Heavy Hyacinth

James Jordan · 09 Sep 2002, 16:44 · from urth-v0209.mbox · original

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: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Subject: RE: (urth) Heavy Hyacinth
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2002 11:44:40 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0209-1711 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0209/1711.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

At 10:16 AM 9/9/2002, you wrote:

>I reiterate that clues that Hyacinth is human, that she is female, does not
>resolve clues that she is not. I realize that I am partly to blame for your
>skepticism for posting a theory that I had not fully developed  (just "hey!
>Look at all the suggestions that Hy is chem!"), but an alternate theory to
>explain the clues and Silk's explanation to Horn would be useful to me.

         Setting aside whether all the mooted clues are really clues or=20
might just be misinterpretations: We can always fall back on thematic=20
rather than literal associations. If the name Hyacinth is also a pointer to=20
Apollo, this relationship stands without her having to be a male. (Look,=20
Silk is NOT going to be a homosexual, or engage in homosexual acts. Not in=20
anything by Gene Wolfe.) Similarly, the fact that her name can also be that=20
of a rock can point to the need for human beings to "reach down" and rescue=20
"lesser" humans, in this case chems, without Hy's actually being a chem. We=20
get the same theme in Short Sun, where the humans must live in such a way=20
as to redeem the inhumi.
         Hy needs rescuing, clearly. She needs a REAL lover, and for Wolfe=20
that's always God and His agents. To add that she's positioned like the=20
chems only adds to the theme. But it does not mean she IS a chem.
         All the stuff about the intelligence and personality of the chems=20
and how it might come to pass is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant=20
thematically. Wolfe makes them persons. Period. They are like Cordwainer=20
Smith's "underpeople." Wolfe and Smith write "theological SF." So, to get=20
theological for a moment, if something can "speak," it has some=20
relationship to the Word of God, and thus has some relationship to God and=20
God's agents. True of Oreb and the kitty cat whose name I forget also. One=20
way or another, both writers are playing with this notion.
         As the Theoanthropos has come down from the Increate to redeem=20
humanity, so those redeemed by the Theoanthropos have a duty to go down and=20
redeem the sub-human world. Wolfe is not an environmentalist, but he is a=20
conservationist. I.e., he's not a neo-Hindu but a conscientious Christian=20
in his view of the animal world. Human beings should the shepherds of=20
creation, not the exploiters of it. This is a large concern in some of his=20
shorter writings (especially those about wolves -- duh!). So, thematically=20
we should not be surprised to detect various expressions of that concern in=20
these larger books.
         I say you've advanced the discussion, but thematically, not as=20
regards the "literal" "facts" of the narrative.
         FWIW.

Nutria


--=20

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