(urth) vanished people=Hieros

[David Stockhoff]

On 11/12/2011 11:24 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
> .............just found-
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>
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> What we've been pondering was from Fitzgerald's 1st Edition. Just from that, I thought Orion made a
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> better candidate as The Hunter than the sun, but I just found some snips from later versions of
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> Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubiyat with significantly different phrasing.  They seem to suggest
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> the Stone is the sun, (as usual, Wolfe is right) but also that the Hunter is the sun.
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>
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>> >2nd Edition
>> >Wake! for the Sun behind yon Eastern height
>> >Has Chased the Session of the Stars from Night:
>> >And, to the field of Heav'n ascending, strikes
>> >The Sultan's Turret in a Shaft of Light.
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>
> 4th and 5th Edition
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>> >Wake! for the Sun has 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
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>

The sun clearly takes center stage, but since the stone-bowl metaphor is 
entirely gone it's hard to argue from this that the sun is a stone. 
Similarly, both versions are martial, not hunting-related, so one can't 
deduce anything about a Hunter either. Still, I see what you mean: Venus 
was never anything but a device if it was intended at all.

I think it's very telling that FItzGerald must have thought his first 
version inferior, but I find it much more interesting. I think that's 
because its images are much less direct and more ambiguous than here. 
Much less literal and far better suited to Wolfe's purpose.