(urth) This week in Google alerts

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Fri, 11/4/11, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

> > >I see the central theme of deities of the wood very
> differently than Lee does 
> 
> >but it's there for sure.
> 
>  
> 
> How do we differ, Marc?
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
> >James Wynn: But I *do* know what I'm talking about
> here, and Wolfe is throwing 
> 
> reference after reference to Dionysus. I can't say I know
> exactly why. I'm saying 
> 
> he's doing it. 
> 
> 
>  
> >Marc Aramini: Yes, he is.  (I am more arrogant
> than you James.  I do know why.)
> 
>  
> 
> Okay, okay, so tell us already Marc! heh. (but seriously- I
> think I've read most 
> 
> of your posts in the past few years but I don't know what
> you will say)    
>         

Well, Lee, our primary difference as far as the importance of dionysius is that I think it directly relates to the text and that Jesus/The Outsider were fully present in the past of the Sun as a conglomerate of the Conciliator mythos (like the Theseus/Minotaur myth appeared to syncretise with later events in history). dionysius is synonymous with the future salvation/existence of man. 

The importance of the wood deity is that it is ultimately the future of mankind: existence as the Green man, his salvation and only hope of life after the new sun comes, when life is engendered in a brush that will then run up a tree.  (empires of foliage and flower directly confronts vegetative matter and the sages as the masters of the supernatural manipulation of time/thyme).  So Dionysius of the vine becomes another aspect of the Outsider in man's future fate.

I think rather than staying strictly gnostic, Wolfe's syncretic habits and the recurring theme of imitation begetting something genuine REDEEM the gnostic and pagan elements in such a way that they, too, become salvific. 

So fallen creation can actually be redeemed by the initially greedy imitation of one who emulates a benevolent goodness, and in emulating becomes it.  The awakening of life in the emerald future is directly related to Dionysius' myth: Urth is flooded then the time of amalgamation into vegetative life occurs, the life of the vine.

What people don't understand is that the subtext of short sun led me to the theme of the creation of the green man, but I could find no way to account for the passage of time Rigoglio claimed passed on Urth since he left; there simply wasn't a mechanism for that in the text, which I was looking for fiercely in the belief that Blue was Urth.  As soon as Gene said Green was Urth, the mechanism I was looking for jumped out. 

"I wanted to take us to Green, where Sinew is. I wanted to see him again, as I still do, and I wanted you others ... to see what real evil is so that you might understand why we on Blue must come together in brotherhood before our own whorl becomes what Green already is." (IGJ 321)

 Those things don't happen by accident, so, of course, Green is Urth and the story of Short Sun is really the story of the trees that sleep but awaken when the New Sun finally comes, when the waters recede.  Thus the myth of Dionysius and its importance.

The mechanism I was looking for was the giant gap in my theory because before that I was seeking the wrong key word.  You see, on a scale of certainty this particular idea is solidly  10/10 for me (the reason: couldn't find a mechanism, asked gene about a possible mechanism, he said "no, no, no Green is urth" then found the mechanism I couldn't find before), whereas the hyacinth is male is more like a 2/10, there are just some disturbing facts there that are not compelling but should probably seek explanation somehow.

The forest had set its own dead there as well, stumps and limbs that time had turned to stone, so that I wondered as I descended, if it might not be that Urth is not, as we assume, older than her daughters the trees, and imagined them growing in the emptiness before the face of the sun, tree clinging to tree with tangled roots and interlacing twigs until at last their accumulation became our Urth, and they only the nap of her garment. 
(Sword and Citadel 75). 

Notice that Severian obsesses over the trees - they seem to predate Urth itself in this passage. While it is idle speculation, it suggests that the power of the Pancreator may be nestled within the trees: 

I made my way through a forest less precipitous than the one through which I had followed the brook. The dark trees seemed, if anything, older. The great ferns of the south were absent there, and in fact I never saw them north of the House Absolute ... but there were wild violets with glossy leaves and flowers the exact color of poor Thecla's eyes growing between the roots of the trees, and moss like the thickest green velvet .... I heard the barking of a dog. At the sound, the silence and wonder of the trees fell back, present still but infinitely more distant. I felt that some mysterious life, old and strange, yet kindly too, had come to the very moment of revealing itself to me, then drawn away like some immensely eminent person, a master of the musicians, perhaps, whom I had struggled for years to attract to my door but who in the act of knocking had heard the voice of another guest who was unpleasing to him and had put down his hand and turned away,
 never to come again. Yet how comforting it was. 
Sword and Citadel 75)