Digest whorl.v010.n138Whorl

Said Wombat, entirely correctly:

Indeed. And there's the extraordinary physical prowess, the ability with a sword. The DNA in the physical body took care of that. But, too, Horn has been touched by the angels (and I do realize how revoltingly prime-time TV this sounds). They have given him the ability to bond with an inhuma to complete"astral travel" and to do what seems like "magic tricks" with his sword etc. when he is there. I think that Horn/Silk/ [maybe Sev too?] can do some magic tricks even when not in projection, though one of you completists will have to prove it since I'm comatose. -alga *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

I don't think that's the case. I do think it has become a bit clearer, although not crystal clear yet. And unfortunately, all evidence seems to point to the "Do Unto Others Theory" as being extremely likely to being "the secret."

And that he seeminly subconsciously reshapes his black sword into a Torturer's sword, presumably because of the aspects of Severian/the Conciliator/The Outsider that were part of Silk and are now merged with Horn. Fernando Q. Gouvea <fqgouvea at colby.edu>

I think it's a combination of things. One, their spirits are at least partially comprised of whatever they're feeding on. When Jahlee(? I've had about five hours of sleep in the past few days, so my memory's a little hazy at this point, and a marathon reading session didn't help, but I'm pretty sure it was Jahlee and not Fava) is asked by Horn what the inhumi who fed on the Neighbors would have been like, she says "Wonderful," or something to that effect. Also, I believe that both Fava and Jahlee are striving to be good "people," to overcome their inherently bad nature, like Severian (and Silk and Horn, for that matter), so that their true spirits are human or very close to it, rather than reptilian in nature.

Great question...

It's also pretty apparent that he knows he's in Silk's body. The people in Gaon thought he was Silk and that's why they made him their ruler; people on cities all over Blue and Green think he's Silk; Oreb calls him Silk, etc. He makes disingenuous comments that he's not Silk, that Oreb's confused, etc. However, this is clearly meant in the spiritual sense, and I don't think he's entirely right there. Horn spends a great deal of time in OBW talking about how he's the only one who doesn't know where Silk is. And we know why now -- as the female neighbor said, his spirit was dying and she puts him in Silk's body. But, even though Horn seems to have picked up some incredible powers that Silk/Severian/The Conciliator had, he doesn't think he is Silk. And, in a sense he's not, exactly, so he's truthful when he says he isn't. He's also a humble person, and doesn't think he can measure up to Silk, even though his personality has become merged with Silk/Pas/The Outsider/The Conciliator/The Autarch/Severian and he is measuring up.

Thanks so much, Nick. I felt this, but couldn't put my finger on it. They're in Nessus right before the Sun goes out. The Duko recognizes his house, but it's collapsed and has been for some time, so the Colony ship is long gone. The people that Horn and company encounter, the guard, the omophage, the lochage, are those from Severian's time. I wonder why Horn didn't encounter Severian, though. Severian certainly seemed to encounter himself often enough in one form or another throughout TBOTNS. And now something of my own... The only complaints that I have about IGJ are due to Wolfe's insanely good writing ability. For a book entitled "In Green's Jungles," we get very little of Green's jungles. He continues to hint around (maddeningly) the Inhumi secret. And, other than the very brief scene we get when the Neighbor female puts his spirit in Silk's body, we get nothing at all, really, about the Whorl. It's gonna be a long seven months until the final book... I was also a bit curious why Horn screws around with Hide so much. You'd think a loving father would tell his son who he is rather than wait for him to figure it out... That puzzled me a bit. Narwhal

Narwhal said:

I think it's the same reason why the Neighbors won't tell Horn about their gods: it's better if he comes to figure it out for himself (with some hints). That the Neighbors aren't completely forthcoming seems not so much to suggest (as Adam speculated) that they believe each race should stick to its own gods as that they believe the Outsider (by whatever name they know Him) is in the process of revealing Himself to Horn as it is, and that it isn't their place to, say, disillusion him about Pas.