do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

Sergei SOLOVIEV · 23 May 2011, 16:47 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: soloviev at irit.fr (Sergei SOLOVIEV)
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 18:47:45 +0200
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
In-Reply-To: <AEC7C702B7C14DB1BF20E6F99A3B4822@jill>
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Message-ID: <4DDA8FB1.8020903 at irit.fr>

But we discuss also the method of Wolfe! And if you look at the stories 
in the
Book of the New Sun, there is often (or always?) an old story "updated" 
(or modified) by the passage of time! And it shows so beautifully the 
depth of time behind - why always try
to find unique source? In the story of Student and his Son something 
even was lost -
the explanation why the black sail provokes the suicide of the Student. 
Jonas knew the original
story (with Athens, Minotaur etc.). In the story of Fish and Frog the 
dialogues of
Wolves are taken from Jungle's book, while the story itself is 
essentially the
story of Romulus and Remus. Why to try to equate as much as possible, when
the diversity is part of the method?

Best

Sergei


Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
> From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
>> Gerry Quinn:
>>> James Wynn:
>
>>>> Obviously, ambiguity is built into Wolfe's novels. There's no false 
>>>> positive test. I'm pretty comfortable that I'm right about this. 
>>>> Maybe I should get serious about locating Fish.
>>>
>>> Remus, obviously.
>>
>> Why call Juno, Rhea Silvia, and Mars by direct cognates and call 
>> Romulus and Remus by Frog and Fish? There's no "Fish" in the "Jungle 
>> Book".
>
> I'm not familiar with details of the Jungle Book - are their parts of 
> it in the story?.  In any case, we don't need it to identify Frog and 
> Fish, because the story of Romulus and Remus is so very clearly 
> identifiable that there seems no reasonable alternative source (other 
> than a different retelling of the same story).
>
> Look at the clear points of identity:
> * twins
> * half or quarter divine origin (more ambiguous than the others, see 
> note 1 below)
> * mother's name: Bird of the Woods = Rhea Silvia
> * abandoned in a basket
> * raised by wolves and shepherds (slight modification, see note 2)
> * raised a motley army and demanded their heritage from their usurping 
> great uncle
> * decided to found a new city
> * stole women from neighbouring tribes
> * Frog builds a trench and tells Fish it is to be the wall; Fish mocks 
> him by jumping over it; Frog slays him (*exactly* the same as with 
> Romulus and Remus).
>
> Note 1: Mars or Hercules was supposedly their father - some people 
> have found Mars somewhere I think, but I prefer the idea of Hercules 
> as Spring Wind, because of his parentage, Zeus appearing as a flower 
> which is the sort of thing he did.  Frog later claimed his heritage in 
> the name of the Red Flower.)
>
> Note 2: Instead of having both twins raised first by wolves and later 
> by shepherds, Wolfe splits them so one is raised by each.
>
> I honestly don't understand how anyone can seriously assert that this 
> story is anything other than a version of Romulus and Remus!  And on 
> such flimsy evidence...
>
>
>> I think it is an easy call that Ymar is Frog (ymir=king=rana=frog). I 
>> suspect that Fish will be found on Tzadkiel (the shepherds). Possibly 
>> he will have a name that means "sword".
>
> That's just a chain of puns in a bunch of different languages.  I 
> think it's random noise that means nothing.  How come Frog isn't 
> Martin Luther King - the chain is one step shorter!  We don't know a 
> lot about the life of Ymar the Autarch - are there any obvious 
> correspondences between his story and that of Frog? I can't think of 
> any, unless Ymar founded Nessus, which seems it would be hard to justify.
>
> If we were completely at sea regarding who Frog is, there might be 
> some point in chasing such thin threads... but we're not!  It's 
> perfectly clear fom the points listed above that Frog is Romulus.  
> Wolfe isn't even trying to hide it.  If Wolfe has worked in clues to 
> the deep history of early Autarchy, they are very subtle and they 
> cannot involve identifying Ymar with Frog (there could in principle be 
> oblique references to events somewhere in the story, maybe in the 
> space travel or war parts).
>
> Why did he change the names of Frog and Fish, but translate Rhea 
> Silvia with a pun?  Why not?  The legends change and mutate over time; 
> some bits fall off and some mutate.  Maybe there's a bit of Jungle 
> Book mixed in, a lot of the chatter among the wolves comes from 
> somewhere other than the story of Romulus and Remus, and it might have 
> come from there, or another story or stories, or completely from 
> Wolfe's imagination.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
>
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