(urth) Patera Inire
James Wynn
crushtv at gmail.com
Sat Jul 17 21:44:36 PDT 2010
> 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 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.
> 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.
But as you pointed out, the Domnicellae of the Pelerines was called
"Mother". I think that is significant.
u+16b9
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