(urth) "don't look at my words" and other quotes.

[Marc Aramini]

Roy, one more thing before I wish everybody a happy holiday.
 
I believe we are given visual data that the narrator misinterprets that we are supposed to interpret correctly.
 
"There is a city somewhat like this on Green, but we are not on Green; these houses would be the towers of the Neighbor lords there. ... I've been thinking about it, and about the City of the Inhumi on Green. Those were ruins left by the Neighbors' ancient race; these were left by ours, I believe -- we are as ancient as they, or nearly." (IGJ 320 or thereabouts)
 
"TO UNDERSTAND, you must visualize its sky and hold the vision above you. NOT MY WORDS. NOT MY WORDS. NOT THE SMEARS OF INK UPON THIS PAPER. The sky, a sky purple or blue black rather than blue, a sky whose skylands were always as visible as those at home, though vastly more remote and colder. It was warm there in the deserted, ruined street; but the dark sky made it seem cold, and I felt sure that it would be cold soon, would turn cold, in fact, before the actual setting of the crimson sun. (IGJ 313)
 
I see this as saying in order to understand the setting you have to visualize it, and not listen to the words of the narrator, as if Wolfe is here speaking to us.  Yes, the narrator draws the wrong conclusion about the city that seems like the city on Green, because it must be a different place to him.  But we are outside and above the text, and here he implores us not to pay attention to his words when other visual overlays will work.
He even says NOT MY WORDS TWICE.
 
And you will say, this throws the entire narrator's description out the window, because we can't say anything is true, and THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LITERAL SCRIPTURE AND THE FREE INTERPRETATION - even with errors you can still reach the truth.  This DONTt PAY ATTENTION TO MY WORDS  is specifically LINKED TO SETTING.  We have to ask ourselves, is Silk in a position to draw the conclusions we are?  Weer was not, nor was Number Five.  It is a common trait of Wolfe's writing that his narrators can't draw the write conclusion.  That's all.
 
And yes, I think the real Outsider is of course not Pas, but that the message Silk received and believed to be the Outsider was placed in his brain by Pas, his own mistaken interpretation.
 
Happy Holidays!
 
Marc


--- On Thu, 12/23/10, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:


From: Roy C. BTW, by no stretch of imagination did Pas bring the human race into being,
therefore Pas is not the Outsider. There is another passage where Silkhorn
mentions that no doubt the Outsider had created the Neighbors from the dust
of Blue, just as he had created humans from the dust of the Short Sun Whorl
(the latter according to the Chrasmologic Writings), and the two whorls were
not identical. (IGJ, 349)

-Roy

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