Janus, Juturna and the reconciliation with Ocean

Chris · 24 Dec 2002, 06:06 · 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: "Chris" <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Janus, Juturna and the reconciliation with Ocean
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 06:06:33 +0000
Message-ID: <urth-v0212-2531 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0212/2531.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Just a couple notes on different subjects, but at least on something less=20
general than before:

I agree that Graves is very helpful in trying to understand Wolfe's work; o=
f=20
course, I also agree with someone else who posted that attempts to jam Wolf=
e=20
into a... Graves-ian framework, aren't going to work. Comparisons tend to b=
e=20
fruitful, though.

There are also qabbalistic references here and there in his work. I only=20
knew enough, at the time, to make some general inferences which have=20
probably been rehashed here 20 times. However, by coincidence I picked up a=20
commentary of the Sefer Yetzirah (for non-Wolfe-related reasons), and when =
I=20
finish it I'm hoping those pieces will fall into place.

Also, w.r.t. Abaia and the undersea entities... I felt that their function=20
in the story was largely allegorical- to the point that they may partially=20
(or even entirely) be the invention of Severian (as an author, and aware of=20
the devices of authors) to illustrate a point. Where he uses them, I find=20
that nearly always the water they are submerged under is time/history, and=20
the large entities like Abaia could be compared to the influence of=20
long-dead nations and cultures, and possibly even dominant *ideas*, cast=20
aside but reaching out to extend their largely subconscious influence on th=
e=20
present. One of the most obvious instances (if any are needed, though I=20
suspect everyone's gone well over this by now) is the defeat of Baldanders=20
and the potential of what he could have been: he goes back under the waters=
,=20
swallowed by time.

Not to say that this is a universal theme applied to all segments in the=20
story, it's just a sub-story alongside the story, I suppose. But I find it=20
an interesting consequence that, from this point of view, the cycle must=20
necessarily end with a flood.

=46rom this way of looking at things, it would follow that while Abaia & co.=20
achieve victory at the end of a cycle in a sense, they nonetheless are=20
vanquished at that instant where the end of the old cycle gives way to the=20
beginning of the new (though they may be reborn). I am unable to produce an=
y=20
textual evidence whether such an extinction did/did not occur, but I would=20
be interested if anyone knows.

Apologies, by the way, if I have spent a great deal of time re-hashing what=20
everyone has taken for granted/dismissed a long time ago; I haven't seen it=20
in the archives, but I also haven't read them from beginning to end either.=20
I've been babbling on far too much of late.

Chris

Andrew wrote:
>Looking for the "simplest" explanation is rarely the best way to approach
>Wolfe. The explanation with the greatest "poetic meaning" is probably the
>most appropriate, as was said of Robert Graves. I agree with Crush on this,
>I think: it is fruitful to approach Wolfe with the same "analeptic" mode of
>enquiry that Graves brought to myths.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 3 months FREE*.=20
http://join.msn.com/?page=3Dfeatures/virus&xAPID=3D42&PS=3D47575&PI=3D7324&=
DI=3D7474&SU=3D=20
http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg&HL=3D1216hotmailtaglines_eliminat=
eviruses_3mf

--=20

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