No Planets Strike question for those with religious backgrounds ...

Stephen Hoy · 26 Apr 2015, 19:46 · from 2015-April.txt.gz

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From: stephenhoy15 at gmail.com (Stephen Hoy)
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2015 14:46:24 -0500
Subject: (urth) No Planets Strike question for those with religious
 backgrounds ...
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What if Donkey's great ears mis-heard 'bilad masih'  as biladmaser?  This
is nearly arabic for 'land of the messiah'. 'barr' denotes 'land' as well.

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 9:21 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:

> "In The Godstone and the Blackymore," White even comments on being
> observed by a Chough:
>
> "I thought how strange that young ravens should be as small as jackdaws,
> that they should have this thin and almost curlew beak. I looked earnestly
> upon the beak, and upon the feet. My heart bounded as I distinguished the
> redness, even against the sky. No wonder they were so trim, so much
> lovelier than any of the black-guard I had previously known. They were not
> ravens at all. They were the red-beaked choughs of legend, looking on Man
> for the first time?as I on them."
>
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 5:17 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I suppose it could mean "web of swords/important events" as well...
>>
>> The story also uses the donkey and the bull to re-enact the rather famous
>> allegory of the long spoons - hell would be much more like heaven if the
>> people fed each other rather than simply tried to feed themselves.
>>
>> I feel that Wolfe's religious stories, for whatever reason, are highly
>> dependent upon older texts.
>>
>> "How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen" is intensely dependent upon T.H.
>> White's biographical travels to the Inniskeas, where White became obsessed
>> with a possibly pagan stone used as the pillow of a holy man which was
>> appropriated in Catholic reverence, depicted in his nonfictional "The
>> Godstone and the Blackymore". There is a scene at the start of that in
>> which the historically ambiguously sexually oriented White talks to his
>> older patron Bunny passionately about falconry that reminded me so strongly
>> of Blood and Musk in The Book of the Long Sun that it was almost shocking.
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 4:58 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I am writing up a whole bunch of the short story ones now, and there is
>>> a scene at the end of the rather allegorical (but obviously so) No Planets
>>> Strike, which depicts the reign of the pagan world (The Beautiful Ones of
>>> the planet Sidhe/The Fair Ones) as alien control of humanity, and pretty
>>> much involves scenes directly from the bible and the life of Christ from
>>> our narrator Donkey ... and there is a scene at the end where he talks
>>> about folks going to the planet Barrmaser, though some pronounce it
>>> Biladmaser.
>>>
>>> These words are Somalian words, and "maser" is tissue.  If it stopped
>>> there I would expect it to be mere coincidence, but in Somali Barr means
>>> "important events" and Bilad means "sword" ... so we have three Somalian
>>> words.
>>>
>>> Does "tissue of Swords" or "Tissue of important events" mean anything to
>>> anyone here with a knowledge of the Christian religion or the transition
>>> from the pagan world to the Christian one?
>>>
>>> I do not think the sound similarities to a Jewish concept such as a bar
>>> mitzvah (where bar implies son) is necessarily the way to go with this,
>>> since all three components are actual words in an existing language ...
>>>
>>
>>
>
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