Andrew and Marc and Silk and Horn and Babbie

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 23 Jan 2003, 16:38 · from urth-v0301.mbox · original

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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Subject: (urth) Andrew and Marc and Silk and Horn and Babbie
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 09:38:55 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0301-2783 at digest.urth.net>
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The one thing we all seem to agree upon is that the weird scene
at the end of OBW is a major turning point, and key to any full
interpretation of _SS_.

I've never been quite able to buy Marc's Horn-into-Babbie=3D20
reading of this scene for practical reasons -- in fact,=3D20
the classic Lupine problem of authorship -- who _writes_=3D20
this scene? If we accept Marc's reading, by the time of=3D20
narration, Horn is "gone" from the Narrator's body. But=3D20
it's written from the point of view of the person who=3D20
primarily experiences ... whatever it is. Silk can not know=3D20
what Horn's departure feels like from Horn's point of view;=3D20
yet in this reading, that is exactly what is being narrated.

Andrew's reading has some merit. I'm particularly whacking
myself on the head over his reading of Evensong -- this=3D20
is so true to the basic Silk pattern; with Evensong, the
Narrator is (in a sense) going through the whole Hyacinth
experience all over again, in a kind of mirror-image.=3D20

I'm not going to dispute Andrew's reading at this point;=3D20
I think it warrants some time. It certainly answers some
questions, but it raises others ... in particular, I have
trouble seeing how the Babbie _persona_ could be extricated
back out from the Silk/Horn/? melange and put back into=3D20
Babbie. (But then, perhaps he carries some Hornishness=3D20
with him ... which would explain the astrally travelling=3D20
Babbie scene which Marc has indicated.)=3D20

Possible areas for investigation to support or deny
this reading:

o Is the Narrator's attitude toward Babbie significantly
  different when Babbie returns in RttW from what it was
  in OBW? If so, how?
o Can we disentangle the "I" references in the scene at
  the end of OBW in a way that makes some kind of artistic
  sense? Is there a pattern to who is speaking when?
o Why would the Babbie persona be necessary to save the=3D20
  Narrator at that point? By which I mean, why Babbie
  specifically? And what happened to Babbie while this
  was going on?
o Does this help to explain how Babbie got back to the=3D20
  Main continent of Blue?

--Blattid

--=20

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