(urth) Bloodsport

[JBarach at aol.com]

Urthers --
 
Last night, I read Wolfe's recent short story "Bloodsport" in Swords &  
Dark Magic, ed. Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders (Eos, 2010) and noticed that it 
 hasn't received any discussion on this list, as far as I can tell.  (If 
I'm  wrong, please point me in the right direction!)
 
As is typical for Wolfe, it seems to be a straightforward story at first,  
such that you even think you're catching the unreliable narrator stuff and  
noticing some of the tricky moves being made ("Aha," you say to yourself), 
only  to find yourself noting more and more things that you want to think 
about later  ("Not sure what THAT means") and end up wondering what exactly 
you've  read.
 
So ... I welcome your comments.  What's going on in this story?   There's a 
lengthy discussion here 
(_http://everythingisnice.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/bloodsport-by-gene-wolfe/_ 
(http://everythingisnice.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/bloodsport-by-gene-wolfe/) ),  which is quite helpful.  Some of my 
questions and  comments follow....
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
SPOILERS
 
 
 
 
 
 
* Is there significance to the names of the main characters, Valorius the  
Knight (surely connected to "valor") and Lurn the pawn (surely an allusion 
to  Lune, the moon)?  She reminds V, at one point, of "the maid no man has  
bussed," which is probably Diana, right?
 
* What is the game they're playing early in the story?  It sounds like  
chess with human pieces, but the names of the pieces aren't all the same as in  
our game of chess.  We don't have bowmen or slingers, etc.  Is that  
difference significant?  In the larger game that they're playing, Lurn  makes it 
to the far side of the board, as it were, and becomes a queen, which is  what 
happens in chess. At the same time, however, Valorius makes it to the  far 
side of the board, as it were, and he becomes able to defeat Lurn, which  
suggests that he has become a king, which is what happens in checkers.
 
* Valorius's father's head has been cleft with an ax (p. 83).  By  whom?  
Presumably by the Hunas, though that's not explicit.  Later in  the story, V 
says that his father "had entered my mind" (p. 94), and V rubs his  head 
because "It is where the ax went in.  I rub it because the place is  healed and 
my father at rest" (p. 95).  Somehow V's attaining his goal  leads to rest 
for his father ... but I'm not sure what this is about.
 
* What does the father's dream writing mean: "I blessed and I cursed you,  
Valorius, and my blessing and my curse are the same.  You will inherit" (p.  
83).  Here's what I suspect: The blessing and the curse, which are the  
same, is that V's father sent him to the Game.  The Game involved curse in  
that V has to suffer and even has to slay Lurn, whom he has come to love.   But 
the Game involved blessing because it led to his ultimate triumph and  
inheritance ... though I'm not clear what the inheritance is.  Nor, it  seems, 
is V: "Whether they be so or no, who is to say?  Perhaps I have  inherited 
already, and know not of it" (p. 83).  How typically Wolfe!
 
* When V meets Lurn again, immediately after this dream, he is initially  
afraid that she will want to engage in combat (p. 84).  Doing so, he says,  
"would be but folly *as the world stands today*" (p. 84).  At first read,  
that could be taken this way: "We're both trying to escape from the Hunas, so 
it  would be foolish for us to fight each other."  
 
But Lurn immediately makes it clear that "as the world stands today"  has 
more than one meaning.  The world doesn't stand, she says.   Rather, it 
"circles the moon as both swim among stars" (p.  84).  Later, we're told again 
that the earth circles moon (p.  95).  If the moon is dominant, then the sun 
hasn't yet risen ... which will  change when V is kinged at the end of the 
story and defeats Lurn.  So this  is night-time, and Lurn wants to keep it 
that way by reestablishing the kingdom  (though it would really be a 
"queendom," with her in power), with the game back  in place, and so forth.  (Shades 
of pagan Rome and the colliseum!)   And that's precisely what can't happen, 
so that V has to defeat her and does  with the help of "Our Lord the Sun" (p. 
96).  From henceforth, I guess, the  earth circles the sun, not the moon.
 
So "as the world stands today" has to do with eschatology: In the present  
age ("as the world stands today"), it would be folly -- for who? Valorius?  
Lurn?  both? -- to fight, but there's coming an time (as the world will one  
day stand) in which they will need to engage in combat and it won't be 
folly to  do so ... and V will win.
 
As Lurn says, as the world stands right now, sometimes the sun and moon do  
fight and when they do, the moon wins (eclipse), defeats the sun, and then  
"having bested him she bids him rise" (p. 85).  That's what happened when V 
 and L fought in the Game.  But, she adds, "Someday he will best her and,  
besting her, take her life.  So is it written.  When the evil day  comes, 
you men will walk in blind dark from twilight to dawn and much harm come  of 
it....  Women will have no warning, so that they bleed in the market"  (p. 
85).  In other words, the sun will kill the moon so that it will be  black at 
night and women will not be able to predict their monthly cycle any  longer. 
 
 
Is that what has happened at the end of the story?  Or is Lurn  mistaken 
(or deliberately trying to keep V from killing her)?
 
* What does V mean when he says that eventually he "beheld something in  
Lurn's eyes that I had never seen in the eyes of any woman" (p. 85).    My 
guess is that it is love.  
 
* Is there some deeper significance to the battle against the Hunas (pp.  
86-89)?
 
* It seems clear to me that V is NOT a Christ-figure, though he may  be, as 
Wolfe has said of Severian and others, a Christian figure.  He won't  say 
that he has never been cruel, though he has tried to be such a man (p.  89).
 
* What does V mean when he says "Deserts call to demons and not to  ghosts. 
 (Yet not to demons only.)" (p. 90)?
 
* Why are there *40* palaces (p. 91)?  That's neither the number of  chess 
pieces in a game (32) or checkers pieces (24).  An online search  indicates 
that there are 40 pieces on the board at the start of a FRENCH game of  
checkers 
(_http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_checkers_on_a_board_at_the_beginning_of_a_game_ 
(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_checkers_on_a_board_at_the_beginning_of_a_game) ).   And sets of checkers usually involve 40 pieces 
(including two extra checkers and  six "kings" for each player).  Significant?
 
* There is a wolf in the story: "I was able to dash among them like a wolf" 
 (p. 91).
 
* They're looking for a palace which includes a garden on a mountain, a  
mountain meadow (p. 91) ... and that's an echo of Eden, isn't it?
 
* What's the significance of V seeing ghosts (pp. 89-90, 92ff.)?  Who  is 
the ghost V sees, leading him into the vaults (p. 92)?  Why is it that,  when 
the ghost speaks ("Where you wished to go, O pawn"), it's V speaking, so  
that Lurn says, "Why are you talking to me like that, Valorius?" (p. 93)?
 
* There are winged figures in the garden who don't move or breathe but  
aren't statues either (p. 93).  Angelic, it seems, but what's the  significance 
here?  If I may theologize after the fashion of James Jordan  (AKA Patera 
Nutria), during the time from creation to Christ, man was "a little  while 
lower than the angels" (Ps. 8; Heb 2).  The Law was given to Israel  by the 
mediation of angels.  And Israel's calendar was regulated by the  moon, which 
was created in the beginning for "seasons" (Gen 1: the term doesn't  refer 
to summer, winter, spring, fall but rather to festival times).  But  the 
lunar/angelic period lasts only until the coming of Christ, who is the "Sun  of 
righteousness, who rises with healing in his wings" (Malachi 4).  When  the 
Sun comes, the lunar period is over.  Is it possible that Wolfe  has any of 
this stuff in mind?
 
* What is the significance of the tomb, with the door opening (p.  94)?  
This is something of a resurrection image, isn't it?  It is, in  fact, his 
father who is resurrected in a sense, who comes to enter V's mind, and  who 
robes him with his own mantle -- an echo, perhaps, of Elisha with Elijah's  
mantle, which designated him as his successor?  In some way, this is V's  
becoming king ... which would suggest that his father was the king (and hence  
what V inherits, through his father's blessing/curse, is in fact the  
kingdom).  Right?
 
* Why in the world does V (or Wolfe) echo Mercutio's words from Romeo  and 
Juliet: "The steel that went in was not so long as my hand and less  wide 
than two fingers together, yet it was enough.  It sufficed" (p.  96)?  The 
line from R&J is: "'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as  a church-door; 
but 'tis enough,'J is: "'tis n  Was this an accident on  Wolfe's part?  That 
hardly seems likely.  Coincidence?   Maybe.  But it was noticeable and a bit 
jarring to me.   Deliberate?  Maybe, but then ... to what end?
 
* Okay, the last paragraph, with its Christ-like allusions, I'm not sure  
about.  V has inherited the kingdom, presumably, but at this point, there's  
still a lot of darkness, there are tyrants, etc.  But not forever.   That 
much I understand.  But what do the various elements of this paragraph  mean?
 
- "Should our folk require a sword, I am the sword that springs to their  
hands"
 
- "Asked to heal, I cure their sick -- when I can": He isn't Christ, but he 
 is a Christian figure.
 
- "If they bring food, I eat it.  If they do not, I fast or find my  own": 
An allusion to Jesus' instruction to his disciples when he sent them out  to 
make their living from preaching the gospel?
 
- "East lies the past, west the future": in Genesis, the Garden  has a door 
on the east side, so that to leave the Garden is to head east (and  then 
Cain is banished further east, and then people move even further east to  the 
land of Babel) and to return to the Garden is to head west.  Similarly,  the 
Tabernacle and Temple are in such a way that you enter them from the  east, 
heading west.
 
- "Go north to find the gods, south to find the blessed": I'm not sure  
about this.  North is associated with the gods in pagan mythology, but in  the 
Bible, too, the Garden is located symbolically in the north.  Eden is a  
mountain from which four rivers flow (Gen 2), and they all flow south, so that  
God's mountain is associated with north.  That's the best I can do with  
that, but "south to find the blessed"?  No clue.
 
- "Above stands the All High, and below lies Pandemonium": Well, the "All  
High" appears to be the one true God over all the gods, and Pandemonium is  
Milton's term for hell, the place from which the demons come to earth to 
attack  man.
 
* The story is framed by references to you, the reader, as a traveler whom  
V has encountered ("from time to time I entertain a lost traveler, such as  
yourself": p. 96).  Note the word "lost."  To this traveler, V gives  his 
orienting speech about east and west, north and south, above and below  and 
then urges the traveler (us): "Choose your road and keep to it, for if you  
stray from it, you may encounter such as I" (p. 96).  Huh?  That makes  it 
sound as if encountering such as V wouldn't be good ... but then who is "such  
as I"?  And why, then, after giving that warning, does V add "We shall not  
meet again"?
 
Many puzzles.   Thanks for your help.
 
John
 
 
 
 
 
 
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