(urth) Phanes

[Nick Lee]

It is proving difficult to condense my ideas here. I just wrote 85 pages on
this subject, and duplicating the rhetorical effect is impossible.

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>

Careful. If it really was "obvious", wouldn't everyone see it? But if is
> clear to you, I do think that's interesting and worth reporting.


I only meant that it is obvious once you know that "Dennis" means
"Dionysus." And naturally you have to know the myths associated with
Dionysus. He is associated with trees, particularly the fig tree (think YHWH
and Silk in Long Sun), and rebirth. Weer is basically a vintner. Dionysus is
also the god who gave Midas his touch, though it wasn't one of stone.

Robert Graves translates "Dionysus" as "lame god." This is not a
conventional translation, but it does explain why Weer, Silk, and Severian
all limp. I am sure Wolfe has read Graves. (Dionysus is also the god of
drama, the theater, and for this reason Severian becomes caught up in
plays.) Vi's wedding contains all the elements that are instrumental in the
Phanes myth, and he did hatch from an egg.

Read Borski's essay on Peace: http://www.siriusfiction.com/PaxBorskii.html

It has some of this information and more insights, though I believe his
thesis is far off the mark. Weer as the Devil would certainly be clever, but
would it mean anything? No, it's just a smokescreen. He also misses Weer's
greatest sin, but that's another essay. Dionysus is associated with the
devil because he is horned, a nature deity, and the Catholic church
conducted a smear campaign on nature deities. Dionysian cults were also
considered subversive, which is ironic given Christian history. Also, the
dragon/serpent is not evil but a divine figure in the East. It was divine in
the West as well, until we began to consider wisdom folly.

Some, as sergei, recently expressed, prefer to read WOlfe from a
> humanistic/psychological level. As I've argued in the past, I think Wolfe
> deliberately interweaves other levels into his stories, like the Secret
> House within House Absolute. These levels include the
> religious/mythological, the political with a hefty dose of autobiography.


There is no text but the text we create as readers. Our methods of
interpretation are influenced by our environment. It is not possible to know
the text the way the author knows it, and yet we try.

I believe that, at his foundation, Wolfe is a genre writer. This is not
meant as a slight. What I mean is that Wolfe builds a world. This is the
ground he lays for the story he wants to tell. His stories reflect his
interests. He wouldn't be much of a writer if there were nothing more to
him. Still, he does repeat himself. Look at the repetition of blue and green
in his stories. Always these two colors: blue and green. Also the wolves,
and if I may, Dionysus. I think it is misleading to think of his work as
possessing levels. It's all there at once. It may appear as levels because
we only glimpse a bit at a time. The "it" is the story.

On the autobiographical side I'd like to note that there might be agreement
> that Weer, Severian and Silkhorn are among the most autobiographical
> characters in the Wolfe retinue (with #5 also joining in).  Your thesis
> seems to suggest a Dionysial connection to those three characters.


More than those three characters.

Certainly Weer is autobiographical. He is such in the sense that he is a
kind of alternate reality version of Wolfe. He is Wolfe asking "what if?"
What if he hadn't married Rosemary? What if he had stayed at home? What if
he had worked as an engineer the rest of his life and never wrote? What if
he hadn't read as much literature? Wolfe loves "what if?" scenarios.

As for the others, I suggest that they are characters dear to Wolfe and have
much of him in them. He draws on his life for details, but I wouldn't call
their stories autobiographical.

The Dionysus/Phanes connection goes beyond those characters. As I said, he
is associated with the protagonist of Sorcerer's House. Also, if you read
the short story "Empires of Foliage and Flower" set in the Briah universe,
you'll notice the story bears resemblance to the mythology of
Phanes/Dionysus. Take Prince Patizithes -- Patizithes means "Lord of Wine
(literally zythos, an alcoholic drink)." The child, Barrus, this is a
mispelling of Bacchus. I believe the unnamed girl in that story is Rosemary.
Rosemary means Aphrodite, and in one myth Dionysus mates with her. She gives
him a son, another wine god who is said by some to be Dionysus himself. Then
there's Father Thyme, who is Khronos, father of Phanes. Dionysus is the
"resurrecting god" the eternal force of creation. He appears in many guises.

I suggest that in Wolfe's readings of mysticism and mythology (and history
in general) he came upon Dionysus and found him many times over, as I have.
Plutarch thought the Jews worshipped the wine god (from the Sabbath,
Sabazois being an analog deity). His worship also presaged the practices of
the Christians -- drinking wine that is blood and taking the god into
yourself. Dionysus/Phanes is also identified with the Logos, and so is
Christ. This provided the foundation for Wolfe's "what if?" What if Christ
were never born? Well, Phanes/Dionysus was associated with Mithras. Both the
Mithraic and Orphic cults were active around the time of Christianity.
Scholars speculate that any of these might have won out and grown. So, if
Christianity didn't exist, the Orphic cult would have taken over. God, after
all, isn't really Phanes. That is just a name. If he is truly omnipotent, he
would be fundamentally the same in each universe. What man calls him is
incidental.

You're already aware of Wolfe's preoccupation with wolves. Most leave it as
being a simple obsession with his own name, inserting himself into the
story, a metafictional trick. The real reason is more complex. Wolfe is
interested in the wild/civilized dichotomy. Dionysus exemplifies this. He is
known as "Liber" and he frees us from the constraints of civilization. Like
Shiva, he is "Nysa," god of creation, destruction, and religious ecstacy.
All these we can equate with the Christian god.

David Stockhoff and I have discussed the general principle of "story as
> universe; author as god/creator"and the possibility that Wolfe applies that
> principle in the Sun Series with an adjustment to "author as demiurge". I'm
> wondering if the gnostic recognition of the Dionysus/Pan figure as demiurge
> and WOlfe's auctorial self-identification could be of use to your thesis.


I've spent a great deal of time studying gnosticism, both regarding Wolfe
and for my own interests. Wolfe isn't Phillip K. Dick, though. It's not that
simple. Wolfe, and when I say "Wolfe" I always mean the figure in my
imagination and not the man himself, is distrustful of authority. To be more
precise, he views the simple, primeval human existence as superior, the
Edenic existence. In this stage of human development, we answer only to
nature, to the Creator. Man, in his hubris, attempts to "swallow" God. He
attempts to become Him, setting himself up over others, creating rules and
laws that are not God's. The demiurge is a human force. God cannot be
destroyed, though. Kill him, and he will be reborn. Attempt to become God,
and he will burn out everything that is not him.

Now what does this have to do with Briah? Plutarch also identifies the
Jewish god with Typhon, who in one myth kills Dionysus (the god of
outsiders, by the way), much the same way Zeus kills Phanes to become top
dog. The Hypsistarians also worshipped the Jewish god under the name Typhon.
He is, after all, the "God of winds." There has been speculation on why
Typhon, Wolfe's character, is named so, leading some to believe he is a
cacogen because he has the name of a monster. It's also the name of a god,
the (Christian) God, in fact. Typhon is just a man. He is a Nebuchadnezzar.
He wants to be God.

El was originally a sky god, like Zeus, until a small sect of desert nomads
began to assign to him the attributes of all gods. He was god of both
creation and destruction, which explains a lot about the Old Testament. Did
it ever strike you as interesting that, in the Wizard Knight, Heaven and
Hell, Elysion and Niflheim, God and Satan, are connected? That is the story
of how a world in which the Norse pantheon becomes dominant would work.

Peter Wright sees The Book of the Long Sun and other stories as Wolfe's
attempts to explain The Book of the New Sun. I suggest that it appears this
way becaue Wolfe is preoccupied with a different story. This is only the tip
of the iceberg as regards the symbolism and associations with
Dionysus/Phanes. I haven't even gotten to Terminus Est, the Claw of the
Conciliator, and the azoth. I can't know if Wolfe intended all these
allusions. Coincidence can only explain so much, though. I'm certainly a
minority in my interpretations. I don't know of anyone else who reads
Pandora the way I do, except maybe one poster on this list.

--Nick
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