(urth) (no subject)
Broceliande27533 at aol.com
Broceliande27533 at aol.com
Thu Jan 27 12:33:04 PST 2005
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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20050127/363e794f/attachment-0003.htm>
More information about the Urth
mailing list