(urth) academic commentary

[Son of Witz]

Good post Brewer.
I stopped reading Attending Daedalus at a point.  It felt like he was missing the point to me, by not getting to that "third text" you mention.

Regarding whether the Heirogrammates and Heirodules serve God, has been answered here, as in the Cock and Eagle story. They guess at God's will, and even evil serves him.

However, the central theme of Resurrection / Death and the cyclical nature of time and creation, gets overlooked when we read this 'second text' interpreting the Heirogrammates as 'just some twisted robots playing eugenics on their creators.'  it doesn't matter that they are robots. What matters, in the metaphor, is this cyclical inversion of causality. We create them so they can recreate us so we can create them so they can recreate us so we can create them so they can recreate us so we can create them so they can recreate us so we can create them so they can recreate us so we can create them so they can recreate us. And so on.

Forget ye not the Amphisbaena!

~Son of Witz.

On Nov 29, 2010, at 7:55 AM, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:

> To be fair, I don't think Wright's central thesis is that BotNS is atheistic. Or 
> rather, that's certainly where he ends up, but I don't think he's primarily 
> giving a theological (or a-theological) reading.
> 
> Instead, he's concerned with how Wolfe uses intertextuality (both with other 
> actual books and you might say "internal" intertextual) to create the experience 
> of creating and confounding reader expectations. That's something we all know, 
> and what ultimately makes his book not all that controversial, I'd think. We all 
> know that reading Wolfe with an eye to a kind of "second text" that lies 
> underneath the apparent story is standard operating procedure for a Wolfe book. 
> Wright just tries to lay out a sort of general methodology for doing that with 
> Wolfe.
> 
> That said, his primary example is that BotNS *appears* to be a story of Severian 
> living out a kind of spiritual Christ-figure story. But, as Lee said, Wright 
> then shows how there's the second text of the "aliens who play Severian and 
> humanity like a fiddle." That's the atheistic view. And it's certainly there as 
> a possibility, one that has been mentioned many times, and, I think, most close 
> readers of BotNS accept this Wolfe presents this as one possible, even if 
> incomplete, explanation of the larger story a number of times in the story. It 
> also seems like a step one has to go through when interpreting the text.
> 
> The problem, as I see it, is that Wright pretty much stops there. Many people, 
> and Wolfe included, I would think, want to say that there's yet a third "text" 
> which is the story of how the Hierodules are still carrying out a divine plan, 
> even if they think they're just manipulating everything else. That's the idea 
> we've hashed out so often in this list where "evil" turns out to be used for 
> "good," etc. Ultimately, I think that Wright's sense of how Wolfe manipulates a 
> reader's expectations with stories-within-stories still fits this 
> interpretation.
> 
> In other words, Wright is ultimately giving a methodological reading of Wolfe. 
> And it's one that I think a majority of readers would agree with. But his 
> primary interpretive example just doesn't go far enough, even on his own terms.
> 
> This is particularly problematic when he gets to Long Sun. It seems to me that 
> Long Sun makes it patently clear from the beginning that what we're going to see 
> is how true revelation, Silk's vision, has to be understood through a "fallen" 
> mythology. That seems to be the entire stated point of Long Sun, especially 
> given the relative directness of the first chapter compared to the opening of 
> BotNS. But Wright largely ignores this and, instead, focuses on how Pas has 
> created a false religion. That entire part of his book just seemed clumsy to me 
> as if he was blatantly ignoring aspects of other books that would complicate 
> what came before.
> 
> I'm also a bit mystified about why Wright took the angle he did when Wolfe has 
> been so straightforward about his own religious beliefs. Wright just never 
> addresses it. Granted, not every book that Wolfe writes has to be completely 
> consistent with his own beliefs. One can make stuff up and lie in fiction, after 
> all. But, if I recall correctly, Wright never even addresses why Wolfe, a 
> believer, might have written a book that, according to Wright, is all about how 
> beliefs are ultimately lies.
> 
> Anyway...I learned a lot from Wright's book, even if I found it incredibly 
> frustrating at times. Like I said, I think he's good as far as he goes, but he's 
> only finished half of the job. He needs to go further and ask himself how his 
> own interpretation could itself still be an "artifice" (his term) used to 
> deceive the reader and make him think and read even more closely.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
> To: urth at lists.urth.net
> Sent: Mon, November 29, 2010 6:16:44 AM
> Subject: (urth) academic commentary
> 
> 
> 
>> Jeff WIlson- He effectively says the "evil does the work of the Increate, too" 
>> meme 
>> 
>> was planted by the Yesodis?
> 
> Yeah, that's my gathering. I think Wright analyzes BotNS from an atheistic 
> perspective.
> So there is no truly higher spiritual power involved. Just some highly advanced 
> aliens
> who play Severian and humanity like a fiddle.
> 
> Jane I think I remember which short paragraph it was in which "the relationship 
> & balance 
> 
> of power between Tzadkiel and Severian are both subverted - turned upon their 
> heads 
> 
> indeed". Is it where Tzadkiel confesses to being an acolyte to Severian in a 
> different
> universe or something like that?
> 
> Sort of similar to the reversal we see where Barbatus and Famulimus, so tall and 
> beautiful 
> 
> and from a giant spaceship, take a knee and bow before scruffy Severian.
> 
> My impression is that Wright interprets BotNS from an atheist point of view 
> because he is,
> himself a devout atheist and perhaps unwilling to acknowledge spirituality in 
> the work of
> an author he so admires, despite awareness of Wolfe's religious leanings.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net