(urth) Patera Inire

Roy C. Lackey rclackey at stic.net
Sun Jul 18 00:31:24 PDT 2010


James Wynn quoted and wrote:
> > Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> > I mentioned Patera Silk as an example from the Sun Cycle of a man who is
a
> > priest who had no natural children. Priests of the RC Church, and
others,
> > also are commonly addressed as Father, even though they are mandated by
the
> > laws of their church to be celibate and not to engage in sexual
congress.
> > It's Father in English, Padre in Spanish, etc. But you already know
that. In
> > LS, priests are addressed as Patera in exactly the same way that priests
in
> > the Catholic Church are addressed as Father; I daresay for the same
reasons.
>
> Well, Palaemon is also referred to as "Master" in exactly the same way
> "that priests in the Catholic Church are addressed as Father". That is,
> it is his title. No one in the Whorl refers to their natural father as
> his "patera". Nor has anyone else in the world ever done so as far as I
> know. It doesn't map.

I agree. If I had said any such thing I would have been wrong. I didn't say
any such thing. Quite the opposite.

> I agree that the Chapter priests are intended to
> call to mind RC priests. But if Wolfe wanted to choose a cognate for
> "father" he had dozens of actual options.  Whatever one thinks he was
> going for _most_ directly, I don't think "father" is it.

Again, I agree. I'm not the one who thinks Inire is anyone's father. In so
far as this subject has anything to do with the thrust of this thread I
started, I have said that the titles "Father" and "Patera" are religious
titles that have nothing to do with either being a biological father.

> > Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> > Anyway, Inire is stated to be a cacogen, an alien. It is very doubtful
that
> > he could have fathered any children on a human woman.
>
> I'm really not trying to prove that Father Inire fathered children by
> seed and coupling. I'm not trying to prove anything specific at all.
> Only this: In a Wolfe story, one might be a parent or child or sibling
> in many ways. A character might call someone "father" (as N5 called
> Maitre and Hoof called the Rajan) or call someone "son" or "daughter"
> (as Silk called Blood and the Rajan called Jahlee). Obviously, their
> relationship is not parent-child in the traditional sense. But that
> doesn't mean that that is not what Wolfe was angling at. He does it so
> often, I would beware assuming he does not mean it in any particular
> instance just because it is not immediately apparent how he would mean
> it that way.

And just because a priest addresses a member of his congregation as "my son"
or "my daughter" does not imply that he is the father of either.

-Roy




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