Phanes

Lee Berman · 30 May 2011, 03:56 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 23:56:26 -0400
Subject: (urth) Phanes
Message-ID: <SNT123-w28F872F8F16C9FB0F1D802CF7B0 at phx.gbl>

>Nick Lee: It is proving difficult to condense my ideas here. I just wrote 85 pages on
>this subject, and duplicating the rhetorical effect is impossible.

I can imagine. Still I'm glad you made the attempt. If I can't match you for your 
scholarship on the subject, I can at least say I agree with your approach. It may
be a minority of contributors here who are open to exploring the mythological 
underpinnings of WOlfe's work but the minority is a pleasant one, and perhaps showing
a few signs of growth.

>I only meant that it is obvious once you know that "Dennis" means
>"Dionysus." And naturally you have to know the myths associated with
>Dionysus. He is associated with trees, particularly the fig tree (think YHWH
>and Silk in Long Sun), and rebirth. Weer is basically a vintner.

No I didn't know that about the name Dennis. Thanks. And I think it means I should be
reading Peace in a more Dionysian light. That's now on my "to do" list.

>Read Borski's essay on Peace: http://www.siriusfiction.com/PaxBorskii.html
>It has some of this information and more insights, though I believe his
>thesis is far off the mark. Weer as the Devil would certainly be clever, but
>would it mean anything? No, it's just a smokescreen. He also misses Weer's
>greatest sin, but that's another essay. Dionysus is associated with the
>devil because he is horned, a nature deity, and the Catholic church
>conducted a smear campaign on nature deities.

I think Borski is very bright and insightful but I agree he often leads himself far down
the wrong path. One of my complaints is him seeing Father Inire only as a Moses figure 
which leads to all sorts of odd conclusions. My own current view is that Inire is another 
Wolfe character connected to Dionysus, via Pan-> Inuus -> Inire (verb for sexual entrance). 
The monkey connection is through the archaic monkey genus name Inuus. Not that I don't see
any Moses connection to Inire. But to ignore the Dionysian-Promethian-Azazel connection is 
to miss a lot, imho (some also find aspects of Fenrir in him; had to mention it).

I am aware of the Catholic (and other Christian sects') crusade to demonize nature gods, most
especially the horned Dionysus/Green Man/Great God Pan. But I'm not sure that is grounds to
dismiss the connection, especially in the mind of a Catholic author. While I would guess 
Wolfe believes in a spiritually higher Christian God of goodness, I suspect he also believes 
in the realness of a material, more earthly devilish, nature sort of god which is in balance/
opposition. I think he personally finds both influences in himself, and as a demiurge creator,
tends to put all the darkest sides of himself into his stories. Thus the appearance of 
Dionysian characters with autobiographical aspects in his work. (I suspect Wolfe doesn't
consider a Dionysian demiurge to be pure evil but as a necessary balance to the impossible
goodness of God).

>I think it is misleading to think of his work as possessssing levels. It's all there at once. 
>It may appear as levels because we only glimpse a bit at a time. 

Fair enough if you can comprehend Wolfe in such a gestalt fashion. Perhaps I can do that also, 
but when attempting to describe that totality to other people, I've found it helps to use such 
heuristic devices as breaking things into levels. One of the tricks of trying to communicate in 
such a limited venue as this one.

>As for the others, I suggest that they are characters dear to Wolfe and have
>much of him in them. He draws on his life for details, but I wouldn't call
>their stories autobiographical.

For me, Wolfe drawing upon his personal life to ascribe details to one of his characters IS
autobiographical. I say this in the sense of describing the levels of his work, to distinguish
from elements of his characters and stories which are religious, mythological, historical or 
political in origin. Again, I find this useful as a way to describe my reading of Wolfe to 
others because... well, for me, I find large gaps in the Sun Series if it is read at any one level. 
But reading with simultaneous awareness of all the levels fills in just about all the gaps. For me, 
anyway.

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