(urth) (no subject)

[Broceliande27533 at aol.com]

I am a lurker who has so far been too shy to contribute, and nervous about 
initiating a debate about 5HC. I have read the many postings in the archives and 
wasn’t sure that anyone was ready for another bout. Also, I have much to say, 
and was afraid, rightly,  of starting and not being able to stop. And the 
connections in 5HC lead you on inexorably.  
I wrote to Jim because of his website and because I thought I had too much to 
say for a posting. 
But, Jim having (qu)o(u)ted me, and because I can for once put off what I am 
supposed to be doing today, here goes. And one thing has led to another.  
Inevitably many of the connections I see have personal meaning and may be 
accidental and I am aware that I have to be careful not to knit myself my own 
Gene Wolfe story rather than looking at the text.  
I agree that 5 HC is about genetic predation, (a great phrase which I gladly 
adopt): about the “Victory” of technologically advanced peoples and thus 
their genes at the expense of others less technologically advanced, as a result of 
human migration (assisted in Earth’s case by disease, which is not an issue 
that GW deals with in 5HC:  perhaps because if he had described lots of the 
Annese expiring as a result of the common cold this might have indicated earth 
origin).  
And the question of whether the Annese or the colonists are the Victors is a 
central unanswered and probably unanswerable question in 5HC. 
Per Aunt Jeannine, is genetic predation “the explanation for the cruelty and 
irrationality (he) sees all around him”? 
5HC, is of course, also about evolution, and I suppose genetic predation as 
an aspect of evolution. 
It has already been commented that the spiral staircase in the library is a 
reference to the double helix , (early 50’s I think: and Watson’s book came 
out in the 60’s). I have never been able to make sense of the key to the 
library.  Is it the key to the genetic code? 

I know nothing about General Wolfe and Quebec, but I have travelled in the 
Pacific North West and the Caribbean, where I have been very conscious of the 
presence and absence of the autochthonous population, and I am very aware of the 
French particularly Napoleonic presence in the Caribbean. Also very aware of 
the Irish presence in the New World: indeed in Alaska where autochthonous 
people survived better than anywhere else (because, I was told, it was impossible 
for Europeans to survive without Native expertise, and because there was 
little or no competition for farming land), many of the Native Americans that I met 
also had Irish ancestry, just as it is suggested that Trenchard has Irish 
ancestry. (I think it is very interesting by the way that Borski’s suggestion 
that Trenchard Sr’s name is “Roy” has been so readily taken up: it feels right, 
doesn’t it? And of course Roy also means King . Borski suggests that he is the 
Annese shaman “Twelvewalker” and RT says he is the descendant of Eastwind  
(or Sandwalker become Eastwind: Eastwind being castrated) 
To me “long house” suggested Native American architecture even though the 
description does not fit. But GW intended I think to leave all kinds of resonant 
echoes of what happened in all sorts of places on our world.. 
The persistence of Native American/First Nations place names has also struck 
me (that’s another theme in 5HC). Also, in England, Celtic place names e.g. “
Afon”, “Derwent”. The Celts are another people subject to genetic predation 
from migrating groups, but as I argue below, they can be regarded as once 
having been genetic predators themselves. 
Wolfe as a Midwesterner must also be acutely aware of vanished peoples and 
surviving place names. 
I agree that pagan themes and the myths of Europe and the Mediterranean are 
extremely important in GW. I am not surprised that he has read Graves. I 
guessed that: certainly from” Soldier”, but perhaps from 5HC too. The sacred trees 
and waters of the Annese are an important theme, as is the ring of trees.  
Sacred trees and waters appear to have been a key element of Celtic or perhaps 
preCeltic religion (see Darrah, below) and circular structures were constructed 
, probably as observatories, by Neolithic and Bronze age peoples in 
significant quantities. If I am right about my theory that the Celtic reference is also 
a reference to human migration and conquest, then, Graves, who theorises at 
length in The White Goddess about population movements into Britain and Ireland 
and religious change, is perhaps relevant in 5HC. 
The BBC website suggests that the word “Celtic” has no cultural, racial or 
even linguistic meaning at all in the history of the Iron Age. But at the time 
when 5HC was written the view was that the Celts came from Central Europe, and 
spread East and West and that “Gal” names are Celtic (e.g. Wales (Gwalia), 
Gael, Galicia, Galatia, Gaul). Graves wrote that there were three waves of 
Celts, Brythons, Goidels and Belgii, starting in about 1000 BC, each of whom 
conquered, pushed Westwards and subsumed existing pre-Celtic cultures. . It was 
also thought that  before then there had been many previous conquests by waves of 
Neolithic and then Bronze age invaders  which had each obliterated or 
replaced the earlier culture with or without great population change. That view was I 
think current and may still be current.  
There is a legend that the Brythons (Britons) were refugees from the Trojan 
war under Aeneas’ grandson Brut. But people often invent interesting foreign 
origins for themselves, just as, maybe, the Annese did. Graves suggests that 
Tuatha de Danaan may have had links with the Danaeans of pre-classical Greece 
before they ended up in Ireland from Spain. David is reading Tales from the 
Odyssey: I read that as a joke about “2001- A Space Odyssey”, which came out in 
1968 I think, and therefore a double reference to the Homeric Greeks as space 
travellers. The Homeric Greeks are also supposed to have invaded Greece during 
the Bronze Age and conquered and suppressed the pre Indo European inhabitants 
and imposed their patriarchal religious beliefs on a matriarchal religious 
system.  
So at the time when 5HC was written, in 1972, Wolfe would have been entitled 
to assume that the Celts had effectively replaced the earlier inhabitants of 
Britain and Ireland and obliterated and replaced their culture. Indeed so 
successful is the Celtic tradition that it is usually assumed that Stonehenge was 
built by and worshipped in by the Druids (certainly  a late iron age "Celtic" 
priesthood) and the Neolithic and Bronze age builders thus entirely forgotten. 
Welsh Scottish and Irish languages traditions and culture have in fact 
survived remarkably over 2,000 years considering the pressure on them. That Westwards 
pressure precipitated the successful Scottish/Irish/Welsh Diaspora into the 
New World.. 
So GW is in my view presenting the Celts of Wales, Ireland and Scotland as “
Gene Wolves”. 
The connection between pre-Roman religious themes and the Arthur and Grail 
legends has been explored by many writers. In particular it has long been 
suggested that the battle between the brothers (5HC again)  Balin (Beli) and Balan 
(Bran)  at the ford is a combat theme which is part of the “Nemeton” cult- see 
Frazer's The Golden Bough: which I assume GW has read, and I bet Jessie L 
Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, et al.  If any subscriber on this list has an 
interest in this area I recommend John Darrah’s “The Real Camelot” and “
Paganism in Arthurian Romance” for a rigorously researched and presented argument 
that the Grail Romances and the Matter of Britain contain many references to 
Bronze age religious practices and cult figures in the Matter of Britain, 
transmitted orally as “a bronze age oral literature” akin to Homer (5HC again), and 
including identifiable references to the moving of the Bluestone circle from 
Prescelli to Stonehenge.  
Graves is also very interesting on the links between the “Celtic” and Norse 
Gods (Gwydion/Odin/Woden). 
I think in 1972 toolmaking was considered to be the defining characteristic 
of Hom Sap. It was thought that tools cane first, brains later. Not sure that 
that is still the case.  For instance, the following have been suggested 
-         Big brains developed  because of language, and maybe singing too, 
not tool making. Quite little monkeys and money-like beings use and even make 
primitive tools, as do birds (who are incidentally quite like us in some ways, 
particularly in courtship and pair bonding and selective promiscuity) 
-         Language, music art and culture are all to do with reproductive 
advantages and courtship: they developed early and before tool making 
-         Baskets and woven containers and other things which have perished 
are just as important and perhaps more so than edged tools and weapons. With a 
basket you can carry the food and with a sling you can carry the baby. 
-         Human migration took place along coastlines by the beachcomber 
routes: nets and baskets etc absolutely essential, big stone hatchets not so 
useful: and you don’t need fire to eat shellfish. Fish is crucial to brain 
development. Some human groups may still not use fire (e.g. the Andaman islanders) 
-         The development of more sophisticated tools came after our brains 
got big  
-         You don’t need tools to produce art including painting: hands are 
quite sufficient: indeed hands prints are an important part of Palaeolithic art 
-         Language and grammar and the speech centre of the brain developed 
first of all through communication through use of hands and only afterwards did 
oral speech develop  
-         We are hardwired to acquire language 
-         We evolved as walkers, not runners 
-         Human males may be hardwired to respond to the female “waist hip 
ratio”: thus Marsch/Victor, reviled for sexism in the passage “all the things 
we consider beautiful in a woman are merely criteria for her own survival, and 
thus the survival of the children we shall father in her” (and then a 
reference to Darwin), is actually making an important evolutionary point 
-         It is big brains that make human childbirth so hazardous: “The 
first birth kills or none,” says Cedar Branches Waving’s grandmother. I would 
add: big brains permit knowledge of good and evil: thus Eve and “In sorrow thou 
shall bring forth children”.   
So GW seems to present very sound anthropological views, whether he intended 
to or not. 
I would also add that hands have many essential functions that must predate 
tool using and construction.  You can’t care for a human baby, even a naked 
one, without hands with fingers and an opposable thumb. It can’t cling. At first 
it can’t suckle without help from human hands.  Hands also have an important 
role in courtship and sexual activity, and a symbolic role too: think of the 
wedding ceremonies: rings and so on.  
You could say that tool making is really irrelevant to what it means to be 
human. It is however the first step to technology, and technologically created 
humans, which is also what 5HC is about. 
The cat (another Marquis of Carabas reference)  is a talking animal. As in 
Narnia, animals that speak have souls: animals that don’t speak don’t have 
souls also apropos the prisoner “I see an animal’s mask: but I have always known 
that I do not speak like the others, but only make certain sound in my mouth- 
sounds enough like human speech to pass the Running Blood ears that hear me, 
sometimes I do not even know what I have said, only that I have dug my hole and 
passed to run singing into the hills”. (And then a reference to hearing the 
shovels scraping and the dead being buried in the cathedral above him). 
I do not know what evidence, if any, Wolfe relies on to support the existence 
of or survival into the 18th C in Scandinavia and Ireland of  Palaeolithic 
Caucasoid pygmies who came to be called the Good People. (Rosemary Sutcliffe, 
children’s historical writer,  (has Wolfe read her?) suggests this in “Knights 
Fee, and I think I have seen it suggested elsewhere : she herself was much 
influenced by Kipling.  Scandinavia and Ireland are prime territories for myth. 
But now there is Homo Florensis, who made me think of the Shadow Children. 
There was an article in the British magazine The Spectator on 6th November 04 
entitled “Do little people go to heaven?”. It asks about whether , if H.F. 
were rational animals, they would have had immortal souls, or whether this is 
restricted to Hom. Sap.  It concludes “But would the Floresians be fallen 
creatures, like the children of Adam, or still walking in unsevered friendship with 
god. CS Lewis wrote about the unfallen Martians in Out of the Silent Planet…
If the Floresians were fallen creatures, how would they be redeemed?” 
Wolfe’s point entirely. 
Did someone say that 5 HC was like a play in 3 Acts? 
There was some discussion a way back about a film of The New Sun books and 
who would play what. I thought about a film of 5HC, and decided that it would 
not work: too obvious a medium, too little  room for ambiguity, or the ambiguity 
would make it incomprehensible.  
But, if certain technical difficulties were overcome, it would make a 
remarkably good opera.  And nowadays there is any number of young, (and indeed old) 
skinny athletic singers around to appear in Act 2. Its difficult to see a 
production at ENO (English National Opera) where the cast keep their clothes on 
nowadays so I’m sure it could be played au naturel without embarrassment.   And 
you could have the same cast singing different roles in each of the three acts. 
 
“How long was human prehistory on mother earth. One million years? Some would 
say 10 million. ( Bones of my fathers).” (I see and hear this as Victor’s 
final aria , with the ENO chorus as shadow children). 
And talking of opera: I haven’t read The Wizard Knight, but is Wolfe by any 
chance a Wagnerian? Was struck by several references in the postings to similar 
themes. And there is  Marquis of Carabas reference in Rheingold which is 
others based firmly on Norse and German myth. 
Whatever you think of his politics, or opera in general, Wagner’s reworking 
of the Norse myths in the Ring is extremely interesting for a folklorist, (see 
Deryck Cooke’s  (mailto:Cooke at s)  “I saw the World End” which is worth 
reading quite apart from the Wagnerian element if you are interested in Teutonic 
myth generally). 
That is all for now, and I thank you for you patience if you have got this 
far,  but one thing led to another, and I shall go back to less pleasant tasks, 
and, when I have time, privately,  to annotating 5HC, and my evidential 
analysis of the questions:- 
1.      What is the evidence for and against the existence of the Annese,  
2.      Is Veil’s hypothesis correct? 
2. Did Victor become Marsch, or did Marsch become Victor, or is the prisoner 
a synchretisation of the two? 
Anyone up for writing a libretto?  
Judith P
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