The Wizard

Daniel Petersen · 06 Mar 2012, 18:46 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com (Daniel Petersen)
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 18:46:35 +0000
Subject: (urth) The Wizard
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W536DF4322F460DC291EB25CF510 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W536DF4322F460DC291EB25CF510 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <CAGB0RZ5ToOv9z0FAog3skoufvH+zhA11cRyBtauEU5xqDGSwfw at mail.gmail.com>

Yeah, Lee, the whole point in Wolfe is for there to be few and oblique
Christian references that are completely outnumbered and
out-everything-elsed that still end up subverting the hordes of 'pagan'
overlords.  It's genius, even if one doesn't agree with him.  And he's a
generous storyteller, not a cranky crank trying to condemn everyone.  He
graciously invites readers to hear the Outsider and be part of Silk's
revolution, exodus, and new frontier.

-DOJP

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 6:33 PM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> >Daniel Petersen: Aw, come on, guys.  It's not too hard to
> >know which is 'primary' for Wolfe.
>
> Heh. The funny thing is that I would tend to agree with you
> if your position was that pagan/gnostic religious references
> were primary in the Sun Series. That is what seems obvious to
> me. There are so many of them and so few Christian references.
> Do we need to do a list/count to corroborate this?
>
> On the other hand, I could see how quality might trump quantity
> for a Christian reader reading a Christian author. One "sign of
> addition" could outshine a hundred Typhons and Tzadkiels and
> Sphigxs and Scyllas and Echidnas and Thyones and Thelxiepeias.
> Perhaps such a secret, Christian insider code is what Wolfe was
> going for.  I dunno. I've spent a lot of time reading Wolfe
> interviews about his work and I get a different impression.
>
> >Gerry Quinn: So why do you think Wolfe put Jesus in?  To confuse
> >people?  There was nothing that obliged him to put in the reference.
> >Or if he really did want to say that Jesus in Silk?s universe was
> >not Christ, he could have put some hint in here.  (But then why does
> >the Outsider show him to Silk?).
>
> I don't find it confusing. The biggest hint I find is that The Outsider
> is a dark god. Darkness defines Him. I assume Jesus in that universe was
> a dark, Outsider prophet, like Severian. Thus both were shown to Silk.
>
> There is a similarity of the Outsider to Dionysus/Great God Pan/Green Man,
> who is a dark pagan god in our universe in contrast to the light of the
> Christian God and saviour.
>
> >[Wolfe] said he was thinking about cosmic cycles, and he does suggest
> that the
> >Solar cycle takes place some time in such a series.  It?s part of the
> >story, in fact.  It?s by no means obvious whether Urth exists in a past,
> >future or current iteration.
>
> It is not fully clear in the story. But Wolfe makes it explicitly clear in
> interviews:
>
> >JJ: This universe that you set in Briah, or part of it--is that our
> universe?...
>
> >GW: No. I thought of it as a long past universe. Something that we are
> repeating
> >rather than something that we are.
>
> We hear Gene Wolfe's own voice on that video interview say that the
> universe of
> Wizard/Knight is not a Christian universe. He is similarly explicit about
> a Christ-
> absence in There Are Doors:
>
> >GW: This is the Christian world. That world is not the Christian world.
> That world
> >is kind of a warmed-over pagan world.
>
> I see this as a theme across much of Wolfe's work. The importance of
> Christ and the
> Light is demonstrated by creating dark worlds and universes without Him.
>  That such
> places resemble pre-Christian earth is no surprise.
>
> I don't insist that every reader must see it this way. But I find it a
> pretty valid
> viewpoint supported by a lot more evidence than, say French wine tasting
> ;- ).
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20120306/c3233dae/attachment.htm>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net