
>> number) and (2) long-past imperial status (and even godly status, at least
>> since Augustus).
>>
>> If "Lives of the Megatherians" is the kind of significant joke we expect
>> from Wolfe, and it plays off both these titles, then the Megatherians must
>> be (a) twisted, "unholy" perversions of saints (b) past rulers known to
>> everyone (c) human or at least semi-human, because this is common to both
>> books.
>>
>> This last point is key: humans are evil because they choose to be; evil
>> monsters are evil simply because we say so, or because they were made that
>> way---they don't make a choice to be evil. Therefore, no one---writer or
>> reader---would care about the "life" of Cthulhu, because all he ever did was
>> eat and sleep, and more knowledge of his life would just make him more
>> human.
>>
>> My vote is for Typhon as the sole Megatherian given a name by Wolfe. I
>> believe the Megatherians to be otherwise lost to history the same way
>> Severian knows nothing of the Caesars or the Good Caliphs or any other king
>> list from our time. I believe they are meant to indicate a long and dark
>> future political history of Earth/Urth, something on the scale (and
>> containing the horror) of the Beast of Revelations arising many times over
>> without any relief from a divine being or an End Times. Perhaps Typhon
>> himself was the last of these rulers.
>>
>> I don't see anything to connect the Beasts with Ascia or Abaia except the
>> number 17, and again I think the whole significance of "17" is that it is
>> not "12." It is the thematic opposite of 12. 12 is the "complete" number
>> because it is highly divisible. 17 is "very" prime, i.e., highly
>> indivisible.
>>
>>
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