(urth) The Wizard

[Daniel Petersen]

The only thing I would add to Craig and Marc's comments is the
qualification that I think some of Wolfe's characters *do* actually
experience genuine redemption, but that it's never finished, but always
ongoing - it has arrived truly but only in part, to help guide
*through*darkness and mystery.  But those characters are indeed now in
communion
with the Community of the Infinite - be it ever so shaky or intermittent or
in process/progress.  Again, I think Wolfe is here evincing a New Testament
eschatology of an 'already-not-yet' kingdom of heaven and salvation.
 Indeed, it's often salvation through paradox, a dancing redemption in
movement and counterpoise (a la Chesterton, O'Connor, and the poetry of
George Herbert), not a static status of 'saved'.

Wolfe is a 'spiritual/mysterious' writer not only in the sense of his
'elisions' and 'uncertainties' and aching absences of 'the most important
information... that can give everything meaning' - but also in the
occasional bursts or hints of numinous* presence* (especially in the
recurring eucharistic imagery and scenes):  some of those moments of the
miraculous, especially when the Outsider manifests a glimpse of his
presence - be it a gentle voice in the ear or a giant face in the sky - are
spine tingling with the possibilities of spiritual realism for me.  Not to
mention that same presence that is felt, perhaps more slyly, but equally,
in some of the exquisite moments of* agape* love exhibited by characters (I
always think of Silk-Horn caressing wee Olivine's metal head - yet another
scene associated with the eucharist).

-DOJP

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> This past year I defended Wolfe's elisions and "uncertainties" by talking
> about the fact that he is truly a spritual/mysterious writer: in reality,
> the most important information, the one that can give everything meaning,
> is not present; it can be seen in structure and in existence, but not
> overtly.  Thus my reasoning for most of his narrators not having the full
> picture of the most important details of their condition: we as humans
> don't quite have the full details just by looking at the facts we "know"
> with certainty, but those aren't the most important things that really make
> sense of everything.
>
> --- On *Sat, 3/10/12, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) The Wizard
> To:
> Cc: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Saturday, March 10, 2012, 8:44 AM
>
>
>  Lafferty and O'Connor seem like perfect analogues on this point. There's
> something in both of those writers that makes faith a very dark and
> dangerous and uncertain thing. That matches well with the sense I get from
> Wolfe. Sometimes I feel like discussions of his religious attitudes neglect
> that dimension in favor of teasing out something like a straightforward
> cosmology or theology behind all the allusion/puzzles rather than seeing
> them as precisely "dark glasses" through which the characters and readers
> are trying to understand what's happening to them. The point isn't to
> unravel it all in order to achieve certainty. The point is that the puzzles
> go all the way down (at least some of the most important ones), but you
> have to live and make decisions anyway. That's what makes the characters in
> all the Sun books so fascinating to me. They HAVE to figure out the real
> story because it's their story, and the consequences are ultimate. But they
> can't, at least not completely. That's a dilemma that would make O'Connor
> proud.
>
> In Lafferty, it often seems to me that the truth is often absent. Some of
> his stories are horrifying because things have gone desperately wrong in a
> fallen world. The apparent humor on the surface leaves scars.
>
>
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