(urth) Witch spirit and Tales of Silk and Horn

[Chris]

It's an interesting angle, but the point of those posts was an issue of what 
constitutes the soul/spirit/identity. Without diving too deeply into it, the 
terms "soul" and "spirit", etc, were being used as shorthand in a way that 
evolved through the thread, so they can't be substituted freely. So your 
hypothesis is if anything even more problematic in this sense, because now 
you're dealing with three entities instead of two.

Saying that Silver Silk was "never Silk" commits you to what I was referring 
to as the "simple view". But, on the simple view, the download/upload 
process is merely memories and inclinations, not "real" spirit, or identity. 
And that's all Silver Silk would be, from that perspective: not Silk, not 
*anyone* in the sense of being an actual person - there would be no spirit 
associated with Silver Silk.

If you take the complex view, in contrast, you can't say that Silver Silk 
"was never Silk" because he was as much "Silk" as the original at the time 
of the download, and has as much claim to the title as the organic version.

So this plotline would just about double the possible branches on the tree 
of interpretation. And it would double (or more) again if you take into 
account the possibility that Pas (or someone else) might have downloaded 
partially into Silk before or after his upload (or before AND after, for 
that matter).

>B)
>I was reading a few posts called Tales of Silk and Horn and I wanted to say 
>one small thing about that.  I think the simplest scheme to describe who 
>inhabits Silk's body at any given point in the narrative is that Horn's 
>body dies on Green, his spirit is sent hurtling into Silk, whose spirit has 
>been so wounded (or has vacated his body) that it is no longer extent in 
>the body.
>
>Then, the quest to find Silk actually ENDS when Horn gives his (ok, Silk's) 
>eye to Pig, allowing Silver Silk, who is a download of Silk from the 
>mainframe into Pig, to re-enter the body of Silk by escaping Pig's eye , 
>creating Silk+Horn.  Then, Horn begins writing.  He says his goodbyes and 
>leaves the body of Silk, and then Silver Silk, who was never the real Silk, 
>takes up the tale of Horn and his death at the beginning of In Green's 
>Jungles, but denies that he is Silk until he is forced into it, so that in 
>the text, Silk admits that he is in fact Silk at about the same place that 
>Silver Silk is freed from Pig and placed in Silk's body.
>
>So it is a copy of a copy of Silk that we are left with, like the copy of a 
>copy of Severian at the end of Urth.
>
>Hmm.
>
>Marc
>
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