(urth) Like a good Neighbor

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Tue, 11/22/11, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Like a good Neighbor
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 3:26 PM
> On 11/22/2011 11:43 AM, David
> Stockhoff wrote:
> > But you must also agree that this flag has some fine
> print---that it subverts itself, it's waved so hard. By this
> I mean simply that not only has a death occurred---though
> under rules we do not yet know---but a supernatural event
> has occurred as well. Horn continues, _in some form_, and
> the story goes on. But note that the story has almost just
> begun---the reader will be jolted, and will be instructed
> too. "Do not trust deaths." Much is NOT told here beyond the
> death itself. 
> 
> Over and over, the narrator reminds us of what a miserable
> failure his mission was. Thus we know that Horn is not
> completely gone in the Rajan. His spirit fled when he
> tumbled in the pit (I say) and his body was ultimately
> destroyed on Green. But there is a sense in which he
> persists, like the hyacinth Remora refers to at the end of
> RttW. We all assumed Remora was referring to the Rajan's
> grief over the death of Hy (and maybe the Silk in him was).
> It is still a strange scene with that interpretation I
> think. But  _I_ think primarily it is the loss of Horn
> who we are intended to grieve over. A man who set out on a
> mission and failed at it --hardly before he had begun--by a
> fluke accident. But by some miraculous method he persisted.
> 
> A lot of Wolfe heroes are
> pre-determined...over-determined...to succeed against all
> who stand against them. Severian, Latro, Able. Eventually,
> Horn becomes a character like that. But the original Horn (I
> say) was not. He was a man with a good, brave heart who was
> as subject as anyone to catastrophic misfortunes. It is a
> rather hopeful story seen that way.
> _______________________________________________

You already know my reading of that final symbol: the blood spilled into the ground springs up as vegetable life that endures even though ancient man is dead.  And Horn too, really.