Short Sun notes: Inhumi and their sources

Andrew Mason: I suspect that for each featured inhumu/a we are meant to be able to work out who their source is.

On Jul 7, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com> wrote: We know that each humanoid inhumu/a has a human spirit, which is derived from someone one of their parents fed on before their birth. In the case we know most about, Krait, it’s his mother, but I’m not sure it has to be in every case. Indeed, one might wonder if sometimes one of them might have a double spirit, derived both from their father and their mother. I suspect that for each featured inhumu/a we are meant to be able to work out who their source is. Krait’s we know is Sinew. Quetzal’s, I suspect, is Pike. (I think this has been suggested before.) The only positive evidence for this is that at one point, when they are walking together in the dark, Silk mistakes him for Pike. But it would make sense of some things about his character. When he says “Some people love birds so much that they want to keep them caged, and other people love birds so much that they want to set them free”, that is amazingly charitable both to Pas and to Echidna — it has a “see the good in everyone” quality worthy of Silk. That would make sense if Quetzal’s source is Silk’s mentor. Jahlee’s, I agree with many people, is Chenille. There’s several pieces of evidence for this; in astral travel she seems to have red hair; Mora, on first meeting her, says “She looks like a whore”; and when she is drunk in Dorp the Rajan mistakes her for Chenille. (It might be that Chenille is the woman she has just fed on, but I don’t think so; she knows who Chenille is — “that lady on Green” — and doesn’t recognise her as her victim.) I do wonder in particular about Jahlee whether she might have a double source, which could explain how she can switch so easily between looking like an old woman and a young woman. (Fava can also look like both, but she has to feed on children to keep looking young, while Jahlee seems able to change at will.) Juganu’s, I propose (and I think this is new) is Lemur, or possibly Loris. We are told that Juganu, in astral travel, has a hawk nose and eyes the colour of ice. Lemur has an aquiline nose, and while his own eyes aren’t described, his brother, Loris, has icy blue eyes. (These are their chem bodies, of course, but presumably they are modelled on their bio bodies.) In the conversation with Remora at the end, the Rajan says Gyrfalcon was as bad as Juganu, and Remora then (a bit cryptically, as is his wont) compares Gyrfalcon to Lemur. This leaves us with Fava. I’m not sure about Fava, though we get enough descriptions of her astral body (which is said to be quite similar to her physical body when in disguise) to suggest that her appearance is significant in some way. It is possible, of course, that her source was in Grandecitta — the shape-changing witch about whom Salica tells a story might have been Fava, or perhaps her mother. Could it be that Salica herself is the source? Fava does claim to remember her youth in Grandecitta — though it’s not clear the memory is her own — and is at one point described as looking like a woman who had been beautiful thirty years before. _______________________________________________

I find the blended identities found within inhumi to be very confusing. Likewise for the merged identities within other characters like Babbie, Oreb, Pig, Kypris/Hyacynth, etc. I appreciate and admire your fortitude in trying to map these out.

I've been lazy, and content to take a broad-based interpretation of all that. For the inhumi I find them to be Wolfean allegory on the presence of blood-sucking parasites among us; the liars and criminals and drug addicts who only take from society without contributing.

The conflation of inhumi with Horn's children and surrogate children seems a bit like the Shakespearean lament: "how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child". Since I think only Number 5 and Severian rival Horn as a Gene Wolfe literary avatar, I suspect there is masked autobiography going on here as well as a general statement on humanity and the difficulties of parenthood.

On Sat, 13 Jul 2013, Andrew Mason wrote: Yes indeed. With Krait I think it's fairly clear what's happening - Horn adopts Krait as his son, and it turns out that he is in a way his son, through Sinew. I think that Horn is unfairly judging Sinew - perhaps because he reminds Horn of his younger self - and that through Krait he comes to appreciate him better. But Jahlee is a real mystery. Why does the Rajan see her, not as his sister - which would make sense if she is Chenille - but as his daughter? You might just say 'by adoption', and adoption is certainly taken seriously in the Vironese community, but there are suggestions there's more to it than that; he thinks in retrospect of Krait as his grandson, and wonders whether it was legitimate to adopt Krait in the light of that; yet the adoption of Krait happened long before he met Jahlee. But there's no suggestion that either Silk or Horn ever had a daughter. There's something here I'm not fathoming.

The scene on dorp when Jahlee is mistaken for Chenille also has two other weird things - the presence of auks ghost and it is where Oreb brings a ring that changes to look like Horn's ring. Silk is also very concerned about the woman Jahlee just fed on, asking if she was dead, a big woman. Jahlee acts drink because she just fed on someone who turned to drugs in her sorrow. The ring, auk's ghost, and suddenly being mistaken for chenille and feeding on a big woman, as well as a lander for silk to leave in at the end, tell me auk fixed the lander and chenille wound up bled in an alley by Jahlee in dorp. Time paradoxes are irrelevant. Astral travel is time travel. Silk could have not have freed them in his time line yet. Sent from my iPhone On Jul 7, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com> wrote:

We know that each humanoid inhumu/a has a human spirit, which is derived from someone one of their parents fed on before their birth. In the case we know most about, Krait, it’s his mother, but I’m not sure it has to be in every case. Indeed, one might wonder if sometimes one of them might have a double spirit, derived both from their father and their mother. I suspect that for each featured inhumu/a we are meant to be able to work out who their source is. Krait’s we know is Sinew. Quetzal’s, I suspect, is Pike. (I think this has been suggested before.) The only positive evidence for this is that at one point, when they are walking together in the dark, Silk mistakes him for Pike. But it would make sense of some things about his character. When he says “Some people love birds so much that they want to keep them caged, and other people love birds so much that they want to set them free”, that is amazingly charitable both to Pas and to Echidna — it has a “see the good in everyone” quality worthy of Silk. That would make sense if Quetzal’s source is Silk’s mentor. Jahlee’s, I agree with many people, is Chenille. There’s several pieces of evidence for this; in astral travel she seems to have red hair; Mora, on first meeting her, says “She looks like a whore”; and when she is drunk in Dorp the Rajan mistakes her for Chenille. (It might be that Chenille is the woman she has just fed on, but I don’t think so; she knows who Chenille is — “that lady on Green” — and doesn’t recognise her as her victim.) I do wonder in particular about Jahlee whether she might have a double source, which could explain how she can switch so easily between looking like an old woman and a young woman. (Fava can also look like both, but she has to feed on children to keep looking young, while Jahlee seems able to change at will.) Juganu’s, I propose (and I think this is new) is Lemur, or possibly Loris. We are told that Juganu, in astral travel, has a hawk nose and eyes the colour of ice. Lemur has an aquiline nose, and while his own eyes aren’t described, his brother, Loris, has icy blue eyes. (These are their chem bodies, of course, but presumably they are modelled on their bio bodies.) In the conversation with Remora at the end, the Rajan says Gyrfalcon was as bad as Juganu, and Remora then (a bit cryptically, as is his wont) compares Gyrfalcon to Lemur. This leaves us with Fava. I’m not sure about Fava, though we get enough descriptions of her astral body (which is said to be quite similar to her physical body when in disguise) to suggest that her appearance is significant in some way. It is possible, of course, that her source was in Grandecitta — the shape-changing witch about whom Salica tells a story might have been Fava, or perhaps her mother. Could it be that Salica herself is the source? Fava does claim to remember her youth in Grandecitta — though it’s not clear the memory is her own — and is at one point described as looking like a woman who had been beautiful thirty years before. _______________________________________________

On Jul 13, 2013, at 1:33 PM, entonio at gmail.com wrote: Silk fred them? No dia 12/07/2013, ?s 13:58, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> escreveu:

The scene on dorp when Jahlee is mistaken for Chenille also has two other weird things - the presence of auks ghost and it is where Oreb brings a ring that changes to look like Horn's ring. Silk is also very concerned about the woman Jahlee just fed on, asking if she was dead, a big woman. Jahlee acts drink because she just fed on someone who turned to drugs in her sorrow. The ring, auk's ghost, and suddenly being mistaken for chenille and feeding on a big woman, as well as a lander for silk to leave in at the end, tell me auk fixed the lander and chenille wound up bled in an alley by Jahlee in dorp. Time paradoxes are irrelevant. Astral travel is time travel. Silk could have not have freed them in his time line yet. Sent from my iPhone On Jul 7, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com> wrote:

We know that each humanoid inhumu/a has a human spirit, which is derived from someone one of their parents fed on before their birth. In the case we know most about, Krait, it’s his mother, but I’m not sure it has to be in every case. Indeed, one might wonder if sometimes one of them might have a double spirit, derived both from their father and their mother. I suspect that for each featured inhumu/a we are meant to be able to work out who their source is. Krait’s we know is Sinew. Quetzal’s, I suspect, is Pike. (I think this has been suggested before.) The only positive evidence for this is that at one point, when they are walking together in the dark, Silk mistakes him for Pike. But it would make sense of some things about his character. When he says “Some people love birds so much that they want to keep them caged, and other people love birds so much that they want to set them free”, that is amazingly charitable both to Pas and to Echidna — it has a “see the good in everyone” quality worthy of Silk. That would make sense if Quetzal’s source is Silk’s mentor. Jahlee’s, I agree with many people, is Chenille. There’s several pieces of evidence for this; in astral travel she seems to have red hair; Mora, on first meeting her, says “She looks like a whore”; and when she is drunk in Dorp the Rajan mistakes her for Chenille. (It might be that Chenille is the woman she has just fed on, but I don’t think so; she knows who Chenille is — “that lady on Green” — and doesn’t recognise her as her victim.) I do wonder in particular about Jahlee whether she might have a double source, which could explain how she can switch so easily between looking like an old woman and a young woman. (Fava can also look like both, but she has to feed on children to keep looking young, while Jahlee seems able to change at will.) Juganu’s, I propose (and I think this is new) is Lemur, or possibly Loris. We are told that Juganu, in astral travel, has a hawk nose and eyes the colour of ice. Lemur has an aquiline nose, and while his own eyes aren’t described, his brother, Loris, has icy blue eyes. (These are their chem bodies, of course, but presumably they are modelled on their bio bodies.) In the conversation with Remora at the end, the Rajan says Gyrfalcon was as bad as Juganu, and Remora then (a bit cryptically, as is his wont) compares Gyrfalcon to Lemur. This leaves us with Fava. I’m not sure about Fava, though we get enough descriptions of her astral body (which is said to be quite similar to her physical body when in disguise) to suggest that her appearance is significant in some way. It is possible, of course, that her source was in Grandecitta — the shape-changing witch about whom Salica tells a story might have been Fava, or perhaps her mother. Could it be that Salica herself is the source? Fava does claim to remember her youth in Grandecitta — though it’s not clear the memory is her own — and is at one point described as looking like a woman who had been beautiful thirty years before. _______________________________________________