(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight
thalassocrat at nym.hush.com
thalassocrat at nym.hush.com
Wed Sep 19 05:00:24 PDT 2007
On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:46:27 +1000 brunians at brunians.org wrote:
>You know, it's all very well to despise the martial virtues.
>
>But the fact is that without them, you don't get to have any other
>virtues.
>
>What idiot said 'Violence solves no problems'? Violence solves
>most
>problems, historically, and if it's mostly hidden away violence in
>modern
>society all that means is that people get to pretend that it isn't
>there,
>and indulge in fatuity.
I think a common theme in Wolfe has to do with the balance between
the virtues of Aphrodite and Ares. They are, I think, his prime
virtues, but an imbalance is a distortion. Aphrodite without Ares
is ineffectual; Ares without Aphrodite is unjust.
Silk: too much Aphrodite, not enough Ares, until his joinder with
Horn.
Able: too much Ares, not enough Aphrodite, until his ersatz love
for Dsiri transmutes into the real thing, and expands beyond her.
I think TWK is quite clearly a critique of the ideal of chivalry to
the extent it has strayed from its (purported but anyway ...)
theoretical purpose of protecting the weak from oppression & become
just an idealogy buttressing a parasitical, closed, warrior elite.
When Able meets Uns and Duns, their mother (I think - don't have
book here) briefly sketches the origins of knighthood. The men got
together to protect people from ogres, giants and dragons. Somebody
who did well at this was honored as a "knight". By the end of
Wizard, Able has restored this original conception.
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