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[Gerry Quinn]

From: Lee Berman 

>Gerry Quinn:
> > Some woodland god who shares one syllable and no etymology with the 
> > English word silver, and has at best a tenuous connection with Dionysus.  Of course 
> >that must be the explanation!  Why worry about the quite plausible derivation of 
> >Silent Silk and Silver Silk (for a single god, not two) that Wolfe gives us in the text?
 
 > Anyway, Wolfe has Hound explain that "Silk has been awarded the 
> epithet Silent.." because he looked out of the Sacred Windows 
> without showing himself or speaking or making the window
> change in any way.
> 
> So how does that explain the epithet Silver? It would seem Wolfe's
>  Hound's (heh) explanation for "Silent Silk or Silver Silk" is lacking by 
> 50% wouldn't you agree? Why did Wolfe even mention "Silver Silk"
>  if he only meant the "silent" explantation to have significance?
The significance of Silver is obvious, surely?  The full quote is:
****************************************************
But Tartaros generally turns them black and speaks. Silk said he didn't speak 
or make the window change at all, pretty often. He just looked on."
****************************************************

In contrast to Tartaros, Silk leaves the windows the colour they are.  Which is described the first time we see one as “luminous grey”.  ‘Luminous Grey Silk’ lacks both poetry and alliteration; thus ‘Silver Silk’.

> If ignoring Silver Silk works for you, that's completely fine. 

But as you see, I don’t ignore it.  That’s your trick.  

I went back and searched the Urth archives for your post on the subject.  You wrote: “My guess is that this is an allusion to a couple satyrs/fauns who are associated with the Dionysus cult, Silvanus and Silenus.”

You totally ignored the clear explanation given in the text.  Sure, maybe you thought it only explained 50%, there’s no sin in not spotting the meaning of ‘Silver’, though I’d have thought a little thinking about the nature of Sacred Windows would make it clear.  But the thing is, you never mentioned it at all.  Did you not read it?  Or did you maybe think an explanation in the text was irrelevant compared to some random connections of a couple of syllables to some associate of some god you want to generate a vague theory about, and some associate of some other god that might have been associated with the first one.  Better not confuse list members with that.

And nobody else mentioned it either.  Better I suppose to chase that new hare.


> But why 
> does it bother you when others find plausible explanations, such
>  as invoking the Silenus and Silvanus epithets of Dionysus? Wolfe 
> mentions and explicitly explains "epithets" in this section. He 
> pointedly refrences Dionysus in a nearby section of the story. You 
> don't have to connect them but why huff and fume when others do? It is in the text.
It’s not in the text in any meaningful way.  It’s either random noise or a reference so cryptic it might as well be.  Rhea Silvia is a completely different case, it’s a full name pseudo-translation of someone who is very clearly the mother of the very clearly referenced character Romulus. 

 
> >I see a problem when a continual torrent of supposed ‘levels’ are proposed by readers who don’t 
> >appear to recognise the need for or even validity of any methodology for assessing the 
> >difference between a genuine correspondence or some spurious ‘link’ dreamt up out of random noise 
> >while trying to confirm some other highly questionable theory.

> But I'm not clear on what your "valid methodology" for understanding 
> this work of literature is.  Is it possible for you to explain it? It can't rely 
> on the old humdrum of "what's in the text".
“What’s in the text” is central to it.  Obviously I can’t provide a statistical mechanism for distinguishing near-perfectly between literary references and noise, but I do assert that there is a distinction and a competent reading is not possible without some means of making it with some degree of reliability.
A start would be reading the text and considering and reporting alternative explanations that are clearly and explicitly given.  Don’t you think?

> It has been demonstrated over and over, including in my example above, 
> that everyone, theorists and skeptics alike, are selective in parsing out 
> portions of the text and paying attention to and quoting only those parts 
> which support a particular view. Let's be honest, Gerrry, ignoring the Silver 
> Silk part of the mystery above is not the first time you've done it nor is this
>  the first time it has been pointed out to you that you do it. How is your 
> methodology in any way superior to anyone else's?
I think we’ve just established that, in one case anyway. 
And in general, I do try to consider and report alternative readings or issues.  You criticised me for doing just that, recently.
By the way, here’s something from your next post in that thread: “In conclusion, I think the presence of Dionysus' millenia-long worship does provide a significant enough basis for a secret underpinning to understanding of the Sun series. More and more this seems to me like a gnostic universe that Wolfe has created.”
“A secret underpinning... a gnostic universe”  I don’t make random assertions about what is being proposed on this list, either.
- Gerry Quinn
 
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