(urth) Silk or Horn?

Marc Aramini marcaramini at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 30 07:00:12 PDT 2013


Lee, I have posted my scheme of their respective "percentages" of Horn and Silk several times, so I won't do it again in full, but the first book of long sun ends with Horn imitating Silk, and the last book of short sun ends where Silk finally stops imitating and pretending to be Horn.  

People credit the stuttering Patera (remorah?) with his "exorcism" but it happened when the narrative drive shifts from concentration on first person past events to first person present, when past becomes third person.  This the story of the man on green is about horn told by silk.  When horn and Babbie become confused in the last chapter of Obw and horn says goodbye, he is GONE, leaving only a fragment,memories, and Silk in extreme denial that his student would sacrifice himself for Silk.  This is why at the end of Obw he says he should have been more positive, he should have concentrated on the nice features of people, and that he caught the ball and won the game.  Silk can't accept that someone would die for him.  So he says horn is alive. (Horn is alive though -as babbie's anger and aggression at the mistreatment of Horn's son at the end of Rttw on urth prove, as well as his little huh huh huh as he points at his horns, but the narrator is ignorant and ascribes other motives to this.  Silk (silver silk) is the narrator of IGJ and the first person Rttw sections. I don't think silk is really strong in the third person sections of Rttw and that is mostly Horn.  He mixes more with Silk when he returns to blue, so the present tense of Obw is silkhorn. The love of silk is all confused with the wants of horn in that book, and this confusion lingers after horn sacrifices himself under the vanished god- tree and says goodbye

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 30, 2013, at 5:02 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

>> Marc Aramini: Nettle knows that the man who has come back is not her husband 
>> anymore.
> 
>> Antonio Pedro Marques: That I do not know. They know he isn't Horn because his 
>> body is Silk's and his personality likewise - in fact the only reason he can 
>> get anyone to entertain him as Horn is because he has all of Horn's memories.
> 
> My first reaction was to disagree with Marc; to say that he is still Horn, in
> part. But then I noticed Marc didn't phrase it like that. He says the guy is
> "not her husband anymore".  An interesting distinction. After all he has been 
> through, is Silkhorn still Nettle's husband?
> 
> There is a scene in RttW where the narrator is sitting at a table with Mint,
> Bison and others, describing his quest to find Silk. They are all trying to 
> be very polite and considerate of his feelings by not pointing out the fact 
> that Silk is sitting at the table with them.
> 
> Finally he gets frustrated with their condescension and says something like,
> "Look, I know you all think I am Silk. I know I look like Silk. But I'm not
> Silk. I'm Horn. Nobody can tell a man he is not who he knows himself to be".
> 
> I find this to be a powerful passage and not one to be dismissed merely as
> the ranting of a delusional guy. We all know that identity, especially self-
> identity is an important theme across all Wolfe's works.
> 
> Horn is very much a middle aged man. There is discussion of his growing 
> stockiness and baldness. There is just a hint of world-weariness. He has the 
> "midlife crisis" need to balance being a husband and father with a need for
> adventure and conflict, Seawrack and a harem, etc.
> 
> Wolfe was nearing 70 as he wrote Short Sun. Perhaps the confusion of Horn and
> Silk serves as a metaphor for the struggle of transition from paunchy middle-aged 
> guy to a less passionate, white-haired, wise, elder man. When do you break down
> and admit fully and completely to being "old"?  Ever?
> 
> (for some reason I am reminded of a recent news story from Florida, where a 72 
> year old guy went on a rampage, shooting a bunch of people including his 80
> year old former boss and former best friend)                         
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