Nodding trees

Dan Rabin · 02 Dec 2002, 04:26 · from urth-v0212.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: Dan Rabin <wolfe-lists at danrabin.com>
Subject: (urth) Nodding trees
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 20:26:41 -0800
Message-ID: <urth-v0212-2301 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0212/2301.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Marc Aramini writes,

>  Also, remember that the trees take part in the cannibalistic ritual
>of Vodalus: " the trees nodded, and I nodded with them". THE TREES PARTICI=
PATE
>IN THE CEREMONY OF THE LIEGE OF LEAVES.

Severian is under the effects of a powerful psychoactive drug=20
(alzabo) at the moment narrated.  He is hallucinating.  I can't count=20
this as an instance of Wolfe intending the trees to be understood as=20
sentient.

>Also remember that there is a big
>section that talks about Vodalus hiding the forests of Lune - sentient tre=
es
>there, maybe?  The trees of Green?

Not a big section.  From _Torturer_ chapter 5:

>This was done before they got it irrigated.  See that gray-brown?=20
>In those times, that's what you'd see if you looked up at her.  Not=20
>green like she is now.  Didn't seem so big either, because it wasn't=20
>so close in-that's what old Branwallader used to say.  Now there's=20
>trees enough on it to hide Nilammon, as the saw goes."
>I seized my opportunity.  "Or Vodalus."
>Rudesind cackled.  "Or him, that's right enough.  Your bunch muyst=20
>be rubbing their hands waiting to have him.  Got something special=20
>planned?"
>If the guild had particular excruciations reserved for specific=20
>individuals, I knew nothing of it; but I endeavored to look wise and=20
>said, "We'll think of something."
>"I suppose you will.  A bit ago, though, I thought you was for him.=20
>Still you'll have to wait if he's hiding in the Forests of Lune."

OK, so there's this once-arid Moon that's now a big forest.  It's=20
hard to find things even in a little forest full of ordinary=20
non-sentient trees, because you can't see very far.  So this really=20
big forest is so big that it can hide Nilammon, who was trying to hid=20
from a mob (thanks to _Lexicon Urthus_ for the reference).  So=20
Severian thinks it a chance to work in a mention of Vodalus, who he=20
presumes to be hiding from all the Autarch's horses (or destriers)=20
and all the Autarch's men.  Forests don't need volition or sentience=20
to hide things--they just stand around being composed of zillions of=20
opaque trees, and human lack of x-ray vision does the rest.

If Wolfe does have a thing about sentient trees, it's certainly much=20
more muted in his works than concerns with memory and identity.  You=20
want sentient trees, read _The Lord of the Rings_, which has them in=20
abundance, right out in the open, with raw explicit scenes like Old=20
Man Willow trapping hobbits, Huorns making Orcs disappear, and Ents=20
tearing down the stronghold of an evil wizard.  Great material, those=20
sentient trees--too bad that slacker Wolfe had them all over his=20
major works and never got any good action out of them!  Instead, his=20
readers have to settle for tired old stuff such as vampire popes,=20
robot nuns, giant time-travelling sailing ships, false gods who=20
appear on giant vision screens, monarchial succession by practical=20
cannibalism, splendid giant underground palaces with coextensive=20
secret passageways, maintenance crews that strap on wings to tend the=20
sun, all kinds of shallow showy stuff like that.

   -- Dan Rabin

--=20

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