(urth) vanished people=Hieros

[Jeff Wilson]

On 11/10/2011 8:59 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
> I'm not arguing (at this time) that Kayaam meant the sun in his stanza. I'm
>
> arguing that WOlfe interprets it as the sun and that's why Severian/Apu Punchau
>
> gets that passage sung to him at this crucial time. He needs to be reminded
>
> he is the sun (which is the source of his power and his salvation from the
>
> depths of human history).
>
>
>
> Anyway, Wolfe has specifically chastised his readers to not fall into the
>
> pop culture trap of calling Venus a goddess of love. "She was a sex goddess".

I wonder if this is also a hint about bowdlerized translations from the 
Victorian era. Some here are apparently unaware of the degree that 
Khayam's verses were admittedly transmogrified by Edward FitzGerald. The 
quote Wolfe chose is drawn from the first edition of 1859, but the same 
translator had in his fifth edition of 1889,


Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

To compare:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.


Of course, Apollo is a hunter and was god of the sun along with arts and 
lyres and pythons, and probably more prominent in the mind of a 
classically educated Englishman than a muslim Afganistani.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >