(urth) (no subject)

[Matthew Weber]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> But I remain unconvinced that our God and Jesus Christ make any appearances
> in the Sun series.
> I'd need either more direct Christian references (call it a crucifix, not a
> "rood"=rod) or fewer
> monsters and demons.
>
>
I would think that "rood" is used primarily to refer to a cross, or the
Cross.  The sense in which it means "rod" or "staff" is even more obscure
than the Christian one.

I have to confess that the assumption I sometimes see at work here, that
Wolfe always takes the longest way possible around everything, baffles and
bemuses me.  Using the word "rood" to signify a cross or crucifix is a way
of distancing the phenomenon; if he merely said "cross" or "crucifix" it
would seem very cozily Christian to us.  But the BotNS is set in a far
future in which Christianity may be only a distant, mythic memory--or
perhaps it's a distant past in which Christianity has not yet appeared.  So
calling it a rood rather than a crucifix or cross renders it intelligible
and retains a slight whiff of Christianity (as a survival of long ago?)
without suggesting that the denizens of Urth practice what we understand to
be the Christian faith.

-- 
Matt +

Let each man pass his days in that wherein his skill is greatest.
    Sextus Propertius (54 B.C.-A.D. 2), Elegies, II, i, 46
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