(urth) Typhon's nature

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Sun, 10/16/11, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:

> 
> All this is very true and well put. Allusions are allusions
> and, unless a particular story is so well known that any
> hint of it carries great weight (and there is after all one
> Greatest Story in particular that Wolfe retells in
> semi-hidden fashion in TBotNS that undeniably fits that
> description!), they should be taken in small doses. Six
> degrees of separation is way too many.
> 
> But here we have kindergarten mythology leaping out at us.
> Echidna is well know to be the mother of monsters. Typhon's
> and Echidna's family is a veritable pantheon of divine
> monsters. The onus is on you to deny a theory of how this
> situation came about and what it means in New Sun and Long
> Sun. You'll need to do more than sit back and yawn if you
> wish your denials to be taken seriously.
> 
> Why should Wolfe care if he recasts a father as a son to
> create this debased and pagan Olympus? You say yourself that
> allusions don't matter! Wolfe is already necessarily picking
> and choosing among disparate mythologies. I see Milton's
> Satan in there plain as day, because Satan raped his
> daughter to produce all the sins of the world. I could go
> on.
> 
> But incest couldn't possibly happen in New Sun! No, Wolfe
> would avoid this topic, the bread and butter of half the
> mythologies (and ancient dynasties) of the world, to avoid
> upsetting Gerry Quinn with the covertness of its secret
> histories.

Gerry tends to stray to absolute surface level interpretations, but I often agree with him that a well known myth will not agree in EVERY particular when mapped onto the story, as, yes, there are different myths that are mutually exclusive.  

Gerry may be correct in saying that simply the names Echidna and Pas might not be quite enough to imply that they are genetically related without other internal evidence (sometimes in the form of theme - I think this is huge in Wolfe). (Are consistently flawed and damaged children that internal textual evidence? I don't know - maybe.)

I DO think the story of Hyacinthus is actually of the utmost importance in Short Sun(transmogrification of fallen lover into vegetable matter that survives tenaciously).  Additionally, James' explanation of the code word Thetis seems spot on - from a time when Zeus was rebelled against (in the Iliad?)  Similarly, OBVIOUSly we have to consider the myth and history of the period in the Latro books to glean absolute meanings.  But just the fact that the greek gods enjoyed incestuous relationships and Wolfe used their names isn't quite enough for me to say, for sure, Typhon and Echidna had to be siblings.