Nightside again, chapter one

Jason Voegele · 11 Dec 1998, 11:48 · from whorl-v0009.mbox · original

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From: "Jason Voegele" <voegele.6 at osu.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Nightside again, chapter one
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:48:00
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>
>2. And another thing,back to  the first paragraph: 'he said that it
>was as though someone who had always been behind him and standing
>(as it were) at both his shoulders had, after so many years of
>pregnant silence, begun to whisper into both his ears'
>This echoes TS Eliot's Waste Land: 'Who is that who walks behind you'
>(Eliot's note refers to polar explorers, but that's a red herring).
>Both refer to some passage in the Bible, presumably after the
>Resurrection where Jesus is seen by various people, but where? And
>why?

This reminds me of the passage in PEACE, in which Aunt Olivia is speaking to
Katie and says:

"Who's that behind you?"
"It's just little Den, Katie.  He's been there before."
"Yes, but there's another, dimmer yet, behind him."
"I can only see the one behind me, Katie."

I think mantis cited the Eliot reference when I first mentioned this.  In
fact, straight from the archives:

<mantis>
I have to admit that this rings bells
in the literary dept. of my brain--T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland,"
wherein the same haunting question is derived from the journals of
English adventurers climbing Mt. Everest and having hallucinations
from lack of oxygen.  (It also evokes the missionaries in the jungle
garden of Nessus sensing the presence of Severian and Agia.)  But, to
get back to PEACE, I suspect that the dimmer one is the reader."You."
</mantis>

I don't have anything new to add to the discussion, since (sigh) I've never
read The Wasteland, but I thought I'd throw something out there for you all
to chew on.

Jason Voegele
voegele.6 at osu.edu

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