(urth) Pike's ghost

[Jerry Friedman]

> From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>> Jerry Friedman: >> So this may be saying that someone has taken a 
>> mandrake root and humanized it, creating a homunculus.
> 
> It might. But mandrake and mandragora are essentially the same word, 
> "drake" being another word for dragon.

Yes, that's why I said the mandragora might be a mandrake root.

"Folk etymology associated the second element with /dragoun/ and substituted native /drake/ in its place."

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=mandrake&searchmode=none

> I guess it might be a difference in reading preference. Is a Wolfe book to be 
> read as a random sequence of colorful episodes which have no connection to
> each  other? I don't see it that way.

Nobody does.  Not around here, anyway.  Maybe you've misread me and others and think we see it that way, or maybe you know you're exaggerating to the point of considerable distortion, or something else.

> If a random someone has grown a fetus from a plant root for no apparent reason, I 
> can't see that as a more interesting interpretation than one which explains 
> who created that fetus and for what purpose.

Okay.  I can't see yours as an interesting interpretation.  That's a matter of taste.

However, I am saying that because of the Levi quotation, or just because a  fabulous mandrake root is something human-like but not really human, I don't think it's valid to say that the only possible reason for Wolfe to use the word was as a connection to Typhon.  Indeed, I think it's quite possible that such a connection never entered his mind.

> As larry says, mandrake and Mandragora 
> both point to Typhon (as homunculus ties to Dr. Talos, but we won't complicate 
> the matter with that, for now).
 
Why don't they point to Ymar?  The two Biblical references to mandrakes are in connection with Rachel and the maiden in the Song of Songs, both types of the Virgin Mary in Catholic theology (or I can find at least one source that says that about each one).  I don't think I need to make the last connection.

Or why not the Sleeper?  Shakespeare refers to mandragora as a soporific, including in a fairly famous passage from /Othello/.

Or Severian in his first life or two?  The most famous quotation about a mandrake starts "Go and catch a falling star", which immediately brings to mind the slingers' song, which Wolfe said illuminates--darkly--Severian's past and future.

http://books.google.com/books?id=N-IemS8Uqn0C&pg=PA233

(You might prefer to associate the falling star with Lucifer and thus with Satan, who Typhon echoes.)

>> larry miller: The question is who that someone is.

Not necessarily.  Maybe we're meant to leave it as a mystery and concentrate on the interaction between Severian and the homunculus.

Jerry Friedman