Nightside again, chapter one

Jonathan Laidlow · 11 Dec 1998, 12:28 · from whorl-v0009.mbox · original

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From: "Jonathan Laidlow" <LAIDLOJM at hhs.bham.ac.uk>
Subject: (whorl) Nightside again, chapter one
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:28:49 GMT
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Stephen Witkoswksi inspired to begin rereading Long Sun again, and=20
I'd be grateful for your input folks:

Nightside chapter 1 - two things I noticed:

1. the word 'clockwork' is used three times in the first three pages.=20
Patera Silk is 'that absurd clockwork figure' in the parenthesis in=20
the second paragraph, and he watches the game 'outside a clockwork=20
show whose works had stopped'. This is where Silk has his first=20
theophany (love that word!). The Outsider gives him an out of body=20
experience and reveals how he is merely a mechanical creation=20
(figuratively) who does what he has been programmed to do?
Then again on p11 at the end of the vision: 'a wind that blew ever=20
stronger and wilder as clockwork that had never really stopped began=20
to turn again'. This then suggests that all is artificial, created -=20
the wind is unnatural, but guided by the clockwork maker.

I'm wondering how to reconcile this with Silk's assertion later in=20
the chapter that the Outside will not help save the Manteion, Silk is=20
the help that is being provided.

2. And another thing,back to  the first paragraph: 'he said that it=20
was as though someone who had always been behind him and standing=20
(as it were) at both his shoulders had, after so many years of=20
pregnant silence, begun to whisper into both his ears'
This echoes TS Eliot's Waste Land: 'Who is that who walks behind you'=20
(Eliot's note refers to polar explorers, but that's a red herring).=20
Both refer to some passage in the Bible, presumably after the=20
Resurrection where Jesus is seen by various people, but where? And=20
why?

Jonathan
********************************************************

Jonathan Laidlow
Dept of English - staff pigeonholes
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT, England
0121 414 5976

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