(urth) vanished people=hieros

[David Stockhoff]

On 11/10/2011 5:34 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
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> Wolfe uses the quote in reference to Severian, The New Sun; Apu Punchau,
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> the sun god. The stone is the sun. Severian is a Sun god in a Stone Town
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> Why would Venus be relevant in those words in this context? (perhaps David has an idea....)
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>> >David Stockhoff: I haven't worked this out at all, but it always seemed to
>> >me that the poet observes a specific night sky, with Orion, followed immediately by
>> >a dawn sky. And the implication to Wolfe must be the sweeping away of
>> >myths by the coming of Christ.
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> Yes. I'm not sure but you might be on the right track and perhaps WOlfe is on that
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> same track. The last star to be swept away by the sun each morning is the Morning Star
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> which is an epithet for Lucifer.


Venus is the stone, that last star which precedes the sun. I have no 
idea really, but if Venus is love and God is love---facts which do not 
escape the author of Long Sun---well, then ....

I wouldn't put much weight on Lucifer's later identity as Satan though, 
just its meaning of Light-Bringer (Sun-Bringer?). And there you go.